Original ExistDifferently.com Weblog of David, a Christian Network and Systems Manager, with topics ranging from Apologetics to Worldview, and some crypto, open source, programming, opinion, and daily life thrown in between.

Fri, 2005-03-04 (Mar 04)

Got a New Car!

Filed under: Blog,Cars,General,Spectra — David @ 03:48

Not quite the budget for a Mazda6 yet. Apparently need some car-credit history to get a good deal on car-credit. You know, the usual. Ended up with a brand-new “2005 Kia Spectra SX”:http://www.kia.com/newspectra/index.php that’s silver (pics coming soon) and a step up from the other nicest car I’ve had, a 2000 Nissan Altima. This has good mileage, very nice body styling, and even though it’s a 4-cylinder 2.0L engine, it’s extremely peppy both at low speeds and on the highway. No mistaking it for a V6 (for sure!) but it will hold its own and outperforms my ’94 Chevy Blazer by leaps and bounds. Plus, I’ll be able to save up to $100/month if I refinance in six months to a year after making payments and building credit. If I make payments above the minimum, I won’t even be upside down for very long, and will hopefully have the Mazda6 in whatever new iteration it’s in at the time (or something better!) reasonably soon!

My Dad and I got home not long ago from the dealer…he was in Ft. Wayne (about an hour and a half to two hours away from home) because we didn’t leave there until half-past midnight! We got there around 5 pm, my Dad knows the guy that runs the dealership for Bob Rohrman, we went to dinner with him (I ate sushi for the first time! Not bad if you eat the kinds without raw fish!) and test-drove the car. I jammed my middle finger in the door when closing it after the test drive; I suppose the policy is “it breaks you (your finger), you buy it” :-)

It actually took me a long time to decide to go with it, but I got a great price and decent financing, and insurance isn’t that bad after working some details out. Dang you have to sign a lot of papers to buy a car! I think the paper-signing took 1.5 hours! Got a nice full tank of gas and even got 10 gallons of gas for my truck for free just for buying the car. Cool. Stupid stuff is $2.099 per gallon at the moment…the 12.5 gallons my new 13-gallon tank needed was $26.41, more than the $25.88 I spent the other day at $1.699/gallon to top off my Blazer, which only needed 14.882 gallons in it’s 20-gallon tank admittedly. But with the MPG(Miles Per Gallon) on the Spectra, with 24/34 city/highway miles per gallon (EPA average rating), it barely sips gas compared to the Blazer. Adding up to a Mazda6 faster! :-)

Need to hit the sack now, no work tomorrow morning but some new toys (car, networking equipment) to play with!

Fri, 2005-02-25 (Feb 25)

Mazda6 Test Drive

Filed under: Blog,Cars,General,Mazda 6 — David @ 00:58

Took the recommendation of a friend and checked out a used car broker in town. Awesome Christians and they also have the best mechanic I’ve ever met in my life! Ask me if you’re interested in the name of the dealer.

The guy (the owner of the dealership/brokerage) took me and my Dad to the car auction place in Plainfield where we basically got to drive around and look at all their cars, and we could look at and test drive anything we wanted to on their test track! (It’s a nice “track” for testing but it doesn’t quite compare to the racing kind.) Got to drive four different “Mazda6”:http://www.familycar.com/RoadTests/Mazda-6/ sedans. All essentially the same car, just different color/number of cylinders/trims. Here’s what they were (two were silver and two were black, but I keep confusing myself as to which were what color so I may be wrong here, but I think I remember…):

1. Black base trim 4-cylinder auto-transmission. This was nice, not too much different in feel than the Altima I had back in 2000.
2. Silver fully loaded V6 manual transmission. This thing just plain rocks! I didn’t get to drive it because I don’t know how to drive a stick shift (yet?). But the dealer drove me in it, and he, um, knows how to drag race cars :-) Very cool.
3. Black fully loaded 4-cylinder auto-transmission. Nice, felt like the manual V6 except for, well, the manual transmission and the V6! A little better accelleration than my Mom’s 2001 Infiniti G20 that her father gave her when he stopped driving last year (he’s in his mid-eighties), I could see myself with this one.
4. Best for last: Black, fully loaded V6 auto-transmission. I love this car. I want this car. Only problem? Should I get this or the silver stick shift with the same trim? I’m having a tough time deciding; making it harder is that the auto-tranny includes a nice little auto-manual-shifter feature over to the right of the Drive position (see “this photo”:http://photos2.ebizautos.com/1366/581667_29.jpg). But I didn’t realize that when I test-drove it, to see how it worked.

I’ve only driven a stick for one half-hour of my entire life. And that was an ’86 Ford Ranger tiny pickup truck that we had for a little while as an extra vehicle. First gear was kind of sticky, and I managed to kill the engine three times in that half-hour (well, it may have been more me than the sticky first gear, but even my parents had trouble with it sometimes. I don’t think they ever killed the engine though :-) But I think it might be fun to try a stick…only problem is, if I buy a car with a loan, and I get tired of driving a stick soon, I’m stuck for a while. But I think driving can be “boring” sometimes because it’s so simple (not that I don’t enjoy it!), so maybe a stick would make it more interesting. Then again, makes it a bit harder to use the cell phone and eat while driving! Six of one… :-)

Anyway, short post, need to get to bed. Nice “photo gallery”:http://www.familycar.com/RoadTests/Mazda-6/Photos.htm of the car here, including the Wagon and 5-Door (Hatchback) models I’m not looking at.

