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.

Thu, 2005-04-21 (Apr 21)

Home!

Filed under: Blog,General,Las Vegas/NAB2005,Personal,Travel/Trips — David @ 10:09

I’m home! Whew! More when I wake up…maybe. Or maybe later :-)

Tue, 2005-04-19 (Apr 19)

Wonderful Hotel Internet :-(

Well, the pictures from yesterday, all several hundred of them, should have been uploaded overnight but the Flickr uploader tool kept timing out. A few uploaded, which you can “see here”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/existdifferently/sets/244083/ for now, I’ll add to the set and post here when I get a chance to upload the rest. Unfortunately the ones that did get posted (since I’m posting in chronological order approximately, at least by memory card) are from the NAB conference, and not from The Strip at night, which I also got a lot of! Some not as blurry this time :-)

We went go-karting last night on some go-karts that look like your average local fun park go-karts, but they weren’t speed-limited and could go up to 40 MPH! We had a lot of fun with those, the testosterone was certainly flowing strong :-) If it hadn’t cost $25 per ride of about 10 minutes or so, we’d have gone a second time for sure. But once was probably good, since several muscles got sore from use even that first time!

I actually got to bed by 1am last night Vegas time, and got up at 8:30 this morning. 7.5 hours…feels good, the last two nights I got just over half that :-)

Gotta go get ready for the day! The show is so huge it’s amazing. Many football fields in size, in each of several buildings!

Mon, 2005-04-18 (Apr 18)

In Vegas!

We arrived in Las Vegas around 9pm Vegas time, or 11pm home time. Took around an hour to walk terminal, get luggage, rent car…then we drove to the Strip where we’re staying at one of the hotel/casinos (I might post which one after we get back). Quite an amazing drive for three guys who’ve never been to Vegas! So many lights and so much money spent on looks!

We took a walk after checking in to the hotel, didn’t get too many pictures as I forgot to grab my camera on the way out the door at first, but got a few. Oh well, more later. You can “see the pictures here from Las Vegas Day 1”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/existdifferently/sets/241080/.

Walking down the strip, we walked past so many pimps passing out handbills I couldn’t keep count; they hold them out with one hand and try to offer them to you, and do a little flicking motion and makes noise against the paper as an extra attention-getter. Plus, the sidewalk was littered with handbills the size of playing cards, often well within 10 feet of each other (or less) they were so dense in certain areas. Like walking on nearly-naked confetti (but without looking at them closely you can’t make out anything other than they weren’t fully naked, they are playing-card sized after all, and many on the sidewalk were upside-down with just words (phone/advertisement/coupon/whatever) showing, too. Pretty sad. Fortunately I have less than zero desire for such a shallow relationship, not to mention the sin or cost issues involved, being on a church trip…numerous things would keep me from pursuing the adverts even if I were so inclined, which like I mentioned I’m not. What a wasted life for most of those girls and their pimps though.

We haven’t solified things, but we may see “Blue Man Group”:http://www.blueman.com/ at Luxor on Tuesday night! And “Star Trek: The Experience”:http://www.startrekexp.com at the Hilton is on the possible list as well…right down the street!

Sun, 2005-04-17 (Apr 17)

To Las Vegas!

Well, this afternoon (Sunday the 17th) I’m off to Las Vegas! A pastor from my church (the media pastor), the Technical Director, and me are all going to “NAB2005”:http://www.nabshow.com/ (the National Association of Broadcasters trade show/conference). It’s going to be fun, and we’ll hopefully pick up some good pointers for what we want to do in the future with our video/media. The show is Monday through Wednesday, and we’re coming back on the red-eye Wednesday night and should be back in town Thursday morning (fortunately I have Thursday off). My girlfriend Ruth is taking a couple of hours off work early on Thursday so I can see her soon when I get back (and finish sleeping Thursday morning, depending on how good the overnight flight goes), she’s so awesome :-)

Depending on what kind of internet access we have in Vegas, I may be posting some pics online while I’m there or perhaps when I get back, time permitting. I may shoot a few good ones over to this blog, but you could watch my “Flickr photostream”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/existdifferently/ directly for any new ones coming down the pike!

