I came across the link to this youtube video at Digg this morning and figured it would at least be funny. Perhaps all of my humor has fled this morning but all I really wanted to do was find this dick and punch him in the nose for wasting so many people's valuable time. I suppose it could be worse.

Technorati : BSA, Microsoft, warez

One of the reasons that I have been looking at switching to another CMS package is due to all of the comment and trackback spam I get. I average several hundred to over a thousand spam comments each day, and around one trackback every two seconds. It's really starting to bog things down here.

Rather than that I have implemented captchas (which I hate with a passion) in the comments as well as renamed my comment and trackback scripts. Hopefully that will help a little bit.

The other reason is a bit more stupid and I decided it wasn't that important after all. I like Gravatars in the comments, but it only works about half the time for 25% of the people. I want to use mybloglog, but there is no plugin for Movabletype. I guess I just need to be patient.

There won't be a huge amount of posting today. I am going to take a short nap. After that I need to make a trip to the dump as well as get a bit of grocery shopping done to get ready for the weekend.

I am sure that I will be back online later with my poignant (nod your head) commentary later.

Apparently someone read my nasty post from yesterday morning about Sevenload because they stopped by and left this comment last night. Now that I am actually awake and have re-read the comment, I stand by my first post. Apparently if we don't agree with them about Guantanamo Bay we are uneducated people. That's a pretty heft portion of the U.S. Population.

At least they had the nuts to stop by and comment. That's more than I can say for a lot of people. They have also taken down the section that I was referring to. I will stop by the site this afternoon and give it a proper review and at least change the title of the prior post. I don't need to stop by and look at anything, the comment they left tells me everything that I need to know. Apparently Sevenload has decided to take a political stance against the United States and thinks that bloggers like this are uneducated and not able to make decisions for ourselves unlike their surrender monkey selves, but then I guess we all have our opinions and like any other consumer, it is buyer beware. I vote with my feet, and my feet are carrying me back to Youtube

I see that Dave Berube also received the same comment from Sevenload that I did last night.

If you want to help spread this story, hit the Digg icon below.

This is my Open Track-back article for Tuesday, March 27th. If you are interested in open trackbacks, pay a visit to Linkfest Haven Deluxe via the link below.

Technorati : Guantanamo Bay, OTA, Sevenload, Spam, Surrender Monkeys, Terrorism

Christopher Tolkien has finished the final novel set in Middle Earth, based upon notes left by his father. The Children of Hurin is set to be released next month. I am really looking forward to taking a look at this once it is released.

Technorati : Lord of the Rings, Middle Earth, Tolkien

I ran across this meme over at Blissful Bedlam and it looked sort of cool, so I though I would put it here. Basically you list as many jobs as you have held for each letter of the alphabet. At least according to Chickie, it needs to be positions that you have been compensated for. I'm not going to tag anyone either, if you want it, here it is...

A -
B - Bagger, as in grocery stores, Blogger (I am getting compensated after all), Baker (of Donuts)
C - Construction (siding, roofing, cleanup), Computer Repair and Consultant, Cook (four different companies)
D - District Manager
E -
F -
G - Grounds-keeper for an Apartment Complex
H -
I -
J -
K -
L - Landscaping (four or five different companies)
M - Maintenance Man for another Apartment Complex, Manager of fast food restaurants.
N -
O -
P - Photographer's Assistant (two different photographers), Professional Asshole (more ways than one to get compensated, sometimes it comes from satisfaction)
Q -
R -
S - Stock Clerk for a grocery store.
T - Technical Services Specialist (IT), Technical Support for an ISP
U - Unemployed (I had the great majority of these jobs before I ever even turned 20 but surprisingly enough I spent most of the time unemployed), Unit Manager
V -
W - Waiter
X -
Y -
Z -

I was sure that I actually had more than that. Fairly long considering that I have worked for the same company now for over twenty years. If I think of any more I may have to add to it.

Just finished watching 24. I have missed it for several weeks, although I do have them recorded. Now I am going to have to go back through and see the ones that I missed. I thought for sure Jack was going to get the retarded guy killed. I am glad he lived.

Technorati : 24, Jack Bauer

Damned if I wouldn't have to shoot someone if they suddenly repelled onto my balcony with a paintbrush.

Say hello to Charlie while you are there. Don't know if he would claim me, but he is another online relative.

My Aunt has also gotten into the act with a bit of her art.

Sevenload is the new German video and photo portal like youtube. I just found a link to it and thought it was a good idea. Youtube is cool, but more sites in that vein will be nice. As soon as the page loaded I saw a link to this article about Guantanamo Bay. I guess I'm done there.

Technorati : Gitmo, Guantanamo Bay, Sevenload

I have written a couple of times about how I almost went to jail over a spitball and a Burger King manager. One of my partners in crime has her abode on the web over here. Now if she would just open up her comments to the public...

This reminds me of a line (you can bash me in the comments) "Old Enough to Pee, Old Enough for Me".

Not that I have used it in twenty years or so. It's easy to look at younger ladies (and guys for you ladies) until your kids start growing. Now when I see an attractive young thing walking around with her ass falling out of her low riding jeans I just have to smack myself in the forehead for being a pig.

It's either that or my wife will smack me.

...thank goodness. It will probably be a quite long one as well. I will be on the grill until at least after lunch, then I have three weeks of schedules to do, some other paperwork to finish, audits and inventories and a butt load of cleaning (particularly my office). I also have to paint all of my booth supports and chair legs.

I thought they were going to tell me to stripe the lot, but for a change we are going to come off with some money and actually pay someone else to do the job. Too bad they aren't a professional. It's going to look just as bad as if I did it, but at least I get to sit that one out.

My boss that I have written about is indeed leaving the company, and I will have a new division manager when I get back from vacation. That really sucks. As many problems as I have given him over the years I like him, and the evil I know is better than the one I don't. And he pretty much leaves me alone to do what I want unless something is just screwed up.

Our company came to him with a contract to sign in order to stay. Basically it said that he would sell all of his rental houses and quit taking safe jobs. Of course he wouldn't sign it. Smart man. What I do on my time off is none of their business, but they have always asserted themselves in a very intrusive way.

I did this paid post on my business blog for labia reduction (I refrained from taking it this afternoon because I could think of nothing but dirty jokes and then took it a few minutes ago) and there are several posts about the opportunity in the forums over there. One of the ladies referred to them as Beef Curtains. LMAO. I've heard them referred as Camel Toes, but never beef curtains.

Technorati : Beef Curtains, Camel Toes

I actually did this screenshot for a post I was doing over at my business blog about Callwave, but this is what my desktop looks like currently.

I am looking forward to Monday. I don't think I am going to do anything except to sleep in and watch the shows that I have missed the last few weeks. There are several episodes of 24, Lost, and Battlestar Galactica that I have recorded but refrained from watching.

The wife and I generally watch Lost and Battlestar together so I will refrain from watching them right way, but I will watch 24. She doesn't particularly care one way or the other about that.

I keep hearing more and more about twitter and am starting to notice it on some of the really big sites. I saw where one guy had it on his sidebar, and also inserted into a post and basically said "hey, now you can know when I'm scratching my ass".

I have tried it twice and just really dislike it. That should be it for me. My choice whether to use it or not but am I missing something here? Does it do something else besides let me text message it and tell you when I'm going potty, or driving to work? Do you really care. I will be more than happy to put it back if everyone wants to know when I pick my nose or whatever. I could even set up Homeseer (my home automation software) to send an SMS message to it so that you know the second I arrive home.

Apparently I just don't get it.

Technorati : Twitter

...me that is. I actually managed to get out of bed by a quarter to five. I didn't want to, but I did somehow manage it. I also got in those posts at the other sites that I had planned on. That's probably ALL I am going to get finished this morning but I did get them finished. I have to start getting ready for work shortly and get this tired boy moving.

Two more days...two more days. Tomorrow will be the killer though. I will most likely end up being at work from 6AM until at least 10PM Saturday evening, just getting things ready for me to be gone for ten days. Food orders, paperwork, scheduling. I've not taken a vacation this long in quite some time, so I have to make sure everything is right.

I have also agreed to work on someone else's PC. They are supposed to drop it off at work for me tomorrow. I already told him that the earliest I could look at it would be Monday and I am most definitely going to be sleeping late. I am planning on taking a couple of Benadryls before I hit the sack Sunday night and am going to sleep until I wake up and then I might sleep some more.

