*stretttttcccccch*

I’m liking this Stuff you don’t want to MISC series - now that I’m in my 2nd year of doing it.  It’s like I’m a veteran!

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2nd Amendment - A Win or a Squeak-By?

I don’t know what’s scarier - the thought of the government changing so quickly so as to take away my right to keep and bear arms within my lifetime, or the fact that the recent Supreme Court ruling squeaked by with just a 5-4 ruling.  And this is AFTER Bush’s appointments. (I got reminded of the 5-4 surprise from Such Is Life)

Having it be a 5-4 decision makes the choice for our next President of the United States even more important.

One dissenter, Justice Stephen Breyer, has words that, to me, are absolutely chilling.

In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas.

If there’s anywhere where loaded handguns are needed by citizens for self defense, it’s in crime-ridden urban areas.  No?

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Gratitude Campaign

Saw this over at Tug’s and wanted to share.  Thank a soldier.

There have been a couple of times where I’ve bought a meal for a soldier in an airport and at a restaurant.  The first time I did it they thanked me and I thought - I need to do this anonymously.  So the next time, I just told my waiter to put their bill on my tab and to just tell them a thankful patriot is in the restaurant.  I didn’t want the credit - I wanted them to know the public is behind them.

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Jaden’s lost tooth

Jaden lost his first tooth this week, and then he actually LOST his first tooth.  He was brushing his teeth and then he comes running up saying “my mouth is bleeding!” and we look and um, yup, “Jaden. did ya notice you’re missing a tooth right up front?”  “oh yeah! my loose tooth!”.  [Slight confused look].  “Where did it go,” we asked.  “I don’t know!” he exclaimed.

So we go look in the bathroom and figure he either swallowed it while brushing his teeth (slim chance) or it went down the drain (high possibility).

We have a little “lost tooth” pillow for the Tooth Fairy to more easily identify any teeth that are intentionally for sale.  We don’t want her (assumed to be a “her”) rifling through all our belongings and thinking she can leave a quarter for just any old thing she wants to around the house.

In lieu of the tooth, we wrote a note:

Dear Tooth Fairy — Jaden lost his tooth this morning while brushing his teeth.  It slipped down the bathroom sink.  He has requested that you please search for his tooth tonight after leaving a quarter for him.  Thank you for your assistance. — Love, Jaden

 

Jaden ended up getting a whole dollar (inflation?) and when he asked why it was a dollar, we brainstormed with him on possible reasons.  The one we ended up as the most likely explanation was that a dollar bill is a lot lighter than a quarter, and she wanted to reward him for brushing his teeth.

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Best of LOLcats 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s a YEAR!  A Year’s Worth of SYDWTM!  I’m glad I gave away stuff LAST week. I guess I should get on some of that…

This week, I’m doing what EVERYONE wants - an extra-long “Best of LOLcats”.

Best of LOLcats

saw this over at Dawg’s and can’t believe I missed it the first time around in March!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another week. Time flies when you’re in a time machine.

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WHALL-E 3.0

You might think you need to see Wall-E this summer.

Well, you do.  But you also don’t want to MISC my very own WHALL-E-versary 3.0!  That’s right - as I mentioned last week, I’m coming up on my 3rd anniversary of blogging and my 1st anniversary of this weekly series.  The problem was, I couldn’t figure out what I should do. One of the commenters mentioned that I should give him a gift since he’s been such a loyal commenter.  That got me thinking - who has been commenting a lot? So I checked.

I also took notice that 5 of the top commenters are “real-life” friends (Absurdist, Jennefer, Ren, Christine, Raganator).  The rest (Poppy, Avitable, Dave2, sue, sourpuss, Hilly, martymankins, and BlondeBlogger) I believe I would enjoy having as real-life friends.  I like how that works out.

Quick analysis also reveals that I have four long-term commenters and three total newbies.  That seems to be a good mix.

But then the question comes - do I care about the number of comments?  Is that what’s important?  Or is it the content?  Maybe the tone?  Are they encouraging?  Do they bring humor?  Wit?  A challenging point of view?

One thing is for certain and that is - I absolute do not care that they agree with me politically, spiritually, technologically or in any way whatsoever.  The people on my top commenters chart are diametrically opposed to me in a multitude of ways.  But fortunately for me, those differences aren’t what defines us.  It’s not what we focus on.

