2006/11/30
Back to blogger
So I created a Blog at Wordpress, but in my recent phase of "must perfect my computing enviroment" I decided that Google=good. I thought it would be smart to use google services when possible, so I pointed laydros.org back to blogger. It has been a good service, and they have a new beta with some extra features. The old posts are still at Wordpress, including a big article on pencils. Later I may try to move some over.
Justice is served.... to an alligator
What happens when a Florida druggie gets cracked out and decides to go seduce an alligator? Well, it's pretty funny, if you are as cynical as me.
Adrian Apgar was heard yelling for help at about 4 AM and when police arrived they found the man, naked, on crack cocaine, and partially digested by an alligator.
Best line of the article:
Judd said Apgar told deputies he was smoking crack-cocaine at the adjacent park, but it was unclear why he was naked or why he was attacked by the alligator.
Link
2006/11/28
History of Zelda
This is a great video for the Legend of Zelda fan. It's certainly not short or for the non-geek, but it is quite tastefully done. I'm pretty excited about the Wii and hope they drop a bit in price soon so I can excuse picking one up. As many people my age I have a soft spot for Nintendo and wouldn't mind seeing them take the lead in the "next-gen console wars" or at least get a bigger presence than they have had over the N64 and Gamecube eras.
We take a look at the humble beginnings of the boy dressed in green, and the adventures he found on his quest for greatness It continues with a look at Link’s return to his roots, and his first handheld outing. Then we find Link riding his way onto the Nintendo 64, and becomes the ultimate master of disguise. After that Link brings us back to the handheld market where Link meets a few new friends. Lastly, ventures onto the GameCube where he undergoes an extreme makeover, and meets a talking cap that’ll change his world perspective. | |
2006/06/17
Flock beta
Flock is a "social browser" built on the Firefox code base, which integrates blogging, photo sharing with Flickr or Photobucket, "favorites" (a.k.a. bookmarks) using del.icio.us or Shadows, and other collaborative features. Last November I took a look at an early Flock release, and found it to be interesting, if a little bit rough. The Flock folks have been hard at work, and the new Flock beta release looks solid enough to be a must for users who spend a great deal of time blogging, sharing pictures, or using services like del.icio.us.
When the original Flock developer's preivew (which meant alpha) came out I tried it and didn't think it really did anything that I wanted. I had seen a little bit of praise for the new beta when it came out so I decided to try it again. I haven't really had a good chance to take it through the paces yet, but so far I like it alot. I'm using the blogging feature right now to make this post, and all I did was highlight the text in that newsforge article, and then right click on it and choose "blog this" and it popped up a nice window for me to work in. It will now, at least in theory, just send this right to my blogger account without me needing to do anything. It also interfaces your bookmarks with Del.icio.us, and your picture with flickr. I'll see how things go.
Blogged with Flock
2006/05/04
Almost.... there.......
One exam down. Now all I have left are the corrections for my FEWAS and 2 exams. I took my Ag Mktg exam today, and I still have Interpersonal Comm on Monday and Law on Tues. I know I made a solid A in my English class, but I honestly don't know how I'm doing in the other three, I doubt I have an A in any, and I doubt I'm going to fail any, but it could go either way. If I can manage to come out of this semester without failing anything and without totally slaughtering my GPA, I think I'll be ok.
I'm just ready for more of a break from this crap. Most of all I want to spend more time with Katy, but I also want to do more with the church, and I want to be able to watch primetime TV, and go to see music shows once in a while. Some things like TV seem so mundane, and I don't really watch much TV, but it just sucks because so much "stuff" happens in the evenings, and I just don't have evenings.
On another subject, NC State has hopefully found a basketball coach. Sidney Lowe was on the 1983 NCAA winning team. He's been an unsuccessful head coach for two NBA teams, and a very successful assistant more recently with the Pistons. So we will see how he does. Good to have an NC State grad in there, but hopefully his coaching will be more student oriented that Jimmy V.
I'm just ready for more of a break from this crap. Most of all I want to spend more time with Katy, but I also want to do more with the church, and I want to be able to watch primetime TV, and go to see music shows once in a while. Some things like TV seem so mundane, and I don't really watch much TV, but it just sucks because so much "stuff" happens in the evenings, and I just don't have evenings.
On another subject, NC State has hopefully found a basketball coach. Sidney Lowe was on the 1983 NCAA winning team. He's been an unsuccessful head coach for two NBA teams, and a very successful assistant more recently with the Pistons. So we will see how he does. Good to have an NC State grad in there, but hopefully his coaching will be more student oriented that Jimmy V.
