Bike odometer: 255 miles
Weight lost: 35 lbs.
Hours of sleep last night: 10
Current reading: I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe, The Prince by Machiavelli
Recent listening: Arkansas Traveler (remaster) by Michelle Shocked,
Recent viewing: Mets at Cardinals, Austin City Limits (Ray Davies), High Stakes Poker
Recent playing: Zuma, Halo
Recently accomplished: Helped Buddy move, more work on Thomas’ computer, grocery shopping
Imperative To Do: Finish old blog entries, get Thomas’ computer to boot, get my computer to boot, rake, clean garage, return stuff to hardware store
Cool Link: White & Nerdy: Weird Al tries his hand at Nerdcore.
Vital Statistics
Bike odometer: 257 miles
Weight lost: 35 lbs.
Hours of sleep last night: 9.2
Current reading: I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe, The Prince by Machiavelli
Recent listening: Pronounced Leh’-nerd Skin’-nerd by Lynryd Skynyrd, DrugMusic, NPR Story of the Day, Science Friday, Planet Waves by Bob Dylan, Lost Dogs by Pearl Jam, Second Helping by Lynryd Skynyrd
Recent viewing: Countdown, Sportscenter, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Drawn Together, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, My Name Is Earl, The Office
Recent playing: Zuma, Halo
Recently accomplished: Paid bills, trying to figure out Thomas’ hard drive
Imperative To Do: Finish old blog entries, get Thomas’ computer to boot, rake, clean garage, return stuff to hardware store
Cool Link: Nintendo DS and other folding things: Thomas releases his first animated short to the world.
Vital Statistics
Bike odometer: 243 miles
Weight lost: 32 lbs.
Hours of sleep last night: 8.5
Current reading: I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe, The Prince by Machiavelli
Recent listening: Glimmer by Kim Richey, Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses by Slipnot, KBOO Bike Show, John Prine
Recent viewing: Crash, Steelers at Chargers, Cowboys at Eagles, Charlie Rose (Bob Woodward), Meet the Press (Bob Woodward), Drawn Together (season premiere!), Without A Trace
Recent playing: Zuma, Halo
Recently accomplished: Fixed Thomas’ hard drive, installed new OS for Thomas, lubed and cleaned bike
Imperative To Do: Finish old blog entries, get Thomas’ computer to boot, rake, clean garage, return stuff to hardware store, pay bills
Cool Link: Blogs – and God’s Youth: Does God want you blogging?
Vital Statistics
Bike odometer: 233 miles
Weight lost: 32 lbs.
Hours of sleep last night: 9.5 (slept in)
Current reading: I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe, The Prince by Machiavelli
Recent listening: Portrait: The Music of Dan Fogelberg by Dan Fogelberg, The Ramones, Eating’s Not Cheating by mc chris, Glimmer by Kim Richey
Recent viewing: Battlestar Galactica, South Park, Nova, Discoveries This Week, Rock Show, Charlie Rose, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show
Recent playing: Zuma
Recently accomplished: Installed new bike computer, pulled Thomas’ hard drives for analysis and repair
Imperative To Do: Finish old blog entries, rake, finish fixing Thomas’ hard drive, clean garage, return stuff to hardware store
Cool Video: Darkness.Light.Darkness. (Warning: contains clay nudity)
Vital Statistics
Two more Half.com gift certificates arrived after my birthday. Here’s the rest of the stuff I bought:
- The Buffalo Springfield Box Set
- Peninsula of Lies by Edward Ball
- How To Be Good by Nick Hornby
- Digital Ash in a Digital Urn by Bright Eyes
- Everything! by Tones on Tail
- The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin
- Rust Never Sleeps (DVD) by Neil Young & Crazy Horse
- Lost Dogs by Pearl Jam
Thanks a bunch to Tom & Jan and Tina, Graham & Thomas. As I mentioned earlier Half.com has become my favorite semi-annual ritual.
Bike odometer: 220 miles
Weight lost: 32 lbs.
Hours of sleep last night: 7.2
Current reading: I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe, The Prince by Machiavelli
Recent listening: Portrait: The Music of Dan Fogelberg by Dan Fogelberg, DrugMusic, Humpy’s Soul Show, It’s The Jump Off
Recent viewing: Without A Trace, Mystery of the Megavolcano, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report
Recent playing: Zuma
Recently accomplished: Installed memory in Graham’s computer
Imperative To Do: Finish old blog entries, rake, install new hard drive for Thomas, clean garage, return stuff to hardware store
Cool Link: Kittens: Pictures taken by a man in Taiwan who rescues street cats before the government collects and “disposes” of them.