Oh yeah, “fully loaded” means, in addition to stuff I’m probably forgetting:

Leather heated seats, premium Bose audio, auto-climate control, power moonroof, 17″ wheels with Alloy rims, bucket seats, 4-wheel ABS, Traction control, remote alarm system, 8-way power driver’s seat, and the Sport Package with optional Spoiler (see the first link above near the bottom for more of a description along with a better format of this list). Not sure if the Sport Package was on all the fully loaded ones I drove, some had spoilers some didn’t, all fully loaded had the 8-way power driver’s seat at least and most of the rest.

I still have some research to do (and maybe a bit more test driving :-) and some financing things to work out, but I really like the Mazda6 V6, fully loaded with either the manual or automatic transmission (once I decide :-) and I hope everything works out for me to get one soon!

While I’m at it…think perhaps this laptop would go well with either of the Mazda (silver or black) colors? “Envy m:870”:http://www.voodoopc.com/sellPage.aspx?productID=1019. Why yes, yes it would. And, if I don’t buy a car, I could probably afford it soon…so that would be a NO :-)

Thu, 2005-02-24 (Feb 24)

A Post In 133 Words or Less

Filed under: Blog,Funny,General,Origins,Worldviews — David @ 00:36

Short made it they, so shall I: ” The History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less”:http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3fs8i/hist/hist.html

Keep in mind: I haven’t actually read the whole darn thing so I can’t vouch for accuracy. One mention of “Religion” I saw. Looks like it fit in 2,000 years ago, hard to tell. Of course I can’t vouch for the earlier: “Photosynthetic unicellular organisms. Oxidation. Mutation. Natural selection and evolution. Respiration. Cell differentiation. Sexual reproduction. Fossilization. Land exploration. Dinosaur extinction. Mammal expansion. Glaciation. Homo sapiens manifestation.”

But hey, anything that short’s bound to have some errors creep in there, I mean it takes so long to go back and check your work… :-)

Supposedly based on the book “A Briefer History of Time“:http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3fs8i/bhtes/ which, of course, I put on hold at the library! Looks humorous.

Sun, 2005-02-20 (Feb 20)

Spoonman

I really can’t say that I’ve ever seen any Anime beyond a minute or two of Pokemon here and there a while back. Can’t say I see myself getting into it. But, if you know me (and no, just reading this blog doesn’t count…IRL(In Real Life) is preferred…if you know me well enough you should figure it out pretty fast when you see it), you might figure out why this is hilarious!

Spoonman“:http://daveschool.com/spoonman/

I like it for the same reason I liked the main character (and his nickname) in “I, Robot“:http://www.irobotmovie.com/ (in addition to that just being a cool movie!).

Anyway. Past bedtime!

Oh yeah, but I do want one of those laptops they have at “Boxxtech”:http://www.boxxtech.com (I customized to the “one I want”:http://www.boxxtech.com/products/configurator.asp?ModelSeriesID=98, starts at $2,985.00 and it’s only $5,068.00 when I get done with it :-) Oh yeah, plus I also played with customizing their high-end desktop system. With nearly every add-on and high-end item I could add (actually I picked my favorites instead of the most costly option a few places) it went from a base of about $3,000 up to over $24,500!!!!! I can’t think of a comparison to my salary that wouldn’t reveal too much, but let’s say I’m not going to be able to afford that system on mine any time soon! Actually, the $3,000 one isn’t exactly in my budget, either…

Okay, now it’s bedtime :-)

Thu, 2005-02-17 (Feb 17)

Fry’s opening (almost) in town!

Filed under: General — David @ 03:32

Scanning through blogs (yes, more procrastination from last post!) and found my “Topix Local News”:http://www.topix.net/city/meridian-hills-in linking to this: “Fry’s Electronics opening in Fishers”:http://www.thenoblesvilleledger.com/articles/0/045672-1540-114.html! Cool, I’ve heard lots of geeks out in California and elsewhere talk about buying electronics at Fry’s, but there’s never been one around here. Granted it’ll be a bit up north, but hey, I already drive to CompUSA! Big place they’re moving into (185,000 sq. ft. according to the article), I remember going there when it was the Incredible Universe electronics store (that was a cool place that closed almost before it opened! I think it was overpriced but it was years and years ago before I had money so I wouldn’t remember). Cool!

Well, I’m Back!