One of the waitresses that used to work for me brought her W2s by as well. I told her that I would do her taxes. That won't take long. Most of the tax returns that I file for them are pretty simple little deals. The biggest thing is to insure that they have/are claiming their tips so that they get the maximum earned income credit. That's where the $300 bucks that I have to write a check for goes I suppose. Either way I will charge her about $25. At least my tax software will have been paid for this year.

I had not planned to file a schedule C this year as I made very little money, but I may have to reconsider that. If I go ahead and redo it with my little bit of income that I actually did make (under Miles Consulting) I can at least take a loss and that may very well break me even. It really depends on what I did last year. I filed on for at least five years straight, but for some reason I think that I didn't do one last year either. I guess I need to dig out that box and look. Whatever I did last year I will do again this. For 2007 I will need to go ahead and do it again though. With the additional income from advertising, filing tax returns, and just the three computers I have looked at this month, I need to.

I will probably be up until about midnight tonight. I have some other things I need to get posted on the other two sites. I may sleep in at least until 5 or 5:30 tomorrow. Every minute counts.

...why do they call it that anyway? I was wrong when I posted Wednesday that I only had three days left until vacation. For some reason I thought it was today. I still have two more days of work before I get another one.

Haven't posted much today, barely even looked at my email. I had one PC to finish up. Replaced the motherboard and CPU, had to clean the front bezel as the power button was sticking in old food or something. It was just nasty. Then I had to reinstall Windows XP and all of their apps.

I booted up a second one that I was looking at for someone else and pretty much gave up for the night. Power supply fan is bad. CPU fan is bad. It's a slightly older Compaq so the darn PSU that I want to replace it with won't even fit the case. Tomorrow I have to look and see if I have an extra case lying around that I haven't ripped the wiring harness out of and a CPU fan and heatsink. Haven't even booted it up to see if her data is corrupted or not. The initial problem when she brought it to me was that it was locking up. No wonder if it was getting that how inside.

One of my guilty pleasures the last couple of years has been watching '24'. I started watching at the end of season three and really enjoyed it. When the new season started recently I made sure to watch it every Monday night, but then I ended up working and missed a few. I haven't seen anything since the first couple of shows this season. Luckily for me I have been recording it with BeyondTV every week in addition to getting spoilers from Denny.

That may be the first thing that I do when I start my vacation this next week. I have eight hours of 24 sitting on my hard drive just waiting to be watched. If I cut out the 20 minutes of commercials in each episode that's only about five and a half hours of actual watching time. A pot of coffee and a couple of beers later I should be well up to date on everything that I have missed.

...until vacation. This will be the longest three days I have had since...my last vacation I suppose.

I have a list a mile long of stuff that I have to get done during vacation. By the time I am finished I will be ready to go back to work. I am going to take the second day and do absolutely nothing though. Sleep in, surf the web sitting around in my underwear. The first day is Sunday and since the wife will be here we will probably spend the day working in the yard and basement.

Looks like my brother and his son may be coming as well, as will Tobacco Joe. Don't know yet if I will have to worry about anyone trying to break left or not. Very cool. I suppose I should email directions to everyone in the next day or so.

In preparation for joining Blogs 4 Bauer, adding the blogroll to my site.

The adventures of James Bond have held my captivation for years. The books by Ian Fleming, that is. I enjoy the movies just as much as the next guy but long before I ever had the opportunity to watch Sean Connery on screen (or TV) I read the books. I was introduced to Ian Fleming around the time I was eight-years-old. That may seem a bit young, but I have been an avid reader since I was about four, and the rule in the house was that if I was old enough to understand it and look in the dictionary, I could read it. The first one I ever read was Casino Royale and boy was I hooked.

When I was ten or so, I read 'James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007' by John Pearson. Being extremely gullible and only ten, I was convinced that it was a real biography. The premise of the book is that he was real, and Ian Fleming met him and modeled 007 after a real spy. It was always fiction and never meant to be more than that, but tell that to a ten-year-old. Most Ian Fleming fans I know consider this book to be part of the official series as well.

In 1981 John Gardner took up the James Bond mantle. I read the first couple he wrote (he penned 16 in all I think) and perhaps the third, but I gave up on his writing after that. James Bond under the hand of John Gardner became a shadow of himself. He pussified Bond, just like most of the movies did. Smoked light cigarettes. Cut down drinking. Started driving a sensible Saab. As we get older these are all sensible things to do, but James Bond is a fictional character and the books sort of ruined themselves for me.

I think that the biggest thing that I really liked about Ian Fleming's Bond is the same thing that made me hate Gardners. I like pulp fiction. Hard boiled detectives. My father made me wait until I was a teenager for them, but Richard Prather's Shell Scott books are along the same vein. Short easy reads full of action, killing, and titties. Maybe with a bit of gambling and dead Russians and Frenchmen to boot. John Gardner 'novelized' Bond. I don't mean that Ian Fleming didn't write novels, but I mean that he wrote pulp fiction in the same vein as Prather, Mickey Spillane, and maybe even Dashiell Hammett.

I miss books like that. Strangely enough Stephen King writes the same way, just in a different genre. Pulp Horror Fiction I guess you could call it. That may be why I like him so much.

So anyway, what got me thinking about James Bond is that the Boy and I watched Casino Royale last night. It kicked some serious ass. It was a stretch to fit the story into modern events, and they only partially succeeded, but the movie itself was true to the Bond character. Much more so than the other movies. Somewhere around here I have the original Casino Royale with Peter Sellers and David Niven, and it is no farther away from the Bond character than the flicks with Sean Connery and Roger Moore. The only reason I don't mention the other actors is because I can't pull their names out of my ass right at this moment.

Not that I don't enjoy the movies, I just don't equate them with the books as much as I did this one. The early ones with Connery came closest, but there is still quite a bit of artistic license with them, particularly the later ones.

If you like Ian Fleming's James Bond then I would definitely recommend renting Casino Royale, but be prepared for the cold bastard that is in the books.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson's Website, The Random Yak, Adam's Blog, basil's blog, Pursuing Holiness, Rightlinx, Right Celebrity, third world county, Faultline USA, stikNstein... has no mercy, stikNstein... has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Pirate's Cove, Planck's Constant, Dumb Ox Daily News, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe

Technorati : Casino Royale, Ian Fleming, James Bond

When I first saw and heard about twitter back in February I tried it out. Hey, I like bling and gadgets. I didn't particularly like it. Recently it has apparently become all the rage again. I have been seeing posts about it all over the Internet. 'five ways to be productive with Twitter', 'five uses for twitter in business', 'twitter is the best thing next to sliced bread'. Well, maybe not the last one, but the other two are real posts I have read.

I figured maybe they had done something else with it, so I would try it out. Right now it's on two of my sites and it still sucks just as much as it did the last time I used it. Maybe I just don't 'get it' but it seems pointless to me so it is coming off of the sites after I post this.

Technorati : Twitter

The techroll is a blogroll for technology/entertainment blogs.

Technorati : Technical Blogroll, Techroll

...but damned if the commercial ain't funny as hell...

Been there. Done that. Slunk away like a dog.

The latest Postie Carnival is up over at Simple Kind of Life and this weeks theme...Television!

There are some really good posts up, including a few bloggers that had a bit of television experience themselves. Head over and check it out.

I regard some of my employees like they are my kids. I certainly don't take care of them like I have to with my kids, thank god, but otherwise I have a fatherly instinct toward them. I have hired and trained quite a few over the years, and they have gone on to go to college, join the military, and go on about their lives. Hopefully I have enriched the lives of at least a couple.

I just got a text message from one of the girls that I hired a couple of years ago. She is leaving for the Coast Guard today. I sent her one back congratulating her and wishing her the best. I know that the job she did for me was nothing particularly ground breaking or anything, but I think that the discipline and hard work did her some good.

...last night.

I don't have much of anything to post this morning other than this. The car is warming up in the driveway. I think I finally finished up at around 11:30 last night therefore I didn't wake up until almost six this morning, about and hour later than normal.

As usual, blogrolling.com is dragging butt, and my page won't load right away because of it. The two blogrolls that I joined recently are going to be getting stuck in entries and then linked to from the main page very soon I suppose. One of them requires that you have it on the front page, so I may have to drop it. I will wait and see. It's just not a good thing for the page to take 30+ seconds to load just because of one little script. Impatient people like me tend to close the page and go on to the next site.

