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Random conversations about computer products

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On June 9, 2006

In Blog

For those of you who have never seen it, Woot.Com is a website that traffics in a variety of items, usually selling one item per day at a large discount over normal retail. The stuff they offer tends by and large to be geek-tech oriented (computers, AV equipment, with the occasional oddkin tossed in for variety).

Tonight, while popping through, I saw this, prompting the following conversation:

kitanzi: What is that?
autographedcat: It’s a computer accessory set shaped like frogs. See: keyboard, mouse, and speakers. Frogs.
kitanzi: They keyboard isn’t shaped like a frog. No wait, it is.
autographedcat: Yeah, see – there’s the eyes, and there’s its little hands.
kitanzi: Roadkill frog, more like.
autographedcat: Maybe that’s why the mouse and the speakers look so alarmed. <does South Park voices> “Oh my God, they killed Kenny!” “You BASTARDS!”

Please Please Tell Me Now

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On June 9, 2006

In Blog

Meme vectored from filkerdave and rms_butterfly:

IP logging is off and anonymous posting is allowed.

Please tell me anything you want, anonymously. It can be a secret, a fear, a wish, a hope, a dream, an insult, your great-aunt’s secret recipe for chocolate fudge banana brownies.

Post twice or more if you like, I’m not counting.

And then, if you want, post this in your journal and see what people say there!

My bologna has a first name, it’s WTF…..?

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On June 8, 2006

In Blog

One of the amazing, mind-staggering things about the Internet is that you can buy just about anything on it, including a Las Vegas wedding, a Mexican divorce, a solid gold Kama Sutra coffee pot, or a baby’s arm holding an apple. [1]

Now, Amazon.com, that all-things-to-all-people web merchant, has started finding the last hidden niches of e-commerce, the things that it never actually occurred to you that you might want to shop online for.

That’s right, you can now order bologna from Amazon.


The customer reviews are utterly hysterical.

At last, my search for bologna, a search that had oft awoken me in the middle of the turgid night, condensed with perspiration and mind a-swim with luncheon shortage paranoia, is over. No more eating of 2 slices of Wonder bread with naught but mustard inbetwixt, no more frustration of desiring that hot-dogged flavor in a flatter and more throwing-disc like form, no more eating of lesser substances that come not in a gleeful molded plastic tray nor come unbecircled in red plastic, no, Dear Lord, I have seen the light, and it is bologna. O loving, nay, GODLY meat, thou fulfilleth me and giveth me purpose. Amen.

Our cups truly runneth over.

[1] Yes, kitanzi, that’s your fault.

Mainlining fire, and other idle pursuits

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On June 7, 2006

In Blog

Back when I got my physical last September, one of the things that came back from the lab work was some slightly elevated liver enzyme levels. They weren’t high enough to be alarming, but they were high enough for my physician to want to run some further tests. So I spent a month abstaining from alcohol and Tylenol, and was retested, but this didn’t make any difference. So I was sent off to get an ultrasound of my abdomen. I did end up procrastinating on this for a bit, because at that time we were moving headlong towards kitanzi‘s surgery, and that, along with some personal relationship stresses, was taking up most of my emotional energy. But I did finally have the ultrasound down in February, and was told that it’s definitely a girl! No, actually, what I was told is that the ultrasound was inconclusive, and they wanted to send me for a full CT scan.

With one thing or another, I never did get called back, so when I was in getting my blood pressure medication adjusted last week, I mentioned that I’d never got a call. Ms. Schaad, the NP who I’ve been seeing about the various things that came out of my physical, rolled her eyes and told me she’d resubmit the paperwork. Yesterday, I was called and told I could come in today at 1:00pm, and to come down and pick up some barium contrast dye to take this morning.

The barium wasn’t as disgusting as I’d been led to believe, though I really don’t think its a taste sensation that will sweep the country either. The real downside of it was that once I drank it, I wasn’t allowed to have anything to eat or drink, even water, until after the procedure. This made me fairly cranky for most of the morning, as I tend to keep a full jug of water on my desk at all times.

I got to the Northside Hospital‘s Radiology facility in Alpharetta right on time, did the paperwork, and waited to be called. I was finally led back into the CT Scanner area by a very perky, pretty young nurse, who gave me some more barium and went over with me all the various ways that the procedure might kill me, and asking me to initial the paper saying that that was alright. I then divested myself of my various belongings, and made myself comfortable on the slab while the pretty nurse set up an IV that would later be used to inject me with even more dye.