Filed under: General — David @ 03:23

Not that I really went anywhere. Just spent so much time working, relaxing, and reading new info, that I didn’t really have the time or inclination to process and organize the info enough to make it pop up here. So I appeared to have dissappeared, except to those I know in real life who saw me a few times :-)

I seem to have a knack for finding interesting (by my definition!) stuff that’s about the actual interesting stuff. For example, there’s a great entry at a blog I read called “Procrastinator, know thyself“:http://www.slackermanager.com/slacker_manager/2005/02/procrastinator_.html that has good insight, but links to another entry in another blog, called “Is Procrastination a Gift?“:http://monster.typepad.com/monsterblog/2005/02/is_procrastinat.html that, in turn, links to “an article in The Wall Street Journal”:http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB110790238799549268-IdjgINilal4npyrZYKHcaaHm5,00.html. The annoying thing? Reading the first, short article can lead to five minutes worth of reading! And that’s just following one link per page. See why I don’t have time to compose posts here, considering they take even longer with links like that? Not to mention it explains why I end up with, um, (let me count), nine browser windows open simultaneously, With a total of seventy-nine “tabs”:http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/tabbed-browsing.html open at once across those nine “Firefox”:http://www.getfirefox.com/ browser windows! Including this post composition window, of course. I mean, I’m only using five tabs right now, in this browser window, to compose this post. Oops, I just went up to nine, finding some “good”:http://www.gmailforums.com/lofiversion/index.php/t1475.html “pages”:http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050114201044946 “tabbed”:http://channels.lockergnome.com/web/archives/20041222_italicise_your_unread_firefox_tabs_and_other_bits.phtml browsing…even after closing the Google window I used to search for them :-)

I could probably come up with some other stuff to talk about (this is where I was going to say, “but it will have to wait until later” until I finished the rest of the paragraph!). For example, a friend suggested some good books to grab, namely those by “Michael Crichton”:http://www.crichton-official.com/ (also see “Wikipedia entry”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton), specifically “The Great Train Robbery“:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060502304/davidsworldva-20/002-2086300-3510456?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=2025&link%5Fcode=xm2 (also see the “DVD”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0792839064/davidsworldva-20/002-2086300-3510456?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=2025&link%5Fcode=xm2) and “Andromeda Strain“:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060541814/davidsworldva-20/002-2086300-3510456?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=2025&link%5Fcode=xm2 (also a movie in “DVD”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00008438U/davidsworldva-20/002-2086300-3510456?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=2025&link%5Fcode=xm2). Of course while looking those up at “Amazon.com”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=davidsworldva-20&path=http://www.amazon.com I saw that they are now playing the trailer for the movie “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”:http://www.hitchhikersmovie.com/ (see “the Amazon page for it”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=davidsworldva-20&path=tg/feature/-/556590/, too) coming the end of April, so I had to watch that and research it a bit. Took me up to 14 browser tabs. Actually, a bit more when I started looking up Michael Crichton books at the library to put on hold :-) And my point at the beginning of this paragraph, was that this post has mainly been me procrastinating to avoid entering the bills I just wrote checks for into “Quicken”:http://www.quicken.com/ and look, I’ve managed to spend a bit more time not doing that :-) Better go now…this post was supposed to be around three sentences long!

Oh yeah…camera is working out great, I love it! More on that some other time :-)

Theory of Relativity Explained with Short Words

Filed under: Entertainment,Funny,General,Science — David @ 02:11

Yep, I took the name of this post from the blog I read it at. Some nut case put this odd item on the ‘net. This post is in the same vein. Read it to find out more. It is very hard to talk this way for very long. I did not read the full post. It was too long, I may try on the next day in time to read it all, but I may not have time at all, when all is said and done. It does seem a bit dumb :-) I am not very good at this! I used a site that will tell me a word that can mean the same as some word that is not the same :-)

Tue, 2005-02-08 (Feb 08)

Considering Cameras (part Yipee! I mean…two)

Filed under: Blog,Digital Cameras,General,Tech (General) — David @ 00:51

(There’s also a “Part One”:http://www.existdifferently.com/archives/2005/02/05/considering-cameras-part-1/ to this post.)

See, “AbesOfMaine”:http://www.abesofmaine.com/ dropped their price on the “Fuji FinePix E550”:http://www.fujifilm.com/JSP/fuji/epartners/digitalE550Overview.jsp?item=I789908&dbid=789908&urltype=overview&NavBarId=I789908 to about $273 plus shipping. Overnight shipping would have been about $35 or so, ground would have been $20. CircuitCity.com was having a deal, web-only, “$314.99”:http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Fujifilm-FinePix-E550-Digital-Camera/sem/rpsm/oid/108877/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do but you could pick it up in-store. The store had it on the shelf for $349.99, but since I ordered online I paid $333.90 including tax. It was a tad more for same day-service, but not that much. And I put off the 512MB xD Picture Card until tomorrow because “eCost”:http://www.ecost.com/ was $25 cheaper even with (overnight) shipping! Hey, the included 16MB card holds a whole two pictures. But that’s at the highest quality; it holds like eleven or twelve medium-quality pics! I think the included rechargable hi-capacity AA batteries with charger is a much better included accessory, but I will have to get some more of these rechargables. At least it only uses two at a time instead my old one’s four.

It might be a dissected fetal pig for lunch...(click for full, 4MB version)What? You didn’t think I was going to go through all that and not give you a sample? Well…okay. I was dissecting a fetal pig for a snack earlier and grabbed this one (click picture for full version but be warned, it’s a 4MB file!). If you ask nicely, I might resize it down a bit (the thumbnail doesn’t show the whole picture), ’cause if you’re on dial-up you may want to just say no to 4MB!