2006/04/26
5 things
Every now and then the internet does turn up to have something good. This comes from a pretty good site called 43folders. It is about organization, and is named after a part of David Allen's Getting Things Done program. This though, is the authors site with lists of 5 things. http://www.5ives.com/
The one that made me totally laugh outloud was the fifth in his list of Five requests with regard to my eventual death, the last one threw me out of my chair:
1. If it happens that my death occurred in some public place, there is to be no ersatz memorial created on that location comprised of teddy bears, mylar balloons, or terrible poems written on posterboard in pink Magic Marker™. This is very, very important.
2. If you choose to have any kind of service “memorializing” me, there will be no use of the phrase “looking down on us.”
3. At no time is any outraged friend or family member to appear in public looking indignant and holding up a framed photograph of me.
4. If you refer to anything I’ve ever done as “brave,” “courageous,” or “special,” I will personally come back from the grave and shit angry ghost turds in your coffee pot.
5. If the resources exist and the weather is fine, I’d prefer to have my remains torn asunder by vicious dogs while “Tusk” is performed by an enthusiastic high school marching band.
I personally have fairly similar feelings about a lot of it. While I believe that I might be "looking down" I think it is somewhat cheezy, and I pretty purely agree with the other 4, including the last one.
The one that made me totally laugh outloud was the fifth in his list of Five requests with regard to my eventual death, the last one threw me out of my chair:
1. If it happens that my death occurred in some public place, there is to be no ersatz memorial created on that location comprised of teddy bears, mylar balloons, or terrible poems written on posterboard in pink Magic Marker™. This is very, very important.
2. If you choose to have any kind of service “memorializing” me, there will be no use of the phrase “looking down on us.”
3. At no time is any outraged friend or family member to appear in public looking indignant and holding up a framed photograph of me.
4. If you refer to anything I’ve ever done as “brave,” “courageous,” or “special,” I will personally come back from the grave and shit angry ghost turds in your coffee pot.
5. If the resources exist and the weather is fine, I’d prefer to have my remains torn asunder by vicious dogs while “Tusk” is performed by an enthusiastic high school marching band.
I personally have fairly similar feelings about a lot of it. While I believe that I might be "looking down" I think it is somewhat cheezy, and I pretty purely agree with the other 4, including the last one.
2006/04/17
Where did we come from
Today, for some reason, sitting with the dogs, my mind wandered to this place it doesn't go very often, and I try not to go to often. I am very much a Christian. But I try to also be open minded and see things from others points of view too. And one place that neither Christian's or aethiests have any explination. If God (of any religion, not just Muslim-Judeo-Christian) put us here, where did he/she/it come from? If the scientific explinations are true, and there was a big bang, and bam, stuff started happening, where did that initial stuff come from.
Doesn't everybody think about this? If so, why don't people talk about it more. If not, why doesn't everybody think about it.
Doesn't everybody think about this? If so, why don't people talk about it more. If not, why doesn't everybody think about it.
2006/04/16
Wasting time again
Again I have a paper to work on, and more importantly a few case's to analyse, and I'm doing other stuff...
This seemed to be fairly accurate, but I think one thing about this is my current state exaggerates how I usually am. I am more stressed right now that I have been in the past, and I tried to answer the questions in this quiz with the current in mind:
Take Free Advanced Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com
Stability results were low which suggests you are very worrying, insecure, emotional, and anxious.
Orderliness results were moderately low which suggests you are, at times, overly flexible, improvised, and fun seeking at the expense of reliability, work ethic, and long term accomplishment.
Extraversion results were medium which suggests you are moderately talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting.
Just two more weeks of class, then 3 exams, then I'm done for the semseter....
This seemed to be fairly accurate, but I think one thing about this is my current state exaggerates how I usually am. I am more stressed right now that I have been in the past, and I tried to answer the questions in this quiz with the current in mind:
| Advanced Global Personality Test Results
|
personality tests by similarminds.com
Stability results were low which suggests you are very worrying, insecure, emotional, and anxious.
Orderliness results were moderately low which suggests you are, at times, overly flexible, improvised, and fun seeking at the expense of reliability, work ethic, and long term accomplishment.
Extraversion results were medium which suggests you are moderately talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting.
Just two more weeks of class, then 3 exams, then I'm done for the semseter....
2006/04/12
I guess I'm stalling
I'm in the NCSU library with my laptop, hoping to make some progress on my Business Communication final paper. In reality I've got little more than a page done. As usual, I'm struggling to focus. I'm more interested in reading stuff on the web, looking at what people are doing around me, etc. But this semester is almost over. Just about 4 more weeks.