Looking over at 'On This Day' I see that we were in New Orleans two years ago tomorrow. I may relink/repost some of those photos this evening when I get home. It's time to go back.

Growing up in the south as I did, most of the religion that I was exposed to was Southern Baptist. Church on Sundays with my Aunt, sometimes on Wednesday evenings with supper to follow, some youth stuff, and occasional picnics. I was just not really aware of other religions and how they operate.

I got a quick introduction in my early twenties however. My wife and her entire family are Catholic. It's an entirely different way of life to be a Catholic. Even the catholic bible is different than the one I grew up reading. Southern Baptists spend a lit of time reading, re-reading their dog eared pages. Catholics handle their bibles extremely reverently, and except for the few priests that I used to know pretty well, treat them with much more pomp and dignity than I have seen before.

...golf. It isn't really as important the last couple of years as it used to be, but all of the upper management in my company plays golf. It's just one of those things that I never found the time for. I wouldn't know the difference between golf clubs and cavemen clubs though. Several of the other managers I work with play and I have had the offer once or twice. If I eventually decide that I want to start working the promotion chain I may just need to learn.

I've written once or twice about how I would love to go on a vacation to Italy. There are a bunch of places in Europe that I want to see while I'm still young enough to get around pretty easily and Italy is one of them. I want to travel to Rome and see the Vatican as well well as all of the earlier historical sites and monuments.

I also want to check out the countryside as well. The Villas in Italy are supposed to be among the most beautiful in the world. Check this out.

Google announced on their blog a change they will be making soon. They will be anonymizing their server logs after 18-24 months unless 'legally' obligated not to.

When you search on Google, we collect information about your search, such as the query itself, IP addresses and cookie details. Previously, we kept this data for as long as it was useful. Today we're pleased to report a change in our privacy policy: Unless we're legally required to retain log data for longer, we will anonymize our server logs after a limited period of time. When we implement this policy change in the coming months, we will continue to keep server log data (so that we can improve Google's services and protect them from security and other abuses)-but will make this data much more anonymous, so that it can no longer be identified with individual users, after 18-24 months

More information can be found over at the Google Blog.

I see dating site ads all over the internet. Most of them are at least initially disguised as being 'free' until you get to the part where you have to enter your credit card information. All I can say is that I am glad I don't have to worry about that stuff anymore. I suppose that online dating is easier than the bar scene though. At least you have the opportunity to screen out potential creeps and stalkers and get to know someone a tiny bit before meeting them. Obviously everything that they say could be a lie, but generally you do get a sense of the person's personality.

JustSayHi.com is a truly free site for Online Dating. They offer the same features as all of the pay sites and is just as good. The sign up process is pretty easy and simple. A couple of quick pages about who you are and describing yourself. In order to keep the service free, they do require that you look at several pages of ads before you get into the service itself. I had to look at three pages of ads to get in.

It seems to be a pretty good site if you are looking for a date. There are plenty of listings as well. One thing that pleased me was that when I went to delete my account, it was right there in the settings tab, it asked me why and deleted it. Overall I was very pleased.

This isn't my skin, but I just downloaded it and am using it now. Adrenaline is a pretty sweet Windowblinds skin that PixelPirate released on March 12th. Click the link to go download it. Very cool.

*Crossposted to theapp.net

Television is like a historical time-line for most of us now. I grew up with television as did most Americans, and can plot my ages and other events along that time-line.

Back when I was small of course, it wasn't so important, and a lot of what I watched was syndicated stuff that had already been on for twenty years. There are only a few shows that I remember from my early childhood. Anyone remember Romper Room? That crazy lady with the mirror? I don't remember a heck of a lot about it, but it is still in my head somewhere. Of course Sesame Street, Captain Kangaroo, and Mr Rogers were all part of it. Mr Rogers is dead, as is Captain Kangaroo. Sesame Street of course, is STILL on after all of these years. The people are all different and there are some new Muppet's on there.

During the first couple of years of elementary school my after school staples were of course, old cartoons and the Mickey Mouse Club. The syndicated black and white version with Annette and the gang, not that crap they put on in the eighties. I remember the serials that were on there. Tripods, the Boy Scouts thing, and a couple of others. I watched them on a crappy old UHF channel local to Atlanta, channel 17. Owned and operated by Ted Turner himself. We all know about WTBS, and then CNN and what happened next. When I was young they showed the Friday Night Frights, horror movies. Man, I loved those.

In the seventies and early eighties it was all about sitcoms. My brother and I would watch TV with our parents from seven in the evening until bedtime. Occasionally we got to stay up late. Happy Days, Welcome Back Kotter, McMillan & Wife, Laverne & Shirley, Three's Company,WKRP in Cincinnati. BJ and the Bear, the Dukes of Hazzard. My little brother and I were glued to the damn thing in the evenings.

Also back in the eighties came the show that changed everything. Miami Vice. Man, Crockett and Tubbs kicked ass. I was in my mid teens when that came out, and by the time the series had evolved and had finished I had been through my dark drug induced days, spent six months in a treatment center and come out the other side. I still like watching Miami Vice on cable occasionally. The A-Team, Dallas, Little House on the Prairie, Facts of Life, Mork from Ork were all staples. Knight Rider was big as was Night Court. Magnum P.I. was also one of my favorites. My mom and I watched this one.

In the mid eighties I did watch too much TV at all. I hung with my friends and had a good time. By the time I started watching it again, I was 20 and married and my son was on his way. I was managing restaurants and that took up a lot of time but I remember living in a little apartment in Atlanta and my wife and I lying in bed watching the X-Files until I had to go in to oversee shift change. Want some 80's TV trivia? There are 197 questions below the fold to check out. The answers will be underneath.

By the time the late nineties rolled around I had spent a couple of years in college, was back in restaurant management for the second time, and had another child on the way. Still watching the X-Files and a new addition for awhile, Millennium. I still like Millennium so much that I rented the DVDs for all three seasons recently. We watched a lot of the USA Network. Reruns of Miami Vice and the Hitchhiker. Lots of made for cable movies with Brian Dennehy playing spies and cops. By this time we had a VCR and I record the stuff that I really wanted to watch but might be at work when it came on.

Now that we are in a new millennium for real, my TV watching habits have changed immensely. I only watch TV every once in a while and it is on my schedule. I have three TV tuners in my computer and BeyondTV records movies and shows that I want to watch. I cut the commercials out and shrink them down to a decent size and watch when I want. I keep the ones that I like and delete the rest. Lost, 24, Grey's Anatomy, Battlestar Galactica, and the Sopranos are the shows I watch. Jericho is also cool. Last year I really like Invasion, but they unfortunately pulled that one. I also loved Farscape and have every episode on my hard drive along with the mini-series that finished it out after the show was canceled. Night Stalker was on for awhile last year or the year before, a remake of the show from the 1960's and very well done. I downloaded them from iTunes last year, along with the first season of Dora the Explorer for my four year old, who loves Dora and Diego.

Even though the medium has changed over the years it still stays the same. Entertaining, riveting, well created shows spark my interest and keep me watching and I ignore the rest.

Oh, BTW, can't forget about my secret love from the early and mid seventies. Many and evening was spent with my little brother and I pretending we were Moondog or Mr Wrestling #2 and kicking each others butts. You guys know what I am talking about.

What shows did you watch growing up and what do you watch now?

This is my open trackback post for the rest of the weekend of March 16th-18th as well as my submission for the Carnival of Posties for March 19th.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson's Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Virtuous Republic, 123beta, Adam's Blog, Maggie's Notebook, basil's blog, Stuck On Stupid, The Bullwinkle Blog, Phastidio.net, The Amboy Times, Leaning Straight Up, Jo's Cafe, Conservative Thoughts, Sujet- Celebrities, Rightlinx, third world county, Faultline USA, Right Celebrity, Woman Honor Thyself, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, , stikNstein... has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Overtaken by Events, Pirate's Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

...at least for the evening. Saint Patrick's Day is almost over and I am sitting here while everyone else is out drinking green beer and having a good old time. The wife is asleep and the girls are getting ready for bed, so I decided to search for Irish themed stuff. I came across a place called Celtic Hills that sells irish gifts. I found this cool wall cross there.

