Category: General

4:00 a.m. I had to run as fast as I could to the bathroom for some intestinal maintenance. But this doesn’t give Ed permission to say “I told you so.” I am blaming it on the Mexican dinner at Sams no3. on Havana.That is all.

I spent the greater part of this morning trying to solve a rather pesky system glitch with my USB external drives. The Sony Spressa CDRW drive I use is installed with the wrong driver. Windows 2000 automatically installs a different version of the driver to my system and I think that is what is causing my system from time to time lock up and spit out my external hard drive and external cdrw drive. But getting a correct Win2K drive has seemed to be impossible. This isn’t the end of the world and the hardware works 99 percent of the time, but on occasion, for no reason at all I will get this pesky error message that my hard drive and my CD drive were improperly unplugged. Since they work most of time, I am assuming it is a software issue not a hardware issue. And the best “first” place to go to fix the problem is to reinstall the drivers. But hours later I have made no major headway. But I will persevere.

On MSN chat this afternoon, the discussion turned to Olestra and specifically the Frito-Lay companies Olean branded fat-free chips.
See, I kind of like them.
And I am discovering that I am nearly all alone in that endeavor. I may be their entire consumer market.
There was talk of seeing how many chips it takes for an entire colon blow. But that conversation passed (…)
But come on! A handful of yummy fried tater crunchies for just 75 calories! How lucky can a guy get. Sure, it can be a gastrointestinal disaster if the entire bag is eaten in one sitting, but then if that happens, it serves a guy right.

Weekend looms following tater event

Speaking of blowing it all in one sitting – the weekend has crept upon us and with that comes plans. For most it is a three day weekend whereby we honor past presidents. Let’s all pause for just a second and give a shout out to 93-year-old Ronald Reagan, who just had a birthday. And, as always, take some time to pour a 40 down for good old Richard Nixon, one of my favorite dudes. A despicable person with few morals and virtually no charisma who forced himself into the global spotlight. How that guy became president is something I will never understand. And for that I love him. It ain’t easy to become an icon.
Just ask Charro.
Snow is forecast for Saturday, but otherwise the weekend looks like a fun warm one. I may propose to the posse a trip out of town somewhere. Perhaps up to Longmont to enjoy some microbrewery guzzling. And I think, in honor of Crabfest at Red Lobster, a sea food buffet somewhere may be in order.

The tool of the average serial killer has now been given new life due to terror . Apparently Duct Tape is now the equivalent of aspirin and band aids in our society (AP). The media is reporting that it is selling off the shelf as fast as they can stock it in hopes of making our home terrorist attack proof. I don’t know about that but I do know that while in the Army, the tape was sold in camo, green and black as well as the traditional gray and quite honestly held the entire military establishment together. Rare it was when a ranking sergeant in the field did not have a roll of duct tape in the cargo pocket of his pants in order to fix a truck, a tent, a computer. But really. Besides its incredible strength and useability, does anyonethink that the tape will be able to prevent anything? I doubt it.

I have lost the link in a housekeeping frenzy, but recently I stumbled on a web log site whose life’s mission was to find and taunt online auctions. Much like Disturbing Auctions but with snarky photos and the ability to comment on delicious finds. It was while on the that mysterious site that I happened upon this. Shop Goodwill. Wow. What kind of gold is this! An online thrift store auction. I doubt the site makes much money and I imagine the web site itself and the bandwidth are donated, but still . . . where else can you find such wonders as Clippo the Clown. Perhaps he would make a perfect companion to Ed’s houseboy Pedro.
If nothing else, the Goodwill store will now be a site to go to for odd pictures to brighten up any template.
heh heh heh.