2006/02/26
Missy and Milo
A couple of weeks ago Katy and I got a new puppy. He was born on Katy's birthday, which is kinda neat. He is a German Shorthaired Pointer like Missy, and has a similar level of energy. They are nuts running all through the house, biting each other, growling, and causeing a rukus. But he's ofcourse cute, and it will be nice to have him from a puppy for training, unlike Missy who we got when she was about 2.
New Toys
So I finally got a new laptop. In fact, this is the first new computer I have ever purchaced. Everything else I have bought second hand. It's nice. Turion ML-32, 512MB ram, 80gig HDD, and the ATI 200M turns out to be nothing bad for video. It was fairly cheap, and I really haven't touched my desktop for much of anything since. That was my hope, to basically just stick with the laptop, and it seems to be working out. I wanted to get something from Apple, but I don't want a PowerPC, because they are moving to Intel chips, and the only Intel laptop is about $2k. So it just wasn't time yet. Hopefully this will get me through school, then I can get something different.
On a seemingly different end of the spectrum, I also found out this week about Moleskine notebooks. As I look further into this, I realize there is a whole culture around it. If you do a search on flickr for moleskine, it is interesting what you will see. They are these overpriced notebooks that people seem to love. Most people use them for one of 3 things: journal, sketchbook, or organizer. They company claims that they are the same notebooks that great minds like Van Gogh, Hemingway, and Picaso used, but in reality they are just making a similar product, that was previously offered by a number of makers. But nevertheless, I'm hooked. They are nice, and very functional. After first learning about them I explained to someone that they are the Macintosh of notebooks, and sure enough a lot of the pictures I have seen on flickr have also featured either an iPod or some sort of Apple computer.
On a seemingly different end of the spectrum, I also found out this week about Moleskine notebooks. As I look further into this, I realize there is a whole culture around it. If you do a search on flickr for moleskine, it is interesting what you will see. They are these overpriced notebooks that people seem to love. Most people use them for one of 3 things: journal, sketchbook, or organizer. They company claims that they are the same notebooks that great minds like Van Gogh, Hemingway, and Picaso used, but in reality they are just making a similar product, that was previously offered by a number of makers. But nevertheless, I'm hooked. They are nice, and very functional. After first learning about them I explained to someone that they are the Macintosh of notebooks, and sure enough a lot of the pictures I have seen on flickr have also featured either an iPod or some sort of Apple computer.
2005/12/15
Christmas List
I'll put my christmas list on here again this year. At the top:
Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir
Star Wars Episode 3
The Kevin Smith movies I still don't have:
-Clerks
-Mallrats
-Chasing Amy
-Jersey Girl
new toolbox
New Third Day CD
Peter Gabriel The Hits
Beck Mellow Gold
Nirvana Boxset
Johnny Cash Live at San Quentin and Folsom
iTunes Store Giftcard
Happiness for all the little girls and boys!!
Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir
Star Wars Episode 3
The Kevin Smith movies I still don't have:
-Clerks
-Mallrats
-Chasing Amy
-Jersey Girl
new toolbox
New Third Day CD
Peter Gabriel The Hits
Beck Mellow Gold
Nirvana Boxset
Johnny Cash Live at San Quentin and Folsom
iTunes Store Giftcard
Happiness for all the little girls and boys!!
2005/12/07
This is too funny
This is great. It's a list of 213 things someone in the military was instructed not to do. It made me think of the stuff Jody has to tell me I can't do at Kinko's all the time. Especially:
87. If the thought of something makes me giggle for longer than 15 seconds, I am to assume that I am not allowed to do it.
Check it out here
The explination of how these rules came down to the author:
a) I did myself, and either got in trouble or commended. (I had a Major shake my hand for the piss bottle thing, for instance.)
b) I witnessed another soldier do it. (Like the Sergeant we had, that basically went insane, and crucified some dead mice.)
c) Was spontaneously informed I was not allowed to do. (Like start a porn studio.)
d) Was the result of a clarification of the above. (“What about especially patriotic porn?”)
e) I was just minding my own business, when something happened. (“Schwarz...what is *that*?” said the Sgt, as he pointed to the back of my car? "Um....a rubber sheep...I can explain why that's there....")
To explain how I've stayed out of jail/alive/not beaten up too badly..... I'm funny, so they let me live.
