thunderbird and striped shirts
Lori sent this URL to me yesterday, I found it hilarious. I read it again today and it was even better so I decided to share;
http://www.thephatphree.com/features.asp?StoryID=239&SectionID=11
It pretty much describes half of the snobby Scottsdale crowd.
If you're not tech savvy, run Microsoft Windows, use Internet Explorer for web browsing and enjoy either Oulook, Outlook Express, or a web based email system, and are satisfied; stop reading.
For those of you who don't use all that, do use it and are unhappy with it, or just have a sense of adventure, you should try out Firefox and Thunderbird. Some of you may have heard of either Mozilla or Firefox, and most of you have heard of Netscape. I know you've all heard of AOL. Well here's some background.. the company Netscape started in 1994 to make some money of this new fangled world wide web thing that was becoming popular thanks to Mosaic (the first widely run web browser, written by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois). They wrote their web browser under the code name "Mozilla". In 1998 AOL bought Netscape and released the source code for free to the world, while continuing development under "the Mozilla Project". They also took the web browser code and incorporated it as the web browser into the AOL software. After a few years of development the two most impressive pieces of software coming out of the project are a web browser named Firefox and an e-mail client named Thunderbird.
So try them out.. download them. Play with them. They do some neat things that their Microsoft equivalents do not. Best of all they are completely open source and free to the world. Any Operating System ever created can adapt this software to run on it, unlike their Microsoft counterparts.
Firefox; http://www.getfirefox.com
Thunderbird; http://www.getthunderbird.com
weekends
Well the weekend started off with Lori and I going to dinner at Claim Jumper and then the Improv to see Carlos Alazraqui. He plays Officer Garcia on Reno 911, which I watch from time to time. It was OK, and we had a few good laughs, but nothing too impressive.
Saturday I went to my parent's place to help them remove a section of wood floor so they can replace their dishwasher. They're going to give me their old one, which will be very nice. After that I joined Dan and Marcella for dinner at Havana Cafe. That place was beyond dead, I'm not sure if it's going to last or not. I'm talking about the Ahwatukee location of course, which is still new, so only time will tell.
After that I went home and watched the ASU game on the DVR. ASU won 42-24 over Oregon St, which helped them up to #14 this week. The game lasted a long time and I ended up staying up really late.
Sunday morning I met one of Lori's friends Dave, along with Steve, Russ, and three of Russ' friends for a road bike ride from Dreamy Draw Park. We rode past my preschool, high school, old soccer fields, and all kinds of other thing I grew up around. It's odd to ride my bike at that end of town, but we had a great ride. I felt really strong and rode really well. I think the cool weather helped, but I definitely have some fitness that needs building on.
After I got home I dealt with some stuff around the house and then Lori came over and we hung out the rest of the day. She hadn't been feeling well in the morning and some stuff was really bothering me. She ended up feeling better and was really nice to waste the rest of her day for me. She helped distract me from the other things and the day ended up actually being pretty enjoyable.
insomnia postings
"You're about as hard to read as Jessica Simpson's autobiography." -- Darryl Hammond impersonating Chris Matthews on SNL
I really don't like her for some reason. Maybe it's the lack of a brain I saw on that MTV show a couple times. I don't know much about her though so I'll admit it's entirely biased.
Anyways, it's 1am and I'm watching Saturday Night Live apparently. I just got done watching "The Terminal", which I really liked. I did some other things while watching it and interrupted the middle (which may have helped make it not boring like others reported), but I liked it anyways.
For some reason I am not tired.. but I chose a good night for it to happen. I've worked a long week already so I'm working from home tomorrow. I can afford to sleep in pretty decently. After this week I think I've earned it.
I failed to mention I went to the dbacks with Lori the other night and they won 4-1. That brings the season total to;
4 wins, 9 losses. dbacks runs; 33, opponent runs; 89
Well, there's always next year. On the plus side, the standings I predicted for the NL West before the season started is what it's at currently. I might actually know what I'm talking about.
You know, Jimmy Fallon really sucked on Saturday Night Live. He could not stop laughing. It's a good thing he left.
turtles and garage catastrophes
So while mountain biking on Friday night I saw a desert tortoise. It was a good 14 inches by 6 inches. I've seen plenty of wildlife in South Mountain Park (rabbits, squirrels, javelina, coyotes, quail, lizards, snakes), but never a turtle and nothing in such detail. If you know Desert Classic, I was heading South/West, and the opposite side of the wash immediately after the tanks is where it was. It was only about a foot off the trail. I took some pictures with my camera phone, and then tried to push him off the trail. He had absolutely no interest in going anywhere. I was thoroughly convinced he was going to get run over so I moved him about 6 feet off the trail into a greenish bit of brush. I hope he ended up being alright. It was pretty cool. I've never felt a turtle that large's shell before, it was pretty odd feeling.
Last night Lori and I made dinner. Well, more accurately, I grilled, and she made dinner. It was the first time she made dinner, and it was really good. We had a marinated salmon, with some asparagus, cous-cous and a bottle of shiraz. It was quite the treat. It was also the first time I've ever grilled salmon. It was pretty easy, heat the charcoal, lay down tin foil, spray it with pam, cook it on each side for about 7 minutes, and it's perfect.