Okay, I have shared a severe bit of nerdiness already, so it isn’t too much to go further. Besides chess, the Bee Gees and the very fact I have created a self-obsessive blog, I have spent the better part of the Tuesday and Wednesday watching the rebroadcast of the Westminster Dog Show.I dig the dog show. Always have. A few thoughts. Joe Garagiola used to host the show every year. He was replaced with Mark McEwan, the former CBS weatherman. Not bad, but in terms of pure geekiness, I thought that it would be hard to beat ol’ Joe. But McEwan did a fine geeky job. His broadcast partner, David Frei, was a bit annoying, however. Standing there proudly displaying his Denver Broncos Super Bowl ring as he does the doggy-do play-by-play was a bit surreal. The former Football PR flack turned dog show competitor (the term he used all the time was “Breeder/ Owner/Handler”
– as if it were a coveted role.) referred to the dogs as “fabulous” on more occassions than you might expect a world champion football dude would.

I was cheering for the Pomeranian. I don’t necessarily like them as a dog, but I figured their day had come and frankly, that dog, to use Frei’s term, was “fabulous.”

But in the end the Kerry Blue Terrier won the show.

Okay. Links are up.Changed the template to be easier to read

Fiddled with the Title header.

Now for an explanation of the title.

It is from Walt Whitman. In the preface of Leaves of Grass.

It needs a whole table of its own right here, but that is on the to do list.

So, the job hunt is looking up a bit. In the past few weeks, I have been able to send out more than a resume or two a week. There are actually job positings! Although in this market that means some fierce competition, but I think I can at least claw my way to the top of the pile.
Sent off three resumes to Nextel this week for three supervisor positions. And several more similar positions were sent off last week. Not my dream job, but I am qualified, so might as well give it a shot.
I have about three weeks of paid unemployment benefits left. Short of getting an extension (which I can’t apply for until the money is gone) the first job that comes along will be my new career. So reach out to your favorite psychic and send me a note on what is in the future, for I can’t fathom it.

Okay, this is a sign of my mind. I was walking the dog this afternoon, like I do most every day – promptly at 4:10 or so. I checked the mail as part of that routine and received my bimonthly unemployment check – the hard gritty evidence that my plan “B” isn’t working.
Anyway. As I return home from walking the dog, I discover that aforementioned check is not in its assigned coat pocket.
AAAck. A minor panic.
I quickly deposited the dog and rushed outside to retrace my steps. There it was – right next to the dogs preferred. “poo” station. Ugh. It must have fallen out when I retrieved my doggy doo doo bag to scoop up the malicious mess.
That disaster was barely averted.
Nothing left to do today except deposit check, cook some dinner and settle down for some Buffy the Vampire Slayer action and a trip to Smallville.

I dig the Bee Gees and have spent a greater part of the last two days jamming. Jamming I say. Jamming to the hit makers.
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Last night I watched Compay Segundo on Ovation as well as a show on Afro/Cubano music. Enthrallling.
He was 90 years-old when it was filmed about five years ago and he was singing, dancing, playing the guitar and actually ran out onto the stage for the encore. Boy, to have that kind of energy at that age. Wow. If you haven’t had the chance to see the Buena Vista Social club from producer performer Ry Cooder, take some time to do that. Great music and gives some pause to what the world has missed out on during the Cuban embargo. There is much more to Cuba than cigars and Ricky Ricardo.
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This weekend I installed Mozilla on my system and replaced it for the Opera internet browser. I cruised around and found some nifty add ons, like mouse gestures and it has made the internet surfing that has beocme my time wasting past time even more fun and interesting.
I tried messing around with some proxy servers and anonymizer software the make myself “invisible: while online,but it seemed a bit annoying so I uninstalled.
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Recently I have re-discovered Chess. Over a year ago, I purchased a chess software program (Chessmaster 8000 from Milton Bradley) for the computer but never really gave much thought to it. But with my time available, I started to take advanage of its feature-rich options and am learning chess. Which is great fun. For Christmas, Sage bought me a shot-glass chess set and we played a few weeks back. She is fairly good and that experience motivated me to study up on the game and develop some strategies and planning philosophies to take my game up a notch or two. But if you have ever played shot glass chess you know that it isn’t really about strategy. It is about getting your opponent drunk, which often means playing give-away chess.
It is perhaps a better use of my time to learn chess than sitting around playing some brain-numbing video game. However, it is a game that indeed will take a lifetime to get the hang of, that is for sure.