I've got to paste in a couple more:
36. Can't have flashbacks to wars I was not in. (The Spanish-American War isn't over).
52. Not allowed to yell “Take that Cobra” at the rifle range.
55. An order to “Put Kiwi on my boots” does *not* involve fruit.
56. An order to “Make my Boots black and shiny” does not involve electrical tape.
119. I cannot arrest children for being rude.
130. “I’m drunk” is a bad answer to any question posed by my commander.
137. Should not show up at the front gate wearing part of a Russian uniform, messily drunk.
138. Even if my commander did it.
87. If the thought of something makes me giggle for longer than 15 seconds, I am to assume that I am not allowed to do it.
Check it out here
The explination of how these rules came down to the author:
a) I did myself, and either got in trouble or commended. (I had a Major shake my hand for the piss bottle thing, for instance.)
b) I witnessed another soldier do it. (Like the Sergeant we had, that basically went insane, and crucified some dead mice.)
c) Was spontaneously informed I was not allowed to do. (Like start a porn studio.)
d) Was the result of a clarification of the above. (“What about especially patriotic porn?”)
e) I was just minding my own business, when something happened. (“Schwarz...what is *that*?” said the Sgt, as he pointed to the back of my car? "Um....a rubber sheep...I can explain why that's there....")
To explain how I've stayed out of jail/alive/not beaten up too badly..... I'm funny, so they let me live.
I've got to paste in a couple more:
36. Can't have flashbacks to wars I was not in. (The Spanish-American War isn't over).
52. Not allowed to yell “Take that Cobra” at the rifle range.
55. An order to “Put Kiwi on my boots” does *not* involve fruit.
56. An order to “Make my Boots black and shiny” does not involve electrical tape.
119. I cannot arrest children for being rude.
130. “I’m drunk” is a bad answer to any question posed by my commander.
137. Should not show up at the front gate wearing part of a Russian uniform, messily drunk.
138. Even if my commander did it.
2005/10/20
Katy
So with the house coming up and more importantly getting married, Katy and I spend a little time trying to hash things out. With a couple of things tonight we had to reach a compromise. I told her that I felt shot down, and that I was realizing I will have to deal with being shot down a lot. I also told her that I want to make sure I don't become the husband that deals with being shot down many times, then after 15 years doesn't want it anymore. This obviously led to a great deal of discussion, and we kind of felt better in the end. Of course since neither she nor I have been married before, we don't really know what we will have to deal with, what we will fight over, etc, but I do really think we are trying our hardest to do and work out the right things. I think we are a bit more realistic than many couples.
But after coming home, and listening to some of my old bands music, and thinking about what is really important to me, I realized a couple of things. First off, I'm not really that guy. I have a big problem with getting hung up on things in a moment, but it is EXTREMELY rare that she and I disagree on something and after stepping back and thinking about it I still consider it an issue.
Also, she's smarter than that. I think about things that have happened between us over more than 5 years of dating and more than a decade of knowing each other, and it seems like she usually knows what's going on. It's an awesome thing. We will still fight and have trouble, but in the same way your parent's did things that upset you and you later look back and realize they really were doing what was best for you, she does these things a lot. I think she knows a lot more about what I'm thinking and doing that I even do, much less what I think she knows.
It's easy to take things like that for granted. I'm really blessed. I think it's bad to go off on how I don't deserve her, but I do sometimes wonder if I'm getting the better end of the deal.
And about the old Of music. I don't listen to it often, but I put on an old recording of a practice, (that I don't think anyone else has) and the demo type thing that we did, and I realized something I hadn't in years..... we were pretty good. I was always kinda the weakest link musician wise, but even my parts weren't bad, and going back and listening to Nick's song writing, and some of the little licks and hooks Mike and Shwin were doing was a lot of fun. We were all very jazz inspired and I guess I forgot how much we broke out of the modern rock mold and added some snazzy little bits that to me separate a good performance of a song from just a good song being reproduced. I miss that stuff a lot. Nick has sorta gone his own way now, but I feel like I still have a very good bond with Mike and Shwin.
I'm sure Katy will be able to tell me when I should try to go down that path again............
But after coming home, and listening to some of my old bands music, and thinking about what is really important to me, I realized a couple of things. First off, I'm not really that guy. I have a big problem with getting hung up on things in a moment, but it is EXTREMELY rare that she and I disagree on something and after stepping back and thinking about it I still consider it an issue.
Also, she's smarter than that. I think about things that have happened between us over more than 5 years of dating and more than a decade of knowing each other, and it seems like she usually knows what's going on. It's an awesome thing. We will still fight and have trouble, but in the same way your parent's did things that upset you and you later look back and realize they really were doing what was best for you, she does these things a lot. I think she knows a lot more about what I'm thinking and doing that I even do, much less what I think she knows.