Oh yeah, and I’m taking the afternoons off work all this week. If you know me, you might know the past weekend (Catalyst Vision Banquet) as being a bit long. Gotta have some recovery time sometimes. Photography takes time, after all… ;-)

(more…)

Sat, 2005-02-05 (Feb 05)

Considering Cameras (part 1)

Filed under: Blog,Digital Cameras,General,Photography,Tech (General) — David @ 05:09

I’ve been wanting a new digital camera for a while. My current, an Olympus D-450 Zoom, functions excruciatingly slowly, and only has 1.3 megapixels of resolution. It was top of the line for a consumer camera when I got it five or six years ago, and I’ve taken thousands of pictures with it (over a thousand in Holland alone last year). But it’s now old enough that it’s available on “eBay”:http://www.ebay.com/ for $50 or less.

I’m by no means a professional photographer, or even in the “amateur” category really. I don’t have time to develop those skills. But I like to pretend like I know what I’m doing, and maybe learn something when I have time. It’s an area of interest.

So, I want a camera that rocks, at a cheap price. Yeah, who doesn’t? :-) Well, my style tends to be, “develop composition mentally over a wide subject angle, test composition through camera (mainly LCD but occasionally viewfinder), shoot quickly before subject moves.” I take lots of pictures, fast. I don’t wait for the “perfect shot”, if needed I’ll take several in a row of the same thing to see which comes out best (quality-wise and in composition).

This style really seems to fit a point-and-shoot camera better than an SLR-like (or SLR, if that were in my price range). But I want the flexibility of as many manual controls as possible in case I want to do something a little more advanced, and have the time to set it up.

Also, because of my quick-composition and multi-pictures tendencies, I like to take some wide-angle shots in addition to closeups of the same thing, making a long and fast zoom very helpful.

I’m looking at three cameras, when I can afford one. I’ve been eyeing the “Fuji FinePix E550 Zoom”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E550/E55A.HTM for the longest. Earlier tonight I found three others that do that thing I hate — turning an easy decision into a much more subjective and time-consuming one! One is the “Olympus C-7000 Zoom”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/C7000/C7KA.HTM, another is the “Casio EXILIM PRO EX-P600”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/P600/P60A.HTM, and the final one is the “Canon Powershot S70”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/CS70/S70A.HTM. All those links are to reviews at a very awesome site, “Image-Resource.com”:http://www.imaging-resource.com. Another good site with lots of info and in-depth reviews is “Digital Photography Review”:http://www.dpreview.com/, which has info on most, if not all, of the same cameras I just mentioned.

Anyway, I’m going to go through each camera and give some highlights on why I like each. Then I’m going to go to sleep. And later, at a yet-to-be-determined time post more as part 2 of this post.

  • “Fuji FinePix E550 Zoom”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E550/E55A.HTM
    This camera is awesome (second “review at DPreview.com”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilme550/ also available). It has nearly everything, the biggest downside is that it only has a 4x zoom, as opposed to the Olympus’s 5x. I don’t mind that it’s a 6.3 megapixel resolution (Olympus and Canon models have seven), six is plenty. A camera with five megapixels I might consider if everything else was awesome enough, but four or lower is a hard sell. It goes from point-and-shoot to full manual control, with lots of options. DPreview says that timing-wise, this thing goes from off to ready-to-shoot in 1.5 seconds, zooms from widest to maximum in 1.5 seconds, and takes a picture about 0.6 seconds after pressing the shutter release fully! That’s a speedy digital camera! All very suitable to my shooting style. Without the flash on, it’s also ready to take a second shot 1.5 seconds after the last, also excellent. My current camera takes 4-6 seconds to be ready for another, and it feels like an eternity most of the time, and it’s pretty bad in the other timing areas, too. But all these cameras here are faster than my existing one, so let’s go on. Oh yeah, it uses the xD Picture Card storage format: more expensive than most but not killer. Two other plusses include interpolated (before compression) pictures up to 12 megapixels from the 6.3 MP sensor, and (according to DPreview) “excellent color and exposure.” It’s also the cheapest of them all! Around $300; unfortunately a Fuji rebate of $50 just expired the end of January :-(
  • “Olympus C-7000 Zoom”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/C7000/C7KA.HTM
    I’m equally balanced between the Fuji and this Olympus right now (this one has “a review at DPreview.com”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/olympusc7000/ as well). For one, my current camera is an Olympus. Actually, that’s a downside :-) But DPreview says it goes from off to ready-to-shoot in 1.4 seconds, a full-shutter-release-press (in one motion) takes a picture in 0.5 seconds, and runs 1.7 seconds shot-to-shot. All of which are just barely on either side of the times for the Fuji E550. But, this thing is a seven megapixel camera. Downsides include low battery life (still sky-high compared to my current one!) and a two-second delay before showing the next picture when browsing through existing shots in-camera. The others here are supposed to be much faster than two seconds to pull up a preview. Note again, that in comparison my current Olympus D-450 Zoom can take 4-6 seconds to display a preview of a picture in the camera, which is again an eternity, especially when trying to “scroll” through the shots! Nicest thing about this one over the Fuji (I think) is that the zoom is 5x optical vs. 4x. It has a fast zoom, extending at startup in one second (not sure on speed while zooming but I would assume it’s equally impressive). Media is xD Picture Card.
  • “Casio EXILIM PRO EX-P600”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/P600/P60A.HTM
    This one isn’t directly reviewed at DPreview, but the next model up, the EX-P700 (substituting seven megapixels for this one’s six) has a “review at DPreview”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/casioexp700/ instead. The EX-P600 is about $80 cheaper than the EX-P700, and some of my info here is from the DPreview info on the EX-P700 instead of the 600. First of all, the timing appears to be very close to the above cameras, except it takes an extra second to turn on and be ready-to-shoot. Like the others (Except the Canon at 1.8″), it’s got a 2.0″ LCD display in addition to the viewfinder. I didn’t see the zoom speed mentioned, but shot-to-shot times were 2 to 2.5 seconds, a bit high. It’s got a 4x optical zoom, the minimum of these cameras. I haven’t gotten in-depth into this camera yet but it looks like a good backup option. Uses SD storage, just like my Treo 600!
  • “Canon Powershot S70”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/CS70/S70A.HTM
    Also has a “review at DPreview”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canons70/ and it’s a seven megapixel model, like the Olympus C-7000. Optical zoom is only 3.6x, a downside. It does have lots of scene presets for different conditions, and looks cool, being the only black one of the bunch. DPreview says the camera is “not a particularly speedy camera” and focusing in low-light can cause a lot of hunting. Picture playback speed also suffers. Almost three seconds from off to ready-to-shoot. Shooting lag time is one second (higher than the others), and zooming full-wide to telephoto takes 1.8 seconds, admittedly not horrible. A good last choice with high resolution but less zoom and speed.

