Sunday December 28, 2003

I was checking out my webhost's site (www.aplus.net) and they have user driven control panel that looks promising.  It's even got password protection at the folder (sub-directory) level.  Cool.

It's amazingling cold again tonight and this old, almost unisulated house is chilly.  Looks like another $250 utility bill is building...  (sigh)

Saturday December 27, 2003

Wow, Christmas is over, just like that!  It was mostly low-drama here and a simple meal and gift opening with my family here at the house.

The orange alert is irritating, so is this whole war in Iraq.  A coworker's son is over there and it is really worrying her - this is the part I hate the most about the war.  As critical as I am about the Military and all the 'rah, rah' flag waving, the part that hits home is how it affects you and me.  I found this cost of the war counter at:  www.costofwar.com  and thought I'd put it here as a reminder (mostly to me).

Monday December 22, 2003

Ahhhh!!!  Christmas is here and my brother's gift is still on the table!!!

Luckily the local warehouse superstore is open tomorrow and until 5:00 PM on Wednesday so there's time to get the goodies for Christmas dinner.

Oh well, it's not worth taking too seriously anyway! 

Merry Christmas!

Saturday December 13, 2003

I've been trying to catch a bug all week with symptoms including headaches, dizziness, hunger and nausea (at the same time), no energy and incredible irritableness.  I'm talking Allegra and Aleve and a few cups of coffee - no fever (that's a good sign).

Christmas is a couple of weeks away and I'm not ready...

Friday December 5, 2003

At this writing it's a couple days away from the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor  on December 7, 1941.

Sixty-two years ago at almost 8:AM on a Sunday morning the Japanese bombed the hell out of Pearl Harbor killing some 2,400 servicemen and women, injuring another 1,200, sank or seriously damaged 8 US Battleships and destroyed or damaged 320 aircraft.

Truly Japan had woke The Sleeping Giant.

We paid Japan back with a couple of crushing atomic blasts, the first being deployed on Hiroshima just past 8:AM on August 6, 1945 that killed in the neighborhood of 100,000 people.  The Nagasaki blast toll was another 60,000, and a staggering 183,000 were killed in conventional bombings of other cities during the course of the war.

Pearl Harbor link:  http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/pearlharbor/

http://www.mrpicassohead.com/create.html

Tuesday October 28, 2003

My employer has been closed the last couple of days from the complications of the fire and the horrible air quality.  The fires are roaring on.  The pic below is from NASA showing the California coast from Ventura to San Diego covered in smoke.

October 27, 2003 Aqua satellite of Southern California wildfires.
Credit: NASA

Sunday October 24, 2003

I can't breath, my head is pounding and most of the freeways are closed - here's a  pic looking west from the yard at 4:PM today...  If you haven't heard, San Diego is on fire, literally!

Sunday October 19, 2003

So the markets (Von's, Albertson's & Ralph's) are on strike and I need a few grocery items.  I'm somewhat incensed that they think it's okay to disrupt my routine and or add grief and headache to all of us who shop at one of these markets.  Tell hell with them.  I'll shop at Henry's, Trader Joe's or there's an Apple Market by my Mom's house - I'll gladly spend my money there.

I saw a Stealth Fighter yesterday when I was near MCAS - it was making a hard, banked turn.  Beautiful bird.  Sad all that talent went into a killing machine.

Sunday October 12, 2003

It's been over a month since I've updated this site - work, home, life; all incredibly time consuming.  The file problem (source files getting trashed after copying) seems to have cured itself - maybe one of those Microsoft patches.  Who knows - the plus is that I'm making more thorough and more frequent backups.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DORIE! Doris (Dorie) Miller would have been 84 years old today (about a year a half older than my Mom).  Dorie supposedly perished on board the carrier Liscome Bay after being torpedoed about 5 o'clock in the morning by a Japanese submarine in the Gilbert Islands in 1943. Dorie was recently played by Cuba Gooding Jr. in the movie Pearl Harbor where he seized the occasion to give the Japanese back some of the firepower they were laying down on the ships and men on that infamous Sunday, December 7, 1941.

Saturday August 23, 2003

Another day in paradise!  73 degrees and a mild breeze.

I took the Saturn in for an oil/filter change and new cooling system hoses (all 7 of them) - 3 hours later I was back on the road again.  During the downtime, I walked over to my Mom's house and reminisced a little on the old neighborhood.

On the way home, I paid $2.29 a gallon for gas and bought a lotto ticket - it's $17M tonight!!!

Tuesday August 12, 2003

Everyone should backup regularly!  No kidding.  A recent bad experience with Nero's Burning ROM 6.0 left a bad taste in my mouth and not much sleep as I stayed up until 4:AM trying to get it right, and restore the source files that got corrupted.

Stupidly my last backup was a few months ago, so I lost some data I can't get back - most of it was junk I didn't have time to go through anyway, one was a household doc for managing costs that I'm reconstructing now.

I ended up using XP's built in CD burning software to make my backups, and then the XP's Restore feature to get the machine back to acceptable behavior (which seemed to work for the settings, but it doesn't restore files as in those contained in the My Documents folder - however these web files seem okay, so far).

Again, my bad for not keeping more current on backing up. 