There is a bunch of other cool stuff over there to check out. Lots of jewelry and gift items. The last time (or maybe the time before) that the wife and I went to the Renaissance Festival south of Atlanta we picked up a couple of really nice silver wedding/anniversary rings that looked like a Celtic knot. I like jewelry in that vein and they have several crosses and pendants that I might enjoy having.

Back to web surfing now.

I have right at a gig of computer memory in my PC, but since I have upgraded to Windows Vista I have been considering getting at least another gig (at least). Memory Store has some decent prices and a decent selection, so that is more than likely where I will get it. When I worked in Norcross I used to buy everything locally, as there are a few stores near our corporate office that carried everything I need at a cheap price. Since I am back in the restaurants again, I usually get everything online. I try to shop around so with memory I go to the Memory Store for my computer memory.

What's really cool is that they have a memory detection module that will detect your motherboard type, filled slots, and all the other info. Not sure but it probably uses Windows WMI information. I know it works for me great. I have four slots in my PC, and they support up to eight gigs of memory.

I found a 1 gig Abit module (my motherboard is a UL8) for $99. I am thinking about going ahead and biting the bullet to get four of them. Four gigs of memory should do me for a couple of years before I need another upgrade. By then I will be ready to replace the entire thing anyway.

I have sent this email to several people already, if you haven't gotten it either I don't have your email address or just plain forgot. It's not personal. If you email or call me after reading this well then maybe it will be personal :)

Since I schedule all of my vacations a year in advance it is difficult for me to get together with folks at the various blogmeets, so we are having a big ass barbecue and party on March 31st. We'll get started at or around 4 PM on that Saturday. There are a few extra beds, and there are hotels and motels in the area. If you are interested in coming, either call me or shoot me an email at rmiles7721 at gmail dot com or rm_blogger at yahoo dot com.

If I know you personally or have met you then you are invited, if not then you are probably invited anyway unless you are some sort of weird stalker in which case we will cut you up and bury you in the back yard with various cats and squirrels and former employees of mine.

The location is at my house in Temple Georgia. Bring your favorite side dish and/or alcohol or bring nothing at all it doesn't matter. We'll be doing burgers, dogs, and beer so if there is something in particular that you want that doesn't fit that list you need to bring it.

...and this one's for your cell phone or MySpace blog. U-Doo is a personalized ringtone thing that you create and download to your phone and/or to your myspace blog. It is an animated avatar that also speaks. It allows you to build a custom avatar, select a message from either one that you record on your phone, via using text to speech, or there are several prerecorded ones to choose from.

I got this cool little skeleton thing over at my MySpace page with a very short text to speech message. I created it in a minute or so, and then told it to upload to my myspace page and it was done about 30 seconds later. Very quick, and it pops it in the 'about me' box.

It also allows you to email it to someone else (or yourself). I did this as well, and after I told my webmail provider that mail from myself was not spam :) I received it in my mail client. It emails a link to the web page for you or your friends to check out.

U-Doo is available free for your web page or via email, and is offered as a subscription service through cell phone providers for a 60 day free trial, and then it's $4.99 a month after that.

I actually have managed to get the weekend off for a change. The Boy has to work in the morning, so I will more than likely have to be back up about 6:30 or around then to take him in and then hopefully I can go back to bed for awhile. I am having trouble getting to sleep. Considering that I have been up for about 20 hours now I am surprised. The wife may just end up having to take him in the morning.

Pappilon just ended. That was really good. I will most definitely do as I said earlier and rent it. I would like to see it again at least once. There are some parts that I missed, particularly at the beginning that I want to see.

...and I don't know why. I have been surfing the web aimlessly as I watch Papillon. Steve McQueen kicked serious ass. He's always been one of my favorite actors and for some reason I have never seen this before. A Damn good movie I must say, with a capital D.

I started watching it shortly after I got home and thought it was almost over. Here it is two hours later and still going. I think I may have to rent it so that I can see the parts that I missed.

I only ended up working until about 10:30 tonight, so I guess it could have been worse. I have about half of my night shift terrified that I am going to fire them now, so hopefully I will get most of my money in the cash register tonight.

My MOST downloaded skin (at 12000+ downloads) is Ryche. It also happens to be the most simple, but offers the most screen real estate. I did it in honor of the band Queensryche, the "thinking man's heavy metal band". Animated icons, band related sounds. Other than that it was a pretty simple theme. CPU monitor, clock, shadowed icons. Nothing spectacular, but definitely the most popular one.

Technorati : DesktopX, Queensryche, Ryche, Stardock, Wincustomize, Windowblinds

Another one of my favorite skins that needs to be updated is my Gatekeeper theme for Desktopx. I ported this with permission from a skin for the Explorer replacement called Talisman. It has areas that are animated, and is just a pretty darn cool skin. That's one of the reasons I ported it for use. It's also my second most highly downloaded skin.

All of the little knobs and doodads in the lower left are switches that open little windows just to the right with menus inside. That's the start menu replacement. There are some other animated areas as well.

I did this one in September of 2000, so it is in desperate need of an update.

Technorati : DesktopX, Gatekeeper, Stardock, Talisman, Wincustomize

I am considering updating my port of the Ganymede Enlightenment theme. I originally did this one for Windowblinds and DesktopX (as well as a few other skinnable apps) back in 2000 and updated it on 2001. Over the last six years, Windows has come a long way, as have video cards, and the programs that use them. Here is a screenshot of it:

Hard to believe that is Windows. I originally did it under Windows 2000, although by then I was probably running XP beta. It's been awhile so I am not really sure. I may take some time to update all of my skins at that time. I have gotten a bit better with Photoshop since then, and there is a lot more stuff that can be done with anti-aliasing and transparency. All of my skins are up for download at http://dethnite.wincustomize.com/ and http://dethnite.deviantart.com.

Technorati : DesktopX, Ganymede, Stardock, Wincustomize, Windowblinds, dethnite

...although I suppose it could have been much worse. The girl that I had cooking with me today was not feeling very well, so I did not get very much time off of the grill. Since this is my weekend off I had to get all of the prep finished for the weekend, make my deposits, buy change, make schedules, order next weeks food, and finish a boatload of paperwork, as well as do audits and inventories...AND cook.

I managed to cook, get the prep done, and buy my change. That's it. I needed a break, so I have been home for about 30 minutes. I'll just go back at 7 PM or so and stay until 10 or 11. It kind of sucks to start my days off that way, but sometimes that's the way it works out.

That nasty looking bug that I caught on my phone earlier was hanging out on the wall outside my walk-in cooler at work. I had stepped out for a quick smoke and that damn thing was crawling up the wall. Big old fat body, little bitty head. Kind of like my 3rd shift. Maybe it was looking for a job.

I need to do some posts and just can't get my head around it tonight. I didn't get very much sleep last night due to work and I am bone tired.

The started calling me about 10 PM or so. I had scheduled a company to come in a clean the hood (exhaust fan) around 10 PM or so, and even wrote it on the schedule so that they could see. The called me anyway because they are to stupid to read the schedule. Then they called me around midnight, and again at 1 AM. Most of the stuff in my store is on GFI circuits, and any kind of moisture whatsoever will throw the breaker. I guess that according to code the exhaust fan has to be included in this, so my exhaust fan was out from 10 PM last night until about 9 this morning. We spent the great majority of the day cleaning it up. Anyway, when the fan goes out, for instance when there's no power, we prop open the front and back doors and deal with it.

The first call I told them to check the switch and make sure it was on, and then check the breaker. About 45 minutes later they called to tell me it wasn't working and asked what to do. I told them to prop the doors open and keep working. The finally called again, the last one at 1 AM. I explained what was wrong and that there was nothing to be done except to just keep on working.

The restaurant looked like crap when I got there, as if having the fan off was something that would keep them from actually performing their jobs. I sent them home and we cleaned it up. Our damn construction guys are too cheap to fix something like this, so the maintenance man rewired everything for me this morning so that it wouldn't happen again.

I also had a waffle party to do today for the day care right down the street for me. The have pre-k classes there as well, so we did two pre-k classes, and then RePete's class. The kids had a ball. Waffles and OJ and coloring pages for all. I was a nice distraction from work for a couple of hours.

The meeting wasn't too terribly bad today. I managed to get out of there shortly before 5 PM and here I am. Pretty tired but none the worse for wear I suppose.

I really need to find some people with half a brain to work my night shift.

...going on today. I am getting ready to go on in a few minutes early. I have a 'waffle party' to do for about 70 pre-k kids today. That's where we go in and cook waffles for the kids and their teachers and give them hats and some coupons and they have a pretty good time all around.

