Blog Posts
My List
My list? As any fans of “Friends” knows, Ross had a list. It was a list of women he was allowed to have sex with no matter what relationship he was in.
I have a list of my own. My list is very different though. My list is a collection of people I would like to invite to my house for burgers and beers on the deck. It’s a list of people I want to just hang out with.
The people on the list strike me as being interesting, but also genuinely friendly. People I would actually like to spend some time with.
Being on this list should be considered the highest honor.
- Michael Keaton
- Kurt Russel
- Nathan Fillion
Since the list is such an honor, I really try to limit it. Of course there are people I would like to hang out with. The problem is that a lot of the people I would like to hang out with are probably dicks. As interesting as he might be, George Lucas strikes me a a dick.
( * UPDATE * )
As of today, we have a new person being admitted to the list! His name is Ray Stevenson. He played (most excellently) Titus Pullo on the HBO series ROME. Of all the characters on the series, his is the most worthy of my list. I’ve heard many interviews with Ray (Mr. Stevenson) and he seems like an extension of Titus Pullo (or vice versa).
As such, he is a welcomed member of my list. Mr. Stevenson, just get in touch with me anytime and I’ll guarantee you a sleeper sofa, a firepit, excellent conversation and a boatload of beer and cocktails.
The same goes for the rest of you on my list!
Quitting is very satisfying
Hobbies are fun. People have all kinds of hobbies. A lot of people want a hobby but don’t know what to do. This is a problem. Sadly, I think I’m one of those people.
I would like a life-long hobby. Something I can get really good at but never master. Something I can be proud of, but always be challenged by. I’m not really a collector… I’m more of a do-er.
I tried my hand at woodworking for a while. I was really in to making puzzle boxes. That was fun. But after a while, it didn’t stick. I’ve tried cooking. That’s pretty good too, but again… I quit after a little while. For a stretch, I was taking long-ish road trips on my scooter. I would video myself and take pictures along the way. After the trip, I would edit it all into a movie. That was fun, but I haven’t done anything like that in almost two years.
I’m currently on a kick of making various cocktails and taking pictures of them. That seems pretty satisfying… at least for the moment. I wonder if I’ll get bored of this too. History would suggest I will.
That led me to start thinking… maybe my hobby is actually “trying out hobbies”. Maybe I’m more enamored with fluttering around experiencing a lot of different things. If I stick on anything in particular for too long, I won’t be trying out other things. Ha… sort of like flipping channels on TV just to see what else I’m not watching.
In that case, quitting is pretty good. Quitting woodworking, quitting scooter movies, quitting being a foodie. Normally, quitting things is no good. I certainly try to teach my kids that you need to see things through to the end. But I’m not quitting a project in the middle or anything like that.
Yep… quitting is very satisfying.
Hey Hollywood… gimme a damn break!
I just read an article about how they might reboot Batman after the next movie comes out. Are you kidding me?! They’re already talking about milking the cow AGAIN before the next movie comes out?
They do this all the damn time! It shouldn’t come as any big surprise that Hollywood is out of ideas. They’ve been telling the same six or seven stories over and over for twenty years now. They’re starting the Spiderman series over already and it’s already setup with a sequel in the works. The FIRST MOVIE ISN’T EVEN DONE AND THEY’RE MAKING A SEQUEL! C’mon man!
Do you wonder why Harry Potter is so successful? Part of it is that it speaks to children and to the inner child of adults. Part of it is that the series has grown up with its audience. I think a lot of it is that it was something new! But hey… if Harry Potter works, so would something almost identical! How about Percy Jackson?!
Wait a second! Independence Day made tons of money… what about Battlefield: Los Angeles?! YEAH!
The worst part is that we keep feeding the beast by going to these stink-tacular pieces of garbage. It’s really too bad that the “indie scene” takes themselves so seriously and puts out depressing, over dramatic sob-fests. They’re the ones that can come out with adventurous movies. And by adventurous, I mean movies that might not do well and have the massive broad spectrum appeal. They take chances.
Until a mega-company like Disney comes along and buys them up.
[UPDATE] – Now it seems that dipping into the 80′s movies is the method of regurgitating everything that’s in fashion today. In addition to remaking Footloose and The Smurfs (which wasn’t a movie to start with, and shouldn’t be now) they’re remaking War Games. Good god. Why stop there? How about remaking The Usual Suspects, Godfather or Gone With the Wind?
It’s my fault, but you’re still stupid
I got a text message from AT&T this morning warning me that I’ve used up 65% of my data plan for this billing period. I didn’t sign up for the gouging 2Gb plan so that means I’ve used 130Mb of data since April 14th.
Huh? I don’t think so.
