Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Happy birthday you stupid waste of time!

Just a quick post to mark the fact that today is my blog's birthday. Happy birthday blog.

2 years. 2 years worth of complete and total nonsense. That's a lot of friggin' nonsense my friends.

Thanks to everybody that stops by here to read this stuff, and a special thanks to those that actually come back!

Now, on with the nonsense. I'm gonna see if I can take the nonsense to even higher levels in year 3! It's going to be tough, but I'm up for it.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Quick! Everybody look at the rain!

There's a big thunderstorm passing through the area and like a bunch of little kids, everyone around me here at work has jumped up from their chairs to go and look out the windows at the rain pouring down. It's just... so... exciting!

Now I find myself being curiously drawn to the window to gaze at nature's fury... Ooooo! Lightning! Ooooh! Thunder!!

Maybe we'll have a tornado! That would be awesome! (Actually, no, it woudn't.)

I worked in a cold, windowless cave for many years and I gotta say, having windows at work is cool.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Proper care and feeding of your feeds...

Ok, this is the last time I'm going to write about this, because it's silly, but I have a slight problem with occasionally becoming obsessed with things, so this is my way of 'letting go'.

All the site feeds are working now, for both the old feeds and the new 'burned' feeds.

If you were already a subscriber, (thanks again,) there is no need to re-subscribe to the site feed. In fact, you don't have to do anything. The feed you were subscribed to all along should auto-magically pick up the new Feedburner feed and all the goodies that go along with it, which is nice.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you're probably better off anyway...

On a completely unrelated note, today is the longest day of the year here in the good old Northern Hemisphere. Enjoy it.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Feed Me... yeah, sure.

Hi Gang.

I know this is going to sound incredible, but there are people out there who actually find this nonsense interesting enough to subscribe to. I know, amazing!

For those of you who subscribe to the site feed, first of all, thanks! And second of all, I have updated the feed so that it is now linked with Feedburner.

If you are already subscribed, you should not have to do anything. The old feed should still work fine. Or you can re-subscribe to the new 'burned' feed and enjoy all the extra goodies that come with it, like the ability to bother people by e-mailing them my posts, and seeing related items in Technorati and Sphere.

The new feed also makes it easier to subscribe with your favorite RSS feed aggregator. See, I'm always lookin out for you.

Thanks again for subscribing and if you see any wonky weirdness in the the feeds, I'd appreciate it if you could send me a note to let me know. Thanks!

Update:
Um, yeah. So, that all sounded so cool and easy when I first typed this post. Click a few buttons, select a few check marks, done.

The feed seemed to be working right at first but then I noticed the new posts were not being displayed, so after wasting way too much time dicking around with the dang thing, I'm not sure if this new Feedburner setup is working or not, but I don't really have a lot of time to spend messing around with it, (nor do I want to spend a lot of time messing around with it).

I figure I'll check it later and see what's what and if it's still not displaying the new posts, I'll just set it back to the old way. If it ain't broke don't fix it I guess...

If you are subscribed and you notice the feed is not being updated or any other weird behavior, please let me know. Thanks!

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Frappr Hacker...

It seems the spammers have gotten their hooks into Frappr.

I noticed the other day that there were a bunch of new maps listed under my Frappr profile that I had not personally added myself to.

At first I thought this might be some kind of new feature in Frappr, since these newly added map links pointed to maps that related to items in my profile's interest list. For example, there was a 'Fans of George Strait' map linked to my profile, along with several other maps that I had not purposely added myself to.

I deleted all the maps that I had not added myself and then checked back a few days later. Sure enough, there was a whole new batch of newly added maps that I had not personally added myself to.

Apparently, someone or something is going around in Frappr adding people's profiles to maps by simply using their e-mail address.

I e-mailed Frappr support about this and the response was basically 'Yup, that's probably what's happening'.  (WTF?)

So I guess the point of this whole story is, if you use Frappr, you might want keep an eye on your profile for any new maps getting added to it that you did not add yourself and then e-mail Frappr if this happens to you.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Odd and ends...

Quick note to self: Don't work on website posts after 11 PM. You are prone to making lots of grammatical errors.

Self replies: Thank you, you tool.

If you have not checked out The New England Patriots Podcasts yet, you have been missing out on some great shows. The guys over at Patriots Football Weekly have been doing two pre-draft Podcast shows a week and they have been very informative. They are definitely worth checking out.