On to today, where I had a really good day at work. Showing up early gives a good feeling of accomplishment when things are actually done prior to lunch. I got quite a few things done at work and coordinated some of the extra work load I've taken on with some of the other people in engineering. I actually worked a really long day and enjoyed it for the first time in a while. Maybe I thrive on a challenge? Interesting.
Then the day went south. When I got home I pulled in to the garage, collected my stuff out of the car, walked around the back of my car and noticed the top panel of my garage door had pulled off the track. I have absolutely no clue how the hell this happened. I'm just glad I caught it before I tried to close the garage door. That could have really broken stuff.. including my car if the errant wheel had caught on the track and it had yanked off the track entirely. So, since I didn't trust closing it, I had to fix it right then (no more people stealing things from my open garage!). I took the wheel off entirely, then closed the door by hand, slid the wheel from the top, re-attached it and checked every last bolt on that garage door. There were a few bolts that were frighteningly loose considering I had a maintenance guy here less than a year ago to fix the broken coil. What shoddy work, serves me right for trusting repair guys.
mikebdotorg, gizmo, gtalk, and work
So I have used "mikebv2" for AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), and Yahoo! Instant Messenger for 4+ years now. Now, I've signed up and added "mikebdotorg" on both services for personal use specifically. I also signed up for gtalk (Google talk) and Gizmo (more on that in a minute) with the same name. So, mikebdotorg is the username to find me on when I'm at home. Write it down, remember it, use it.
So what is Gizmo you might ask? It's a freeware, distributed SIP-based VoIP program for your computer. Many of you have heard of Skype (which just got bought by eBay last week), which is a similar program, but not SIP based. SIP is an open standard for VoIP signaling. Skype uses a closed standard, so it doesn't have the possibility of interoperating with any other program. Gizmo uses the open standard so it will work with other programs. Use Gizmo, it's your friend. You can get it at; http://www.gizmoproject.com/. And give me a call, just dial mikebdotorg.
Gtalk is also your friend. Gtalk is Google's new chat program. But, gtalk is also an open standard. Ever heard of Jabber? No? Jabber is an XML based Instant Messaging standard. It can be encrypted (SSL), and of course since it's an open standard, anyone can implement the protocol. Google's gtalk is simply Jabber. So, any existing client that supports Jabber can use it. Just connect to talk.google.com with your gmail (Google mail) address (for instance joebob@gmail.com), and your gmail password. Make sure you enable SSL as well. Or, you can download the gtalk client at; http://www.google.com/talk/. Of course, you can hit me up at mikebdotorg@gmail.com on gtalk. If anyone needs an invite to gmail, just let me know.
Work work work. This has been a busy week at the office. I have been busy lately, but now one of the guys in my department is leaving the group. Guess who gets to pick up 80% of his work? Me! Along with that, rumor has it a new department is going to be created where my boss wil probably end up. Maybe even another person from our department. That would take us from an overall group of six down to three or four in a matter of weeks. Not sure how that's going to work or not.. It should be interesting to see how things pan out in the next few weeks.
This Dilbert may be hitting close to home;
shock and awe
Forget dropping bombs for political gain, we can all be shocked and in awe of President Bush actually taking responsibility for something;
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0913KatrinaWashington13-ON.html
I fully expected a press secretary release saying that they were going to blame FEMA. I'm actually impressed.
good new orleans stories and riding
Here is an entry worth reading from the New Orleans blog I mentioned;
http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/63014.html
I had a great bike ride tonight, despite the end being in the dark. I rode out to Pecos and 24th St and then did a solid climb up to Chandler Blvd. The descent down to the Ray/Chandler intersection is a bit sketchy with skinny lanes for the cars, a thin bike lane, darkness, 35mph, and a bend in the middle. It is always a bit entertaining to almost keep up with cars though. I have successfully hit that light in a way that I beat cars down to the stop sign at least a couple times now. It hurts to do it though, and the effort I made going up the hill didn't leave my legs able to do it tonight.
My ride on Friday had me a bit nervous on the bike being my first ride since the crash in the garage the previous week. I didn't feel any ill effects today though thankfully. Best of all though, the weather cooled off a bit. I got home and wasn't dripping with sweat like usual. It was kind of odd actually. Dare I say that Summer is coming to an end?!
WOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
It's probably another month of 90+, but I can deal with that.
go fuck yourself mr. cheney
Funny clip of Dick Cheney getting cursed at on live TV;
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/09/08.html#a4856
screwed up story
Wow.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0910katrina-flee10.html
t-shirt hell
You all remember t-shirt hell. They had the t-shirt that instead of I "heart" NY, they had I "plane" NY after 9/11? Yes, those guys. They come up with offensive t-shirts about everything. Here are their Hurricane Katrina ones;
http://www.tshirthell.com/katrinashirts2.htm
All except for the last one are good. You could even collect them all!