Nasty cheap vodka? Filter it!

Some people have entirely too much time on their hands…..

Seriously… I’m tired of dealing with stupid people. Basic computer concepts – it should be a mandatory class for anyone who is planning on interacting with computers in this office. I should bring that up at the next meeting…

“Uh, yeah, I’d like to send everyone here to a remedial computer class at the local community college. They’ll teach them things like: the difference between files and folders; what a ‘left click’ does as opposed to a ‘right click’; how to navigate with Windows Explorer, and what you can do with that instead of trying to open EVERYTHING through Word; and more advanced topics such as definitions of Operating Systems and Applications. I’m sure if there’s time, they’ll cover how to move, copy, rename, and delete files… and the differences between those.”

That’d go over well. People normally enjoy being told they need to go a remedial anything. I think that’s a problem Microsoft has created. “Windows is so easy to use, a 4 year old can use it!” So if you try to tell someone they don’t have basic computer skills that a 4 year old already has, they’re insulted. Not my fault you landed in the shallow end of the gene pool. Really, you’re trying to open an executable file through Word, and you swear this is how you’ve always done it before. You swear you just edited this in Word… no… you didn’t and you never have.

What did these people do when all we had was DOS? “Where’s the ‘Any key’??” How did they ever survive when the copier had a paper jam and didn’t give them step-by-step instructions on a cute little LCD display?

When I start my own company, there’s going to be a basic IQ test required for employment. No drug test – I don’t care if you’re addicted to crack as long as you know the difference between a computer and a monitor, and that turning the monitor off and on does nothing.

Click some ads over there, or do a search or something. Please?

The site search function doesn’t work yet…. I’m hoping that just works itself out. And the Adsense stuff doesn’t really seem to give much relevent info on the home page…. if you click through specific posts it does though. Probably something about the way the page is actually built – pretty much, none of the contect is “here” it’s all pulled from blogger’s server or flickr.

Blockbuster is falling behind again – a bunch of movies in my queue are listed as ‘short wait’ or ‘long wait’ I’ve still been watching a ton of movies though. Hopefully they follow in Netflix’s footsteps and let you share your queue and movie ratings.

And I now think that Tivo is one of the greatest inventions ever.

There’s been crap for movies coming out lately, so I actually picked up a few TV series season DVDs. Greg the Bunny for one – I loved that show when it was on Fox. Please bring it back! C’mon, if they can bring back Family Guy, they can bring back Greg the Bunny! Penn & Teller: BS! is on some premium cable channel that I obviously don’t get. It’s like Myth Busters with a lot less science and a lot more cussing. Not something I’d make a point of watching if I had cable, but I’d stop and watch if I was flipping channels and it was on.

Speaking of TV – my ghetto ‘speaker-wire antenna’ does a much better job of getting a good picture in than the $50 amplified antenna I bought the other day. The amplified one can pull in stations from far away that my speaker wire has no chance of, but I get a much better picture for the local stations out of my home-brew antenna. I’m pretty sure using extra speaker wire is actually a step down from using a clothes hanger and foil, but it works rather well.

Watched a ton of movies, and I don’t feel like typing about all of them, so I’ll just list them, and if you really care you can ask my opinion about one (or more) of them:

Troy
K-19 – The Widowmaker
Rushmore
Great Escape
Soylent Green
Final Destination
Saw

I will say you should watch Saw – it’s one of the better thrillers I’ve seen in a long time. I’m still conflicted about the ended, but the movie as a whole I thought was great. Reminded me a lot of Seven. And Great Escape is a great Sunday afternoon movie. Based on a true story set in World War II. I put it in my queue because I caught something on TV where they went back to the site and were looking for artifacts and the tunnels and whatnot. And really, with James Garner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and more – how can you go wrong!?

I’m also going to write a list of Things Everyone Should Know. It will include items such as:

• Turn signals were a free option on your car, and bulbs are cheap to replace. Feel free to put some wear on them.
• When driving on the highway and about to miss your exit, just go to the next exit and turn around. Slamming on your brakes and diving through 3 lanes of traffic to exit is just not a good idea
• Your gas pedal is not binary – it has an infinite number of states. Feel free to use them as circumstances dictate
• When waiting on vehicle or pedestrian traffic to make a turn, you do not need to wait until they’ve cleared the intersection by 50 feet to start your turn

We’ll get to more later… TTFN.

Just hanging out in the dentist office. Just realized my phone can take black and white pictures. I can do sepia too. Aren’t you thrilled?

Ok, well I guess it was time to change stuff up a little anyway. This isn’t really as clean as I’d like it, but what can you do?

I’ll get the rest of the stuff (pictures, movies, etc) back on as I can… just hang out….

Then: Now:

Not bad eh?

And in case you ever thought “Huh… I wonder why a valentine heart looks nothing like an actual heart” I give you The Straight Dope‘s answer…

While I appreciate the action, this is still funny

Those Brits are a bunch of thieves… But Tivo is making it easy for people with their “TivoToGo” You don’t even have to hack your Tivo to transfer shows to your PC

The high one day: 63F
The high the day after: 32F

Ok, so I broke the 2001 pictures a little. I’ll fix it later. One of these days I’d like to redesign this whole site. If you’re using IE you can do the cute little picture show. If you’re using FireFox (like you should be) you’ll have to click through the show. Deal with it.

