10:11 AM
If you've been experiencing irritating delays when attempting to download files in Firebird 0.8, you're not alone! The new download manager is to blame.
From an interview transcript with Larry King four days ago:
"EISNER: I promise you. I have been to the cemetery where he is resting. His wishes were that it was unmarked, and not available to anybody to ever find out. But I went up there and I talked my way into them showing me where he's buried.
KING: Do you know why unmarked?
EISNER: I think he didn't want -- he want of wanted his privacy forever.
KING: Even in eternity.
EISNER: And his wife did, and I respect that. It's a beautiful, little spot and nobody could ever find it, and I'm very proud that I talked myself into it."
Walt Disney is actually buried at Forst Lawn in Glendale, and his grave is clearly marked.
She's an indoor cat, so she really doesn't smell like anything at all...but if you bury your nose in her fur and breathe in you can smell her faintly. She doesn't seem to mind too much, and her scent is oh-so wonderful.
9:59 AM
I've finally found a lightweight RSS plugin for Firefox that I can live with. It took weeks of searching, but I have to say I'm really happy with "RSS Reader Panel." It's simple, it's fast, and it also supports Atom feeds.
The folks at Blogger seem to think that Atom is the wave of the future, so it's nice to have support for that as well.
Mine's getting a little grungy after being used for so many years...maybe I should get a new one. After all, they come in different colors now and they've added a few buttons too...
11:27 AM
If anyone reading this is interested in purchasing Creative Memories scrapbook supplies, let me know because Tammy's thinking about selling their stuff.
10:24 AM
Disney bought the Muppets yesterday in a move that many people had been expecting for years.
I have mixed feelings on this.
On the one hand, I feel that the Muppets are a tired and old franchise and not much has been done with them since the early 80s. I think that a lot of kids have no idea who the Muppets are. I also don't think that Eisner will know what to do with them to change that, either.
On the other hand, I do have a tremendous amount of respect for the Henson company, and I trust that they know what they're doing. Jim Henson's five children bought the company back from EM.TV in May of last year and they've refocused their efforts on improving the quality of the company's products. Brian Henson's well-known commitment to producing Farscape is nice too. :)
On a related note, it looks like savefarscape.com got a facelift.
10:17 AM
When we moved into our house a year and a half ago, there were a few stains on the carpets downstairs near the kitchen. I'd been cleaning them up with various kinds of carpet cleaners which had all worked reasonably well. However there was this one big stain that I couldn't get out no matter how hard I pressed or how many cleaning products I tried.
I'm here to tell you today that there is a MIRACLE CARPET STAIN REMOVER on the market that no one should be without. This weekend I tried the WD40 Company's Spot Shot and it got that stain out no problem! The stain had seriously been there probably two years or more, and Spot Shot succeeded where all others had failed! Incredible!
I can't recommend it enough! And oh yeah, WD40 is itself a pretty incredible product too.
How's your day going? That's good. Mine's going okay I guess. Traffic was decent this morning, but it's never what I would call a 'pleasant drive.'
I've got plenty of work to do today. There's never a shortage of things to work on around here and lately it's been tough to keep it all straight.
There's not a whole lot happening in the news today. Have you noticed? Yeah. Kinda slow.
Hey, did you know that Monday's a holiday? Yep. No, I'm not kidding - three day weekend. It's Presidents' Day! You should check with your employer to see if you have it off. Tammy doesn't, and she did last year. That's kind of a bummer.
Anyway I'd better get back to work. It was great talking with you.
All I know of "Comcast: The Company" is that-
* They are a huge nationwide cable company with monopolies in many markets (as is the case with almost all cable companies)
* They impose download caps on their broadband customers and threaten heavy-downloaders with service termination without ever revealing how much bandwidth use is "too much."
* They raised their cable rates twice in the last year.
* Their customers hate them for all of the reasons above.
Disney needs new leadership, that's for sure. I just don't know that a company as universally disliked as Comcast is the one to do it.
I registered over at SaveDisney.com a few weeks ago, and yesterday in my mailbox I got a free SaveDisney.com bumper sticker! It says something like "Dump Michael. Bring back Roy." I thought it was a real hoot.
While I may agree with its message, I feel strongly that bumper stickers are sported exclusively by hippies and white trash. I am neither, so I will simply carry the sticker's message in my heart!
1:37 PM
Well I did it. Yesterday when I upgraded Firebird/Fox, I also took the time to make the switch from Eudora to Thunderbird.
I used Eudora for a good long while - years! - and honestly, it's a piece of shit. So many other email clients have updated their interfaces and simplified their configuration options over the years, and all the while Eudora has only received minor changes and tweaks - virtually nothing that would distinguish the Eudora of today from the Eudora of 1996.
The straw that broke my back was this - I receive a pretty high-volume of messages each day (300+), and Eudora just can't handle it. Every few months, once my mailbox had reached a certain size, Eudora would choke on restart and tell me that my mailbox was corrupted and it'd offer to rebuild it for me. Well it'd take about 10 minutes to rebuilt it, and that'd work for that session, but the next time I launched the program - same thing. Eudora's solution to this was to have me clear messages out of my trash and other mailboxes. Sorry but I think that's retarded.