I signed into the AT&T Website to check things out. I saw that, according to AT&T, I sent 52Mb yesterday at 4:50. There’s a lot wrong there. First of all, I didn’t send 52Mb of anything from my phone, ever. EVER. (more…)
Sniffing out posers
Why, oh why do I have such a limit of patience for posers? I’m really a pretty moderate guy. I tend to let things go and not dwell on them. But when someone is really in my face about things that I know about, it gets under my skin. Especially when it’s obvious that they don’t have a damn clue what they’re talking about.
You probably know that I’m a computer guy. I’ll blow my own horn for a second here and say I’m a damn good computer guy. So when someone comes up to me presenting themselves as computer guys, I have a certain level of expectation. I expect that they can do certain things. I understand that everyone has specialities, but when you label yourself a “computer guy”, I expect that you should be able to get pictures off your phone.
The situation I’m faced with at the moment is this doofus sitting next to me. He’ claiming to be the end-all be-all of computer guys. I’m not sure why he feels so qualified. I guess he probably installed MS-Word on his computer all by himself. Whatever.
He got all up in my face about how much he LOVES Android and HATES iPhones. He lauded how great the interface of Android is and how bad working with iPhones is. Huh?
I should have known better, but I asked him why he felt that way. He went into how impossible it was to get pictures out of the iPhone so that they could be imported into a Word document. Again, I say… huh? He went on to talk about how after searching the internet for hours and hours, he finally found them in an encrypted directory (or some other bullshit… this dude has no idea what he’s talking about). It was at this point I wrote him off as a 100% pure poser.
The worst part is that I’m stuck with him for another 10 hours. <sigh/>
Give me strength.
Brandy Louis
Johnny’s Italian Steakhouse hosts cooking classes on the first Tuesday of every month. My dad has taken me twice. It’s been outstanding both times. You get an evening hosted by the very charming Chef Rod accompanied by a full meal. It’s really a great way to spend an evening.
Here’s one of the recipes we got.
Brandy Louis
Ingredients:
- Mayonnaise, 1 cup
- Boetje’s Dijon Mustard, 1 TBL
- Worcestershire, 2 tsp
- Tabasco Sauce, 1/2 tsp
- Green Onion, chopped, 1 TBL
- Ketchup, 2 TBL
- Brandy, 2 TBL
Procedure
- In bowl combine all ingredients and stir to incorporate
Serve with chilled shrimp
Hey Network Administrators… suck it.
Network administrators are nearly the most useless and annoying people in any IT organization. They have nothing to do and they seem to be notorious tinkerers. Playing with networks is like playing with their toys. Their favorite toy is SECURITY. They just looove to tinker with security settings. I think it gives them some sort of bizarre fetish satisfaction to be able to screw with peoples lives; all in the name of SECURITY.
Transformation of a conservative
If someone had told me six weeks ago that I would have been marching in a union protest, I would have thought they were crazy. I’m a pretty conservative guy, politically speaking. My general sense of things can be summed up pretty simply.
We need less government. Hey government, stay outta my way and outta my business.
It’s no big secret that when I joined the technical college as a teacher, I was automatically signed into their union. I thought that was hilarious! ME! Part of the teachers union! That’s like saying Yoda joined up with the Empire because he got a job as a poet. Whatever.
So I was part of the teachers union. It honestly didn’t impact me at all one way or the other. If anything, it’s been a hinderance to me since the contract the Part Time Teachers union has states that newbie teachers don’t get offered classes as much or as frequently. Okay. Fine… they were taking a portion of my paychecks. That’s cool.
Then I joined the state of Wisconsin. I’m just about to quit here. I’m currently a computer guy working on a variety of projects. Again, I was thrust into a union. I’m sure I’ve enjoyed a lot of the benefits which have been negotiated for me. Again, the unions take a portion of my paycheck. At least now, I have a lot of vacation time to show for it.
Funny how a GOP guy can still be a donkey
Then we have an election and usher in (along with the rest of the nation) a whole bunch of conservatives. Some say it was because of the lunacy going on in Washington. Whatever the reason, I was happy. Like I said, I’m a conservative. Just keep government crap outta my shit and I’ll be a happy guy.
Scott Walker is a freakin’ nut bag though.
I thought we had elected a guy to come in and make sense of things in a way that makes sense. This guy is 25 pounds of conservative crazy in a 5 pound bucket. Not even Rush Limbaugh is nutty like this freak.
He comes in to the state and within a month (after the Packers won the Super Bowl) goes straight for the nuclear bomb. He didn’t pussyfoot around and slowly implement incremental changes. He just said “How much dynamite do we have? Okay, let’s use it all.”
When he put out his budget proposal, it was immediately apparent to EVERYONE that he was going after the unions. He wanted us to pay for our retirement and health care. He said (and continues to say) that we in the public sector are getting special treatment and that it has to end.
What a load of shit.
When I left the private sector to come to work for the state, I took an 8% pay cut. Let me restate that… an 8% PAY CUT. My pay was lowered by 8% for the privilege of serving the people of the state. Bear in mind that this isn’t some anecdotal random nobody. This is me and my personal experience.
