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in the event of a real emergency

The Skybar - a famous old candy bar
The Skybar - a famous old candy bar

Report from the swine flu front line: In the event of a real emergency – we would be dead already.

The SkyBar. Carlton came home with a SkyBar the other day. He had no clue that he had gotten a famous old candy bar from the 1940’s and 50’s. Apparently they the NECCO people still make a few Skybars every year and sell them in New England where they are still much loved. (It is called the SkyBar because it was introduced in the 1930’s via a huge skywriting  ad campaign.)

I am opposed to the death penalty. But, I am making an exception in John Allen Muhammad’s case.

Just backuped the blog using the new computer. In two weeks we’ll be winging it to Kona – I want to be sure that the Mac can do all the required tasks. I am still ripping movies to take. I found a housing and an abandoned 40 gig drive in my computer junk box – so I made an external drive. I don’t think the drive is very reliable – but I am thinking that it will be good enough to store movies.

In honor of Halloween – I am listening to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It is remarkably good. More like a “modern” novel than a “victorian” novel.

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entirely too busy …

I was going to go to the volunteer job this morning for a couple of hours and then, either:

  1. Go to Georgetown, buy some French underwear, get dinner at Dean and Deluca, or
  2. Go to Clarendon, visit the Apple Store, get dinner at Whole Foods.

But, as I was getting ready to leave a boat load of H1N1 aka pig flu vaccine showed up at our hospital. For our staff. Not the public. Not the volunteers. So, I worked instead of going shopping. And, I went to the salad bar at the hospital.

Ain’t life exciting when you are a “senior”?

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entirely too tranquil…

I am entirely too contented. A little warm air, a little sun on my porch, a cup of coffee, my iPod … life is good.

So, maybe the world is going to end in Dec 2012. I doubt it. It will be damned interesting if it does. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. But, that bozo in Colorado – Richard Heene – father of Balloon Boy – seems that he believes that the world is going to end in 2012 – so he needs to make a lot of money real fast. Earth to Richard… if you really believe – you will max out your credit cards and live large until Dec 21, 2012. Then, poof.

While I am at it – Why exactly should us old people be getting $250? Aren’t we the same selfish people of have been saying “keep your mitts off my medicare – we got ours and we ain’t going to share”?

And, I noticed that Obama’s staff scolded the Wall Street types for taking HUGE bonuses. I could stand all manner if verbal abuse for the kind of money they got. More than $250, I am guessing. Along with good health care.

Now, for something fun. Photoshop Disasters Check them out.

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This I do not need…

how compulsive can you get?
how compulsive can you get?

$6.85 + shipping for 10 servings of toilet paper. What ever happened to taking about 1/3 of a roll from home and jumping on it to flatten? And, boys and girls – if you are in a place where you need to byo-tp – you are going to need a boatload more than 10 servings.

I really wanted to play with the Mac version of PrintScreen. I think it was cmd+shift+4.

Another thing I don’t need. DeathSwitch. Check it out. I do worry a little bit about what would happen it I get hit by a bus (A possibility for urban persons).  Someone will have to get everything converted back to snail mail bills and checks for Mr C.

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Finally…

It finally stopped raining. Now, if the goddess could make it a little warmer please. Where is global warming when you need it?

Very bad stuff at the grocery this morning:

  • Ice Scrappers on sale $1.97 and
  • Fruit Cakes. Maybe they were left over from last year.

Big event today is Handbreaking some movies. Will stash them on the removable hard drive. Then if we get bored silly in Hawaii, we’ll have some movies.

Doing the Handbreaking on the Ubuntu machine. Each one takes about 10 hours. But, I am in no rush. Figure I can do 2 a day and we are not leaving for 20 days. I’ll pick out some and let Mr C pick out some. He does not share my love of 1950’s sci-fi. (Either movies or written).

First movie: Dr Strangelove.

As for The Airness – I have had it about a month. And, I like it. I’d like it more if it had a 256 GB SSD. But, I’ll just have to use the gigabytes that I have carefully. I like the form factor too. The lightness makes it easy to pass over to Carlton to see this or that. The 13 inch screen is gracious. And the keyboard is almost as good as the classic IBM Thinkpad keyboard. And, it plays nice with the old Dell box. Very long range plan is to replace the Dell box with either a Mac Mini or iMac. I have no plans to “upgrade” XP to Windows 7. I paid my dues with the HP Vista 64-bit Whore Machine.

