Saturday, February 26, 2005

Car Buying

In and out in two hours. Only slight buyer remorse (G.A.P. coverage? Fine.)

I'm way environmentally friendly and have a Magnesium Metallic car.

The only thing I haven't found a place for, in transitioning my stuff from the TL, are my sunglasses. The heart beads made the cut.

Also, there's no way to plug in the iPod, it appears. That's kind of a serious problem.

Friday, February 25, 2005

Today is Absolutely Today

Today is Absolutely Today . Steve White's new blog.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Garden State

(Molly and)I really like the Garden State Soundtrack. If you don't have iTunes, click here.

New Music

Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool
And I fleshed out my Shawn Colvin.

Live 88
Whole New You.

I don't have a complete Neil Young, or Bruce Springsteen, or Tragically Hip or R.E.M. But I have a complete Shawn Colvin. It is interesting (to me) how these things sneak up on you. I must be a Shawn Colvin fan.

Not yet, you buggers

Sunset Magazine sent me a senior discount subscription offer.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Cars Are Cars

I'm all set to get me some new wheels. I am getting that paragon of civic virtue, the Civic Hybrid. Oh, damn, the new MINI Cooper convertible is out. damn damn damn...

No, really, I'm getting the Honda Civic Hybrid. Great mileage, low pollution. I fit. (Headroom is usually the issue. I don't fit in lots of cars.) Molly gets to pick the color.

At least two people I know at work have one of these. They are happy with the car. My nearly four year old Acura, with 106,000 miles on it has been extremely reliable. I have high hopes for the Civic.

I've been figuring out the luxuries I'm giving up, so I know going into it and so I won't be disappointed later. No sun/moon roof. No seat warmer. I can feel the pity flowing my way.

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Hubble.

Monday, February 21, 2005

Unintelligent Design

The New York Times Magazine
"Some nonfunctional oddities, like the peacock's tail or the human male's nipples, might be attributed to a sense of whimsy on the part of the designer. Others just seem grossly inefficient. In mammals, for instance, the recurrent laryngeal nerve does not go directly from the cranium to the larynx, the way any competent engineer would have arranged it. Instead, it extends down the neck to the chest, loops around a lung ligament and then runs back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe, that means a 20-foot length of nerve where 1 foot would have done. If this is evidence of design, it would seem to be of the unintelligent variety."


As Lilah would say, he he.

(btw, apologies if you don't want to mess with a NYTimes web sign-up. It's relatively painless)

Drag The Duck to your Applications Folder

Adium is my chat client of choice. Logs you into all your chat accounts; I use it for AIM/Yahoo/MSN. And you gotta love a program where the installation instructions are as seen below.

Saturday, February 19, 2005

Elucidate

Elucidate. John elucidates on your behalf.

Friday, February 18, 2005

Paint a breast, write the word Love, go to jail.

Muralist's vision has jail staring him in face : "Santia ordered Stross, 43, to serve 30 days in jail, do two years' probation and pay a $500 fine for violating a city sign ordinance. Roseville officials said letters were prohibited on the mural and Eve's exposed chest is indecent."

Yeesh.

Yahoo! News - Hurt Troops Often Denied Pay, Benefits


Yahoo! News - Hurt Troops Often Denied Pay, Benefits
: "Hundreds of Army Reserve and National Guard troops returning home after being wounded in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites) have gone months without pay or medical benefits they were entitled to receive, military officials and government auditors said Thursday."

How would you support the troops? (Besides bringing them home and/or taking care of them after they've served?)

Groan

Ok, make sure your pop-up blockers are on and check out this site.
My favorite:

What's The Difference Between a Bad Golfer And a Bad Skydiver?
A Bad Golfer Goes, Whack, Dang!
A Bad Skydiver Goes Dang! Whack.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

This is a test, it is only a test


So, I can post images. This seems like a reasonable test graphic. :-)

Bush's Barberini Faun

Maureen Dowd: "I'm still mystified by this story. I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the 'Barberini Faun' is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?"

Maureen Dowd won a Pulitzer for her coverage of the Lewinsky debacle. She's unable, apparently, to get a press pass to the White House.