I’m coming up on 2500 comments some time soon.  I have a few loyal commenters.  I love writing in the blog.  I’d love more comments and more commenters.  I wanna do something, but I just don’t know what.

I recently read that it is Blog Reader Appreciation Week and how fitting that it somewhat coincide with my WHALL-e-versary 3.0?  I wanna do something but I just don’t know how.

I don’t have a budget for prizes.  But I am creative and I can carve out time here and there.  So the 13 loyal commenters can choose one of the following list as their prize.   Just email me at whall at my domain name (whall.org) and tell me which one you want!

1. Guest post on your blog if you have one
2. Lunch on me if you’re in town
3. Custom poetry and art work, framed
4. Astrology: Natal Chart & Solar Return for the year and a brief analysis
5. One of my available Dilbert or Calvin & Hobbes comic books
6. Five mp3’s off of Amazon.com (assuming I can get the ones you want)

Yay!  congrats, winners!

Oh, and also, the first five commenters on this post who AREN’T in the list can also win.   That way you new kids who have recently joined in the fun can also join in the prize fun.

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Best of LOLcats

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey folks, thanx for stopping by.  Did you get that thing I sent you? 

Best. political. post. ever.

Many don’t like the political speak.  Some live off of it.  No matter which camp you’re in, you’ll likely enjoy Shiny’s Takeout’s Political Corner: November Reign. 

whall.org milestones

I’m just now realizing that this and next month marks my 3rd anniversary of blogging (7/26/05) and my 1st anniversary of Stuff you don’t want to MISC summaries (6/17/07).  Yeah yeah, this is only the 50th edition, as I skipped a couple of weeks when I was weak, so we’ll just call it even and call July the anniversary for both.  

Also, I just hit 2000 comments not too long ago.  The 2500th comment isn’t too far away (some people I read celebrate that).

Any suggestions on what I should do?  You can assume the following:

• No budget
• No time
• No talent
• No interest from the 99.999% of the people on the planet.

With all this going for me, I’m pumped!  Let me know what you think!

The Wii.  It’s back.

I think I mentioned some time back that our Wii started having issues reading disks.  We kept trying to play games for a couple of days, and we found that if we turn the Wii off and back on, it would read a disk.  But if we ejected the disk it would not read the next one.  When it got so bad we couldn’t stand it (about 3 days later), we called in and were informed that our warranty had expired 3 days ago.

Fortunately, the guy on the phone was not only nice but empowered.  He processed our RMA and we, like good little consumers, held onto the console for much longer than we should, unable to really let it go even with it’s problems.  The RMA was good for 3 months, and so we held.  And held.  Finally I decided I should go ahead and send it in, and WHAMMO we got it back in less than a week!  I couldn’t believe it!

And now that it’s back, I can go for my all-important Guitar Hero goals.  My first goal is to be ranked < 10,000, and then 5,000 and then 1,000.  This is out of (at time of writing) 703,000 or so people on the system.

I think my goals are realistic.  For example, this most recent bump of about 1,000 place points was due to the following three songs:

I got 325K for beating ONE on Expert (before, I beat One on PS2, which doesn’t participate in online scoring).  I beat my Medium Barracude by 1,000 and I beat my Medium Through Fire And Flames by a good 80k.  

There are still forty (40) songs in the game that aren’t uploaded to guitar hero.com, so I’m feeling pretty good - individual song scores range from 100-400k each.  Some of the songs missing were just bad uploads when I played them, so I just need to replay them.

Here’s where I’m at, the 10000th place score, and the 1000th place score.

Best of LOLcats

Ok, this one is for you artists out there.

 

 

 

Busy busy week!  I actually made my first ever vlog (gasp!) today but am having some audio trouble so I’ll post it when it’s ready.  In this issue,

• Jaden’s Kindergarten Graduation
• Luna joins the Hall Family (new puppy!)
• Best of LOLcats

Jaden’s Kindergarten Graduation

Well, they don’t actually call it a “graduation” but more like a “Celebration of Success”.  I’m sooo glad they clarified that they were celebrating success and not something else, like, oh, I don’t know… failure?

