Category: Just Stuff

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One Thing About eBooks…

…and particularly Kindle books, is the ease of taking notes within the books–and searching notes. This is especially useful for those books that have error reporting enabled. One of my fav notes to submit in an error report is, “Consult Inigo Montoya. (No, not that quote; the other one.)” I generally slug that comment in wherever a word is misused. And, oh, am I finding a slew of those! The quality of proof readingand copy editing has really, really declined in recent years, and in self-published books it is frequently non-existent… or of a “quality” that can only–charitably–be described as comparable to toxic sewer sludge.

Oh, well, at least I have the joy of making LOADS of snarky notes, and even–happy-happy-joy-joy–submitting a few as “error reports”.

Gottalovethat.

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Ramblings

I love these cool, gray Autumn days. Easy on the eyes. Especially nice when they come along on weekends. Good napping weather. 🙂

“Golden Boy” (not his name) cat is at least smart enough to have learned to keep a minimum of 4″ between himself and this lil notebook as I type along, surf or whatever. Other Cats (who shall also go unnamed) weren’t that smart. But I do wish he’d can the “walk up on the back of the couch and butt head into typing human” trick. Distracting and sometimes annoying. He does do a good job of amusing himself with random stuff he “finds” (or steals from my desk or whatever) to carry around while loudly proclaiming his victory over the inanimate object or throwing it so he can chase and catch it.

Don’t you just love this?

Thank you for your order. I have contacted XCompany to send you the email with the download link and serial number. You should receive the email form XCompany on Monday.

*arrrggghhhh!* THE REASON for purchasing downloadable software IS INSTANT GRATIFICATION!!!

*sigh* I’ll wait until Monday. Not. I bought it, I’ll have it NOW. *goes and finds, downloads a pirated copy and keygen for the software* Works for now. One decimal point of a version back. I’ll just reinstall with the legit copy/license key later. *grumble-grumble-gripe-complain*

Ashton Kutcher –is there an excuse for any film with this guy in it? I only ask because I came into the room and there was a movie on with him in it. Tune out…

Seven weeks with only 1.5 doses (three half tabs) of high blood pressure meds needed. Something’s working. Kinda like that.

SyFy–*feh* The SciFi Channel was once a decent idea. Now? What a bust. Kind of like The History Channel was a decent idea before it became “The Conspiracy Theory Channel” mixed in with lots of other kinds of dumbass crap.

‘S’all I have.

Nah: one more. I noticed that the “holiday” commercials for gift-giving from Kay Jewelers are not touting prostitution anymore (“Every kiss begins with Kays”). That’s progress of some sort, at least.

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It’s the Little Things… Isn’t It?

Why do I prefer some products (various computer hardware, software, automotive, household products, etc.) over others? Usually, it seems to come down to little things.

I prefer Mobil1 motor oils, because, among other “little things”, Mobil makes a wide array of reliable, high-quality synthetic lubricants besides just motor oil, and I like having a consistent quality across the board in my automotive lubes.

I prefer ASUS computer hardware wherever possible, because I have come to find ASUS hardware to be consistently reliable and high-quality, but also–perhaps especially–because of one important “little thing”–live people respond quickly to support requests 24X7. I have not always liked the answers I’ve gotten, but I’ve never gotten any lame excuses from the support folks, either. Oh, and they all seem to be competent speakers of English. *heh*

I prefer Opera as my web browser for TONS of “little things” it does right. Built in mouse gestures that work consistently well and aren’t “broken” by upgrades like the add-on mouse gestures other browsers clumsily implement. Paste-and-go. Why the heck is that not a context menu option in other browsers (let alone, as in Opera, a quick keystroke combo)? How many times each day do folks paste links in a nav bar and then have to press “enter” or click another button to get the simple functionality of CTRL+D I have (yes, I modded the built in keystroke combo, because I have no use for CTRL+D as a keystroke combo to bookmark a site).

Speaking of modding keyboard navigation keystrokes, that’s another little thing: super simple, easy-peasy in Opera to make darned near any keystroke combo one wants.

Tons and tons of those kinds of “little things” make Opera THE choice here at twc central.

Household products? You may not have heard of the company, but for years now we have relied on the consistently exceptional quality and affordable cost of Melaleuca products, and my Wonder Woman will NOT give up her nutritional supplements the company makes. One example of affordable, high quality: the liquid laundry soap (not detergent) generally requires about 1/8 of a cup of product to do an excellent job cleaning clothes in our washer, with our small town water. That’s half what the company recommends, but it works for us. And that makes the product less expensive to use than buying something else at WallyWorld

And all the products work similarly for us. Little things like, use less (often much, much less) or simply unique properties–like the disinfectant spray that uses thyme as a primary component, for its disinfectant properties–have solidified the company’s products as our default for household needs.

