My friend Nat has posted about a family dinner at which he was thoroughly disgusted by the items that his in-laws brought to eat. The name of both his post and my post matches the name of a forum that used to exist on Lower Lights. When I first set up the forum system on…

I’ve done a little work on making my blog look more like Nat’s. In the end, I want it to look different from his, but he has a great look already that is better than the wordpress defaults. Not knowing CSS, this is a slow-going adventure! CSS looks extremely powerful, and the only way to…

It’s Valentine’s Day. Have you remembered to obtain SOMETHING for your significant other today? For those of the male species who may not be aware, we cannot EVER ignore any Hallmark Holiday (birthdays, mother’s day, anniversary, TODAY, etc.), even if she tells you that you don’t need to get her anything. The fact that you…

The quote in my last post got my brain thinking on a tangent. People waste an amazing amount of energy doing things that are either pointless or harmful, myself included. I have a tendency to get lost in my computer or a movie and ignore everything else around me, especially if it involves getting up…

I came across a quote today that someone on an open source mailing list was using as their signature. Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with the proof. — J.K. Galbraith It is amazing that we have progressed as…

When you shave, do you move the razor downward or upward? The former is often referred to as “with the grain” while the latter is “against the grain.” In the movie Lethal Weapon 4, Roger Murtaugh tells his son that he should shave with the grain. For me, shaving in this way results in almost…

Kathy surprised me with a new present a few days ago. It’s a Nikon D70 digital camera. She’s known for a long time that I wanted one, and with my recent raise at work, she felt that I deserved something special. This camera is so far beyond anything I ever expected to own that I’m…

It’s nearly midnight on New Years Eve, Mountain Standard Time. Tomorrow, we all venture into a new year. Things are pretty good for me right now. I have a good job, and some additional opportunities on the horizon. Kathy’s brother (my brother-in-law) is exchanging vows in the afternoon tomorrow — with his wife. They were…

This christmas, we did something a little different for the kids. We told them prior to the big day that they would not have any presents under the tree, and there would be nothing in their stockings. They didn’t actually believe that we would do it, but we did. Sitting on top of their stockings…

I upgraded to WordPress 1.22 just a few minutes ago. I am now back to the default stylesheet, and will work on modifying it when I can. I had one problem after the upgrade. I could not edit my links. I fixed the problem myself. Here’s a patch. I finally did find an official WordPress…

Here’s the states that I have visited. There are actually a few more, but I am not counting the ones that I went through on my bus trip to Ohio.

I went to Walmart on December 24th. Yes, I was dumb enough to wander into the den of evil on Christmas Eve. Thankfully, I only had a few things to get, and I was able to get into a relatively fast “20 items or less” checkout line. I bought some of the 50 cent pies…

As a regular consumer of Dr. Pepper, I was intrigued when I stumbled across this list of drinks and their caffeine levels. It’s interesting that a Diet Coke has more than a regular Coca-Cola Classic, but those in India won’t be surprised. There, the Classic has NO caffeine at all, but the Diet variety does.

I have had enormous trouble with optical drives on my main Windows system. The CD burner that came with it died for unknown reasons. I bought a new DVD burner that did everything except dual layer, and either Ben (my 3 year old) or one of the other small kids who happened to be in…

Now that Nat has upgraded to version 1.2.1, version 1.2.2 has now come out. I will be upgrading my blog from 1.2.1 to 1.2.2 in the near future. When I do, I will be temporarily going back to the default WordPress stylesheet. I will be attempting to distill Nat’s stylesheet to its essence, so that…

Yesterday slashdot had an article about a project to visualize the GNU/Linux boot process. For no reason other than satisfying my inner geek, I rebooted this server and obtained my own visualization. Read on for gory details.

English is a cornucopia of homonyms. You can find the oddest ways to say almost anything, and generate misunderstanding because there’s another word that sounds exactly the same. Some friends that I chat with every day were trading links as usual, and this video clip surfaced. This is a very funny clip of Ken Jennings…

AOL is the spawn of the devil. I believe everyone knows someone who has had an AOL account and had enormous trouble getting the account cancelled when it is no longer needed. I just saw an installment of “Get Gephardt” where he helped someone cancel an AOL account after 18 months of continued credit card…

I am sometimes asked why I have taken on the burden of running a system for the Lower Lights community. The answer to that question is mostly “because I can,” but there is a lot of nostalgia involved too. The friendships I forged on Lower Lights hastened the breakdown of my first marriage and helped…