Fred Kirsh, if you want to thank me for the PFW Podcast plugs, a complimentary renewal to my PFW subscription would be nice. Hint!

Google Calendar: Did you know you can add the Red Sox and Patriots schedule to Google calendar by just doing a quick search in public calendars? Well you can. And it's awesome.

Despite the Pats glaring need at wide receiver this year, this very informative article over at The Cold Hard Football Facts explains why it would probably not be in the Patriots' best interest to pick a receiver in the 1st round of the NFL draft.

Also, I gotta say, this Draught Party CHFF is planning at The Cask this weekend sounds like it will be a blast. I am highly considering sneaking out of the house and making an appearance... We'll see.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

The Best of Both Worlds...

If you've got a spiffy Intel based Mac, you can now install and run Windows XP on your machine, thanks to this new software release from Apple called, Boot Camp. This is very, very cool. One computer can do it all.

Now, if you could run XP on top of OS X, that would really be cool. Maybe in a few years when I'm ready to trade in 'ol reliable, (PowerBook G4,) they'll have that working too.  (Holy fuck do I feel like a geek right now. Nerd alert!)

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Recent observations...

Noticed recently:

File under - Protect me from myself:
New software recently released for the latest iPods now has a setting that allows you to set the maximum volume for the device. I don't really have a problem with that and I guess it could actually be a pretty handy setting, but I have to wonder, is it really necessary?

How about this for an idea: if you think your music is playing too loudly, just turn down the volume. I know, call me crazy!

Oh wait, that would mean you might have to take some personal responsibility for your own actions. Never mind.

File under - Football Geek:
Speaking of the iPod, I've been listening to the Patriots PodCast over the last week or so and I have to give it an enthusiastic thumbs up! It's no secret that I can't stand Boston Sports Talk Radio, so The Pats Podcast has been a great find for me. Get it on iTunes.

File under - Nerdery:
While at work, I've seen people goofing off in a variety of ways, from playing solitaire, to shoot-em-up video games, to just plain sleeping at their desk. I'm certainly not perfect myself and have been known to occasionally waste valuable company time and resources goofing around on the internets.

My personal goof-off sin involves Bloglines. I go there several times a day to check for updates to people's sites. It's not like I'm spending hours there or anything like that but, let's face it, the less time spent wasting time at work, the better. That is where this handy little Konfabulator widget comes in. It displays the most recent Bloglines site updates right there on the desktop. Very cool! (And free. Bonus!) "This'll put you in solid with your boss..."

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Pats / Sox Nation Frapper Map...

The Patriots and Red Sox Nation map on Frapper has been slowly but surely gathering new members.

I am glad to see people seem to like the map. If you have not added yourself, swing on by and stick a pin in there! No obligations. It's all just for fun!

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

recently noticed...

I asked my wife some questions about some recently noticed odd behavior:

- If you park in a handicapped spot, but put your hazard lights on, does that make it o.k.?

A: No.

- A bunch of people in my office have built mountains of empty soda cans on their desks. They are literally surrounded by a pile of cans about 8 cans deep and 6 cans tall. Is there some kind of geek status derived from the amount of empty soda cans you can surround yourself with on your desk?

A: I don't know. Is that like beer cans but with soda? To me that's pretty stupid.

- While driving, if you look in your rear view mirror and notice that there is a mile of cars trailing behind you waiting to pass, yet you refuse to move over, are you doing some kind of public service by making us all drive below the speed-limit?

A: I gotta say No.

Thanks dear!

In other news, I finally got my iPod back from Apple today. It took exactly 6 weeks for them to send me a new, (read: refurbished,) iPod.

I'm just glad it's back. I've already been yelled at to turn that damned music down... I felt like I was back living at my Mom's house.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

WARNING: LOUD MUSIC CAN HURT YOUR EARS

From the completely asinine and ridiculous department:

Apparently, if you listen to your music too loudly, it's entirely possible that you can damage your hearing.

Somebody's going to have to pay.

If this guy has his way, that pay out will come from Apple computer, because I guess the company did not properly warn him that sticking headphones into his ears and cranking up the Mantovani can actually hurt your ears.

Fucking un-believeable.