Then it's wonderful meeting day of course, it being Thursday yet again. Have I told you how much I despise our meetings. Three hours of paper pushing with about five minutes of actual productive meeting time. Blah.

A couple of months before my wife and I were married, she and a friend along with their respective mothers took a trip to Mexico. My son has also been a few years back, but as of yet I have not had the chance to visit. Sooner or later I will remedy that. While they were there they rented a car of course. When I do end up going I will either drive mine, or rent one here to drive there. If you've been around here for awhile you know that I am deathly afraid of flying and after that last fiasco on a commuter jet I decided that there was just no reason for me to leave the perfectly good ground.

One thing I was not aware of when my wife went that I wish I had is that Mexico does not recognize auto insurance from the United States. This means that if you get into an accident and don't have Mexican Car Insurance you might end up in jail, or held personally liable for any damages, whether it was your fault or not. Just as in the U.S. if you get in an accident without insurance, they can hold you responsible. You might even end up with jail time over something as simple as a fender-bender. In addition, they will hold you in jail until they have received FULL payment.

Another thing to consider when going is health insurance. Quite a few U.S. Insurance companies will not cover you when you leave the United States. This means that you need to get some kind of coverage that will take care of you and your family while there.

There is a pretty good article here about why your insurance may not be enough on a trip to Mexico and why you might want to find out exactly what is covered. The Mexican Insurance Store has a lot of valuable information about Auto and Health coverage while in Mexico. They've been in the insurance business for 29 years and offer the best emergency medical assistance services in the industry through Assist America. That's the same service that the AMA gives THEIR employees and families when they travel outside of the United States.

You can actually purchase your insurance online and print out your insurance certificate right at home OR you can call them and give them your information and they will fax or email the information right back to you.

They also offer some extras as well such as programs with fixed deductibles and a $25k Bail Bond Service, which might not be a bad idea in Mexico. I have heard horror stories about people getting locked up out of country and it's not pretty.

Isn't that what it's all about? Every day at 3 PM or right around there, I have the great need to take a dump. I was thinking about this the other day and wanted to post about it, but completely forgot until 3:11 this afternoon, as I was keeping my regular date with the porcelain god. I guess being regular is a damn good thing. Better than the alternative anyway.

It doesn't matter where I am. I am not a picky shitter. Home, work, Walmart, it just doesn't matter. I try to schedule it where I can be at home, but occasionally it doesn't work that way. If at work I just try to sneak back into my office and hope nobody else goes in the men's room for quite some time.

...obviously not until Christmas. My vacation. I have gotten to where I am counting the days now. Kind of expected since I am a couple of months overdue for this one. Other than a get-together I am planning to have on the 31st that I have yet to send out any emails about (well, maybe one) I am just going to hand at the house and do some yard work. My yard looks like crap coming out of the winter and needs some TLC.

I need to clean out the goldfish pond and mulch the flower beds. I may put in another small garden, but I haven't really decided about that one yet. Most likely just a few containers of tomatoes and peppers this year, maybe with some cukes as well.

I also need to decide what I am going to plant in my great grandmother's flower boxes. They still need to be cleaned up a bit, but I have the heavy ass things out on my front sidewalk just waiting for something cool to be planted.

Here's some pictures I have posted over the last couple of years.

That's the pond (duh)

Here is the area right around the pond. This must have been taken a bit later in the year. My pepper plants were getting pretty damn big.

That's the area right around the bottom of my back porch. Those suckers get bigger every year.

Here's another shot of the pond from two years ago if I recall. A friend of my wife's was moving and didn't want to hassle with her pond, so we picked up a bunch of Koi out of her nasty ass pond. All of them are dead now. The only fish that seem to survive here year in and year out are the 10 cent goldfish that I bought at Walmart when I first put the pond in.

I thought I actually had some more pictures up. There seem to be some missing, and there is no telling what category I filed them under. I managed to clean up the categories last month, but there are bound to be a few lost posts in there.

It's about time for me to get off my ass and get ready for work. It will be pretty busy today, and then tomorrow I actually get to leave for awhile. We are doing a Waffle Party for three different classes tomorrow, about 70 kids. They always have a blast, and it generally doesn't cost the schools anything. All three and four years olds tomorrow, so that will be cool.

Technorati : Gardening, Ponds, Vacation
Del.icio.us : Gardening, Ponds, Vacation
Ice Rocket : Gardening, Ponds, Vacation

Does anyone know much about Gravatar? There's not shit for help files at their site, and some of them show up here in the comments, but some don't, in particular mine.

I downloaded a Wordpress plugin to use mybloglog icons in the comments and have been trying to hack around that to use it with Movabletype, but I have been unsuccessful so far. I did notice over at their blog (which is at typepad.com) they ARE using them, so I know it has to be possible.

Over all I suppose it's no big deal, but I would like to get one of the two working properly, and mybloglog seems to be getting a lot more use than Gravatar now anyway.

Technorati : comments, gravatar, mybloglog

For some reason several people have had issues when pinging my site. This is an issues particularly since I participate in open trackbacks posts. Looking through a couple of forums I found a couple of settings to tweak that might solve the issue and I mainly wanted someplace to 'write' them down in case I need to tweak them later. The error that people have been getting is 'failed: HTTP error: 403 Throttled'

I found this posting on a forum discussing MT

I have added the first two settings into my config file, so hopefully that will take care of the situation.

Technorati : MT, Movabletype, trackbacks

When I first moved into my house here in Temple I had no access to any kind of broadband whatsoever. Back in late 2000 or 2001, I was able to get DSL, and shortly thereafter Cable access to the Internet. I was really not aware of this, but apparently about 40% of Internet users are still using dial-up to connect. I honestly though that more people had access to high speed Internet.

Some of those people I am sure have access to it, but just don't want to pay anywhere from $30-$70 a month for the service. My next door neighbors that moved away a couple of months ago used dial-up, mainly because he wanted to save money. I also used to work with a guy, and he did it for the same reasons. Eventually they both migrated to high speed though.

PCDialup.com is an ISP, currently only serving the state of California, that offers dial-up access for $3.95 a month. That's a pretty good deal if you are looking to save money. The wave of 'free' internet access companies has all but disappeared, and this is most definitely the next best thing. With the fact that so much of the country is using broadband, companies like PCDialup are able to access equipment and phone lines much cheaper than they could ten years ago, and are able to pass that savings on to us.

They also offer accelerated web browsing for only $1 more per month. This is for basic 56k access. As I said before, it is currently only available in California, but they will be expanding their capacity to the rest of the U.S. shortly as the service grows.

LoudLaunch - Compensating bloggers for their unbiased opinions, reviews, and analysis. View the LoudLaunch campaign release this post was based on.

I don't guess this is really a meme in the sense, but I ran across this list over at Elisson's who got it from Modulator, who in turn picked it up at Pharyngula. It's "The Most Significant Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years."

I don't know exactly how significant some of them are, but there are some really good reads in the list. Books I've read are bold, return favorites are red, and one's I have never heard of are struck out.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone*, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

Personally I would have had Alan Dean Foster among the list. Timescape was OK, but certainly shouldn't be in this list. The Sillmarillion was boring as hell the first time I read it (I was about 13), but I am very interested in history, and it made more sense as an adult. I find it hard to believe that I have never heard of eleven of them. If I saw the covers I would probably recognize them, and probably have at least two or three upstairs with the rest of he books.

Technorati : Fantasy, Science Fiction

Here's the history of DST according to Wiki:

Did you get that part about it being unpopular among farmers? That's because farmers are smart. DST was enacted by POLITICIANS, no matter how many times they tell you it was for farmers. If farmers need more daylight, they get out of bed earlier. Real damn simple, but we have to complicate things the same way they are being complicated now by making Daylight Savings Time actually last LONGER than Standard Time. Which means that it is the NEW standard. Why not just leave it alone at the end of October, then you won't have to worry about it anymore.

Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa don't follow DST. They are the smart ones. Hell, in Arizona, you could probably do without the sun for a couple of extra hours anyway.

This is my Open Trackback Post for Monday, March 12th.

On top of that list is to sit in my car and purposely get struck by lightning. Damn, check this out.

Every time that I start talking or thinking about my employees, I instantly become Jerry Springer. It's funny how life imitates art, although I wouldn't exactly call what he does art.