The next bit was spent being shuttled back and forth through the machine, before she came in to give me the injection. Wow, what an utterly weird feeling! It wasn’t actually painful, but it felt as though a nice fire was slowly making its way through my bloodstream. it lasted for about five minutes, during which I was shuttled through the machine a couple of more times, and then it was all done. I came home and ordered some Chinese food and played City of Villains until kitanzi came home.

I won’t know the results for a few days, but it was definitely an *interesting* experience.

Fall of Civilization Imminent. Film at 11

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On June 5, 2006

In Blog

Courtesy of mvaldemar, I learn that a minor league ballpark in St. Louis is serving Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheeseburgers:



It’s sweet like a doughnut, and then you’ve got the hamburger. You’ve read that right. It’s a burger with cheese and bacon, sandwiched between a Krispy Kreme doughnut — a heart attack waiting to happen. A burger so perfect, they say, tampering is discouraged.

“You’re ruining it! You’re not supposed to put ketchup on it!” Bowers says to a diner.

“Well, I don’t know. It’s my first time,” he replies.

For a mere $4.50 it’s breakfast, dinner, and a little dessert all in one. That it packs up to 1,000 calories — the donut alone has 10 grams of sugar — doesn’t seem to faze diabetic diner Floyd Schuetz.

“Oh, I’ll have another one of these,” he says.

That is quite possibly the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen served on a plate.

Mobility!

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On June 4, 2006

In Blog

For quite some time, I have desired a portable Internet device that i could carry when I traveled, as I admit to being such a hopeless Internet junkie and I much prefer to have my own computer for such activities. (My PDA/Mobile is an Internet device and useful in a pinch, but it’s not really the best application for serious websurfing or journaling.) Using other people’s computers is like using other people’s kitchens. You can get done what you need to, but nothing is where you expect it to be and you have to rummage about to find anything.

tarkrai kindly donated me a couple of ancient, but working, laptops from his collection of derelict computer parts, but for various reason neither was able to transform into what I really needed. Then baiku announced his intention to divest himself of a similar crop of old tech for anyone who’d be willing to come take them away. Since I had a DVD full of 2006 Doctor Who episodes for him, we made arrangements to meet up and he handed me two Dell Inspirons of unknown status. Neither of them turned out to work, but I figured it was worth the $30 that Ginstar would charge me to find out what it would take to repair one of them. So the Inspiron 4000 went into the shop, was determined to have a bad motherboard, and completely repaired for $200.

When I got it back, I ran diagnostics and found that the hard drive had bad sectors, so I pulled the hard drive out of the still non-functional 3500, and found it was perfectly ok, so I transplanted it into the 4000 and installed Ubuntu Linux 5.10 on my now fully functional Death Star laptop computer.

I have to say that Ubuntu has impressed me greatly. I’d already been using it for sometime on my workstation at the office, but given the horror stories I’d heard about getting Linux working on laptop computers, I was unprepared for how utterly seamless it was to install. I didn’t have to recompile any thing, hunt for drivers, twiddle with my settings. It installed, brought up the X display, let me log in, and *everything worked*. Well done.

Having gotten the laptop up and on the network, there was one last critical accessory to make this laptop perfect. I wanted to install a WiFi card. Even with the tremendous ease that I got the base OS installed on the machine, though, I wasn’t expecting this to be easy. Everything I’d read about getting wifi to work on Linux laptops led me to anticipate a lot of fiddling ahead.

I got some advice from fleetfootmike and rinioth, who said that my best bet was a card with a PrismII chipset. rinioth also sent me a great chart with pretty much all the cards that were on the market and the state of drivers for each of them. So I printed that out and headed down the local Best Buy. Unfortunately, none of the cards they had in stock were PrismII cards, but I did find a Netgear WG511T, which uses the Atheros chip and which the chart said had a good driver. Knowing I had 30 days to try it and bring it back if I couldn’t make it work, I decided to take a chance.

Brought it home, plugged it in. Booted up. Ubuntu recognized the card immediately. Is that supposed to happen? Interesting. Looked up the commands for configuring the card. Attached to my AP, got an IP from dhcp, and was surfing. Just like that. I didn’t have to install any drivers. I didn’t have to struggle or swear or do anything at all. it just plain worked the way it was supposed to. I even found that the GUI Network Configuration tool in Gnome already knows how to talk to it and feed it its necessary configurations.

I believe the appropriate word is “squee!!”