That sad part is that this idiot probably has a good chance of winning his case. I mean, if you can sue Dunkin Donuts and win because you were not properly warned that drinking hot coffee can burn your tongue, and you can sue McDonalds and win because you were not properly warned that eating fries, burgers and shakes can make you into a fat fuck, why not sue Apple because you were not properly warned that sticking headphones inside your ears and listening to your music too loudly using your iPod could cause hearing loss.

Makes sense to me.

Personally, I just want my iPod back from the dang battery replacement service... Hey wait, Apple told me the repair job was going to take 2-3 weeks and it's been longer than that. Maybe I can sue!

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Nerd Alert!

My wife may argue this, but I tend to think of myself as kind of a 'low-tech' guy. I don't get all crazy about PDA's and phones and those LT. Uhura ear-peice communicator lookin' things people stick in their ears now-a-days.

My boss asked me the other day what my cell phone number was and when I told him I didn't have a cell phone, he looked at me like I had 3 heads.

That being said, the new Powerbooks that Apple unveiled today are effing sweet. And I might blow a gasket if my iPod does not come back to me from the battery replacement program soon...

Today I had to drive down to a customer site with some other folks from work and they all had their cell phones goin' while the car's dashboard displayed a GPS powered map and a pleasant female computer voice provided driving directions: "5 miles to exit".

For some reason, I kept waiting for the computer voice from Alien to start speaking. "You now... have... 5 Minutes... to Detonation..."

"But Mother, I've turned the cooling systems back on..."

Whoops! Sorry. Had an Alien moment there.

Since I'm already off on a tangent, I went to the library today to try and get Conrad's The Nostromo. They didn't have it. So I checked for Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. That was not there either. What the hell? These are classic novels, are they not? My town's library kinda blows...

Back to the built in dashboard map, I asked if you could get the Star Trek computer voice downloaded as the onboard map's voice for giving directions. That would be cool.

Alas, it turns out that is not yet possible.

Well if you're car's built in dashboard map can't speak to you in the Star Trek computer voice, what the hell is the point then?

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Pats / Sox Nation Frapper Map...

After I got sucked into this whole Frapper thing by Beth, I decided to make a map on Frapper for Patriots and Red Sox fans to post their locations (Bruins and Celtics fans are also welcome!)

This map is just for fun and is up there for anybody to enjoy and use. If you want to display the button for it on your site, you can get the code in the widgets section on Frapper. Enjoy!

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Cool. I'm Spock...

Which Fantasy/SciFi Character Are You?

A focused advisor whose actions are dictated by almost pure logic, you believe in exploring the fascinating possibilities around you.

Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Why Macs rule...

I finally got my new hard-drive installed in my laptop. It was very easy to do.

I removed the bottom from the computer and the drive was easily accessable. All I had to do then was undo 4 screws holding the drive in and pop the drive controller cable off the motherboard. The old drive came right out and then I replaced it with the new one.

The only part that made me a little nervous was popping the drive controller connection off the motherboard. It was snapped into the motherboard pretty tight and at first I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be a 'permanent' connection. (I was a little worried the instructions might have been wrong. Screwing up my computer would not have been a good thing.) Thankfully after a little gentle prying, it came off with out a problem.

Once I got the new drive in I just had to install the operating system. That's it.

Mac OS 10.4 comes with this great program called the Migration Assistant. Once the OS is installed, the Assistant comes up and moves all your files and preferences over from your old drive (or computer) to the new one. No settings to have to re-configure, no apps to install, no files to search around for. It all just worked (as it should) and when it was finished, I logged in as if nothing had changed. The process could not have been any easier. I didn't even swear once the whole time! Ha!

Now I have all this extra space. It's so roomy here. ECHO! Echo... echo...

Now that I have plenty of space, I'm thinking of saving up for an M-Box and maybe recording some songs with Garage Band.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Brain Dump...

I've been feeling very run down and tired lately. I've got all kinds of shit going on and I feel like I just can't keep up with it all. I feel like I keep falling farther and farther back on stuff. Then, just when I think I'm making some progress and start to feel like I'm getting caught up with things, something happens to set me back.

It's as if I'm clawing to barely keep up and keep my head above water lately. Of course, most of these feelings are probably all in my head, but they are there none-the-less. In the meantime, can somebody toss me a life jacket please?

