12:26 PM
I voted today! Thanks to the magic of absentee ballots, I've never in my life seen the inside of a voting booth.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has made his own voting suggestions for various California propositions. Amazingly, when I compared my votes to his suggestions, we agreed on all but one!
10:33 AM
XM's new MyFi looks pretty impressive! I'd be a little concerned about having just five hours of battery life, but all in all this is a pretty sweet little device that'll put satellite radio into the hands of even more people.
10:07 AM
We had a great time at Stacy and Steve's wedding this weekend in Laguna Beach. The weather was beautiful, the location was beautiful, and the people were beautiful. I'd never been a groomsman before, and I had one of the best seats in the house! I had the ocean on my right, two of my best friends getting married right in front of me, and three hundred people admiring my devilish good looks to the left of me. And plenty of free martinis to go around. What more could you ask for?
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In other news, Sirius made some minor programming changes today.
Eminem's Shade 45 is now showing up in the program guide and it officially launches on Thursday. Street Beat, channel 44, is no more! 104, CNN Headline News, will shortly be changing to carry just plain ol' CNN. That is all!
11:43 AM Keyhole is a beautiful piece of software, but it costs $40 a year to use. I enjoy staring at satellite photos of the earth projected on a rotatable, zoomable globe, but not when it costs me money.
NASA has come to the rescue with WorldWind, a free piece of software that does essentially the same thing. Their servers are swamped right now, so I'd offer up a review if I could get it to download faster. In any case, it's exciting to see a free alternative out there to Keyhole!
If you're more interested in zooming around the galaxy than you are in spying on our home planet, Celestia is for you.
3:40 PM
Henson's four-hour miniseries Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars was one of the best finales to a television series I have ever seen, sci-fi or otherwise.
I was a little iffy after seeing the trailer weeks ago, but after watching the miniseries I don't think that televised science fiction has ever been so well done.
They tied up all the lose ends, the CGI effects were some of the best ever, and the Eidolons' face-opening trick was so great.
It's easy to see just how crazy people like George Lucas and Rick Berman have become when you put something like ST: Enterprise or The Phantom Menace up against an episode of Farscape. Blows them all away!
6:12 PM
If you'd been thinking about getting a Disneyland pass so that you can visit the park as often as you'd like during the 50th anniversary celebration next year, you'd better hustle down to Anaheim this weekend.
As of Monday the 18th, new annual pass pricing is as follows:
SoCal Select = $99 (no increase)
SoCal = $149 ($20 increase with fewer blockout dates)
Deluxe = $209 ($30 increase)
Premium = $329 ($50 increase)
So now you just have to visit seven times instead of six to make back the difference on a Premium pass. I was actually expecting something much more dramatic, with the Premium hitting $500, so I'm a little relieved, actually.
9:25 AM
In order to get your HAM radio license, you need to pass a multiple choice test.
Sample tests are online. A technician class license is the most basic, and it's all you'd really need to start talkin' to people. General and Extra class are way harder, and I think you have to learn morse code for them.
In the days of the Internet, though, getting an amateur radio license seems like a colossal waste of time.
2:42 PM
I've found a new drink that suits me well.
A well-made classic dry martini is delicious and mind-blowing.
The alcohol content is pretty high though, and I haven't dared drink more than one per session. One martini in 30 minutes will have me on the floor faster than a handful of gin and tonics will over the course of a few hours. Good fun all the way though.
The dry martini is a classic concoction, and anyone who enjoys gin should love it. Martinis at the Dunst household are free of charge to all visitors.
10:12 AM
Hard water got you down? Let the Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaner keep your shower nice and clean for you! No more scrubbing, wiping, or rinsing!
10:42 AM
When people hear you have a 'scanner' they usually think 'police scanner'. And while it's true scanners do let you listen to police transmissions, there are many more interesting things to listen to out there. The backstage goings-on at Disneyland, for example.
Nascar fans even use them to listen in on conversations between their favorite drivers and their pit crew. Apparently it's pretty common to find vendors who rent scanners at racetracks!
12:12 PM CherryOS claims to emulate OSX within Windows XP at 80% of the host processor's speed.
How they've managed to leapfrog PearPC's slow progress remains to be seen. The CherryOS site is pretty sparse on details, so the jury's still out on this one.
10:11 AM
It was announced today that Howard Stern is moving to Sirius. Whether you like the guy or not, that's great news for Sirius. Their stock seems to be doing pretty well this morning thanks to the announcement.
1:15 PM
We got a new kitten a few days ago. We call him Conan (The Destroyer.) He likes to play.
Violently.
He'll latch on to my arm with all four legs and dig his teeth as hard as he can to any flesh he sees. I'll throw him off across the other side of the bed and he'll just run right back and latch on to my arm again, digging his teeth into my wrist in the exact same place.
When he's old enough he's getting declawed.
Our three-year old girl cat (Corky) hates him and hisses at him at every opportunity, but she's mostly afraid of him. I find that hilarious. Sometimes she'll get brave and run up to him and smack him in the head with her (declawed) paw and then run away. He'll just sit there and take it like a trooper without fighting back, but once he gets big I bet he'll get sick of the nice guy act and then we'll have a real show on our hands.
Before we got the kitten, I had never heard Corky growl before. It is a frightening sound. It will terrify you the first few days, and after that you just pick her up and you don't care about whatever sound she's making, because for the love of god you're ten times her size and she doesn't have claws anyway.
You're supposed to keep a new cat separated from any existing cats you have until they get used to each others' smells and the aggression melts away, but we didn't see that happening at all, so we've decided to let them out together for supervised visits when we're at home. The little guy shows no fear in the face of danger, and Corky's fine as long as she doesn't have to be around him.
We may be doing irreperable damage and somehow ensuring that they will never get along, but christ almighty we're both gone all day and our time at home is too precious to worry about if these cats are ever going to fall in love.
11:49 AM
I got a speeding ticket on the way home from work - less than a mile from my house - two weeks ago. I was doing 51 in a 35. No biggie, right? I figured I'd just go to traffic school to get it 'erased,' so I did some research into how I'd make that all happen.
That's when I discovered Orange County's dirty little secret.
10:21 AM
An American Airlines AAirpass will entitle you to first-class seating on any American Airlines flight - anywhere in the world - for the rest of your life.
For a mere 3 million dollars it can be yours! Get one of your spouse too and save 1 million dollars!
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