We’re so very happy for him.  His teacher, Ms. Dominguez, is simply awesome.  We couldn’t imagine a better Kindergarten teacher. 

 

It’s people like her that make me want our society to pay good teachers more.  Note that I’m not saying “all teachers should get raises” or “we should pay teachers more.”  Specifically, I’m saying that we should reward good teachers.  there should be such high standards for those in charge of teaching our young, that the market should demand extremely high talent, excellent motivators, caring and loving guidance givers, and we should pay them accordingly.  I want people to have to “try out” to be counted among the amazing.

Then again, maybe the allure of money would attract the wrong types of people.  Perhaps the quality of not requiring high recompense is one that accompanies all the other great qualities of the perfect teacher.  Hmm.  Maybe our current system is already the best it could be.  It sure doesn’t seem so, though.

What do YOU think we should do for our best teachers?

Luna joins the Hall Family

We’re big supporters of rescued dogs, and we encourage anyone who wants a great pet to consider adoption vs breeding.  In fact, you can go to petfinder.com and type in your zipcode and find the perfect pet near you that needs a home.

 

Today we added Luna to our family - we found her through FOGAS - Friends of Gonzales Animal Shelter, where Caitlin volunteers countless hours each month in front of PetSmart to help clean, educate, set up, tear down, answer questions, and keep the dogs company while they look for new owners.

Posting this picture reminds me that some people might have different meanings for the word “puppy” - to us, it’s just about any dog under a year old.  Luna is five months old (as far as anyone knows).  She’s probably a mixture of Australian Shepherd and Border Collie (as far as anyone knows) and she’s incredibly cute (as far as anyone knows).  She’s already started to attempt asserting her place in the pack, but you never know how the order ends up with dogs.

Everything is SO much easier now that we’ve shaved the dog’s names into their fur.

Best of LOLcats

To make a long post even longer, and only annoy a few people, add some LOLcats!

 

Yeah, that’s kinda good…
but “Chuck Norris Cat,” as name
fits bill much better.

I hope you had a good Memorial Day.  Do you remember what Memorial Day is for?  And how it’s different from Veteran’s Day?  Good, I knew you did.

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Cabling update

In the beginning, there was a cabling project, phase 1, with a before picture of spaghetti sneeze.  Then there was a phase 2, with a before picture that took where the last one left off.  This brings us to Phase 3.

Behold the new after pictures

Many thanks go our our new temp Alex, who pulled an all-nighter or two to help me out with this project.  Of course, yesterday during the Memorial Day holiday, one of the switches failed, meaning many of those yellow cables needed to be restrung to other switches with no thought as to aesthetics.  At least the new switch will be here tomorrow so I can re-set those cables.

Next project?  This server rack:

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Best of LOLcats

Which is your favorite(s)?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another weekly installment.  Sheesh, my LAST post was a weekly installment.  Which was late.  Again.

What’s a blog again?

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Posting Frequency

For the past week, I was mostly locked away in a conference room with an out-of-town fellow employee and a SharePoint guru.  Hmm, this sounds like the beginning of a joke: “So a colleague, a consultant and a conservative walk into a bar…“  We flew the colleague in from California, so I wanted to honor and respect his time and get the most done while he was here.  We’re using Microsoft EA monies to pay the consultant, so I want to squeeze every paid hour out of him.  That, combined with a very busy personal life, left little time to blog.

I’m not one to apologize for not posting, at least, not anymore.  I figure if I don’t post, I don’t post.  My *goal* is to post once per weekday, do a Sunday weekly post, and Saturday may or may not get a post.  I’m not interested in posting more than once per day unless it is a special case.  Like if I won the lottery later today, I’d post about it.

There are some who have posted every single day for years.  Others seem to post right around midnight each day with a scheduled post.  And others I read post multiple times per day, once every few days, or as Scott Adams says for the DNRC newsletter, “approximately whenever the hell I feel like it.”

I was looking for some kind of graph or tool that would tell me my posting frequency, but I didn’t immediately find one (anyone know of one?).  I had signed up for the global dashboard for wordpress.com last year and thought I had it set up, but it’s still all zeros.

Best.  Day.  Ever.   = today.