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a totally rotten day, weatherwise

ladders in an empty store
ladders in an empty store

I found these ladders when I went to the gay rights march last weekend. Did someone put rainbow colored ladders out on purpose? A very low key sign of secret support?

But, on to this weekend. A totally rotten day. COLD and raining. I saw some big sleety looking drips and drops earlier. But now it is just pouring cold rain. This has been going on since Thursday. Or was it Wednesday? Long enough.

Today I made Carlton’s traditional Xmas present. (A spreadsheet showing the details of his investment portfolio.) And, I tweaked up The Airness for max ESPN360 goodness so he can watch VT play football later this evening on the computer. Figure that since he paid for the thing – he may as well benefit from it.

But, all things considered… I’d rather be in Hawai’i.

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95 cents

Once again I scored a 95 cent classic audiobook from iTunes. The current bargain is 95 cents for The Count of Monte Cristo. 50 hours worth. Oliver Twist is also available at that price. I don’t understand it. But have decided to snag any of the old 19th century classics that come along. Sort of like taking War and Peace with you to the beach. But, I have actually read War and Peace.  The first husband and I took a copy as our only reading material on a long trip. We ripped it into chunks and shared it. Maybe that is why our marriage failed.

So, if you want to class up your audiobook collection on the cheap – slide on over to iTunes.

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The Solar Decathlon

The Spanish Entry
The Spanish Entry

Yesterday was a fine warm sunny day and I went down to the Mall to check out the 2009 Solar Decathlon. I waited on line and went inside the Germany entry, the University of Illinois entry and to support the home team – the VT entry.

About the VT entry – the interior is very elegantly outfitted. I would be very happy to have their design team do my apartment over.

The Solar Decathlon – Check it out. You can find all the teams and follow the scoring.

The VT Entry – It looks better in real life.

Our hospital got some pig flu vaccine yesterday. Not enough to go around.

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new neighbor

We have a new construction crane in the neighborhood.
We have a new construction crane in the neighborhood.

Nice day today.

I went down to the Mall to take in the Bi-Annual Solar Decathlon.

Watching the evening news. Now I am mad. I always knew that congress persons had darn good health insurance – mostly paid for by us kiddies. But, what I didn’t know, and hope isn’t true, even after the bastards get out of office – being voted out, scared out, or run out – they and their families continue being covered. Until they reach 65. Isn’t that wonderfully self-serving behavior? I hope this is just poor reporting. I hope we are not still providing health insurance to losers from the past. Bad enough we have to pay for the incumbent crooks.

More about the Solar Decathlon later.

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mac=replace/pc=merge

Gay Rights March
Gay Rights March

Repeat after me – Macs Replace Folders, PCs Merge Folders. Macs Replace Folders, PCs Merge Folders. Macs Replace Folders, PCs Merge Folders. Macs Replace Folders, PCs Merge Folders. Macs Replace Folders, PCs Merge Folders.

I wonder how many more of these gotcha’s are hiding in my new machine?

But, The Time Machine thingie worked as advertised. So, only one photo got lost. And it was no loss.

I still haven’t decided how to catalog, cull, process, organize, etc etc images on The Airness. A whole bunch of images are cataloged using Photoshop Elements over on the XP part of the Dell Box.

I really liked my 30 day trial of Lightroom last summer. I would spring for my very own copy. $299. But, I am in lust with an as yet unavailable camera. It is supposed to ship with a copy of Lightroom. I could use getting a copy of Lightroom to help justify the cost of the camera.

Photoshop Elements for PC used to have vastly superior cataloging abilities over the Mac version. But, I haven’t checked out the current release. PSE is a fine enough program – but it is long on cute scrapbooky features. And, it has a distressing habit of needing frequent expensive upgrades.

I really really miss Irfanview. That would be the great freeware swiss army knife PC image viewer/editor/tweaker. It doesn’t work gracefully with WINE. Someone should take up a collection and pay Irfan Skiljan to port Irfranview to the Linux/Mac world.

I have poked around with iPhoto which comes with The Airness. I didn’t feel the love. At least not yet. Maybe it will grow on me being “free”.

And, I just installed Picasa. The Linux version was some sort of strange package that come with a special version of WINE and the Windows version of Picasa. I think that the Mac version is “pure”. Don’t know. Just guessing.