That’s it for my first roundup! I’ll follow up when I get the chance. And when I make the purchse, whenever I happen to save up the money (sooner if I get the Fuji! :-)

Mon, 2005-01-24 (Jan 24)

Hey, look, I’m up!

Filed under: Blog,General — David @ 07:10

Yep, that’s right! I’m actually awake! Ready to go out the door in fact. Got to go right now, being picked up. Got up at 6:15 though!

Wed, 2005-01-19 (Jan 19)

Comment Spam-Be-Gone: Thank You Google!

“Google”:http://www.google.com/ has done it again: solved a major problem on the web. Fixed Comment Spam! It was a blindingly obvious fix, but only with the usual 20/20 hindsight :-) It will take a little while to make a difference in the number of comment attacks, until all blogs are updated to take advantage of it. The major services out there (including LiveJournal for some of my readers) have it or are implementing it right away, in cooperation with Google, Yahoo, and MSN Search. Robert “brought it to my attention”:http://robert.accettura.com/archives/2005/01/18/no-more-spam/ from his blog and I checked out (as you should) this Google post called “Preventing comment spam“:http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html on Google’s official blog. All the gory (not really) details.

Very elegant, but it does require the major search engines, the reason for the comment spam problem, to implement ignoring the rel=”nofollow” attribute to all links they index. Fortunately, that’s exactly what has happened, and why this is even news!

So, Google, thank you once times a “googol”:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=googol&btnG=Google+Search!

Sun, 2005-01-16 (Jan 16)

LibraryLookup

Filed under: Books,General,Internet,Tech (General),Web Development — David @ 01:49

Another awesome library-related web tool (the first I mentioned was “LibraryElf”:http://www.existdifferently.com/archives/2005/01/16/library-elf/) is the “bookmarklet(Google for term to define)”:http://www.google.com/search?q=bookmarklet creation tool over at “Jon Udell’s LibraryLookup”:http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/stories/2002/12/11/librarylookup.html page. If you live in Indianapolis, Indiana (or in the county of Marion in Indiana), you can use his customize tool to “build your own bookmarklet”:http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/stories/2002/12/11/librarylookupGenerator.html that lets you, when browsing Amazon.com or another similar web merchant, click this bookmarklet in your toolbar to open a search for that book at your local library! Easy way to save money buying a book that’s at your library!

This is very cool. If you go to the “Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library(IMCPL)”:http://www.imcpl.org/ you can just drag this link to your bookmarks/favorites/links bar, go to a page at Amazon (see “my LibraryElf post”:http://www.existdifferently.com/archives/2005/01/16/library-elf/ for some Amazon links), and click the bookmarklet to try it yourself! It seems that IMCPL returns the identical match in a list of search results, but it seems the exact ISBN match is the third item down, so click the third ISBN down in the results to see the actual book information.

Note that if you use his “custom bookmarklet generator”:http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/stories/2002/12/11/librarylookupGenerator.html (which I did to create the link above) the values for IMCPL are:


Base URL: http: //catalog.imcpl.org/
Library Name: [whatever you want to call the link]
Vendor: "iPac" is the one you must select

(note: remove the space between the “http” and the “catalog.imcpl.org” above, I had to add it to get it to show up correctly in this post)

I provide this information because it was very hard to figure out that “iPac” was the correct vendor type, since it doesn’t mention that specific vendor anywhere on IMCPL’s site. Try it, you’ll like it!