I went ahead and upgraded my WP-Stats just now to 1.2.1.  Oh, and I just read that my theme has to call wp_footer, and mine doesn’t.  Whoops.  Well, I guess my stats will start collecting today…

What would be really cool is a module for Wordpress that would show you your trends and help nudge you to whatever goal you have.  If it’s a post per day, it reminds you.  If it’s 4 posts per week, it reminds you.  Heck, maybe it can write your post for you by giving you X number of blog memes, topics based on how you want to structure your blog.

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Best of LOLcats

 

 

 

 

 

I’m going to rename “Wednesday” to “Waynesday”.  Any Objections?  See if you can spot the references to me in the following subsections.

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Google Maps “Street View”

I suppose I have zero street cred now. Until yesterday, I’d NEVER seen “street view” on Google Maps. I use Google Maps a LOT and I just now noticed the little camera icon on some of the turns.

You click on the camera icon for the turn, and it shows you a picture of what it would look like from your car if you were right at that place!  How crazy is that!??!

That is just plain cool.  But not only that, the arrows are interactive, and can pan and zoom around so you can actually simulate the action of turning.  The visual effect is very impressive.  It’s also remarkable to me how they superimposed the blue lines onto the ground, making me think of the yellow first down markers they do for football games on TV.

I did some tests for my own home, and sure enough, it has the entrance onto my street and actually goes to my mailbox.

I assume it won’t be long before the in-car dash GPS and driving assist systems offer these visual cues.

I assume it won’t be long before the systems can display transparently on the inside of the windshield.

I assume it won’t be long before people are dependent upon the Windshield Automatic Yield Navigation Electronics (WAYNE) system to get anywhere, and the general population will lose its ability to navigate themselves in older cars.

I assume it won’t be long before the first hacker devoted to the Sun God RA, gets into the main centralized street view system, chanting “RA, RA, RA! GOD OF THE SUN!” and turns everyone’s navigation system to point them off the highway, over a side rail and right into the Sun.

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SharePoint SP3 issue

We’re in the process of upgrading from SharePoint 2003 to MOSS 2007.  As part of preparation, we loaded service pack 3 on our main SharePoint 2003 server, and everything seemed fine until the next morning, when nobody could use Datasheet view on lists.

Some quick googling helped us find that this is a frequent enough issue that MS issued a hotfix.  So I did an online request for a hotfix, which assured me that I’d hear from them within 8 business hours, which is a long time when you’re paying a consultant to spend time with you onsite to help with the migration.

That’s just too long for me to wait, even WITH an awesome consultant, so some more googling resulted in what the actual “fix” was, which is to add 4 lines to the ows.js file - seems one of the service packs overwrites that file with a version that conveniently disabled activex, something Datasheet view highly depends on.  Ooops!

Which is a nice segue into our most anticipated weekly part of the series:

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Best of LOLcats

I wonder if this LOLcat sent his MyCoke code to Avi.

 

Wow, they’re synchronized hamsters, even.

 

It’s the kitty that does it for me.

 

 

Another weekly update of stuff you don’t want to MISC.  Well you liberals might want to MISC my economy comments.  I guess they could be called economents.

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Iron Man

I, like many of the bloggers I read, saw Iron Man and loved it.  I classify the movie under “Movies that did not suck at all”.  I really enjoyed it.  It is PG-13, and it’s rated such, in my opinion, due to the violence.  Still, a great flick. 

Jaden’s favorite parts were the flying.  Bravo, Jaden.  Bravo.

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Quick comment on economy

I wish the media would give the full story when they report stuff.  Why do I have to go looking to find out some of these things about the economy?

What I learned recently was that a “recession” is defined as two (2) quarters of negative growth in GDP (Gross Domestic Product).  I thought, based on what the media tells us, that we’re in a recession.  But when you look at 4th quarter of last year, GDP grew by 2/10ths of a percent.  In 1st quarter of this year, GDP grew by 6/10ths of a percent.  I know it’s not a lot, but it is growth, and it’s increasing.  And the stimulus checks aren’t even here yet!

In fact, maybe the media should have been saying as the headline:

GDP growth rose 300 percent quarter to quarter

It’s true, right? Oh wait, the media doesn’t like telling truths that helps people feel good.  They’d rather scare people, I think.