Vital Statistics
This is a screenshot from Thomas’ computer last week. It shows the “History” menu in his web browser. Behind the the menu, you can see parts of the article he was reading on Wikipedia: Eroticism. Click the image to open a window with a larger version.
I stumbled upon this information one night because he kept using his computer when he was supposed to be in bed. Tina busted him several times and so I checked on him remotely from my office (all of the computers in our house are remotely viewable/controllable from my office computer). He was no longer using his computer, but I was surprised to find that he was reading an article on eroticism. I told Tina the next day and we agree to talk to him about it.
In the meantime, I pondered how he had even thought to look up “eroticism” on Wikipedia. We considered that he might have gotten some inappropriate spam, but I checked his email and didn’t see anything like that. Then I thought to check his browsing history and obtained this screenshot. The “History” menu shows all of the pages that you have accessed in the order that you accessed them. More recent pages are at the top and go down in reverse chronological order. So you can see that he started at Wikipedia’s front page where he clicked on a link to “relationship”. This took him to something called a “disambiguation page” – a page designed to resolve word ambiguities by summarizing the articles for each use of the word. From there, he clicked on the link to “romantic love” which has links to “free love”, “puppy love” (which has a link to “crush”) and, finally, “erotic love”, which redirects to the “Eroticism” article.
When Tina and I asked him about it (separately and non-chalantly), he said that he just clicked on a link in Wikipedia and then clicked a bunch of others after that. Moreover, he said he didn’t really understand any of the articles. We told him he could ask us about stuff like that if he wanted to know more and he said, “OK.” And that was the end of it. At least for now.
Bike odometer: 201 miles
Current reading: I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe, The Prince by Machiavelli
Recent listening: This Is The Moody Blues by The Moody Blues, Coverville, DrugMusic
Recent viewing: Falcons at Saints, Countdown, The Daily Show, The Simpsons
Recent playing: Zuma
Recently accomplished: n/a
Imperative To Do: Refinish deck, hair cut, new rear fender for bike, finish old blog entries, fix toilet (call plumber), rake, install new hard drive for Thomas
Cool Link: Fembot for sale: Somebody is selling an Austin Powers prop and the pictures are quite creepy.
Vital Statistics
I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday party. Thirty of my best friends showed up and we partied way past dark. In the day time it was lots of kids, sunshine, music and burritos. At night it was music and adult conversation around the fire pit on the deck. My life is good at 40.
Yesterday I received a mystery CD in the mail. It has readings by Jack Kerouac and came from Cheektowaga, NY. I’m quite sure I did not order it and have no idea why I received it. It came addressed to “Mick Ring” which rules out all of the places I order from online. If you know why I received this CD, I would love to hear from you.
My mom offered to help me refinish my deck this week, so I’ll probably take a day or two off work so we can get that done. After a few rainy days last week, it’s been sunny and is supposed to continue that way. We should take advantage of it while it lasts!
Bike odometer: 201 miles
Current reading: I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe, The Prince by Machiavelli
Recent listening: n/a
Recent viewing: Giants at Seahawks, Bengals at Steelers, Sportscenter, 60 Minutes, The Simpsons
Recent playing: Zuma
Recently accomplished: recovering from party
Imperative To Do: Refinish deck, hair cut, new rear fender for bike, finish old blog entries, fix toilet (call plumber), rake
Cool Links: Some Scion stuff:
- A review by Automobile magazine
- A review at edmunds.com
- Photo gallery at edmunds.com
- “Media tour” at edmunds.com
Can’t leave well enough alone
After messing up the layout to my blog the other day I angrily turned off the StyleCatcher plugin and reverted to the default layout. Sometimes I just have to walk away from tricky technical problems for awhile before I can fix them. That was the case this time.
I reinstalled a little bit ago and tried out one of the styles on a test blog and it worked fine. I then found a style that matches the rest of my website and successfully applied it to my blog. Woo hoo!
Messing Around
While messing around with the layout of this blog last night I apparently screwed something up. Please forgive the messiness until I figure out what’s wrong. I hate when software promises to be easy but isn’t.
Update: Figured out how to revert to defaults.
Return of Salt of the Earth
After dealing with many difficulties related to the server move, we have Tina’s blog available once again. As always, you can find her at Salt of the Earth