Library Elf

Filed under: Books,General,Internet,Tech (General),Web Development — David @ 01:02

In news important enough to deserve its own entry, I found a great new little resource over at “LibraryElf“:http://www.libraryelf.com/ that I found through a great little “post at 43 Folders“:http://www.43folders.com/2005/01/lazyweb_library.html. It gives you an RSS feed, and emails, with notifications of books due at the local public library here in town (they added ours, in one day, at my request!) and several others around the country. Granted, the local library already has reminder emails. But this site will not just email you, but text message your cell phone and provide a nice little RSS feed you can stick in your newsreader to let you know when what’s due, or overdue. With customizable reminder times (library’s limited to three days prior to due date), and the ability to notify you when holds are ready to be picked up as well!

For those with big families of book-checker-outers, or those with accounts at multiple libraries that ‘Elf supports, you can add multiple cards to one account and it will track all of them for you on the same system. Makes tracking all your stuff that much easier, even if they don’t let you place holds or auto-renew the books online through their system at the moment.

I’m thinking maybe if they allowed you to place holds on books you find in the library’s catalog (wait, I know the library lets you do this already through their site, let me finish!), but add them to an “interest queue” (see the second comment at that 43 Folders post above, which links to “Netflix for books or ‘interest queues'”:http://www.sauria.com/blog/computers/open_source/osaf/chandler/1129) that monitors when I return books and puts the next book or two on hold for me automatically. That would give the library more books on its shelves (so I don’t have to check out 30 books on a topic because I don’t want to forget to get them, then renew them up to the 15-times max unless someone else requests them). And me a more manageable stack of books to read at once, while letting me get to my “wish list.” But ‘Elf doesn’t place holds yet, so it’s a dream for the moment. Enough from, me go check it out!

Unrelated: “this is cool”:http://www.lazyweb.org/.

I’m baaack…and funnier than ever!

Not that I’ve really gone anywhere. Or become funnier than ever (I just find and link to funny stuff, in case you hadn’t noticed). I’ve just been busy. And every time I get some time I could be posting, I pick up one of the five or so books I’m reading instead. Come on, it’s only been eight days. Plus work takes a lot of time. If anyone wants to donate a salary equal to that which I’m making now (preferrably more, and no, I won’t tell you what it is :-) I could switch to blogging full time. Any takers?

Didn’t think so. Just in case, the lines of communication are always open…

Anyway, I’ve been reading a lot of good books, which I need to at least link to soon, if not review. And of course there’s the usual day-to-day life happenings, but I tend to forget those after 24 hours anyway, so you may not get a combined update of time I spend not posting here. If you really want to know some personal details, all the other cousins on my Dad’s side of the family came from Illinois to our house today (there’s three of ’em besides my brother and me). The goal? Get a photo taken of the five of us together to give to our grandma (we call her Busha since she’s Polish and that’s how you say grandma in Polish…or at least that’s what I’ve been told my whole live, I don’t exactly speak Polish so I can’t vouch for authenticity) for her birthday this year. Goal accomplished, and my family got a new family photo while we were at it (the last one was from the early ’90s, so it did need a bit of updating!). Plus it was good to spend the day with them, we haven’t seen them in a long time. The five of us have ages that are, youngest-to-oldest, 15, 20, 21, 25, and 32. My brother and I are the youngest. Next are two girls that are the daughters of one of my Dad’s sisters, then the son of my Dad’s other sister. Not like you care terribly much, so I’ll stop the info there. And get on with the humor.

“ForeverGeek”:http://www.forevergeek.com/ (an excellent blog itself) has a great link to an article entitled, “Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?“:http://forevergeek.com/entertainment/is_your_son_a_computer_hacker.php that you must check out. They provide a quick quote from the article so I won’t give you preview…the full article they link to is “over here”:http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html and in case you can’t tell, it’s satire. Very, very funny satire, made more so by the pages of comments you can find at the bottom made by many, many people who actually think the article is serious and publish rebuttals, or just call the article stupid! But the reasons for that are explained in another “Adequacy.org”:http://www.adequacy.org article, “Writing Satire For A Technical Audience“:http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2002.1.28.213530.133.html. Heck, that one might actually be a lot funnier than the first one! Depends on who you are, I guess. If you enjoy those — and still have time left, as they aren’t short — try this one: “Internet Licenses: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?“:http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.12.28.55410.553.html

ovingMay onway otay otherway tuffsay, oogleGay ashay away ranslationtay “intoway igpay atinlay”:http://www.google.com/intl/xx-piglatin/! ockRay onway, oogleGay! Iway riedtray otay earchsay orfay ymay itesay onway itway, andway itway idn’tway indfay anythingway henway Iway usedway igpay atinlay otay erformpay ethay earchsay: “Ouryay earchsay – “existway ifferentlyday“:http://www.google.com/search?hl=xx-piglatin&q=existway+ifferentlyday&btnG=Google+Earchsay – idday otnay atchmay anyway ocumentsday.”