The only reason the media gets away with distorting the truth is because people let them.  I implore the masses (you know, the dozen or so people who will read these words) - PLEASE question the headlines you read.  The media has one main goal: sell papers. I believe the media has ulterior goals of pushing agendas, but the first goal is still enough for all of us to question the headlines.  When they report “41 children from polygamist compound found to have had broken bones”, find out what that is compared to normal kids.  If they reported all the facts, they’d disclose that 9% is lower or the same as typical farm population kids.  Oh, and they don’t disclose that they got the 41 number from any child that had or has ever had any kind of broken bone.  But of course your head gets filled with images of 41 kids with broken arms and legs *right at this moment*, not in any time of their 18 years of age.

I guess I should get my warning out there.  If the democrats come in and raise my taxes, I feel like I’ll give up.  I’ll stop working so hard.  I’ll show them what it means to disincent those of us who actually work for a living and try to succeed.  I work harder and smarter each year so I can make more money, not so my “excess” (their term) can go to someone who doesn’t give a flip.

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TequilaCon 2008

I, unlike many of the bloggers I read, did not attend TequilaCon 2008 in Philadelphia.  I’m not sure if I’d be suited to attend such a drink-fest, so maybe I can plan to attend in the future as official photographer or something.  The twitter updates were hilarious. 

Yeah, this is probably something better for me to watch than participate in

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Best of LOLcats

 

 

 

 

Tuesday is a GREAT day for my Sunday series!  It never hurts to mix things up a bit.  Well, unless you mix up the sugar and the rat poison.  In this episode I not only bring you more LOLcats than I’ve done in a while, but I also deliver a Palindrodometer.

Even those of you who despise LOLcats, I challenge you not to chuckle at least once at the list I’ve compiled this week.  The LOLMonkey itself is enough to get a small chortle.

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Dave2’s Blogiversary

If you don’t know about Dave’s FIVE YEAR Blogiversary, then you’re either hiding under a rock, or you don’t know who Dave is.  Or both.  This guy knows how to give stuff away (although, now that the entire winner’s list is in, evidently he doesn’t know how to give stuff away to ME.  I’ll have to work with him on that)

Get this - the guy does a whole WEEK of giveaways.  I added it up and it’s more than $500 worth of stuff.

Please sing the following to the tune of “Twelve Days of Christmas”

On the first day of Blogiversary, my friend Dave gave* to me… the rules of his blogiversary.
On the second day of Blogiversary, my friend Dave gave* to me… too many shirts, and the rules of his blogiversary.
On the third day of Blogiversary, my friend Dave gave* to me… Try Evil Hats, too many shirts, and the rules of his blogiversary.
On the fourth day of Blogiversary, my friend Dave gave* to me… Custom Playing Cards, Try Evil Hats, too many shirts, and the rules of his blogiversary.
On the fifth day of Blogiversary, my friend Dave gave* to me… DAVE… IN… MY… TOWN!!!… Custom Playing Cards, Try Evil Hats, too many shirts, and the rules of his blogiversary.
On the sixth day of Blogiversary, my friend Dave gave* to me… six apologies, DAVE… IN… MY… TOWN!!!… Custom Playing Cards, Try Evil Hats, too many shirts, and the rules of his blogiversary.
On the seventh day of Blogiversary, my friend Dave gave* to me… seven million winners and a vlog, six apologies, DAVE… IN… MY… TOWN!!!… Custom Playing Cards, Try Evil Hats, too many shirts, and the rules of his blogiversary.
On the eighth day of Blogiversary, my friend Dave gave* to me… eight lame excuses, seven million winners and a vlog, six apologies, DAVE… IN… MY… TOWN!!!… Custom Playing Cards, Try Evil Hats, too many shirts, and the rules of his blogiversary.

 *not!

I already have plans to order me a couple decks of those awesome cards…

THANK YOU DAVE FOR putting on such a great series!

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I brake for palindromes

I beg you - please don’t ask me why I feel compelled to share my palindrome experiences with you. Call me a race car, call me Otto, I don’t care. Do you know what my favorite number is? I prefer PI.

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Best of LOLcats

Here you go.  And yes, I’m talking to you, Raganator.  Oh, and everyone else, too.

^^^ sometimes I need this kind of TLC ^^^