The Sox won on Ortiz's awesome walk-off homer last night and the Yankees lost to the Devil Dogs, making our lead in the East, 4 and our Magic Number, 22. I'm hoping we can win this series against The Angels and head into this weekend series against the MFY with a 3 game lead, minimum. I hope the Sox see the opportunity that is in front of them this weekend. They could really slam the door on The Yankees chances for the division and put a serious kink in their Wildcard hopes too. Seize the moment Red Sox!!

But, first things first. We still need to get past the always tough Angels...

The World Champion New England Patriots kick off the NFL season tomorrow vs The Oakland Raiders. It's still hard to believe it's already time for football! I am pretty excited about this NFL season and am really looking forward to tomorrow's game. It will be so cool to see the 3rd Superbowl Championship banner unveiled at THE RAZOR. I'll probably be bouncing off the walls tomorrow waiting for the game.

I found a cool site, massachusettsgasprices.com. Use it to find the cheapest gas stations in your town. There is a Konfabulator Widget you can use to go along with it here. There's probably a Dashboard widget for gas prices too, but I have not tried any of them out yet.

I've been listening to a really cool podcast that features some great jazz guitar, No Idle Frets, on the way home from work and it really makes the commute fly by. I start listening to it and just zone out driving. The next thing I know, I'm half way home.

I finally reached critical mass on my computer drive, with barely 500 Megs available, so I ordred a new drive to replace it. I bought some RAM too so my computer will be much happier once I get it all put in.

I've been toying with the idea of dropping the silly psudonym that I use around the interweb and just using my first name when I leave comments and stuff on my friend's sites but I'm still building up the nerve to do it. I know, I know, talk about making a big deal out of nothing. I can be such a goof about some things! Oh well.

I'll end this one with a quote to get you ready for The Patriots game tomorrow:

"I had an equipment manager at Michigan. He's got so many Big-Ten rings, he doesn't have enough fingers. He said, 'You know, Tom, you know what my favorite ring is?' I said, 'What's that?' And he said, 'The next one. The next one. That's my favorite."

-Tom Brady

 

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Google Talk and iChat...

I tried setting up iChat (Mac OS IM client) to work with Google Talk (available here) but I have no idea if I've got it setup right or not.

If you're trying out Google Talk, feel free to add me to your buddy list by using my gmail address and give me a shout. I'd love to find out if this thing will actually work with iChat! ;-)

(If you want a gmail invite, just let me know. I've got plenty of them.)

Update:
I downloaded the Google Talk Windoze client and sent a couple invites out to some select people so don't get all freaked out if you see an invite from me to try it out. ;-)

Monday, August 08, 2005

Sports. Geek.

An actual conversation:

Me: Yoda sucks.

Other SW nerd: What's with you and your vindictive agenda against Yoda?

Me: Yoda is not clutch.

Other SW nerd: Not 'clutch'??

Me: Yeah. Everytime the Jedi really need him, he gets his butt whipped and then he runs away and escapes or whatever... He puts up a fight but when the chips are down and shit is on the line, you don't want to have to count on Yoda to come through for you.

Ortiz - Clutch. Vinatieri - Clutch. Yoda - Not Clutch.

Monday, July 25, 2005

Konfabulator now available for free!

Awesome news for nerds, Konfabulator is now available for free!

Konfabulator is very cool. It displays specialized windows called 'Widgets' that sit on your computer desktop and let you keep track of all kinds of different things. It works on Macs and PC's.

I've written about this software before and I give it 2 nerdy thumbs up, (especially for Windows users.) Now that it's free, definitely check it out (and be sure to download the Baseball Ticker widget.)

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Technology is against me...

Lately it seems like all my gadgets are against me.

My computer crashed for the first time in about 3 years last night. It probably had to do with the fact that I have hardly any space left on my drive and I was running about 5 apps at the same time. I'm guessing my computer ran out of virtual memory and went belly up.

My computer came back to life but some of my settings got all effed up and my iTunes database got trashed. All my songs were still there but I lost all my playlists which was a major bummer.

So I need to get a new, bigger drive but I'm having trouble prying open my wallet. It has to be done but I'm stalling. I tried going through and deleting some songs to make room but I only freed up about 800 MB of space. It's too hard to part with my tunes!

I could also use another 512 MB of RAM too but the drive will have to come first. An 80GB drive costs about $200.00. Money is tight right now and my Anniversary is around the corner. That takes priority over a computer drive.