So like I said, I switched to Thunderbird and never looked back. Thunderbird does everything I want it to, and it looks great. It's even skinnable, although I like the default skin better than the alternatives. And it's free - unlike POODORA!
Yes, that's right. I called it Poodora. When you see that word spread across the Internet, remember that I invented it, just now.
1:04 PM
Looks like SBC Yahoo (my DSL provider) just upgraded all of their DSL packages.
Previously I had been getting 768-1.5 down / 256 up for $49 each month.
Now I can upgrade to their new $45 plan, at 1.5-3.0 down / 384 up! Aaaand according to the SBC techs over at Broadband Reports' SBC forum, '3.0' actually means '6.0' if you're close enough to the phone company's office.
10:17 AM
We went to the Improv in Irvine on Saturday night and saw Harland Williams. He didn't appear to have much material prepared, but he did a lot of improv using audience members and was pretty funny anyway.
I think I'd like to start going to comedy clubs more often. The Improv was a 30 minute drive down to Irvine, but I'm wondering if there's something closer to Anaheim Hills. There's gotta be.
10:03 AM Icom America just announced their newest scanner, the IC-R20. This thing is huge!
For one thing, it's got dual-tuners that can be used in certain bands, something never seen on a receiver before as far as I know. It uses a BNC antenna connector instead of the weak SMA connector that Icom seems to love so much. It's also got a built-in audio recorder!
This is the first non-Uniden receiver that you can control by plugging into a computer! And I'm pretty sure this is the first receiver to use USB and not an antiquated serial port connector for PC control and cloning operations!
Exciting times! HOWEVER, the IC-R20 *still* lacks support for trunked systems. In fact, Icom doesn't have a single trunking scanner anywhere in their entire product lineup! What the hell is wrong with those guys?
12:14 PM GBAGI is an AGI interpreter for the Game Boy Advance. It'll let you play just about all of those classic games from the glory days of Sierra On-Line.
Unfortunately the interpreter uses the AGI data from the MS-DOS EGA versions and not the vastly-superior Apple IIGS ports :)
If you don't have your old game disks lying around, I'm sure your favorite peer to peer network can hook you up. If not, try browsing the forums at The Underdogs.
On a related note, AGD Interactive is a small group of anonymous programmers who have dedicated themselves to remaking Sierra's golden oldies with updated graphics, music, and plotlines - for no money whatsoever. They've already released sexed-up versions of Kings Quest 1 and 2, and right now they're working on Quest for Glory 2.
2:49 PM
Brian Fischer! My old pal who I lost touch with after high school in Palos Verdes!
Where are you now? If you just Googled yourself and found this entry months later, then my plan has worked, and I have found you by having you find yourself, which in turn has found me!
Get in touch and let me know what you're up to! Maybe we can hang out if you're still in Southern California.
Last I heard you got married. So did I! We could do the double-date thing or whatever. Seriously though, contact me!
11:15 AM
I am reminded that in an election year, listening to NPR becomes an excercise in pain management.
Is anyone really so interested in the caucuses and primaries that NPR needs to actually broadcast them live and give you the blow-by-blow of every stupid speech that is made? I have a hard time believing that's the case.
I understand that they're a news outfit and this political hooplah is technically news, but NPR just goes overboard and gives it way too much coverage. I've had to start listening to CDs on my commutes, and I don't think I have enough music to last me through November.
10:38 AM
The Internet Archive has set up a free music archive where you can download free music 'till the cows come home at a cool 150k/sec.
Click the "Live Music Archive" for some real treats. People taping music at concerts has come a long way!
For example, Bela Fleck did a concert at Purdue in December, and you can download the whole thing at a quality that would rival any live commercial recording. It's incredible how good today's digital recorders sound. Seriously.
Most of the files in the archive are distributed as .SHN files. SHN files are essentially compressed wave files, but SHN is not a lossy format, so you won't see any loss in quality. Of course that means the files you download are huge (820MB for the Flecktones double-CD above,) but if you've got a broadband connection that shouldn't matter too much.
If you want to convert SHN to MP3, it's a relatively simple process. Just download the free utility, dBpowerAMP along with the Shorten (shn) plugin and you're good to go.
Incidentally, Comfort Stand Records uses the Internet Archive as their primary means of distributing the albums in their ever-growing catalog.
1:10 PM
I went to get my hair cut this weekend. It had really been a long time since the last one.
I went to Tammy's salon this time instead of the cheapo 'GreatCuts' that I usually visit. It was really interesting because they relaxed my hair and I've never had that done before!
Have you ever wondered how some 'people of color' are able to get their hair to be straight enough to comb and style? The answer is relaxer! It's this super toxic chemical that they comb into your hair, but it completely eliminates any natural curl and leaves you with straight, manageable hair.
After 15 minutes the relaxer is washed out, and a special chemical conditioner is applied to halt the chemical process before it totally disintegrates your hair.
Anyway, I've been living with annoying-as-crap curly hair for 25 long years, and this was an eye-opening experience. It feels totally awesome to have straight hair. I don't have to fight with it every morning to make it do what I want anymore!
I almost can't wait for my hair to get longer so that I can have longish straight hair. It's a whole new world baby.
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