It's easy to take things like that for granted. I'm really blessed. I think it's bad to go off on how I don't deserve her, but I do sometimes wonder if I'm getting the better end of the deal.
And about the old Of music. I don't listen to it often, but I put on an old recording of a practice, (that I don't think anyone else has) and the demo type thing that we did, and I realized something I hadn't in years..... we were pretty good. I was always kinda the weakest link musician wise, but even my parts weren't bad, and going back and listening to Nick's song writing, and some of the little licks and hooks Mike and Shwin were doing was a lot of fun. We were all very jazz inspired and I guess I forgot how much we broke out of the modern rock mold and added some snazzy little bits that to me separate a good performance of a song from just a good song being reproduced. I miss that stuff a lot. Nick has sorta gone his own way now, but I feel like I still have a very good bond with Mike and Shwin.
I'm sure Katy will be able to tell me when I should try to go down that path again............
2005/10/18
"But it doesn't looks smaller"
OK, I really have all sorts of things I want to post, but because I have so much going on to post about, I haven't had as much time to post. But this is funny.
I've been pretty burned out at Kinko's lately. I'm starting to fall victim to a lot of the attitudes I hear Kinko's people talk about. Saturday night a lady came in with an oversize. I had seen one of our guys helping her the night before. As we often see she brought in an 8.5x11 piece of paper (probably designed in MS Word) and wanted it blown up to "poster" size. There is no official "poster" size. Many are either 18x24 or 24x36, but there certainly is no standard. So she had told the employee the night before to make it the same size as the promotional signs FedEx sends us to hang in the windows, because our in-house printing capabilities aren't good enough for us to use for promotion.
She has another oversize that she has somehow mounted to a precut 20"x30" board she bought at Wal-Mart. She shows me the one done for her the previous night, then shows me the board, and says "See, I told him this was too big for poster size."
At this point she has already lost me. Being the jaded punk I am, if someone gets stuck on this "poster size" pet peeve of mine, they have already lost my good favor. But I try to make people happy. At this point I told her I could try to fix it for her, but I couldn't do it as a free redo if the employee last night had done what she asked for to the best of his ability. She told me she asked him to size it to the promotional banners in the windows. I walked over to the window, pulled out my tape measurer, and it was 40"x30". That's TWICE the 20"x30" she wanted. I pointed this out and her response was "But I don't think they are that big!"
?????
Befuddled, and a bit offended someone of the same species as me could be quite so dense, I held out my tape measurer for her to use. She of course didn't like that and said that she didn't need to measure it, she just needed her copy made right.
So I made the copy for her, got it to exactly 20"x30", and didn't even charge her. It just wasn't worth it. I honestly felt kinda bad for her after realizing her capability to reason.
Bleh.
I've been pretty burned out at Kinko's lately. I'm starting to fall victim to a lot of the attitudes I hear Kinko's people talk about. Saturday night a lady came in with an oversize. I had seen one of our guys helping her the night before. As we often see she brought in an 8.5x11 piece of paper (probably designed in MS Word) and wanted it blown up to "poster" size. There is no official "poster" size. Many are either 18x24 or 24x36, but there certainly is no standard. So she had told the employee the night before to make it the same size as the promotional signs FedEx sends us to hang in the windows, because our in-house printing capabilities aren't good enough for us to use for promotion.
She has another oversize that she has somehow mounted to a precut 20"x30" board she bought at Wal-Mart. She shows me the one done for her the previous night, then shows me the board, and says "See, I told him this was too big for poster size."
At this point she has already lost me. Being the jaded punk I am, if someone gets stuck on this "poster size" pet peeve of mine, they have already lost my good favor. But I try to make people happy. At this point I told her I could try to fix it for her, but I couldn't do it as a free redo if the employee last night had done what she asked for to the best of his ability. She told me she asked him to size it to the promotional banners in the windows. I walked over to the window, pulled out my tape measurer, and it was 40"x30". That's TWICE the 20"x30" she wanted. I pointed this out and her response was "But I don't think they are that big!"
?????
Befuddled, and a bit offended someone of the same species as me could be quite so dense, I held out my tape measurer for her to use. She of course didn't like that and said that she didn't need to measure it, she just needed her copy made right.
So I made the copy for her, got it to exactly 20"x30", and didn't even charge her. It just wasn't worth it. I honestly felt kinda bad for her after realizing her capability to reason.
Bleh.
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