This sounds so much like the crap that I deal with on a daily basis. I am just waiting to see one of my employees on the show any day.

I had a fairly long day at work today. Don't really have much to post about here. Lots of DRAMA with all capitals. Waitresses boyfriends hitting on other waitresses, people coming in late (one of my pet peeves), general bullshit like that.

Payday is Sunday for my people at work. The ones that work graveyard shift Saturday usually get paid before they leave Sunday morning. I have had a lot of issues with getting hung on Sunday nights, so last week I told them all that if they were off Saturday but working Sunday, they would start getting paid at the end of their Sunday shift, meaning 7 AM Monday morning. Sure enough, both of the people that are working tonight showed up this afternoon looking to get paid and I sent their asses back out the door and told them that I would either be there for shift change tonight or pay them when they got off.

They finally got there tonight, twenty minutes late. One of the waitresses called me a couple of minutes ago wanting to know if I was coming up to pay here. She sounded distraught when I told her that I would be there before she gets off work in the morning. What the fuck is up with that? I have about the crappiest 3rd shift working that I have ever had. I have managed to hire a couple of people to start on Wednesday, one of which used to work for me in another store, and the other one is new, but he is in his fifties, so at least I will have a bit more adult presence in there. That's been part of the problem the last couple of months, mainly young people with bad attitudes. I still need to hire a couple more people, and I plan to have them hired and trained before I start my vacation on the 25th.

It looks like my boss is going to be staying with the company after all, so that is a good thing. The evil you know is always better than the one you don't.

Update - August 9th 2008

I posted this link way back in March of 2007 and since then it's had over 8,000 hits so I figured it was time to get rid of the crappy ads in the middle of the page and update this place!

The original link I posted to delutube has been removed. So I have done a bit of searching to see if there was something else useful around.

Supposedly FTVTeen works. Let me know how your results are with this one.

Undele Tube was pretty useful at it but when you visit the site it just says "under maintenance right now. Keep checking back.

WikiHow also has some information on how to access recently deleted YouTube videos as well. The Wikihow article is below:

“

”

How to Access Recently Deleted YouTube Videos

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit
This article's accuracy is in doubt. See the discussion page. Please fact check, edit, cite references and remove this notice when the article has been improved. You may also comment on the discussion page. Notice added on 2008-02-18. This article is intended to guide you on how to view videos that are usually deleted on the video sharing website, www.youtube.com.

Steps

1. Go to the search bar.
2. Type what you wish to search for.
3. Where it asks you how you would like to sort the search results, click "Date Added", this will show the most recent videos added to YouTube that match your search terms. You can now see the videos that will soon be deleted. YouTube will usually delete videos violating its Terms of Use in the first 2-4 hours.

Tips

• Videos that are deleted will still be displayed in the search results for a few hours, so prepare to be disappointed if the video you wished to watch has been removed.

Related wikiHows

• How to Film Videos With a Video Camera and Put Them on Youtube
• How to Put Videos from Youtube Onto Your Psp
• How to Put YouTube Videos on Your Zune Without Any Software
• How to Use Movie Clip to Make a Music Video for YouTube
• How to Watch YouTube Videos on an iPhone

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Access Recently Deleted YouTube Videos. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

If you found any of this helpful or you have other links to programs or sites I don't have that will allow us to watch deleted YouTube videos please feel free to leave a comment, or if it's been awhile shoot me an email using the Contact Me link on the sidebar. Thanks!

I came across a site here that will let you watch videos that have been removed from Youtube, because apparently they are still there, just not listed. Sneaky but cool. Thanks to Vincent Chow.

Technorati : Youtube

Apparently Mayan priests (I didn't realize there was still such a thing) will purify an archaeological site after President Bush pays it a visit next week. According to Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan organization;

Gimme a break with this. The only people getting 'persecuted' are here illegally. Persecution my rear end.

This is one of my weekend open trackback posts for March 9th, 10th, and 11th.

Technorati : Illegal Aliens, Immigration, OTA, Open Trackback Alliance

Charter has been misbehaving again. My Internet connection has been down most of the afternoon and evening. I'm not so desperate as to connect through my cell phone, mostly just pissed off. I was able to get online for a short while when I got home, but that was about it. I may post a little, and then more when I get home from work tonight, as I have to go in a few minutes.

I did manage to skate from the meeting, which was very cool. I hate meetings as some of you already know.

Once again it is my favorite day of the week. After I cook and clean and just generally boss my employees around for the next nine hours I get to go sit in a meeting shuffling paperwork for three more, get to Pete's softball game by 7 PM and get back to work for shift change and about three more hours of work because I am off tomorrow. Almost not worth taking a day off.

This is pretty cool. Not nearly as cool as my brother reading his book, but I am much lazier and prefer a computer to read the crap I have posted. I signed up for Odiogo's free Podiocast service which turns all of my blogposts into mp3 podcasts. Here's the post that I did earlier on 'More about Couey'.

Very weird. Now I am going to have to search through my site for the post with the most profanity just to listen to it and see if they bleep my ass. That might be difficult as there are so many to choose from. I curse even more than I post, although I have really been trying hard at work to keep my language clean, so that seems to have rolled over into my home life, at least until I get pissed off and then the stream of foul invectives issues out. Just can't help it.

Here's some links if you want to subscribe:

• iTunes users
  
  Click here to subscribe to this feed
  


• Juice users
  
  Click here to subscribe to this feed
  


• Other (copy and paste this link into your favorite podcast client)
  http://podcasts.odiogo.com/shadowscope/podcasts-xml.php

And here is the main page to get to them.

Have I told you how much I like cool gizmos and gadgets? This is much better than my audio-cast, but I will probably keep that link up. I have only used it twice but if I am without computer or iPaq I can post that from my cell phone.

Technorati : Blogging, Odiogo, Podiocasts

If you have read the blog for awhile, you know I am into home automation. I mean really into it. I am always irritating the family by changing light switches to ones that can be turned on from the remote control, having the computer tell when it's time to take out the trash, or when it's time to go to work, or even turn the pond lights on at night. Very cool stuff. Recently Homeseer released the latest version which is now up to 2.2

It is by far the best automation software I have ever used. I posted their press release over at Technobabble yesterday if you are into that sort of stuff.

...chapter two is up now. I haven't had the chance to listen to it yet, most likely as soon as I get home from work tomorrow.

Go visit Charles' blog if you get the chance and listen to the book.

I noticed in some of my comments today that some people's gravatar icons show up, but mine does not. I double check the email address and it matches. Weird. Anyone else using Gravatar on an MT blog?

I also noticed that there is a wordpress plugin for mybloglog that does the same thing. I need to look at it and see how it is implemented. I think that might be too much for my meager perl skills to handle though.

Seems like I just went to bed. Actually I was up about 3 AM and went back to bed about an hour ago. I sure didn't want to get back out of bed again. Being home most of the day yesterday interrupted my routine. I've got three more days before I get a day off but I am ready for it now.

Today will be another fairly long day, as I have a bunch of stuff that should have been done yesterday to do. I still don't know what kind of organizational changes they will be making over the next few weeks, but I do know it's coming, so that is pretty stressful. Between that and desperately needing my vacation I just want to stay in bed for a few more hours.

Pete has softball practice tonight at 5:30 so I know that I will manage to get out of there before it is too terribly late, no matter what else I manage to get finished today.

I'm not making too much sense this morning (and it's a good thing I have spellcheck) so I am going to quit while I am ahead but don't forget to head over to the Battle of the Blogs today and cast your vote.

I ran across this link on how to create a stop-motion movie over at Lifehacker. That looks pretty cool, something I may have to do on my next day off.

Speaking of movies, I have NOT forgotten about the drawing for that $30 that I should have done this past week. Life interferes sometimes. I will most definitely have it done this Friday, which is my next day off.

Cross-posted at technobabble

...and the girls kicked ass. 15 to 2. I broke one of our rules since it was the first game of the season, and let Pete go to Pizza Hut with her friends. I was not going to with having to get up so early, but one of the other parents offered to bring her home. She's a cop, and the wife knows her, so I feel pretty confident about leaving Pete with them.

If it had not been the first game of the season I would have just had to piss Pete off though. School nights her bed time is 9 PM and we are very strict about that. We finally quit making the Boy go to bed at a certain time when he hit about 17, figuring that he was adult enough to make that decision himself. If he can manage to go to school and make good grades after staying up all night, he is more than welcome to. Normally he hits the sack before we do.

