Category Archives: uncategorized

The Winnie-the-Pooh Bandit.

Cereal Killer.

Sweetness and light.

Creepy treat ,30200-12863870,00.html”>babies.

Preaching to the choir.

“Run Away From the Dots.”

Mac OS X 10.3 (aka Panther):

Most excellent release of Mac OS X. It was a much smoother transition from 10.2 to 10.3 than it was from 10.1 to 10.2 (for starters, QuickMail didn’t fight 10.3 the way it did 10.2), although there were a few incompatibility problems, most notably Silk. I also don’t know if anyone has successfully compiled and/or run PostgreSQL on 10.3 yet. Remote Desktop 1.2 seems to be working, which is a pleasant departure from past upgrades. Tragically (and I’m not being sarcastic), Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 is unplayably slow. That one hurts.

The new Finder is nice, although it’s taking me more time than I expected to get the hand of it. The metal interface is cool and all, but it’s an awful lot of chrome (no pun intended) taking up space. I think I may actually prefer the 10.2 Finder. The threading in Mail is exceptionally well done. Safari 1.1 is there, but I haven’t noticed a difference from 1.0 yet. iChat AV is no longer a beta version. Exposé is wicked cool, and the new Command-Tab switching is implemented well. The overall look is much more polished. I especially like the new tabs, much more than I thought I would.

The big news? Mike and I have successfully authenticated Panther against Active Directory at login without using a Mac OS X Server. Woohoo! Now all we need to do is figure out to map home directories to the network and we’re golden.

iTrip:

I also received my new iTrip yesterday, the one for the third generation iPod. So far, I really like it. Dan, Mike, and I immediately went out to the VUE to test it, and it passed with flying colors. Mike then ran a completely unscientific test showing that the range on the iTrip is about 20-25 feet, at least in our parking lot using my radio. Dan tried it in his car and got decent reception considering his antenna is broken off. Mike was able to pick up the iTrip’s signal in his car while it was still in Dan’s car.

We were especially pleased with the bass; it was much boomier than we expected it to be over an FM signal.

Overall, it sounds pretty good. It certainly isn’t as clear as a line in, or even a cassette adapter, but considering it was my only real choice, it’s pretty good. Jen even gave it a thumbs up.

Now to purge my car of compact discs…

Reuters: A British couple have been forced to move house because of the shame caused by the name of their street — Butt Hole Road.

Butt Hole Road. That’s great!

Of course, I’ll bet you didn’t know that this was a real town, either.

The Saturn Snobs
Me: Geez! Did you see the way that guy just cut me off?
Jen: Mm hm.
Me: Man. And that was a Saturn, too. He doesn’t deserve a Saturn.
Jen: Oh, please, it was an Ion.

Alumni
Jen: So we took the kids over to the Millersville pond today. They collected pine cones and acorns, and for some reason, seashells.
Me: Seashells at the pond?
Jen: Yeah. I don’t get it.
Me: So you went to the Millersville pond at school today, Gracie?
Grace: Yeah.
Me: Can I tell you something about Millersville?
Grace: What?
Me: Did you see all the big buildings around the pond?
Grace: Yeah.
Me: That’s where Mommy and Daddy went to college.
Grace: Yeah, I know. Millersville University, right?
Me: Um, yeah.
Grace: I knew that, Daddy.
Me: Maybe someday, you’ll go to college there.
Grace: [rolls eyes] I don’t think so, Daddy.
Me: [laughing] Yeah, that’s what Mommy and I used to say, too.

Garage Sale
Mother-in-Law: Well, if the garage sale starts at 7:00, you want to be out here by 6:00. It was listed in the paper as starting at 7:00.
Me: It starts at 7:00; I’ll be out at 7:00.
MIL: But the real bargain hunters will be out at 6:00.
Me: But it starts at 7:00.
MIL: They like to come out early.
Me: That’s sick. If it starts at 7:00, it starts at 7:00, not 6:00. I don’t get these people who get up at the crack of dawn to go to garage sales before they even start. It’s sick! These people are mentally deficient.

Top Eleven Cartoon Spinoffs: Gilligan’s Planet only amassed twelve episodes, mostly because that’s the gamut of shows the public could’ve put up with before wondering why the gang built a space ship instead of, you know, a BOAT.

50 Reasons Why Lord of the Rings, As They Say in America, “Sucks”: Every time Frodo or Bilbo went invisible with the ring they should have also gone BLIND.Your eyes cannot function unless light is reflected off the cornea.If light passes through it (as must be the case with invisibility) sight is no longer possible.Also, rings do not turn you invisible.

Top 34 Signs That Irritating That Hacker Last Week May Have Been a Mistake: You recieve your death certificate in the mail.

Jim Croce’s List of Things It Would Be Imprudent To Do: Talk back to your mother, go swimming right after eating, return to work without washing your hands, leave your pet in the car on a hot day, mess around with Jim.

Recent Unpatriotic Thoughts, Canadian Edition: As a solution to the Mid East peace crisis, suggested to several friends that we give Saskatchewan to the Palestinians.

The FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives: Osama bin Laden.

Top Ten Urinals:Hong Kong Shertaon Hotel and Towers, Hong Kong.

Siskel & Ebert’s Top Ten Lists.

Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002: Links that don’t behave as expected undermine users’ understanding of their own system. A link should be a simple hypertext reference that replaces the current page with new content. Users hate unwarranted pop-up windows.

Just read Amy’s post on Switchfoot and FFH: are Walt and I the only people left on earth who don’t like Switchfoot? oh, they just grate on me…. like Jeremy Deibler of FFH… but apparently all the mu-ivcf clan just think they’re the bee’s knees. I do not understand.

I was going to leave a comment, but I’m too lazy to sign up with Xanga, so I’ll just comment here.

I couldn’t name a Switchfoot song to save my life. Somebody lent me a tape of theirs several years ago. I gave it a cursory listen and promptly forgot about it. I think I gave it back to the lender later. I hope so, because that was several moves ago, and if not, it’s long gone.

And FFH? Well, suffice to say that I have some issues with FFH. I have some tangential connections to them and have been familiar with them personally and with their work for quite some time. I’ll only say, however, that they are not, and I say this emphatically, the bee’s knees. I wouldn’t rate them anywhere above the bee’s ankles.

No, in fact, I don’t listen to much Christian music. Most of it is either too musically bland or too lyrically vapid (if well-intentioned). My current favorite Christian act is probably Rock’n’Roll Worship Circus. Their passion and their energy are inspiring, especially live, and their music is right up my alley. I’ve always been a big Jars of Clay fan, and I still appreciate their music. Most of my favorite Christian bands are no longer together: Jawbone Hill, rainchildren, Dime Store Prophets, Black-Eyed Sceva (who later became Model Engine), Dryve, and some others, especially Anonymous Joe. Oh, and of course, like any well-behaved Christian guitarist, I believe that Phil Keaggy actually is the bee’s knees. I can listen to Third Day and Caedmon’s Call, as well, but I wouldn’t rate them among my favorites. I do like Delirious. Oh, I almost forgot Chris Tomlin. He’s quite good. I also like the worship music being put out by Vineyard and by Saddleback Church.

Ahhh, the MU–IVCF clan. Boy, that takes me back. Back to when Bill and I used to heckle whoever was doing announcements by doing our Beavis and Butthead impersonations just loud enough to be distracting. Heh heh, that was cool. But, boy it annoyed the crap out of anybody trying to do announcements, because we always sat right up front.

Here are some free, legal MP3s from Go-Kart Records. I’m not too much into punk, but it makes great background music for playing Tony Hawk.

They’re even properly tagged and everything.

According to this quiz, sovaldi I am a Musical Thinker.

Musical Thinkers:
– Tend to think in sounds, purchase and may also think in rhythms and melodies
– Are sensitive to the sounds and rhythms of words as well as their meanings
– Feel a strong connection between music and emotions

Other Musical Thinkers include
Mozart, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix

Careers which suit Musical Thinkers include
Musician, Music teacher, Sound engineer, Recording technician

Who am I to argue?

Note, however, that “Assistant Director of Technology” is not in the list of careers that suit me. Hmmm…

Well, a trend in Mac circles right now seems to be sharing what’s on your dock. Not that anybody cares, but here’s mine.

It’s situated on the bottom, where it rightfully belongs. I’m constantly amazed at how many people, my wife included, pin the dock to the left or right. I told Jen I can’t believe I’m married to a dock-on-the-right woman. She said it’s only because AppleWorks doesn’t respect the dock. OK, I can live with that.

I have magnification turned on. Sometimes it annoys me, and sometimes it causes me to click on the wrong icon, but it’s just do danged cool. And I don’t have the dock hidden; only Luddites do that.

Onto the goodies. Starting from the left: Finder, Safari, Mail, Address Book, iCal, QuickMail Pro (blech – only use it for school, and only because I have to; I am actively looking for ways to put a bullet through its head), REALbasic 5.2.1 (latest release version), REALbasic 5.5a6 (latest pre-release version with shiny, new DB), Word X, PowerPoint X, AppleWorks 6 (still my preferred word processor), BBEdit Lite 6.1, SubEthaEdit (the text processor formerly known as Hydra), GoLive 6, Photoshop 7, ImageReady 7, Terminal, iPhoto 2, iTunes 4, QuickTime Player, Preview, StuffIt Expander, Frequency, NetNewsWire Lite, iChat AV, Apple’s X11, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3. Then the little divider. On the right, starting from the little divider, we have a custom FileMaker database I wrote for managing worship services at my church (makes it really easy to generate CCLI reports), Downloads folder, Projects folder, Games folder, and Trash.

So, what’s missing from my Dock? Excel, for one. I don’t use it that much. FileMaker used to have a prominent place on the dock, but I’ve been working hard on making it obsolete for myself. No room for Internet Explorer, either, although up until very recently, I still had Camino and Mozilla on the Dock. But they just can’t compete with Safari. For these less frequently used apps, I use Ranchero’s great TigerLaunch.

According to this highly scientific quiz (no doubt administered and scored by a real scientician), I am a Non-Potty Mouth.

And just to be proactive to comments: Yes, I have been known cuss. Yes, at one time in the not-very-recent-past I would have scored quite high on this quiz. But I’ve cleaned up my language considerably. I still cling to the word CRAP though. I find it to be wonderfully expressive.

I will also admit that there have recently been times that I desparately wanted to swear. Fortunately, or unfortunately, my good friend Mike sensed my need and provided a stream of profanity by proxy.