I was heading off to the Lynn Allen web site (a Quad Cities band that played warm up for a lot of big-name acts) to see if I could download any of their songs and lo and behold I found this gem. Is it ever FUNNY!
While you are there, grab some of their songs. They are all free - no RIAA to kill you for illegal downloading. And, of course, Lynn Allen ROCKS!
I was doing some checking around to see if there were any new blogging tools and I found an interesting little program called Zempt. Zempt is a SourceForge open source project, which is a huge positive in my book. It also has a pretty cool interface (check the screen shot)
It seems to give me pretty much all that w.bloggar does; the difference is that while both w.bloggar and Zempt are free, Zempt is open source while w.bloggar only gives you the binaries. I think I’ll play with Zempt for a while and see if it is as good as w.bloggar. Who knows, I may have a new program for posting!
UPDATE: One thing I did notice is that now I get the “Trackback” entry at the end of my posts; Zempt adds it, w.bloggar does not. I can’t figure out how to either add or remove it from either of the two programs. Any help out there?
No, I’m not talking about Chicago! I’m talking about here; beautiful downtown Muscatine, Iowa. It is windy city today. While the temperature is nice enough at 82°, the wind bounced my Windstar all over the road tonight on the way home from work. Yahoo Weather says that we have had winds of 22 mph, but it is not a steady wind. Its gusting up to twice that much. I think there’s even too much wind to “go fly a kite”!
Our field sales force is in for a semi-annual region meeting and I am spending my time updating laptop software. I have spent the better part of the last two weeks scripting all of the updates and fixes so that there is as little tech interaction as possible so we can work on as many laptops as possible. Here is a list of all we are doing to each laptop (nearly all of these are scripted):
So my week will be taken up by all this and the onesy-twosy hardware and software issues that inevitably occur like: “My Palm doesn’t sync with Outlook” or “Why can’t I open our product photos?” or “My system is really slow”.
Sounds like fun, huh? You just want to be me!
Went up to Iowa City today to see KC’s brother RJ ride in a bicycle race. It was a two-day affair; he had raced for distance yesterday and said he felt pretty good about that performance. He was a bit disappointed with today’s performance, though. He felt that he had held his own yesterday but today was a different story. Today’s was pretty much cycling laps with a big downhill grade with a right turn and then a matching uphill grade after another right turn. I have three pictures here of RJ as he is rounding the corner at the downhill grade on the course.
Am I ever glad it wasn’t me riding that race! Going down that hill at about 30 mph on a bike only to make a hard right turn - too much for me!
Yup, that’s right folks. KC and I hit the road tonight after work. We are now in beautiful downtown Des Moines (well almost downtown!) at KC’s mom’s place. I’m blogging over dialup, which is new for me. I have a cable modem at home and on the rare occaision when I do blog from work, we have multiple T3 lines.
We are here in Des Moines to watch the Drake Relays tomorrow. KC’s brother got us the tickets and I’m really looking forward to going. We went last year and I was sort of apprehensive (it was my first time last year) but KC, who had been to many Drake Relays in the past, convinced me to go. It was great. We saw many Olypmic hopefuls competing in many events. We also had great seats; third row in the middle of the number one turn. I hope this year’s seats will be as good. Also, last year the weather was great - sunny and warm - almost like going out on a summer afternoon. I hope the weather cooperates as much tomorrow.
We will see ZDog and J also. ZDog has a ticket and we are hoping to get one for J as well - didn’t know she wanted to go until some time this week. KC’s brother (who got our tickets) seems to think we can get her a ticket from someone selling them outside Drake Stadium tomorrow. We visited with Breezomatic and her friend Ally on our way over - met them at the Coral Ridge Mall in Iowa City and had supper with them in the food court there. We had a few groceries for Breezomatic as well; the girls were headed back to Kirkwood.
Well, time to get some sleep and get ready for a big day tomorrow. I hope to have pictures as I brought along the digital camera (I’m still trying to figure that gadget out - heaven forbid I’d read directions?!?!) and should get some nice shots of the competitors.
I’ve just been playing around with blogging tools. While my blog is powered by Movable Type, I use w.bloggar to type in the entries. It has a lot of niceties and really makes posting easy. I can also upload images using this, but to be truthful I haven’t done that with w.bloggar, only with Movable Type’s built-in upload function. With built-in spell checking, w.bloggar is a great tool to post with, but I’m always on the lookout for better tools!