I now have a working wireless laptop. I am a happy cat.

The stupid, it burns!

By

On June 2, 2006

In Blog

You know, every time I think I can no longer be utterly dumbfounded by the stupid things that politicians get up to, along comes a story like this one in Atlanta’s Creative Loafing:

Lawmakers want to punish bank for stiffing scouts
Bank of America quit donating to the Boy Scouts for its policy on gays
BY COLEY WARD

The Boy Scout motto is, “always be prepared.” And in an election year, one should be prepared for a flurry of grandstanding. So maybe we should have seen this one coming.

In April, Bank of America’s Charitable Foundation declined to give money to a local Boy Scouts council, citing the scouts’ national policy barring gays from serving as Boy Scout troop leaders.

Now, Sen. John Wiles, R-Kennesaw, and Rep. Earl Ehrhart, R-Powder Springs, say they will introduce a bill during the next legislative session that would punish Bank of America by allowing the state to refuse to do business with any company that “practices discrimination.”

Basically, what Wiles and Ehrhart are recommending is that the state be allowed to discriminate against a company that discriminates against a group that discriminates.

Wiles, who is a former scout and who has three sons in the Boy Scouts, says Bank of America has the right to donate to whomever the company wants.

“But we as a state,” he says, “we have the right not to do business with people who discriminate.”

Of course, the next legislative session is months away, and talk of a proposed bill at this point is a bit premature. But the announcement comes just in time — less than two months before the state’s primary elections — to send a message to the social conservatives in Ehrhart’s and Wiles’ districts.

Bank of America officials say the company is just trying to be consistent with its policy not to fund groups that discriminate on the basis of age, race, sex or sexual orientation. A letter from Bank of America to the Valdosta-based Alapaha council instructs the troop that if it were able to “depart from the current discriminatory practices of the national organization” the bank would consider donating to the Boy Scouts again.

Wiles says that’s not good enough. He calls Bank of America’s decision extortion.

“This is a new policy Bank of America’s taken on and they’re forcing local Boy Scout councils who rely on their money to change their policy,” Wiles says.

Lynne Hogue, a Georgia State University law professor, says it seems more like Wiles and Erhart are the ones trying to wrench money from Bank of America for the scouts.

“It sounds like an extortion plot,” Hogue says. “They’re saying, ‘If you want to do business with the state we’re going to stick a gun to your head, and you’ve got to give money to these groups that we want money given to.’ The mafia couldn’t do a better job.”

Hogue also says he believes it’s unlikely that Wiles’ and Ehrhart’s proposal would make it onto the House floor for a vote.

“I think this is just bluster and political pandering and not much else,” he says. “It’s hard to imagine that this is a serious legislative proposal.”

I don’t even know where to begin. Unbelievable. How do people like this manage to tie their own shoes?

Paging

By

On May 27, 2006

In Blog

Joe, I think I found some evidence of one of your past lives. 🙂


https://www.autographedcat.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/looseparts20060527.jpg
Dave Blazek’s Loose Parts

Song: Ordinary Tree

By

On May 26, 2006

In Blog

Today is the day we do horrible things to cadhla‘s masterpiece. As if what braider did to it wasn’t enough, kitanzi got my head wrapped around this possibility, and I couldn’t resist:

Ordinary Tree
TTTO: “Ordinary Day” by Great Big Sea
Inspired by “Sycamore Tree” by Seanan McGuire

Saw your name on the tree, your initials surround mine
I wonder who carved them there for me to find, oh-oh.
It’s a lie, but it’s also a fact
I love you, but I can’t come back
‘Cause I must fly…

And I say….Way-hey-hey, I’ve just got to fly away
And you’re not going to call me home
And the end of the day, I know I must fly on my own

I did all that I could to keep you from dying
And you’ll never know why I can’t keep from crying
But you fit in this small town world
And I can’t be a small town girl
No, I must fly…

Way-hey-hey, I’ve just got to fly away
And you’re not going to call me home
And the end of the day, I know I must fly on my own

We each paid our dues and we each played our parts
But there’s no second chances, there’s no second starts, oh no
And you’re not coming back through my door
But I know now who this song is for
And I must fly…

Way-hey-hey, I’ve just got to fly away
And you’re not going to call me home
And the end of the day, I know I must fly on my own

Saw your name on the tree, your initials surround mine….

Announcement

By

On May 25, 2006

In Blog

I have a cadhla album, right here in my hands. *snoopy dance*

That is all!

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