Unique properties and features, customer service, consistently high quality, attention to detail: come to think if it, these aren’t “little things” at all!

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Dog Days

Been getting more sweat-inducing work recently. Long story, but good outcome.

We’re staging in our own implementation of zoned AC here at twc central, and my office hasn’t been put in the loop, yet. One-a these days… 😉 But since I’ve been getting some serious shirt sleeve time in the humidity (though only upper 80s) outdoors for the past week or so, no AC with a room temp of 86F isn’t all that bad. Of course, that’s near the computers. The other side of the room’s only 82.4 right now. *heh* Balmy. Can’t wait to move my office to the basement…

Went shopping for a new dishwasher on my birthday. Going to wait on buying and having our selection installed until I can definitely schedule to be here for the installation, though. My schedule right now is too crazy. Maybe the end of June. Set the $$ aside and plan the work… And no, I’m not stupid enough to do the installation myself. Almost, but not quite. (I will pull the old one out, though. I can do something like that on one of those nights when sleep eludes me ;-))

As soon as I have my table saw back, I have several projects around the house to do this summer. Should be fun.

And then there are the lil compy projects I have on standby… While I really like various ‘nix distros, and for normal, everyday computing I think Linux or BSD are really quite easily Good Enough (and in many ways superior to Windows), I really have to stay current with M$ software, since that’s where folks need help. (Hmmm, seems there ought to be something to say there… ) Oh, my calls for help with Apple computers are about as great in terms of percentages of users *heh*, it’s just that there really aren’t very many Mac users in America’s Third World County and hereabouts.

And Linux users? The population is pretty much confined to a few geeks and some users I have switched over to Linux.

So, more Microsoft products to play with on twc central computers. I have several licensed copies/versions of XP and Windows 7, and even copies of Windows Server 2008(R2) and Windows Home Server to play around with this summer. Heck, if WHS is “Good Enough” I might just keep that around for other users here at twc central. Then there’re copies of Office 2007 (which I’ve been avoiding using) and 2010 I probably ought to install and noodle around with. If my schedule ever slows down enough, I think I can find things to keep busy.

Oh, this post is being written in a new WinXP64 VM session. No reason to have XP except for the fact that so many folks still use it. Nice the way Virtualbox runs just about any OS so very nicely in VMs. A full installation of XP in a Virtualbox session is MUCH better (more complete, “real”) than M$’s “XP Mode” available in Win7 Pro and up. Not that it’s all that great to begin with. I never warmed up to XP, so all I can say is, it works at least as well as XP on a physical machine.

(Rambling any? Tired and just… rambling.)

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Quirky Day

As a result of beating back some locusts (and getting my lunch eaten by others *heh*), this turned out to be a mostly good, productive but kinda quirky day.

Man! Was I ever a chatty cathy during the time working on the tail end of flooring and other projects Down South. Motormouth city, fer shure. (And yeh, I coulda had a classic SM-58 in my hand doing a monologue, for all the running off… gottachucleatmyself… )

Learned something freaky deaky about OS X. Installing a new hard drive (in a Macbook) and using an OS X install CD apparently does NOT automagically bring up a prompt to initialize the new disk. Have to open Utilities… Disk Utility in the boot menu to force recognition and installation of the drive. Strange. I’ve not run into that in other OSes hardly at all in the last 10 years. I guess Apple only wants geeks to install new drives in their systems. Can’t give an average user any obvious help. *heh* That Apple: always looking out for the users to keep ’em from doing normal stuff. *LOL*

Anyway, boy did I feel like an idiot when I looked over instructions someone had printed out for transferring all his data and software from one Macbook drive to a new one. I never even thought the system wouldn’t tell him he needed to initialize the drive. Silly me. I acted like he was doing the install on a Windows, Linux or BSD system. Live and learn.

Man, sometimes getting old sucks swamp gas. (Yeh, the gas can be a problem too.) Now, my good knee and good hip (on opposite sides, no less… of course) are the ones talking to me. Figures. Just when I get used to the pain in the others… 🙂

My Wonder Woman just got another rave review from her work for another course in her grad classes. Natch. She’s such a wiz! But heck, with a 3,000 word paper for her first month’s class and a ten page paper for this class, at this rate she should just have shot for a PhD, complete with thesis. *heh* Her EdLaw class has at least been pretty interesting. But it’ll be over by the end of this month, I think, and her next class doesn’t begin until April. Means she’ll have some “time out” (from course work, not from teaching) before Lovely Daughter’s wedding March 27. Nice.