Also, in case anyone’s interested, Fuji has a nice $50 rebate this month on their “Finepix S5100”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/S5100/S51A.HTM SLR-like digital camera! It’s 4 megapixels with a 10x optical zoom, among lots of other good features, which you can see by reading the review the name is linked to. Best price I’ve seen (it’s where I ordered mine) before the rebate is from “ButterflyPhoto”:http://www.butterflyphoto.com/ and you can “see the S5100 item listing here”:http://www.butterflyphoto.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=FUJIS5100. Just $249.95 before the rebate, or $199.99 (yes, that’s less than $200!) after the rebate! This camera was at least $275 before shipping at the cheapest location I’ve ever found for it, back a couple of months ago when I bought my “Finpix E550”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E550/E55A.HTM (buy it now for “$247 at ButterflyPhoto”:http://www.butterflyphoto.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=FUJIE550 which is over $60 less than I paid for it!) which is another awesome camera but more along the point-and-shoot lines (but is VERY nice for that type of shooting, and I’ve taken over 2,000 pictures with it since I got it around two months ago!). Anyway, I ordered this last (Friday) night and it should get here either next week around when I get home, or at the latest the beginning of the next week. I already have a second 512MB xD picture card to use in it…best price on those is “eCost.com”:http://www.ecost.com/ecost/ecsplash/shop/detail~dpno~269806.asp as far as I’ve found (free shipping, small handling fee, $10 for overnight shipping). The xD picture cards are a bit more expensive than traditional flash storage cards but the data transfer rate is much higher unless you buy a high-speed card of another type, which would likely be priced the same. But all xD cards are the same high speed, no need to double-check :-)

Fri, 2005-04-01 (Apr 01)

And to think there’s worse…

Filed under: Blog,Christianity,General,In The News,Personal,Worldviews — David @ 03:12

A “blog entry here”:http://coffeetalking.blogspot.com/2005/03/little-bit-of-everything.html links to quite a story: “False Imprisonment”:http://www.dmregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050331/SPORTS13/503310395/1003&lead=1

It’s worth reading all the way through. The sad part? I can tell you from personal (not my individual, but I was one of three people second-most affected) experience that what happened in this case is NOTHING compared to the true injustice in the, um, “justice” system in this country right now (try taking that story, drag it out to about seven years, and make it two separate false charges and two false or forced convictions…and that’s just for starters). Even sadder? That we have the “best” system of it’s sort on the planet. And some people are optimistic! And by that I mean utopian…they thing everything’s going to get better as we “evolve.” I don’t mean to say that you shouldn’t be optimistic about some things, such as God’s plan for your life and such, but don’t be optimistic about the world as-is getting better any time soon. It’s pretty much headed down the toilet, for the time being at least. Either Jesus is coming back first, or it will get worse until the next turn in the cycle mentioned by the book “The Fourth Turning”:http://www.fourthturning.com/ (which notes that it’s gotten bad like this (well, not exactly like this, but worse than we might usually imagine, also “see the book on Amazon”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/055306682X/davidsworldva-20/002-2086300-3510456?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=1789&link%5Fcode=xm2 and also note that I haven’t read the entire book, nor is it written from a Christian perspective)) in the past, but that history always seems to repeat itself, particularly in a four-part cycle identified in said book). Original sin brings us all this, and crushes utpianism, at least until God returns, and at that point “utopia” is just one of the two!

But I digress slightly :-)

Also, this is worth considering: “Iniquity Abounds”:http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Basics/iniquity_abounds.htm

Time for some sleep, even though there’s no work tomorrow (yay!). I wish well those of you who may perhaps have to go to either work or school and stayed up a bit late ;-)

Tue, 2005-03-29 (Mar 29)

Words, Words, and Few for You!