I've been very annoyed with my .Mac account lately. I've added a bunch of bookmarks to my online bookmarks file but the damn things will not sync with my computer and get added to my local Safari bookmarks. It's pissing me off! It all worked fine in Mac OS 10.3.9. I'm wondering if Sync is broken in 10.4.1 or something. Either way, I'm not going to be renewing .Mac. It's expensive and I don't use half the services. The one thing I use everyday is the Bookmark sync and if that's not working, it's just not worth it.

I was very sad to see that 'unkymoods' seems to have disappeared. I just found that site a few weeks ago and really liked all the different moods you could display on your blog. Now unkymoods.com just has a godaddy parked page. I hope it's not gone forever but it doesn't look good.

I've been wicked busy at work. Things are just nuts and half the people are on vacation, making it a lot worse. Thank god it is Friday tomorrow. Why do the short weeks always seem to be the longest to get through? Overall work has been 'ok' lately. I'm trying not to let stuff bother me and just go with the flow. I posted my resume online on Monster. Maybe I'll get a hit or two...

I've been getting into Podcasts lately. I heard about them a few months ago on a Soxaholix post but never got into them. It was too hard to find ones that I liked. Now that you can find them right in iTunes, it is real easy to find interesting Podcasts. So far my favorites are The Daily Sourcecode, Accident Hash and 5 Minutes with Wichita.

I made an area for Podcasts in my link area.

I would like to try to do a Podcast someday. Maybe I could do it on my hour long drive to work. It could be called The Commuter Hell Podcast and I could talk about all the near accidents I witness on an almost daily basis. I could be like a play by play announcer for Rt 495.

Hows this sound?

"Oh, look at that! That person nearly got killed by that lady in the SUV talking on her phone!"

or,

"Why are we stopping? Oh, accident on the other side of the highway. Carnage. Very interesting. Everyone stop and look."

I'd need to get recording equipment and somewhere to record the files first. Another reason to get that new hard drive I guess... First things first.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Save early, save often

Ok, I had a big long post all written up and then I closed the damn browser window. Post gone. Cryin' won't bring it back. Save early, save often, dammit.

Anyway, I was going to tell you about some podcasts I've become interested in and some other junk, but now I'm tired and I don't have the energy to try and re-write my post.

I signed up on Audioscrobbler so if you want to see what I'm listening to, go check it out.

Also, I'm displaying my IM status on the blog now, so if you want to chat me up, feel free, especially during a game. I'd be happy to chat with ya!

Ok that's it. Sorry this is lame now. My earlier post was much more entertaining but I deleted it because I'm a tool.

I need to sleep but I'm staying up watching The Red Sox / Rangers game. It seems like whenever I go to sleep thinking the Red Sox have a game all wrapped up, I wake up to find they've blown the game, so now I'm going to see this one through to the end. This is a trend that cannot continue.

7-4 Sox, bottom of the 8th. Wake. Wake. Wake. Wake... Will he pitch a complete game? We'll see (if I can keep my eyes open).

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Sox / Nerd convergence

Baseball related nerdery:

Mac OS 10.4:

iCal: Download the Red Sox (or your favorite team's) schedule into iCal from here or here.

Next, get this Dashboard widget and turn on the Sox calendar. You'll never wonder when the next game start is again.

This next one is my favorite: MLB Scoreboard. This is a very well done widget and the guy that made it is always working on it to make it better. Pick your team or let is scroll through several teams. It shows innings, who's on base, balls and strikes, the score... the thing kicks ass.

Windoze users, don't think I forgot about you. (I sit in front of Windows all day long at the Software Factory.) Since there is nothing like Dashboard built into Windows, you're going to have to shell out 20 bucks and get Konfabulator. To be honest, it's not as good as the Dashboard, but it's as close as you can get on Windows. There are a lot of useful Widgets that you can download, including a Baseball Scoreboard Widget. Check out the gallery and see what interests you.

Ok thats enough nerdery for today. It's nice outside. Get out there before it starts raining again!!

By the way, Wells vs. Moose tonight at 8:00. Wells has all day to recover from whatever he did Saturday Night... I am deferring further commentary to ms_brightside, since I agree with everything she said in her last post which also caused me to wonder, why can't I find a job that is wicked easy and pays a shitload of money? ;-)

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