In case you're wondering, this is a Barberini Faun

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

YATC (Yet another two cows)

2 COWS

DEMOCRATIC
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbara Streisand sings for you.

REPUBLICANISM
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?

SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk
the other, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are
surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the
analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow
and produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give
excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

TALIBAN CORPORATION
You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature' private
parts.
You get a $40 million grant from the US government to find
alternatives to milk production but use the money to buy weapons.

IRAQI CORPORATION
You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They send radio tapes of their mooing.

POLISH CORPORATION
You have two bulls.
Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

BELGIAN CORPORATION
You have one cow.
The cow is schizophrenic.
Sometimes the cow thinks he's French, other times he's Flemish.
The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow.
The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk.
The cow asks permission to be cut in half.
The cow dies happy.

FLORIDA CORPORATION
You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some of the people who actually like the brown one best accidentally
vote for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which one you
think is the best-looking cow.

CALIFORNIA CORPORATION
You have millions of cows.
They make real California cheese.
Arnold likes the ones with the big udders.

iTunes buy of the day

All Grammy winning albums are $2 off. I'm looking at: this one by Wilco.
Also, greatest hits albums are usually really cheap. Like Sting & The Police, 18 tracks for $12. And Suzanne Vega's greatest hits, 21 songs for $12. If you're curious about an artist, it's a nice way to check them out.

Sunday, February 13, 2005

Chicken Breast in a Bag

BBC - Food - Recipes - Chicken Breast in a Bag.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Hmmm, ya think maybe the Safari problem is related to Saft?

Dori, at Backup Brain notes:
"Mac OS X Update 10.3.8 is out. And I really, really hope that it fixes my Safari constantly crashing problem, although I haven't been able to find it mentioned in any of the docs.

I've mentioned here before how much I like Saft, a Safari add-on. Without Saft, for instance, I'd lose all my open windows in Safari when it crashes (several times a day), but Saft keeps track of what's opened. Version 7.5.1 just shipped, and it helps detect possible IDN Spoofs."

Safari doesn't hardly ever crash on me, but then, I don't use Saft.

Friday, February 11, 2005

Links of the day

You can help this rabbit, or you can turn the page.

Ouch My favorite line: "that's yours...".

Siena Villa

I really want to be a good apartment neighbor. I'm sensitive to the fact that my downstairs neighbors might not be grateful if I take up clogging. I make sure I don't start laundry after 9, since I heard my neighbor's washer running one night. If I can hear them, they can hear me.
So, we weren't pleased when the new downstairs neighbors wrapped up their move-in at 3:00 a.m. last night.

3:00 a.m.

I'm hoping to meet them and actually bring it up with them. Perhaps they're as chagrined that they had to wrap up the move at that time. Maybe they wanted to return the U-Haul and save a day's rental fee. But in the meantime, I called the apartment management to complain.

She was entirely consistent.

Me: Hi. So, we have new neighbors, downstairs?
Her: (warily?!) Yesss.
Me: Well, they moved in at 3:00 a.m. last night.
Her: No they didn't.
Me: I'm sorry?
Her: I saw them moving in during the day, they were quite busy.
Me: I don't know when they started moving in, but they were still at it at 3:00 in the morning.

At this point, she changes gears and says that she'll talk to them 'within minutes'. I'm sure, given her communication skills, that conversation will be something like: "the neighbors upstairs called to complain about you."

Birthdays

I've always been (proportionately) jealous of my cousin, Jennifer, who was born one day before me, on July 16th. July 16th is the anniversary of all kinds of interesting things. Some are fun, like the opening of Disneyland; some are of historical note, like the first test of the atomic bomb. Well, finally, an anniversary of note that occurs on July 17. Camilla Parker Bowles was born on July 17th, 1947.
The other mollifying recognition of 7/17 is that the default date for the iCal icon is my birthday.

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Peerflix: No DVD Rentals! Trade Your DVDs

Peerflix: No DVD Rentals! Trade Your DVDs -> Clear out that stack of DVDs you don't watch anymore.

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Eggsactly

"The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit." -W. Somerset Maugham

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Aren't daughters grand!

Mike Connolly's daughter, Kelly, rocks. She got her dad the very cool M&M dispenser that's been feeding us the past week or so. Thanks Kelly!