Talking is cool. Both online and in person. For me, when I get enough talking one-on-one, apparently I can’t come up with anything worthwhile to post to the general public here (and by “general public” I mean, the two or three people that read this regularly and anyone else that stumbles through from Google or something :-)

Not that that’s a bad thing. Unless you want to read more stuff here. But hey, it’s my blog, so you’ll just have to live. I do respond to comments occasionally, especially from commenters that aren’t, um, regulars :-) Or I would, if there were more than three such comments on the whole site. And one of those is from someone I know in person.

Of course, if I posted more interesting stuff here that was actually worth commenting on, I suppose I might then expect more comments. Catch-22 really. Or maybe the most important things I have to say right now aren’t meant for you to hear. Or you. Or you. Safe bet: if you don’t know if it’s you or not, it’s not you :-) On the other hand, if you do know what I’m talking about, feel free to ignore what I’m talking about, it doesn’t apply to you :-)

Do I get a prize? You know, for least content in three paragraphs? I should at least get runner-up for this one :-) What do you know, I did want to talk. Just not about anything you’re probably interested in, here at least :-) If you’re feeling left out, give it time (sure for this post to sink in or something (like it ever will…ha! Like the blonde that died in the shower when the shampoo bottle said “lather, rinse, repeat” ;-), but what I mean is come back later and perhaps eventually I’ll be able to post something more interesting in such a public forum :-)

Um…”Mozilla Firefox 1.0.2″:http://www.getfirefox.com/ is out. It’s cool. Get it. Um…[looks at multitude of tabs open for something interesting to post]…I found a site called “LinkedIn”:https://www.linkedin.com/ the other day that I hadn’t seen before. Interesting stuff, but I haven’t signed up yet. Still, the tab remains open since I’m curious about it :-)

Also, “Magix music products”:http://site.magix.net/index.php?id=471&no_cache=1 are good stuff…try the demos sometime. Music Studio 2005 is really good and at less than $100 is very powerful, the main limitation I run into is not being able to edit the audio while recording at the same time, which you can do in their premiere “Samplitude”:http://site.magix.net/index.php?id=15648&type=2 product (although it’s $1,000 more expensive :-)

If you have an extra $79 laying around (and who doesn’t?), “Amazon Prime”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/subs/primeclub/signup/main.html/002-2086300-3510456 is a nice program to get into if you like Amazon.com and want to get fast, free shipping (or faster, cheaper shipping). Details are right there on the site, I think you can read it without me :-) Free two-day shipping on over 1 million items, overnight for $3.99, for a year. Yep, I told you anyway! Get over it!

Ran into an interesting site while searching for something (I don’t remember what, a how-to on something) the other day. It’s a computer help site called “Bleeping Computer”:http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/. I get a kick out of the name and wish I’d gotten to that domain…like I need more than the 30+ I have :-)

If you’re looking to buy something computer related, first check out “eCost”:http://www.ecost.com/ because they have a lot of good deals. LCDs and camera memory cards are some of their best and most often discounted items. But they have lots of stuff. Also, for general, daily updated deals (lots of Dell deals that link directly to Dell, sometimes with coupon codes, but plenty of non-Dell, and some non-computer related, like “Overstock.com”:http://www.overstock.com selling down comforters and bedsheets really cheap) are awesome over at “GotApex”:http://www.gotapex.com/. I watch that site several days out of the week to spot good stuff. Not that I buy that often, or I’d be much poorer than I am (although they’re one of the reasons I’m as poor as I am already :-)

For example, GotApex is listing right now that Amazon.com has a “Canon PowerShot SD110 Digital Elph 3 megapixel 2X zoom”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0001G6U9I/ref%3Dnosim/gotapex/002-2086300-3510456 camera for just $159! If I had the spare cash I’d jump on it, the Elphs are awesome because they’re so darn tiny while still be high quality. And usually high priced. But I don’t :-)

And, my last item for this post is “my Flickr page”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/existdifferently/ which, if you’re not on my friends or family list, still has a lot of pictures that I spent all night last Friday night (until 8am Saturday morning) tagging with metadata and making public. I have over 3,200 images uploaded to Flickr, and am nowhere near getting them all sorted (probably never will be) but I like the ones I have available now :-)

Goodnight!

