Zane was in a School Performance last night titled, “Everyone Smiles in the same language”.

It was very good, with the kids doing different songs or dances from different parts of the world.

When we were leaving, I reminded the kids to watch out for cars, because “Everyone gets hit by a car in the same language”.

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Shaftoe’s Haikus come

Plentiful in first pages

None after. Blame Morphine?

According to Wiki How, those lines don’t technically qualify, since they aren’t relating an abstract concept, nor it is about imagery or nature. If you haven’t read the book, then you probably won’t get it.

As I mentioned in my “Books I would like to Read” post, I’m working on Cryptonomicon right now. Great book so far! I really love Stepehnson’s writing. There are a  bunch of books that I am going to put at the top of the list that I have already read, but want to read again, and Snow Crash, also by Stephenson, is one of them.

The downfall of Cryptonimicon is that it is a lot of words. The book is over 900 pages, and it has to be one of the smallest fonts that I’ve seen in a book. Really, I’m not getting old, the writing is small. I’m about a third of the way through it, but it could be months before I finish.

One thing from the book that puzzled me, and I discussed it a really strange guy I know, is that the Japanese are referred to as Nipponese, and I guess it is accurate, at least for the time frame. Evidently the Japanese referred to their homeland as Nippon. Or at least they did in the World War II Era, I don’t know if that is still true. At the time, anything of Japanese origin was Nipponese.

That also explains the line from the Pink Floyd song “The Postwar Dream”. The song was on the album “The Final Cut”, and you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a historical reference. Great Album.

Seems like I’m getting a little random though, so I better stop here. I was re-reading yesterday’s post, and it seemed more like a jumble of random stuff, rather than just some interesting links. I had better stop while I’m still within 3 subjects of the title.

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Let me just say that I think the writers are getting the short end of the stick, and not only are they justified in striking, but I want them to squeeze every last penny out of those Hollywood fat cats.

That being said, man I love that there isn’t a darn thing on TV to watch. I really enjoy some television shows, but I would enjoy them more if they didn’t take any time to watch. I personally have no idea what show airs on any particular day, let alone what time it comes on.

All I know is I press DVR button twice, and I see what has been recorded. If nothing is there, then I don’t watch anything. If something is there, then I’ll watch it.

I’ve made many attempts lately to really trim down the amount of TV that I watch. I ask myself if I would really miss a show, or if I really look forward to seeing that show. Most of the time the answers are "no", and I stop watching it.

This isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy watching some of them, which I did, it’s just that they don’t really add much to my life, so why burn the time to watch them?

Last night, I realized that there hasn’t been anything on my DVR in quite awhile. Why is that I wonder? Oh yea, that writer strike.

That explains why I was able to read "I am Legend", as well as many of the short stories in that same book. That also explains why I have been able to play so much Civ, and watch a couple of my Netflix movies.

Of course, if the writers stay on strike, then I guess there won’t be anymore books or movies, but I’m sure that is going to take awhile, not to mention that I haven’t read any fiction books in so long it isn’t even funny.

Maybe I should cancel my cable. I mean, all the good series come out on DVD anyway, right?

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Friday started out to be a good day. As I was pulling into the parking lot at work, I realized that I had finished everything that I needed to do the previous day. This means that today I get to work on what I want to work on. Yippee!

One of the first things I decided to do was take care of a problem that has been nagging me for quite awhile. The hard drive on my primary machine.

The primary machine that I use has two physical hard drives in it. Drive 1 is a crappy Western Digital. I don’t like Western Digital Drives, due to personal experience. You probably figured that out though.

 Luckily the second hard drive is a Maxtor. The Western Digital has been having issues for at least 8 months or so, and every time I get any real drive access on it, like when Outlook is updating it’s offline files, the machine hangs for a little while.

My intent was to take a ghost image of the Problematic 150G Western Digital, and place the image on my fully functional Maxtor 250G Drive. Then I would switch the drives around, making the Maxtor my primary drive. After that, I could do what I want with the Western Digital.

I’ll make a long story short, and let you know that it didn’t work out as planned. I ended up having to reload Windows.

Now, when you’ve decided to reload your computer, and have prepared, it can be really beneficial, kind of a cleansing experience.

If you aren’t expecting to do it, then it can be a real pain.

This was a real pain.

The Lemonade Part

I didn’t realize how badly that flaky drive was slowing down my day to day operations. Since swapping those hard drives, the machine is flying. It’s also really nice to start over, I only have the applications on there that I really use.

I tend to install a lot of software, and although I uninstall it periodically, the computer tends to get a little cluttered.

It’s also nice to set everything up exactly the way you want it, get all of your images and shortcuts going again, the desktop arranged just so. I’m not a control freak, but I still like having my workspace squared away.

All in all, I’m glad that I had to re-load my computer, although I wasn’t expecting it, I did have the time to do it that day, and I’m really reaping the benefits of it now.

Posted in Hard-Drives, Personal-Computing, Rambling 10 Comments »

Whew! Command of the grill week is over, well, I still wanted to do a little wrap up post on that, but I should finish that up pretty soon and I’ll be able to get back to my regular posting topics.

Near the end of Command of the Grill Week, I finally gave up on my old grill. It was a little Sunbeam Kettle grill, which has served me well over the years that I’ve had it, but finally the ash bucket rusted out.

I’ve been growing a little frustrated with it, because it has a standard wire grate, rather than a nice heavy duty cast iron grate. The wire grate makes it really hard to leave any grill marks at all.

The timing couldn’t have been better. My wife had been asking me what I wanted for my birthday, and although I had been kicking around some ideas, I didn’t know for sure.

This grill is made by BBQ Grillware, who I hadn’t heard of before. Although it is stainless steel, it is still a charcoal grill with a cast iron grill grates. The grill marks are exquisite. I’m not sure how often I’ll have to light the whole grill, but it sure is nice to have a little extra space.

Phil posted about old friends and new friends, in his case a new computer. So this is my new friend. I’m looking forward to doing some serious grilling on it.

Posted in Grilling, Rambling 4 Comments »