Anywayway (oops, enough of that — but I was getting fluent at the typing while issuing forth the above paragraph from my fingers (not quite as fluent as I am at speaking it, however)), on to some comics: here are “two”:http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19990211 “UserFriendly“:http://userfriendly.org/ “comics”:http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19990815 that are rather funny, if you know what they mean. I supposed you’ll have to read them to find out if you do. If you don’t understand them, follow the directions in the first ;-)

If you’re ready to be done with the humor for a minute, here’s a link to two of the books I’m in middle of right now. They’re both by “Hugh Hewitt”:http://www.hughhewitt.com/pages/about_hugh.htm. One is “In, But Not Of : A Guide to Christian Ambition“:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0785263950/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2 and the other is “The Embarrassed Believer“:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0849914191/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2, both are excellent so far and after doing a quick Amazon search, I think I may try and grab his newest book, “Blog : Understanding the Information Reformation That’s Changing Your World“:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/078521187X/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2, from the library. Maybe

I’m reading a few other books as well, but I don’t feel like taking the time to find them and put their info in right now, so you’ll have to wait. Go away now. Or read my other entries, if you haven’t. Or re-read them, I won’t stop you. Or get organized with the info over at the cool website called “43 Folders“:http://www.43folders.com/ (trust me, it’s cool).

Sat, 2005-01-08 (Jan 08)

ABBBB (or, A Bit of Badinage Before Bed)

Filed under: Blog,Funny,General — David @ 04:03

I’m not tired yet, but I need to go to bed because I need to get up early, there’s things to do tomorrow! Oh well, at least I got to sleep all day today. Until I had to get up to go see the hilarious comedian we had at church tonight (“Joe Kessler”:http://www.northcentral.edu/admissions/staff/kessler.php in case you’re interested. You wouldn’t know he was a comedian from that link, but if you have Adobe Acrobat Reader you can “try this”:http://www.northcentral.edu/admissions/staff/documents/kessler_brochure.pdf).

Anyway, I figured I’d check out some funny stuff online because I already read all my usual blogs and news sites and wanted a bit more humor to finish out the day. And because it’s too late to watch the two-hour season premiere of Alias that I recorded Wednesday night without going to bed too late to get up early (as I found out two days this week that I had to work :-)

So…first thing I google is the phrase “you might be a librarian if” to see if I can find anything interesting along those lines. Only three results (librarians must be too busy cataloging to think up jokes about themselves (at least along the “redneck” joke style), or maybe no one thinks about them often enough to make up jokes about them. I know I didn’t pay much attention to them until I met someone becoming one, but I must say they are interesting people and my personality seems to have many places where it lines up with theirs :-)

So first I found “this”:http://www.agmb.de/medibib-l/1995/0189.html (Somebody reading this might particularly get a kick out of number nine…please keep in mind number five please! Of course that somebody might also have read this before.):

You might be a librarian if:

# You might be a librarian if it often appears that you have wrinkles in your nylons; especially if you don’t wear nylons — and you are a man.
# If you wear socks on the beach you may be a librarian.
# If the cans in your cupboard are arranged alphabetically by the name of the agribusiness responsible for their production, you are very likely a librarian.
# You may be a librarian if you need new glasses and are disappointed to find such a limited selection of horn rims.
# You may be a librarian if you do not think this is funny. You are probably a librarian if you think this is insulting. You are certainly a librarian if you do not see why this is insulting.
# If your Nash has less than 50,000 miles on it, that is one sign you may be a librarian.
# If you are the lowest paid faculty member at a university you are probably a librarian.
# The person assigned to record the minutes is usually a librarian. If two librarians are at a meeting, the other one will be asked to arrange for coffee and cookies. If three librarians are at the meeting, two of them
will be in a run-off election for the coffee-and-cookie job.
# If you go to Ohio on vacation, you may be a librarian.
# Librarians frequently have permanent soup stains on their pocket protectors.
# If you think that a night club is a stick you keep beside your bed to protect yourself from intruders, you may be a librarian.
# You might consider the possibility that you are a librarian if you have a dress you can not wear because the skirt is so short that your legs show above the tops of your tube socks.
# When Walmart puts a plaque of honor with your name on it on the door of their dressing room, you may wonder if you are a librarian.

Copyright (C) 1995 by Millard Johnson
The material above may be freely used provided the following is attached: Librarians are as diverse in appearance, interests, and attitude as any other people. About their only common traits are that they all hold master’s degrees from accredited institutions of higher education and they have a sense of humor that allows them to laugh at the absurdities of the stereotype commonly associated with their profession.