I’ve been on a Mt Dew kick lately. I have 4 free songs from Itunes – I don’t even use Itunes. I’m not sure I need 4 free songs. I could just sign up for Napster’s free trial, download a crapload of songs for free. Why should I bother try to read a 10-digit code printed on the underside of a bottle cap? You can’t even read half the letters. I don’t think it’s worth $1 of my time to try either.

Here’s your funny link for today (Google Maps) – notice the search terms…

I went and saw Million Dollar Baby the other day – fantastic movie. Clint still has that knack. And you can’t really go wrong having Morgan Freeman narrating a movie for you – Shawshank anyone? Hey, I just found a nifty trick by accident – ctrl + arrow takes you to the start or end of a word. Handy for when you want to put something in italics with Blogger (ctrl+shift+arrow to highlight, then ctrl + i to put the tags around it) Where was I? Oh, right, movie. Very powerful stuff, well done, award-winning, go see it now, etc.

Make that 5 free songs…

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow – The only thing impressive about this movie was that the entire thing was done in a blue room. You can’t really call it a blue screen at that point. I was going to put a link here to NaturalBornViewers.com so you could see someone that actually thought this was one of the greatest movies, and you could laugh at them with me. Instead you’ll just have to pretend. Why? Because every time I go to that stupid site it locks up my browser.

I finally watched The Graduate too. I think it’s just a movie that every one is supposed to have seen. Oh, and Remember the Titans which I really enjoyed. Maybe just slightly less than Friday Night Lights

Oh, and I have a Tivo now as well. Yes, I don’t even have cable, but I now own a Tivo. I’m not sure how I lived without it before. I knew I’d like it, but not this much. And it was only $50 with a $100 rebate – do the math.

Ok, I’m off to see if I can fit my ‘blogroll’ in here somewhere….

Had a call from a user the other day, thought I’d share:
“I have tried to print my open orders to Xerox printer, but nothing is coming out. Can you check to see if anything is in the cube?”

In second place, we have the guy who asked if I could change something in his ‘file’ on the terminal server. It’s amazing how leaving a few letters out can leave me scratching my head. “Oh, you mean profile!” But really, do the details matter? I mean, it’s not like a dry ink bottle and a dry ink waste bottle are all that different – they both contain basically the same thing…. right?

The award for “We Really didn’t think our domain name through” this week goes to ExpertSexChange.com and PenisLand.net

I keep getting surprised at movies I rent. I watched Without a Paddle last night and it was actually a good movie. Either that, or the with all the crap Hollywood’s been putting out lately it just seemed like a good movie. I’d give it a B- I suppose.

Manchurian Candidate was just Conspiracy Theory all over again. Still decent I guess. Another B-

Blade 2 was disappointing. I’m pretty sure the days of good trilogies are gone. I’ve heard that the third installment is even worse. As long as it doesn’t top the Matrix for “Biggest Trilogy Letdown Ever” Uhg. C+

I actually went and saw a movie at a theater! Sideways wasn’t as good as everyone kept saying it was, but it was a good story with decent acting and some funny bits to it. At least rent it when it comes out if you haven’t seen it yet. B

If you thought I had too much time on my hands, you obviously haven’t seen this guy.

Not that I ever comment on politics, but Bush is brilliant.
” Some in our country think that Social Security is a trust fund — in other words, there’s a pile of money being accumulated. That’s just simply not true. The money — payroll taxes going into the Social Security are spent. They’re spent on benefits and they’re spent on government programs. There is no trust. We’re on the ultimate pay-as-you-go system — what goes in comes out. And so, starting in 2018, what’s going in — what’s coming out is greater than what’s going in. It says we’ve got a problem. And we’d better start dealing with it now. The longer we wait, the harder it is to fix the problem.

Secondly, if you’re a person who is retired or near retirement, nothing will change, there is enough money. You’re in good shape. I know there are some who have heard talk about Social Security around the country here, saying, oops, he’s going to take away my check. That’s not going to happen. I don’t care what the rhetoric is, what the mailings say, what the TV ads say, you’re in good shape. It’s the younger workers who ought to be asking the members of the Congress and the President of the United States, what are you going to do to fix the problem. ”

See? Brilliant. Why didn’t anyone else see this coming? What he’s saying is that Social Security is broken, but if you’re an old person, don’t worry about it, you’ll be fine… we’re just going to screw the generation after you. They don’t vote as much as you… so you’re fine for now. We can drop a bomb in a 3 foot wide hole to level a building halfway around the world, but we still don’t quit grasp basic accounting.

And we’ll leave you with this parting gift

So I’m sitting in line at echeck on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. What a racket…. $20 for them to say ‘yup, not destroying the environment too bad’

We never voted for this. And it’s pointless – those who know they won’t pass just register their car in a county that doesn’t have echeck. What does this accomplish? Nothing. It’s just making someone a lot of money, and causes me anguish every year. The world is out to get me.