Going on Nicole Lee’s posts, I downloaded Ecto for Windows. Nicole uses it both on her Mac and on her Windows PC. She says she is liking Ecto better than w.bloggar. Well, I downloaded it and then unzipped the file and had a single setup file. I used a small utility called Lister (a hex viewer) to check the contents and found that Ecto used Inno Setup, which I use to create LANDesk packages at work. I thought, “Can’t be all bad” and started the install. OOPS! The first window warned me that I didn’t have .NET installed and Ecto needs .NET. Well, that means I won’t be using Ecto because I simply will NOT install .NET. I use Windows and I use MS GIF Animator and those are the ONLY MS softwares that I use. .NET is the devil and I won’t dance.
I downloaded Blog v8.0 and have been messing around with it. Blog is a stand-alone blogging tool. No need for anything on the server except space. Blog handles all the posts, templates, etc. from your computer. The advantage of this is that you have all the data on your PC so when you perform a backup (you do backup, don’t you?!) you also back up your blog’s entries and comments. The disadvantage is that you can only blog from your PC. Using Movable Type, like I do, I can blog from any place that has web access. Blog is nice, but it does odd things… like treating comments as emails; instead of posting comments on a form like here, you actually send an email to the author. Don’t think I like that one. Also, it has some quirky errors that don’t exactly say what they mean. Yeah, they are all described well on the author’s site, but shouldn’t the error describe the problem?
The same author also has a program called BlogMan, which is very similar to w.bloggar. The problem with BlogMan is that I get an error when trying to view any previous entry. I haven’t really delved in to the settings a bunch, but it did pull down the settings from my blog. However, it won’t bring down my last entry; I get some kind of parsing error and there is no such error listing on the author’s web site. Sooooo…. looks like BlogMan is out and it’s back to w.bloggar.
Oh, by the way, Happy Birthday, Vickie!
Yup, that’s me. Family Tech Support. Somebody has a problem with their computer and they call me. Got a call from my brother, who said his computer was getting slower and slower. He couldn’t figure it out. This is the same brother that had the same things going on at my last rant about being family tech support. At that time I had uninstalled Kazaa Media Desktop from his computer (put on by his teen age son) and told him not to let his son install it again. Anyone who knows anything about malware and spyware know that Kazaa should not be on your computer. If Kazaa were a female, she’d be the $5 hooker that even a body condom wouldn’t protect you from the diseases she had. If you have it installed on your computer UNINSTALL IT NOW!
Anyway, I found that Kazaa Media Desktop had been installed again, along with a bunch of it’s cousins in the spyware/malware department. Well, I uninstalled KMD, then updated Ad-Aware and ran it only to find around 670 detected items. I removed them and then rebooted and voila! It ran as well as it ever did. I told him that if he wanted we could install Windows 2000 and give his stepson a restricted account so he COULDN’T install ANY software. For now, he is going to tell him again and let him know of my recommendation: eMule. Open source and ONLY the P2P program; none of that other crap.
KC and I went to the movie Jersey Girl on Thursday last week. I’ve been mulling the movie around in my head for a while and thought I’d post a review. Right away, I’ll let you know that Jersey Girl is a movie written and directed by Kevin Smith. For those of you who don’t know, Kevin Smith is the artist who has given us Jay and Silent Bob in the movies Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. This movie is a departure from his previous work. Not to say it was not as well written or directed; like them or not his previous movies were excellent in these areas. You knew the characters and the movies were all well-paced, both signs of good writing and directing. No, this movie is a departure from the “dick and fart” jokes that make up a lot of his previous work. This is a movie you can take the entire family to and ALL will enjoy.