Technorati : Parenting, Softball, Sports

Since the wife is so sick I am going to take Pete to her softball game tonight. That will be cool. I don't get to go to too many of them. I just wish it were earlier or a bit warmer. Not much fun standing outside in the cold for it. I'll just have to make sure and take my hat.

The girls got their uniforms yesterday, so she is very excited about that. Since the game is so late, I may or may not get to post again today, maybe a couple of times before I hit the sack anyway.

I left my backpack in my wife's car yesterday. My smokes are in there and I am here. Damn. I know I probably need to quit at some point, but today is not going to be the day. I may end up fishing up some change and running up to the store later, but I don't particularly want to get the baby out in the cold right now. Maybe it will warm up later.

I finally finished working on that web page I have been fooling with over the weekend. I won't link to it yet as I don't know when she is making it public. I didn't actually do the template anyway, I just added the sidebar and fixed some html errors to make it more compliant with standards, as well as the stock Movabletype templates.

Now I have a couple of waitresses to do taxes for. One good thing about being home with RePete all day is that I can finish some of this stuff that I have been working on.

I am going to try and finish my sidebar here as well. I just do not like the template for some reason and my switch to the one I am using over at Technobabble. It is pretty plain, but I like it.

RePete is still sick. She seems to be getting over whatever bug she has, but is going to have to stay home today. Since it's my turn, I am keeping her today. The only crappy part is that I am going to have to get her up and drag her into work for at least an hour or so for drawer change and to make sure I am staffed. I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping everyone shows up. It's going to be bad enough to have her with me without having to be there an extra hour or two trying to cover the shift.

Pete has her first softball game of the year tonight. It's going to be cold too, so I am sure that will be a blast. The wife has to work late so I will get them all ready and feed them (I occasionally let them eat) and have her ready to walk out the door.

Since I am going to be home today I have a few things I need to work on today. Still having problems with the html and CSS code I was working on over the weekend. It is a custom blog setup, so none of the standard MT stuff is being used in the stylesheet, so for the life of me I can't figure out what the heck is screwed up. I'm just going to load it all up in my html editor and put each item of the old CSS into a standard MT stylesheet, so that it is portable later on. That's the only problem with custom stylesheets that use their own terms instead of the ones everyone else is using, you can't replace it later (or it's much more difficult) with one of the stock ones from the MT library.

I have all three of my blogs set up using different style sheets, but they are all interchangeable. I can swap out the style sheet for a different look with very minimal changes, even with all of the heavy customization that I have done with this one.

The Carnival of the Posties is coming up, and this weeks theme is music, so this is my submission.

I grew up with music. I think most people do, but I have a particular love for it. I can listen to just about anything that has a beat, and only really dislike a few things. As a kid I did as all children do and listened to whatever my parents happened to have on at the time. That meant a lot of Elton John, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and the like. My father was more into older stuff though. Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper. REAL rock. I love all of it.

As I got into my teens though, I got hooked on Metal, and that has been my love ever since I listened to that first KISS album. I've posted a few songs here over the last few years, here are a few of them.

Megadeth - Wake up Dead

I first saw Megadeth at the Metroplex on Marietta Street in Atlanta back in the mid '80's. Man, Dave Mustaine kicks some serious butt. I spent the entire show about ten feet from him, just banging my head.

Here are a couple more Megadeth tunes.

Megadeth - In My Darkest Hour - This song was written after Cliff Burton (Metallica) Died.

Megadeth - Countdown to Extinction - By the time this came out, I was married and had a son. It was released at some point while I was in my short-lived college career.

Metallica - Sad but True - The wife likes to joke sometimes that this is our song.

Armored Saint - Aftermath - A hard rocking band. The lead singer ended up joining Anthrax.

Alice Cooper - The Ballad of Dwight Fry - Alice Cooper is great. Love it to Death is probably my all time favorite of his albums. His early years are when he was truly at his best.

King Crimson - 21st Century Schizoid Man - You wouldn't think that something from the 60's would fit into my list, but I fell in love with Emerson, Lake & Palmer the first time I heard anything by them, and later on while looking through my dad's albums, I found this one and once I realized that Greg Lake was doing vocals on their first two albums, had to listen to it. One of my favorites.

Guns N Roses - Used to Love Her - Guns N Roses were pretty good for awhile, but they just blew themselves out of the water with too much drugs, too many good times.

Willie and the Poor Boys - These Arms of Mine - This is also one of my favorite albums. I turned my wife onto this and the song was played at our wedding reception.

Nowadays I mostly listen to the Pixies, Evanescence, and stuff like that, but I always return to the staples that I grew up with. I can't imagine NOT having it be part of my life.

...at work are a pretty interesting deal. It starts out extremely slow. Sunday is the day when most people sleep in. The folks that ARE up are getting ready for church. They all go about their business, sleeping or churching and then all roll in between 10 and 2. We do about the same amount of business in those four hours that we do all day long on Saturday.

Needless to say, it ends up being a goatfuck about half the time. My staff at the new store has improved, but it's still pretty rough at times.

They have a tendency to finish up the shift and shoot out of there at 2 PM, whether they are finished with their cleanup and sidework or not. I have the fix for that one today, and they are probably not going to enjoy it. Sunday is also payday. I pay my graveyard shift as soon as they get off work at 7 AM. Normally I will go ahead and pay my day shift at the same time. I saves me 30-40 minutes from the end of the day, and I'm all about getting my stuff done and getting the hell out of dodge. Today I am going to make them wait until after their shift to get paid. Of course, if their sidework isn't finished, they will wait until it is before I pay them. I have several things to do this afternoon, so I can wait all day if I have to, I don't really care.

With my boss leaving the company, apparently there are all sorts of organizational changes going on. It is now looking like I may end up with a different immediate boss who is a real fuck-head. He is a piece of work who basically does nothing. Several of my employees have worked for him in the past and I know they don't particularly want to work for him again. If I do end up with him over me I will end up spending half the time minimizing the damage he does from my days off.

I should start finding out about the changes by Wednesday at the earliest. No sense in worrying about them until they occur, I just hope that my AVP thinks about what he is doing before making them.

It wasn't quite as bad as I thought it would be today. I ended up getting out of there right around 5 PM. We were pretty busy for breakfast this morning and then it just slowed down at lunch time so that I was able to get a bit more done than I had planned.

Sometimes people just don't get it. I am fairly anal about how I want things at work, where they go, how orders are to be called out, and just having them do the right things the right way. One of the waitresses was giving orders during breakfast, and as I have done for years, I correct them if they are wrong. I'm not an asshole about it, unless the keep on making the same mistakes over and over again. I corrected her about something and rather than just taking it in stride, she made a big deal about it, and purposely made sure to do it wrong the rest of the day, only with an exaggerated flair. Some things are all fun and games until I make out next weeks fucking schedule. Yuck it up while you can bitch, because I know how to get things done and there are plenty of people that are dying to come to work there and do it my way.

Then, this afternoon one of the other managers called up there and spoke with a waitress, who had transferred to my store from hers a couple of months ago. She had the gall to ask the waitress when she was coming back, that she needed her. Oh, hell no you didn't go there. One thing we just don't do is recruit employees from other stores in our company, and I am going to be raising hell about it on Monday with my boss. I have had several people transfer to my store, but I did not approach a single one, nor let them know it would be OK. They asked for the transfer and it was approved. If I wanted to start stealing people from the other stores, I would have the best staff in west Georgia in about a week, particularly since I have hired and trained about 25% of the folks that work in the ten stores out here.

Well, it's time for a bit of baked fish. I may rant a bit more later.

...when you are not doing much of anything at all. The Boy just left for work and it's time for me to get my rear end into the shower and go to work myself. Hopefully everyone will show up today. Going back on a Saturday after two days off can sometimes be rough, because all the preparation for the weekend has been done by someone else.

I will spend the next few hours cooking, then I have audits and inventories to do, as well as some cleaning. That is supposing of course that everyone shows up for their shifts. If not, I still have to do the same stuff, but I may be several hours behind.

Pete has practice today at noon, but I probably already mentioned that. They should be home by the time I get back here from work, so I may end up spending a little time fooling around before I get back online this afternoon, if at all. It may be tonight or tomorrow before I get another chance.

