Reality Me

Month: January 2007

  • Stephen Colbert Does His Job Well

    And they just don’t get it…

  • The Sky Is Crying

    We have a beautiful rain coming down right now. Unfortunately, the lower pressure gives Cathy migraines. On the positive side, she always lets us know when we need to take an umbrella with us.

  • Give Free Hugs – Get Harassed By The Man

    You know.. I could see apprehensive people thinking "this perv is looking for a cheap feel" or "what a creative way to get a date" but the guy isn’t doing either. He is genuinely giving love. Watch the video and see the smiles he brings. The joy. The bonding and community. Then, in response, our society tries to take him down. Douse the good. Make a negative from a positive. But there is hope and the community rebounds and gives back what Juan Mann started. The community gives love and where Juan Mann first supported them and brought them up, they in turn help him. It’s a good watch.

    Read the story behind the serial hugger Juan Mann.

    Juan Mann (pronounced one man) is a play on words, but the hugger insisted his rules included no names, no phone numbers, no relationships and no dates. [Source]

  • Joint Compound and Power Sanders

    Bad idea…

    So I bought this new joint compound that make a heavier particulate and falls to the floor leaving less dust in the air. Working with it by hand has been great but slow. Definitely worth the few extra dollars. Impatience got me and I smacked a piece of medium grade drywall sandpaper (the gridded stuff) onto my power hand sander and made real quick work of smoothing out the joints. Then I turned around to see the fog that had come into the room. Maybe in a few weeks the dust will finish settling. Ew. Guess I should have closed the closet door too. This isn’t good foreplay.

  • Silence!

    I would really enjoy a sensory deprivation tank right now. Could go for a depravation tank too.

  • Taking Christmas Down

    So the first rolled around and the wife efficiently packaged up the Christmas decor for another year. That is, minus the tree itself and the house lights. Those are my responsibility. Last year we bought this cool Christmas tree bag that stores the tree very nicely. Er, if only I could figure out where I put that bag…

  • I feel like a programmer again!

    Finally! With the installation of service pack 2, I am working with 2 monitor again! I should have done this eons ago! Hmm. I bet 3 monitors would triple my productivity 🙂

  • Today’s smile

    Great commercial!

  • Finding the right words for SP2

    So, exactly what words should come my mouth when my machine crashes during the installation of Windows XP Service Pack 2?

    Update: All appears well.

  • Do As I Say, Not As I Do

    Being Geek, I hit a computer hard. However, my computer remains my lifeline so although I demand much of and push it to the limits, there are certain risks I don’t take. One that I have neglected has been upgrading Windows XP to service pack 2. Today I take that chance and am installing the once dreaded, highly needed, SP2! Wish me luck.

    Btw, the do as I say reference is to "keep your computer updated" advise that I tell most people.

  • What’s wrong with teenage girls?

    Sarah has a simple chore that I would think she would find pleasurable. She has to feed the cats. The outside cat gets fed once a day (even though I’ve asked her to feed it twice a day in the winter) and the indoor cat uses a Le Bistro self-feeder which only needs to be filled periodically. Not a single day goes by that Sarah does not have to be prompted by Mom or myself to feed the cat. I can always tell when the cat did not get fed because the sad sack stares longingly into our living room window and, if ignored, will bring us a present of a mole, skink, lizard, bat, mouse, squirrel, or bird. This morning she gave us a sparrow.

    When I was Sarah’s age, I was not allowed to have pets so instead I took to feeding birds. I would actually ride my bike down to the feed store on Main Street in Medford, NJ and make a special mix that would attract certain types of birds. Then as I ate breakfast by the bay window, the birds would eat with me. And the neighbor’s cat would sneak up on them and kill them as I chowed. That’s when I took a disliking to cats. Yeah, yeah… life’s full of contradictions. Anyhow, I really took pleasure in feeding the creatures and making sure that they never ran out of food. So it befuddles me how she can callously ignore this dependent creature.

    I am a believer in the school of hard knocks and learning by physics. Perhaps I should deny food to Sarah for a couple of days. Nah, that wouldn’t work. She has too much candy stashed in her room. I guess this is one of those times we (or Noah) does the job for her and it comes back to her in other ways. "Dad, can I have some food for snacks at the mall?" "No dear, I gave your snack food to the cat."

    Little side note, Sad Sack was a WWII commit strip that my grandfather on my father’s side keep in a red, hardcover book. It was primarily line art and similar to Beetle Bailey. Whenever I would visit Nanny and Pop, that was one of the first books I would grab (followed by the photography techniques books with the naked women..boys will be boys afterall).

  • Why should I use your broken music?

    It’s that damn DRM. Yesterday Cathy’s computer gets this message:

    Some of the items in the iTunes library, including "Rough Boy", were not copied to the iPod "Pavlov" because you are not authorized to play them on this computer.

    Then it goes on to list a whole bunch of songs…basically anything she has ever purchased through iTunes. (Blingo has been good to her!) Oh, it also removed the tunes from the actual device. I am sure this has something to do with Sarah or Tommy plugging their iPods into Mom’s computer. How do families with multiple iPods but only one computer get their music?

    DRM sucks. Even Bill Gates says DRM stinks. (see also)

    [Biill Gate’s] short term advice: "People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then." [Source]

    So, my next step will be a long, arduous customer service fight with Apple (oh the bad karma and wasted time!). Simultaneously I suppose I will research how to cripple DRM since, frankly, Cathy is being hassled for legitimately buying music and that doesn’t fly with me.

    Update: Some resources that look like they will be helpful. Mark’s(we)blog and one digital life (showing a backup procedure for your tunes).

    Update: The solution was actually pretty simple. 1) Logged out of Sarah’s iTunes login. 2) Logged into Cathy’s iTunes login. 3) Under the iTunes->Store menu choose "Authorize this computer." Done.

  • Bush Supporters Are Nuts!

    And the funniest thing I read this week:

    Lohse, a social work master’s student at Southern Connecticut State University, says he has proven what many progressives have probably suspected for years: a direct link between mental illness and support for President Bush. [Source]

  • LOST – the unanswered questions

    Here is a list of unsolved mysteries and unanswered questions. I expect some will never get answered.

  • Pretty, Ugly, Layout

    To the non feed readers, I threw up a new theme. Looks nice in FF. I haven’t checked in IE anything but James has reported that it looks terrible in IE 7. I’ll have to fix it later.

    In other news, WordPress 2.0.6 was just released and claims to be the last batch of security fixes before WordPress 2.1.

    Update: Regulus2.0 seems to hold fairly well in FF1.5, FF2.x, IE 6, and IE5.5. So far the only big difference I have seen is that the two columns on the right degrade to a single column in the IEs. IE7 still unchecked.