Jersey Girl stars Ben Affleck as Ollie Trinke, a hot-shot New York publicist, who falls for and marries urban professional Gertrude, played by Jennifer Lopez. They have a whirlwind romance (much like real life?!) which produces a child. Gertrude dies in childbirth leaving Ollie to raise his daughter. He can no longer be the publicist putting in 18 hour days; he has to raise his daughter. George Carlin does a wonderful job as Ollie’s dad, Bart; Bart offers to take the pair in to Ollie’s childhood home in New Jersey until Ollie can get back on his feet…. which stretches to seven years (at least as far as the movie goes). After a few months of Ollie trying to get back to his work (unsuccessfully), Bart forces Ollie to become a real father by refusing to babysit young Gertie (named after her mother) any longer. Ollie decides to take Gertie along with him to a press conference which ruins his career where he completely loses it when Gertie needs some attention when Ollie has to do his job. (He was to help Will Smith publicize his upcoming movie Independence Day, but said “He’s the Fresh Prince - a two-bit rapper and a TV personality, not a movie star!”) Cut to the present day where Gertie, played by newcomer Raquel Castro, is now seven or so. We still find Ollie wandering around lost without his wife. Ollie becomes the object of affection of the local video store clerk Maya, played very well by Liv Tyler. Two other interesting characters are Uncle Greenie (Stephen Root) and Uncle Block (Mike Starr), who aren’t Gertie’s uncles (as Ollie constantly points out to her) but merely bar-friends of Bart’s. Throw in a small role by Jason Biggs and even smaller roles by Jason Lee, Matt Damon, Will Smith (playing himself) and of course Jennifer Schwalbach Smith (Kevin’s wife) and you have many players from previous movies Kevin has done.
The movie was a nice story. Kevin does a great job of character development and storytelling, just as he has done his entire career. The difference in this movie is that the characters seem like someone you would know. The true separation of this movie from most of the tripe out there now is that there are no action scenes, no computer-generated graphics, no million-dollar special effects; just a good story and good acting. While I am no big Affleck fan, he always seems to bring his A-game for Smith; don’t know why, but he really does a great job in this movie. Carlin should get talk of a supporting actor nomination for some award (Golden Globe, Oscar, etc) for his work here. He was tremendous - many of the lines he uses are lines my dad has said to me at one time or another. Tyler’s character is a bit kooky and she pulls it off brilliantly. Root and Starr add comic relief and play off of Carlin well. Raquel Castro, however, steals the show. She has amazing presence and command of the scenes she is in. It is amazing how she looks as though she really COULD be Ben and Jen’s daughter. She looks to have a bright future in acting. The scene where she, Affleck, Carlin, Tyler, Root and Starr team up for the family entertainment night at her school and perform the “God That’s Good” song from the opera Sweeney Todd is as good as it is funny for the situation.
If you liked the previous Kevin Smith movies (which I did) you will find this one enjoyably different. If you liked the jokes and the silliness of the previous Kevin Smith movies, you probably will think this one is at best OK. If you don’t know Kevin Smith from Adam, you’ll like this one. I rate it 9 of 10.
Well, as I was saying yesterday, I have two pictures of my back yard. One from near the patio door and one from the brush pile at the bottom of the hill. Looking at these you will see why I can’t stand to have the willow trees “moult” like they do. (Because I have to clean up their mess!)
Here is a shot from the patio door. You can see the two willow trees and the brush pile between them. (Notice my neighbor’s freshly-mowed yard, also)
Here is a shot from the bottom of the hill, next to the brush pile. (Yeah, I know; I need to paint the shed!)
So after the chiropractic adjustment today, I’m not wild about going down there to work. Maybe tomorrow. Did I say I hate yard work?
Spent a lot of yesterday in the yard. I really despise yard work. I hate mowing grass. I hate trimming trees. I hate pulling weeds. And yet, I spent most of my day yesterday doing just that. Did I mention that my back yard is a huge hill that is great for sledding in the winter but crap for mowing and yard work? My mom, who grew up in the area, says that what is my back yard at one time was a slough. I can’t get a vehicle there to clean up branches because there is no way to drive there. I can’t use a riding mower (the hill is too steep to go side-to-side and there is no room to turn the mower around at the top when going up-and-down), so I use a self-propelled push mower and wear my softball cleats. I have yet to rake up the back yard to gather all the tiny branches the willow trees drop, but I will probably be doing that some time this week. The worst is that after all these dead branches from the two willow trees are gathered, I can’t simply burn the branches. We have a no-burn law in town here. I have to gather them and take them to the compost site. SOOOO, I have to drag them up the hill and then put them in a vehicle which I then have to take a few miles to the compost site and empty there. Did I mention I hate yard work?
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