Update: I do find it somewhat ironic how long this post ended up being, and how much info I included, given the title. So much for intent! :-) But aren’t you glad I got around to some actually useful information after all that stuff at the top?

Mon, 2005-03-28 (Mar 28)

To sleep, or not to sleep?

Filed under: Personal — David @ 02:00

Yep. You didn’t guess it! To sleep :-) This time…

[possibly shortest post ever, even with this postscript!]

Fri, 2005-03-25 (Mar 25)

My Kind of Alarm!

Filed under: Blog,General,In The News,Personal — David @ 17:48

I should probably look into “this alarm clock”:http://coffeetalking.blogspot.com/2005/03/are-you-alarm-hitter.html at some point. That, or move my alarm clock across the room. But I tried that before, and got so ticked off about having to get out of bed to turn it off that I just moved it closer :-) This one actually moves so it is next to your bed the first time, and if it moves to a random part of the room so you have to look for it, it could be helpful. Of course now I just sleep through my current clock (well, I did today, but I actually woke up to it a few times this week!), so it might not help much :-)

Update: Original article with pictures (it’s ugly at the moment!): “right here”:http://bicillin.media.mit.edu/clocky/

Wed, 2005-03-16 (Mar 16)

Life Is Good

Filed under: Blog,Books,Christianity,General,Personal — David @ 00:53

Yep, life is good. Bears repeating. My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers is a good book. So is Secrets of the Secret Place by Bob Sorge. I’m not even going to give you links to them, because you can find them at Amazon yourself just fine. Actually, it’s becuase I’ve got better things than to find the links to them right now. And I’m feeling lazy. But I’d appreciate you buying them through a search using this box if you wouldn’t mind:

Amazon Logo

Search Now:

Give’s me a tiny kickback and costs you nothing but searching from this page (or using the links to Amazon for other books in my older posts). Thanks.

Anyway, just started those books. Gotta move slowly in them, quite a bit of info.

Still no pics of new car up, but that’s due to, well, the whole lazy thing. Plus a lot going on now. I don’t really feel like spending the time to type out those things that I don’t mind saying publicly, and, well, the other things wouldn’t end up here anyway :-) Librarygal mentioned that’s why she uses Friends mode to post more sensitive, not-quite-public posts, in Live Journal. Blah. Blasted features community sites implement that I don’t feel like adding or upgrading or developing my own community on my server directly at the moment. So I’ll live without it I guess. Public only. When I have time.

But, remember, life is good! Which it is. There will never be a time when it couldn’t be better here on earth, and there are those things that I’d rather were different at the moment. But they are looking up compared to, for example, a month ago (not that I remember what was going on a month ago…), just in general.

Maturing is good. Maturity is only a state we think we’ve reached when we don’t realize we’re still on the journey. The never-ending process of maturing, however, basically means growing and learning (in my opinion…no dictionary was harmed or consulted in the defining of the term): from circumstances, thoughts, feelings, experiences, friends, books, chats, talks, conversation, movies, literature, family, God. And making yourself better by experiencing these things. “But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” says 2 Peter 3:18, KJV. That’s how we mature.

Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.

Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious–the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.
— Philippians 4:6-9 (The Message)

Good advice in all the translations/paraphrases, but I liked The Message at the moment, it’s different than the usual wording, giving it a fresh perspective. Stop reading. Start doing :-)

Tue, 2005-03-08 (Mar 08)

Communication Styles

Filed under: Blog,General,Personal — David @ 00:55

“Thinking Faster”:http://workingsmarter.typepad.com/, a blog I follow semi-regularly (it’s in my newsreader, I don’t read it as often as I should but I read over the homepage worth of posts and they’re all excellent at the moment! Stuff to get you thinking, can’t say whether I agree with it all but food for thought is normally good), has an interesting post called “Tools of the Trade“:http://workingsmarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/02/tools_of_the_tr.html that mentions two people he knew, one that exclusively used email for communication, the other the phone.