Saturday August 2, 2003

Nothing much new.  It's been uncomfortably hot, and the humidity is untypical.  A storm blew through Ocotillo Wells (a desert community east of our local mountains) yesterday dropping 1.5 inches of rain.  San Diego just got some great looking clouds and some mild winds.

I'm just completing ripping our CD collection to MP3's using the new MP3pro compression with a full version of Musicmatch.  I've got just over 12 gigs and 4,300 songs.  There are some sound effects CD's next and then about 30 Christmas CDs.  The next step will be checking out the music server feature - I assume that means listening to the files on any PC here in the house.

For some irreverent fun, check out:  http://www.billmaher.com/

Happy July 4th weekend!!!

I ran across this fun time-telling site - it's actually an ad for Rolex: 

http://www.rolex.com/download/fich_zones_flash.html

And the official Do Not Call Registry is up and running. 
Goodbye telemarketers!!  (click the icon to right to go there directly)

Success!  My build-from-scratch desktop PC is up and running.  It's a Shuttle XPC (small form factor) with a gig of RAM, an Athlon 2400+ (2GHZ) CPU and a 120G  Seagate Barracuda HD.  WinXP Pro is the OS - overall it's a very fast system.

We drove up to the new Fry's in San Marcos yesterday.  Great store, so-so prices and a large selection.  When did San Diego get so big?!?

Also discovered (last week) a local coatings company called Flame Spray.  They put a layer of zinc on a pair of old, rusty steel light brackets - they look better than new and they'll NEVER rust again.

This about sums up how I feel today... (pic is from 1977 for running a red light and no driver's license)

It's overcast and cool this morning.  The household chores are barely getting started (sort of  like me) - must be the weather.

I'm not sure what to think about the final episode of Six Feet Under.  Each character has methodically (feels more like mechanically) morphed from one extreme to another.  All in all it's still some of the best television writing I've seen and enjoyed.

I've got a test video on the Pics page - it's over 32-megs in size so if you don't have broadband you'll probably want to skip viewing it.

What a fun, fast and weird week.  I've just about finished up my responsibilities at my old job and the new one starts on Monday.  Thanks goodness it's within the same company - the anxiety and excitement of a new job is rough enough, a new company would be right over the top!

Like Japanese food?  We do, and tonight was a great excuse to eat at O-nami's, a busy seafood buffet (I love the green tea ice cream).

Politically (and I really try to keep my liberal ranting down to a dull roar) I'm curious as ever as to what's up with us and Iraq?  I read this blurb about Patriot Acts I and II and while I can't ever see how it would affect me, I'm a little uptight about the what-if scenarios.

And last, but not least...  the season finalé of Six Feet Under airs this Sunday. 

Nothing new for the site.  I've got to write something for the blog too.

Happy Memorial Day!

For fun, click here to read about making water go uphill!

The site gets an update - I repositioned the buttons, and pulled off a couple of mp3 files after I was having trouble with file associations and WinXP.

Speaking of music files...  I used to use Roxio for ripping music and burning CD's.  And then I reformatted a drive and lost the program.  I've tried the Windows Media (player?) however it only rips WMA files and no MP3's unless you get (and buy) InterVideo's mp3 plugin.  I've got a demo copy of Nero's Mix to play with (ugly interface).  Oh well, more as I figure it out...  or not.

I've been digging around for info about heart disease after a family member was recently diagnosed. 

There are quite a few points of view from both western and holistic health "Experts" and all are a little confusing, and even contradicting.  I don't think there's a silver bullet (regarding curing heart disease), rather the age old adage about moderation regarding diet and exercise will probably work best, and of course I'm speaking solely for myself.  No, my heart is currently fine, and I intend to keep it that way, so I'm also interested in staying healthy and being proactive now and for the rest of my life.

Here's a site I recently ran across:  http://www.matthewbayan.com/

The work week is over and now the working weekend begins, i.e. household duties, chores and errands. 

Am I the only middle-aged guy that would like to just get into his classic 1970 426 Hemi Challenger and drive up the California coast until the sun goes down?  Wait, I am middle-aged but don't have the Challenger - what's up with that?

The 'war' is over, so why are the Iraqi's turning their anger towards us?  Hmmm...  And what now for  those returning troops?

Mad Icon Disease - wow, do you have one of these in your household?

Oh well, it's Friday - yippee!!!

Vacation ends today, and the dread of going back to work has begun.  I am purposely keeping busy to keep my mind off of reality.

On an up note; the Saturn is getting an oversized, Cat-back exhaust system installed this afternoon - boys and their toys!

Photoshop (and me) made some mini-buttons for the index page, and then I dropped the borders around this table too.

The bad thing about taking a vacation at home is that the phone still rings at 8:AM Monday morning...  (sigh)  No, I don't want to refinance, I don't want to consolidate my bills and I don't want to take a survey!

I spent more time on this site than I had planned today.  However the bulk of the work is done and the links are all working.

The pics page is unpopulated until I sort that out.

Welcome to the new site.  What is the old saying about necessity being the Mother of invention?  Well, the old web host was rumored to be going out of business and instead of waiting for it to crash, I jumped ship and signed on with Aplus.net.  They have a high C/Net rating and four times the storage space and unlimited bandwidth.  Very cool!

The links to right will be disabled until I get those pages up and going.  I'm going for a simpler site overall.