No, I didn't win, you have to play to do that. It sure would be nice. Apparently it's up to about $340 million now. I may have to get a ticket before the drawing on Tuesday. Just in case you know.

That alarm went off way too early today. The last thing I wanted to do was crawl out from under those covers. The coffee is making and I am waiting patiently in an attempt to stay awake until it finishes gurgling it's happy way into the pot. There is nothing quite like the aroma of fresh brewed coffee wafting through the house when you wake up.

...

Good deal. It's finished and I have my first cup. Coffee and I have a serious love affair going on. I've been drinking it since I was a kid, and even when it is 90 degrees outside I have to have it. I don't function very well until I have had a couple of cups and a shower.

...

Pete has softball practice at noon today, and her first game of the season is Monday night. That will be cool. I don't know that we will all go Monday though. The game is not until 7:45, and it is away. RePete will need to be in bed shortly, and with the way she has been feeling I may just keep her home Monday evening and make sure she gets in bed on time. The wife managed to get a quick photo with her cell phone Pete playing catcher at practice last night. The last couple of practices she has thrown a fit about playing. See, her coach is pretty hard, but she is very good. All of the kids love her to death, but of course they get yelled at. That's part and parcel with competition and just the way it is, but Pete will get her panties in a wad and talk about quitting, even though she knows that she has and will have a good time. Of course she is all about being little miss drama, so that is a big part of it.

One thing I don't believe that I have mentioned before is that my little brother is a writer, and a pretty decent one at that. One of his books that I believe is currently out of print is called 'Prayer at Rumayla; A Novel of the Gulf War'. He is doing it in an audio podcast and the book will be going back into print later this year. Right now you can get the podcast for free through iTunes, but he is asking for reviews over at his site. You can get more details about Prayer at Rumayla here and don't forget to visit his blog while you are there.

Technorati : Charles Sheehan-Miles, Gulf War, Prayer at Rumayla

Several months back I was emailed asking if I would do a review for BTV. Actually it may have been closer to a year, I don't really remember. Now that I have no internet connection, I figured this would be the perfect time.

You can read the entire review in the extended entry.

...not my immediate boss, but hers. I found that out last night, and it blew me out of the water. I have known him since he was a manager fifteen years ago. It kind of sucks because now I have to break in some other asshole.

What should make it interesting is that it screws up all of their plans for the next few months. My boss was supposed to be stepping down and taking a voluntary demotion. I already turned down her job, so the other guy that got blasted last night was going to take the district, and I was going to answer directly to the next level up. Not having to pay a district manager would be a bump up in pay for me because it would be money that I would save in profits, 10% of which belong on my paycheck. Only problem...the guy that is taking the division position went to school with my friend, and he hates his guts, or at least that was the impression I got last night. Maybe strong dislike is a better word. I doubt seriously if he really hates him. He told them last night that he would no longer take that district and asked for a transfer to the other side of Atlanta. Damn. Drama.

That either means they will leave my boss alone for awhile (I hope) or come back to me. I told them last time that if they absolutely had nobody else I would take the promotion but I really didn't want it. I can afford to bide my time and wait for a better one to come along. It might be another year, or even five years, but it will come along, and I will still be on the immediate promotion list at the top just as I am now. I've turned down three promotions over the last three months, and can keep going until the right one comes up. Since we are growing so rapidly the need for people that can get stuff done the right way is not going to ever leave. Not only that, but I have trained most of the division now, and they are like my kids. Fill up all of the districts and stores with them, and maybe a couple more divisions and I will et exactly what I want. Either that or they will eat me, like spiders.

The meeting last night lasted about three hours. The format itself changed slightly from the last one I had to attend. We started out with my SVP and his three AVPs speaking about sourcing and recruiting, which is a pretty big deal for a growth company. I don't go into that side of the equation that much as I tend to just bitch about my employees and whatever their daily drama might be, however it is one of the biggest issues for us right now.

In the twenty years I have been with them, we have grown a thousand stores. Over the next TEN years, we plan on opening a thousand more, but the only thing that will hold us back is not having enough quality people. One of the things that they have been on us for the last couple of years is sourcing and recruiting. Obviously I am not a recruiter, but I am a damn site better judge of who can run a successful restaurant than someone NOT in the operations end anyway. That is pretty much how our upper management team feels as well. We source names, they bring 'em on board.

One of the things my SVP asked/stated last night was a question wanting to know how we can make sourcing as important as food cost/sales/profits. Pretty simple to me, base part of our pay on it. I see it coming. I don't know if anyone else figured that one out yet or not, but it's coming. I am going to have to start working my ass off on that one, because that is my weakest area.

Anyway, after their speeched and a short (thank god) video on leaders and leading, we ate, and then got into the role-playing. We had one of four things that we had to do, and we didn't find out which on until we were up there. We were each paired up with an AVP (but not ours) and the situations were stuff like 'manager waiting in line at a car rental is impressed with the assistant manager's professional customer service, how do they recruit him', 'waiting in line at the bank you notice a very professional guy in line, he works a comfortable 9 to 5, how do you approach him', 'you run into a family friend who is laid off, how do you approach her', and one other I don't remember. I got the bank one.

I also got the AVP who decided he needed to be an over the top asshole. He only did it to me and one other guy, the one who is in my old store and next up for promotion after me (or instead of me when I turn down the next district is more like it). I started talking to him, and asked him if he had been in the store local to the bank. He immediately went on the offensive, asked if I didn't remember him, and started raising hell about having burned his food. I tried to get him to come back and let us fix it, and steer the conversation to talking about him, but he wouldn't have any of it.

By the way, we only had four minutes to introduce ourselves or 'break the ice', get them interested, sell them on the idea, and then wrap it up, or 'close the deal'. In most cases this is just simply inviting them in for a cup of coffee to talk to them later, or getting their card and phone number. With something like that our recruiter will call up and tell them, "Hey, I got your name from so-and-so, they were really impressed with you, and think you would make a good addition to our team" or some bullshit like that. It works well though, and is flattering. For someone who has a good job and is not looking, that is one way to pique their interest.

Anyway, I never even got past breaking the ice. The other manager had the exact same problem and ended the role-play, but me being stubborn kept going until I ran the clock out. Fuck you, I'm not quitting just because you are making it difficult. Obviously I would never be able to recruit an individual like that, but it might be someone I could get a coupon or offer a free meal to, and get back in as a customer. It made it difficult because obviously if it was someone I 'remembered' he should have told me that before we started, and also because you are not going to come into my restaurant and have me burn your food four damn times. I am the best operator in the 28 stores in my area, and one of the best and fastest cooks in the system. I used to be very modest about that and would never say it, preferring to let other people say it, but the facts are the facts. If I fuck up your food I'm going to fix it then and there AND buy your damn meal as well. He just decided he needed to be an asshole to myself and one other manager to prove a point about real life.

The only problem with that is that 90% of the people in the room are new, having been with us anywhere from 3 months to five years, and the only learning experience they get from that type of situation is that they don't want to get paired with him next time.

My Area People Director (recruiter) called me at my store at shift change last night. He told me that all of the recruiters and avp's had their discussion and all agreed that he was way over the top. Basically apologizing to me. They didn't have to apologize to me, but I hope they called the other manager and did the same with him. I did start getting pissed off during the four minutes I had, and I did very well to restrain myself from telling him to shut the fuck up. Not something you want to do with an AVP. I may not particularly want to advance very far anymore, but it's not a good thing to actively piss too many people off. I like to stay under the radar and get left alone to do my job.

This sucks. I am going to go down to my basement and completely reset my router and cable modem. I can sit here and write for awhile in between straightening up the house, but I have some stuff I need to do online that I promised to take care of today.

OK, I have reset everything. The modem seems to have provisioned itself and the router connected. Now it's not even picking up an IP address from Charter. Damn, this sucks. Nothing in the log except where I tried to renew the IP address.

Oh well, I have other stuff to do anyway.

Jut checked again, it's about 11:30 now and my internet is still down. fucking shit.

It only took four hours, but I am back online. Jeesh.

I don't know about that shutdown day stuff.

We are having some pretty bad thunderstorms right now and my cable is out. Blogging from my iPaq is the coolest thing since sliced bread, when I am on a trip with no computer or Internet access, but it blows having to do it here.

I need to at least get myself a bluetooth PDA keyboard. That would make a world of difference.

I an ping the dhcp server and get a new IP address, but I can't reach the gateway router, much less get past it.