At the second Google page I found, a weirdly formatted page from the a newsletter at the University of Kentucky, repeated a few of the above but also had some interesting quotes. I like these four:

* “I believe you should live each day as if it is your last, which is why I don’t have any clean laundry because, come on, who wants to wash clothes on the last day of their life?”
–unknown
* “Alcoholism is sad, but drunks are funny.”
-Bill Maher
* Michael Guerra, a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, speaking of recent testing results that indicate that students have made little, if any, advances in reading and writing skills since the 1970’s said:
“This report suggests that mediocrity is still common in our schools and excellence is still rare.”
* “It sure would be nice if we got a day off for the president’s birthday, like they do for the queen. Of course, then we would have a lot of people voting for a candidate born on July 3 or December 26, just for the long weekends.”
-unknown

That third Google result returned a 404 Not Found error, but using Google’s Cache feature I was able to figure out that the site the link went to was a page of links, with the search phrase being a link to a website that had been moved “somewhere else”:http://www.lipsticklibrarian.com/. I didn’t spend enough time there to find any humor.

To be more than fair, I did google for “you might be a geek if“:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=%22you+might+be+a+geek+if%22&btnG=Search and “you might be a nerd if“:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=%22you+might+be+a+nerd+if%22&btnG=Search and found plenty of sites to waste quite a bit of time on:

geek:
* “You Might Be A Geek“:http://www.math.vt.edu/people/hoggard/you-might-be-a-geek.html (Six of these apply to me. This site also has a link to a hilarious “joke about biostatisticians and epidemiologists”:http://www.math.vt.edu/people/hoggard/texts/statisticians.)
* Hilarious Geek Culture Quiz (I got a 40 out of 72 on this, updating a few questions to make sense in my context. I esp. like numbers 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (esp), 15, 31 (done), 32 (several), 37 (actually mine’s 24-hour time, not GMT), 39, 41, 42, 46 (yep), 50, 51 (yep!), 52, 60 (actually just after), and 62-67 (yep). I especially like number 7, “…and you *always* put the period outside the quotes, since you’re not quoting the end of the sentence…what the hell do english majors know, anyway.” Of course, this time I was quoting the end of the sentence, but I really can’t bring myself to quote ending punctuation that’s not part of the original quotation. That would be a false and ambiguous quotation! By the way, scroll down and read the comments after this one, they’re pretty darn funny as well!)
* “Another Geek If List”:http://www.katscratch.com/aMEWsments/mews23.html (I either identify with or resemble a lot of these remarks! It has it’s stupid ones, but the good ones far outweigh. I can’t pick a favorite, but I do like, “if you just don’t have the heart to throw away the 100-in-1 electronics kit you got for your ninth birthday”, since I don’t have the “heart” to throw out just about anything, but especially something that you can still do something with, whether that’s actually useful or not…also, the last quiz has this one, too, but a couple of times I’ve done this: “if, when you go into a computer store, you eavesdrop on a salesperson talking with customers and you butt in to correct him and spend the next twenty minutes answering the customers’ questions, while the salesperson stands by silently, nodding his head”. (See? This list doesn’t put periods at the end of it’s bullet-points, so I couldn’t quote it!) Also, I did this on the missions trip to Holland, which was the last time I flew: “if you find yourself at the airport on your vacation studying the baggage handling equipment”. Also, I’ve never been to an airshow, but for “if you are at an airshow and know how fast the skydivers are falling” I’d have to venture that the velocity would be equal to 9.8 m/sec^2^ times the number of seconds since falling, up to of course the person’s “terminal”:http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~broholm/l10/node5.html “velocity”:http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/termv.html which appears to be around 200mph for an average person. Of course the terminal velocity lowers quite a bit once a parachute comes into play, which is the whole reason those things work in the first place.) Actually there are so many good ones here I have to list a few more (keep in mind these mostly apply to me, but it’s not an exaustive list of those that apply to me!):
** if you can type 70 words a minute but can’t read your own handwriting
** if your favorite James Bond character is “Q”, the guy who makes the gadgets
** if you thought the real heroes of “Apollo 13” were the mission controllers
** if you think that when people around you yawn, its because they didn’t get enough sleep
** if you know what http:// stands for [HyperText Transfer Protocol…duh!]
** if you order pizza over the Internet and pay for it through your home banking software [“Pizza Hut”:http://www.pizzahut.com has a good online ordering system!]
** if your three year old son asks why the sky is blue and you try to explain atmospheric absorption theory [I don’t have a son but when I do, I will!]
** if you’ve already calculated how much you make per second ]actually I hadn’t but I just did…not going to post it here, but it’s between $0.003 and $0.005 :-]
** if the blinking 12:00 on someone’s VCR draws you in like a tractor beam to fix it
* “Star Trek Geek If…”:http://members.tripod.com/~learnb/recdeck/geeksign.htm (No I’m not at this level…mostly… :-)

nerd:
* “redneck ripoffs“:http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~garthman/humor.html (The link to “You might be a nerd if…” on this page is good, but also see the story thingy at the bottom. I didn’t even read the whole “nerd if” thingy so I can go to bed, much less the story, but it’s quite interesting (see the Disclaimer page) to see the style it’s written in.)
* “You Might Be A Nerd If…“:http://www.jokechallenge.com/lists/nerd.html

Okay as much as I’ve gone on, I almost could have watched that Alias I was putting off because it was too long. Grrr. Oh well going to bed now! BTW(By The Way), you might be a geek, nerd, and/or librarian if you write blog entries like this, or for that matter read (and mostly understand) them!

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