I found it interesting, because I’m much more comfortable with email than a phone conversation. I dislike the phone and voicemail for most purposes; I’ll use it if I have to but I may procrastinate making a call, and I dislike voicemail. I always transcribe the pertinent details into a blank text document on the computer (sometimes on a piece of paper), delete the voicemail, and either reply by take care of a request, send a reply — by email — or add an Outlook Task entry for the item with the transcribed details as the body so I don’t forget and I have the phone number. Rarely do I actually return the call with another call, at least, if I can help it. Sometimes you can’t avoid it, or it will work better to just make the call.

I used to be able to avoid phone calls before I started working. When you work in a retail story, or at a desk in an office, it usually forces some phone time, and it’s been good for me. I’m much better on the phone than I used to be, but that doesn’t mean I actually like it!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m with everyone else in hating getting greeted by a computer menu when I’m trying to call tech support — or worse, a sales person! It’s not that I dislike not having to talk with a human, but it prolongs the phone time (it can take five minutes to communicate the same information a human could have taken and redirected my call with in five seconds — maybe ten), wasting my time and insulting my intelligence (yes, I typed 5……4……3……2…….1. A whole lot faster than you said it back to me, too! “Please listen carefully as our menu has changed.” Really? Since the last time I called five minutes ago and went through this whole thing before you disconnected me? If you’re putting that much effort into changing your menu that quickly, answer the phone already! Can you tell I’ve dealt with this recently? ;-)

So anyway, email me. If I’m at the computer and your email warrants a response I have the answer to right away, you’ll probably get it as fast as I can type it. If you call me, you’re probably interrupting something so I’ll have to be short and probably call you back anyway, so as not to be rude with the person I’m already with, or so I can finish up what I was in the middle of so I can focus on you. Email gives me that chance, even if you email me asking me to call you! I’m more likely to return that request (and remember to!) if it can’t just go in one ear and out the other, since email doesn’t just go away.

This post was supposed to be a paragraph or two. Yikes, it’s turning into an email! (If you’d read any of my work emails over the past year (my second year of full-time at my current job started March 3rd!), you would likely see a pattern of really long emails switching into short(er) emails that clearly in plain english state the most important information first, with ancillary info down near the bottom where apparently no one in my office other than me gets to when reading an email. I modified my style after finding this last fact out, plus a few nice notices from boss & coworkers that shorter emails may actually be read :-)

Notice I don’t feel the same constraints in blog posts. But I do need to get to bed, got a busy week this week! My to-do list grew by leaps and bounds Monday, even though I got a lot done and checked off. And most of it is “must do this week” priority! Oh well, a lot of that gets knocked into next week every week, some stuff just doesn’t seem as important any more after you haven’t done it :-) Just kidding…it’s a matter of prioritizing as usual. Can’t get it all done, but I try. I’m just juggling a few major decisions that need testing to get to a conclusion and I have hard deadlines for some by the end of this week or we’ll be locked into thousands of dollars worth of spending. Hey, no pressure! :-)

How do I handle it? I call on the smart people for help! Nothing like someone who can say “been there, done that!”

On a goodnight sidenote, this essay called “The Tyranny of Email“:http://www.w-uh.com/articles/030308-tyranny_of_email.html that kicks off the above-mentioned article, is well-written and brings up some good points. I don’t agree with a lot of them, as you may pick up after reading my entry here. Or at least, I don’t know if I could bring myself to implement most of the suggestions, even if I wanted to. Yeah, that’s more accurate :-)

Actually, the follow-up post entitled “‘Tyranny’ Revisited“:http://www.w-uh.com/articles/030316-tyranny_revisited.html is even more useful, and agreeable, to me. Just one gem of the bunch:

Whenever you are not doing something which requires concentration, by all means, run your email client, run your IM client, have notifications turned on, take ‘phone calls, the works. But when you really need to get work done, turn everything off. Isolate yourself. Okay, enough about that.

The layout of a workday, under the heading “Three Hours?”, is interesting, but I agree, purely theoretical.