Lovely Daughter home early tonight–by 8:00 or so. I guess she has a big day tomorrow between church and some sort of social activity tomorrow evening. Something about gathering to worship some really amazing pottery? I think she called it a “super bowl” or some such. I don’t get it. Seems like idolatry to me, but then I’m just an Olde Pharte.

Oh, well, I don’t suppose it’s much more idolatrous than what goes on in most churches on Sunday mornings.

Just hit my own personal wall. Going to hit the sheets before my head falls off my shoulders.

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Snow

Well, America’s Third World County is just about exactly as white as snow… wherever the sand trucks haven’t been (which is everywhere except the one main highway).

Went out and about to see the crazies drive. They were out. And crazy. Went about 10 miles to get groceries (well, and beer; there is NO decent beer for sale in town–seriously–and I’m behind on brewing up more *sigh* Need to start some more, and some cider, this weekend). Saw 4 trucks from the highway department–3 plowing and one sanding–headed north as we were headed south. 30 minutes later, as we were headed back north, there was no real evidence they’d been by… and here they came on their southward trek on the same span of highway.

Cleaned cars off once today–about 4″. The 30 mins we were in buying groceries, another inch piled on. Back for a few hours. Another 4-5 inches on the car we drove out for groceries.

Add this to the earlier snow this month, and this is more snow than we’ve had in one January since we moved here 15 years ago. Must be global warming.

Oh. Well. At least my wonder Woman had the day off, as the back roads were impassable or unsafe for the buses. Meant she had more time to sleep in a bit and still have extra time to work on papers for a grad class. Good on her. I spent some time under the house beefing up some insulation around pipes. Never had a problem, but I had the wraps (and bought some more insulating foam-in-a-can while we were out), so I figured why not? Found a couple of cracks/seams I could foam and pack w/fiberglass. Little snugger is nice.

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Kitchen Fan

I’m a fan of Wolfgang Puck’s kitchen wares. It started around seven years ago when I found a nice set of Puck-ish mixing bowls with lids. Mixing bowls are always an issue around here–having enough, appropriate sizes, etc. No more. That the set included some whisks and such and was at a “fell-off-the-truck” price was just lagniappe I couldn’t pass up.

Since then, various Puck-ish wares, such as his 10-cup rice cooker (ours is actually an older model, same essential features, though), have found their way into our kitchen and proved themselves useful, durable and versatile. The most recent addition came because of the ongoing deterioration of our once top o’ the line “waterless” cookware. Oh, the pots n pans are still in fine shape, but, over the past 30 years, the Bakelite handles have slowly gone the way of the dodo. Yes, I have tracked down a source for replacement handles (and lid knobs), but the total cost would’ve been around what it cost to buy this:

No, the set’s not “waterless” and only the bottoms of the pots n pans are multi-clad, but with very little adaptation of my cooking habits, the past six months’ use of them has been positive, without exception.

I saw a FB comment a while back panning *heh* the set because the user said the handles got too hot and the pans were not “no-stick”–even hard to clean. Bushwah. Someone didn’t RTM (“read the manual”–bowdlerized for those folks who’re too prissy for “RTFM” :-)). Instructions for the set say explicitly to use them on NO HIGHER than medium high heat. That and the old rule that any cook worth his salt knows for keeping pans “unsticky”–“hot pan, cold oil: food won’t stick”–has meant I have experienced neither of the issues the person who DIDN’T “READ THE MANUAL” had with the pans.

To be fair, after 30 years of using “waterless” cookware that was also designed for the same heat range as this set, that wasn’t an adjustment for me. But, no. Paying $100 for a bunch of pots n pans and then not even reading the little one-page instruction card that came with ’em is just stupid.

So, in a very, very (very) inexpensive set of pots n pans (with some nice lil tools as well–minimalist spats n spoons, useful meat fork, another nice whisk), I have found some surprisingly advanced features and decent build quality, and so I’m pleased. Heck, my cheapo set of six stock pots (found at another “fell-off-the-truck-pricing” store–six, admittedly cheap stock pots in graduated sizes for $25? Yeh, even for cheap stock pots, that’s really cheap) even has lids that can double up on some of the pots n pans when I do not want to use the glass lids, for whatever reason.