I was somewhat compensated for the lower salary by the balancing out of the retirement and health care being so much cheaper. It didn’t cover things completely… my pay checks are still significantly lower than they were. Now this power-drunk, disconnected weirdo wants to take MORE money from my paycheck. I’m sorry but I just can’t afford to work here anymore. I’m quitting to go back to the private sector. Again, my new salary will be 9% higher. Don’t let anyone tell you public and private sector people make the same money (much less that public sector people make more).
Let’s stay focused though. All along, Walker’s been saying that he has to crush unions because it’s a fiscal issue. It’s a money thing. Naturally, this nut bag can’t be trusted. He’s shown that over and over. I’m not even talking about the phony phone call from that blogger guy. I’m just talking about what he’s laying out and threatening. If he doesn’t get his way with the budget, he’s going to lay off 1,500 people?! Guess what! After he gets his way, it’s not going to do as much as he thinks and those people are STILL GOING TO GET LAID OFF! This fat fool also kept talking about how he wanted the democrats to come back from Illinois to negotiate the bill. He really doesn’t think much of anyone. Can you really tell me he was going to negotiate? HELL NO. The republicans don’t need a single democrat vote to pass this travesty. They only need them present to hold the vote. Telling us he wanted them to negotiate is akin to saying “You have to come to my house so I can murder you, but don’t worry… I’ll only use a gun and I might not murder you.” How disingenuous can you get?
Well last night on March 9th, 2011, the truth was finally revealed. To nobodies surprise, it turns out that crushing the unions actually isn’t a fiscal matter after all. The republicans decided that since they can’t bully the democrats back from Illinois, they’d just separate out the union crushing portions and get that passed. I hate terms like “railroaded” and “rammed” but they’re really the most appropriate terms for what happened. In just a few minutes, the republicans railroaded the revised legislation through.
I’m embarrassed and ashamed. I still maintain my stance that government should just stay out of my business. The thought that I might be lumped in with Walker is terrifying to me.
I’m too worked up to continue right now.
[facebook]
A very distressing concept…
I just had a very disturbing thought. I was reading about how the new iPad is going to have a curved surface and a camera. I have an iPad and am very happy with it. For me, it’s not a laptop replacement, but I’d wager it gets nearly as much use as my regular computers (for non-development work of course).
My troubling thought is this… I’m just about ready to get off the “new technology” wagon. *gasp!* I know… I’ve pretty much always been an early adopter, but things are really going too fast for me now.
I have a pretty serious computer rig at home and am really happy with it. I always feel like I need more hard drive space, but the computer itself is rarely taxed in terms of performance. Really, the only time it pegs out on the CPU performance is when I’m doing video transcoding. Other than that, the thing hardly ever breaks a sweat.
I have a laptop that is pretty much my “main” computer. It gets used every single day. It’s where I do my iPhone development. It’s what I use to listen to music at work and what I take with me everywhere.
I have an iPad. Like my laptop, it also comes with me everywhere. The difference is that the iPad actually gets used while I’m out. I have to be facing a pretty serious task to break out the laptop while I’m out. I’ll bust the iPad out just to screw around (most of the time, I’m just screwing around).
I have an iPhone. Unlike the laptop and iPad, the iPhone has a data connection wherever I am. If I’m at a football game, I can check the weather or upload pictures (also taken with the iPhone). If I’m at a scout meeting, I can check my email or update Facebook with it. I can’t necessarily do this with the laptop or iPad unless I know there’s a Wi-Fi signal around.
My point is this… my bases are pretty much covered. There’s really nothing I need to do or want to do that I can’t already do. The one exception is photography. I’d like a decent camera to be able to take really nice photos. My iPhone and my point-and-shoot just don’t cut it.
But outside of that, I’m satisfied.
An iPad with a camera? I’m sure someone will come up with an application that will make it super awesome. Being able to load pictures on to the device via an SD slot? I don’t do that now and wouldn’t want to. My workflows have me putting my pictures on the big computer for storage and processing.
I never thought the day would come where I’d say it, but I think I’m going to coast with what I have for the foreseeable future.
Sometimes you have to start over
I’ve been getting my standard list of bugs. Some are legitimate. Most aren’t. Today though, I got a list of bugs that reads like this…
- Doing some action, got a big bad error message
- Hit the back button and tried another action. Got another message
- Hit the back button and did something else. Got another message.
- Hit the back button and tried something. Got another message.
To me, this seems like driving your car into a tree and then trying to continue to drive.
- Driving along, hit a tree. Couldn’t drive forward anymore.
- Changed the radio station, still couldn’t drive forward
- Tried the headlights. Headlights don’t work now! Must be a bug with changing radio stations. Still couldn’t drive forward
- Unbuckled seatbelt. Still couldn’t drive forward
I’ve said it before, I’m shocked (and terrified) that these people are allowed to operate motor vehicles.