And if you’re still with me, the post “I am an Iterator“:http://www.w-uh.com/posts/030315a-iterator.html at the same site is interesting to think about. I probably fit that profile on some things, for a set period of time until I lose interest. Until then, I tend to follow that pattern of redoing things to get closer to perfection, but in a very, very limited capacity. And rarely in my writing, as I hate, hate, hate editing! I can probably count on my fingers the times I’ve really gone back and edited something I’ve written for more than surface spelling errors and maybe a bit of basic grammar. Hope you can’t tell too much :-)

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 :-)

Sun, 2005-01-16 (Jan 16)

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).

Wed, 2005-01-05 (Jan 05)

Geek Quiz

Filed under: Blog,Funny,Personal,Tech (General) — David @ 03:48

I really dislike online quizzes, but hey, some of them are good. Just following the example of “librarygal”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/librarygal/149223.html and “fearless4jesus”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/fearless4jesus/18768.html. So here’s this one:

You are 41% geek
You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator.

Normal: Tell our geek we need him to work this weekend.
You [to Geek]: We need more than that, Scotty. You’ll have to stay until you can squeeze more outta them engines!
Geek [to You]: I’m givin’ her all she’s got, Captain, but we need more dilithium crystals!
You [to Normal]: He wants to know if he gets overtime.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

I do have a question. Does it make me even more of a geek if I’m insulted that it didn’t give me a high enough score? Heck, I even went back and answered two questions differently and it only pushed me up to 43%…

Sat, 2004-12-25 (Dec 25)

“isn’t it time someone saved you?”

SPOILER ALERT! If you haven’t seen Spider-Man 2, and don’t want to know the ending, don’t read the “more” part of this post! Merry Christmas and go watch the movie! :-)

Okay, just finished watching a couple of movies tonight. “Elf”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002F6BRE/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2 I watched because my Mom wanted to see it, so my family watched it. It was okay. Funnier than I expected in several areas, and Bob Newhart is good in it, but not worth subjecting myself to twice. Not like I usually watch movies more than once.

“Spider-Man 2”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005JMQW/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2, on the other hand, was awesome. It didn’t quite have as much action as the first, much more plot development, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There was action, it just wasn’t in spurts quite as long as I rememember them being in the first movie. I could be remembering incorrectly.

My favorite part (and this is where the spoilers start) was (more…)

Thu, 2004-12-23 (Dec 23)

Librarians, or, Three Posts in One Night

Filed under: Blog,General,Personal — David @ 14:01

I’ll probably go to bed soon (maybe after a snack (edit: this was around 3 to 4 am when I wrote this part)), but I found some more interesting stuff online so I’ll post that first. May be the first time I’ve posted three blog entries in one night (too lazy to check old posts to be sure), but even if I matched the number I don’t think any of them were as long as these three are.

Firefox Tabs Commented On 2004-12-23 I can’t remember how I found half this stuff, but I wouldn’t post it here if I didn’t think it was interesting, funny, or entertaining (well, not in this post at least). I have all these sites open in separate tabs in “Firefox”:http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=affiliates&id=13029&t=46 right now. (I also have twelve additional browser windows open from the past few days, each with several tabs at least…and this is considered “normal” for me!) The thumbnail at the left is of my current computer state as I write this, with the browser shown being the one with the tabs open that I’m writing about. Click for a bigger view (resized to 640×480 for easier viewing…I’m running 1024×768 natively, and if anyone cares to donate a 20″ LCD I’ll gladly switch to 1600×1200).

First up is sites having to do with libraries or librarians, since not only is “librarygal”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/librarygal/ the person who has made me aware of the existance of the MLS degree (although she says I’m probably more interested in the MIS area if I pursue that direction when I go to college, which is true), she’s also the only person I know for sure that consistently reads my blog.

There’s some interesting humor over at “Laughing Librarian”:http://www.laughinglibrarian.com/ where you try to guess whether certain phrases are children’s book titles or titles of porno videos (more…)

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