I have my eye out for more Puck-ish wares…

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Lil Kitchen Tip

While I have a wealth of cutting boards now, for quite some time we made do with a “practice” cutting board of mahogany that I’d made when I was in seventh grade (as a gift for my grandmother).

mahogany-pig

(Click to enbiggen the pic 🙂 )

While using it exclusively for all our kitchen cutting n chopping, I devised a simple method that made things go a bit faster in the kitchen. When the pig’s facing right, cut veggies. When it’s facing left, cut meats. Sure, I still had to clean the pig–and the counter it was on–after use, but I didn’t have to clean it WHILE in use. No matter which I started cutting frirst, the veggies/meats were kept to different surfaces, as long as I cut all of either veggies or meats at once.

Later, our collection grew, of course (including the walnut/maple cutting board the mahogany one was practice for, as my mom had decided her “new”, smaller kitchen needed utensil/tools downsizing), but the habit’s remained and has continued to be a useful streamlining habit.

knives-n-pig

BTW, that’s my two fav chef’s knives shown. An older Chicago cutlery knife that’s still in very good condition and a newer (only about 20 years old, now) Sabatier-before-Sabatier-was-devalued-by-WallyWorld that was an anniversary present from my Wonder Woman to me. (Last year, when Sabatier was still seliling directly online, this model was priced at $107, but I’m sure she didn’t pay that much 20 years ago.) She knows I loves me knives. *arrgh!* 🙂

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I just have to get some new lines

So, my Wonder Woman picked up my coffee mug and took a sip. I sighed and said, “Now you’ve done it. Ruined another cuppa coffee… *sigh*”

“It’s too sweet, now?” she replied.

Yeh, I need new lines. Over the past 30-*mumble* years, I’ve become far too predictable.

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Meandering Musings

So, North Korea has a popgun… sorta. But that’s not what disturbs me so. Subliterate dumbasses rule the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind:

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea’s rocket may have fallen into the sea, but military experts cautioned Monday against calling it a complete failure, noting that it traveled twice as far as any missile the country has launched.

What disturbs me is that I estimate that approaching 100% of politicians *spit*, Mass Media Podpeople and Academia Nut Fruitcakes, and at least 90% of the American public wouldn’t see anything wrong with the sentence above. *sigh* Expand “In a democracy (”rule by mob”), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority… ” to include people who can’t count or even think.

There’s nothing like a good crisis for effecting a political control of private resources, is there?

Obama Wants to Control the Banks
There’s a reason he refuses to accept repayment of TARP money…

…The chairman offers to write a check, now, with interest. He’s been sitting on the cash for months and has felt the dead hand of government threatening to run his business and dictate pay scales. He sees the writing on the wall and he wants out. But the Obama team says no, since unlike the smaller banks that gave their TARP money back, this bank is far more prominent. The bank has also been threatened with “adverse” consequences if its chairman persists. That’s politics talking, not economics.

Think about it: If Rick Wagoner can be fired and compact cars can be mandated, why can’t a bank with a vault full of TARP money be told where to lend? And since politics drives this administration, why can’t special loans and terms be offered to favored constituents, favored industries, or even favored regions? Our prosperity has never been based on the political allocation of credit — until now.

Meanwhile, The O! wants to put everything but hopenchange back into Pandora’s Box. (And stop the tide from coming in and turn everything he touches into gold and all other manner of mythical accomplishments.) Will the Republic survive The O!? Will the planet? Film at eleven (of The Beast in another ugly dress, posing as Jackie O.)

I don’t know which is worse, President “Fifi” Bush holding hands with a Saudi “Prince” (read “Thug” for “Prince”) or The O! bowing to a foreign potentate (thug). You make the call”

FILES-US-POLITICS-INAUGURATION-BUSH-LEGACY

Meanwhile, at least 31 States have introduced (and some have passed) bills affirming the 10th Amendment. Perhaps there is some small hope for The Founders’ Constitution still remaining.

The odious Senator Ted Stevens was apparently another easy target for federal persecutors’ implementation of the central principal of modern governance: anarcho-tyranny or, “going after a ‘safe criminal'”. Until–this time, finally–federal persecutors got caught cooking the evidence. What republic can long survive when its people rightly view its law enforcement as capricious at best, normally corrupt.

Hmmm… notalotta encouragement from what passes as news nowadays, eh? Some, but not much. And what there is of encouragement doesn’t seem to find its way into Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind “reportage”.

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