Category: Uhm

When it fits nowhere else.

Mmm, Mexican

Dinner and Site stuff.

Jenn and I went to El Burrito for dinner tonight. I really wanted chicken burrito with green sauce, but it wasn’t on the menu, so I went for a chicken chimichanga, which was quite good. Jenn and I also split a 46 oz raspberry margarita, which was also quite good.

You may notice in the left sidebar a section labeled Tags. New to WordPress 2.3, they are similar to categories, but a little more detailed. I added tags to most posts for the last 3 months, so some are showing up now. I had a problem with going through, that I would use a tag then never use it again and a few other issues. I think I am going to write down 50 or so tags, and try and stick to those. The big problem, obviously, is there are now 496 untagged posts. This sounds way to much like my fun with categories, but I only had to do about 350 of those. The other issue I have, is the tags will be very similar to the abstracts I write for every post. This means for every new post I will need a title, the post, an abstract, categories, and tags. It almost sounds like work. I will figure something out I guess.

New iPods

iPods, thats about it.

About an hour ago, Apple updated their entire iPod line.

The new iPod shuffle is available in different colors, with no other changes.

The new nano is smaller, and again different colors. Capacity is up to 4 and 8GB from 2 and 4, and the screen is slightly larger and brighter.

The iPod is now renamed iPod classic, and also has a redesigned case, greater capacity (up to 160GB), and is now in an all metal case.

New to the line is the iPod touch, essentially a phone-less iPhone. It features wi-fi, calendar and address book, Safari web browser, multi-touch interface, and direct access to the iTunes store, without needing to download media to a computer first.

All in all, good updates for most. I am unimpressed with the look of the new cases though. I will wait until I can see them in person, but my current opinion is if I were in the market for a new iPod, I would purchase a now “previous model” (especially with the price drops often seen on previous models).

No real news otherwise. Mostly waiting for the weekend for Todd’s wedding.

nick

Some Quotes

A craptastic load of quotes.

At Steak n’ Shake, I wait on you. At other restaurants, the chicken waits on you.

What part of “Sudden Death” didn’t you understand?
(Funnier when you think of Christopher Walken saying it.)

Everyone and their mums is packin’ round here!
Like who?
Farmers.
Who else?
Farmers’ mums.

By the power of Greyskull!

I may not be a religious man Reverend, but I know right and I know wrong and I have the good grace to know which is which.
Oh, fuck off, grasshopper.

You’re a doctor, deal with it.
Yeah, motherfucker.

And are they as big as he is?
Who?
The mum and sister?
Same person.

I could have given you the tour! I’ve been around the station a few times!

With respect, sir, you can’t just make people disappear.
Yes I can, I’m the Chief Inspector.

So what made you want to become a policeman?
Officer.
What made you want to become a policeman officer?

I took the liberty of bullshitting you.

Luckily, my neck broke my fall.

Hey, hey, easy kids. Everybody in the car. Boat leaves in two minutes… or perhaps you don’t want to see the second largest ball of twine on the face of the earth, which is only four short hours away?

If someone doesn’t start explaining what’s going on here…well, there’s going to be some explaining to do!

Wise men say, ‘forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza.’

You’re a claustraphobic!
You want a fist in the mouth? I’ve never even looked at another guy before!

Attention. Here’s an update on tonight’s dinner. It was veal. I repeat, veal. The winner of tonight’s mystery meat contest is Jeffrey Corbin who guessed “some kind of beef.”

Look at the size of that boy’s head. It’s like an orange on a toothpick.
No kidding. His head’s like Sputnik. Spherical, but quite pointy in parts.

Do you actually like haggis?
No, I think it’s repellent in every way. In fact, I think most Scottish cuisine is based on a dare.

And in closing, note the new poll.

Book Review

World War Z and MacBook predictions.

So, I finished up my book last night (World War Z). To anyone considering reading it but on the fence, go get it. It wasn’t what I thought, not that that is bad. I had expected a history book like recount, with highlights and a story. Instead, it was a narrator interviewing some of the prime players in the Human – Zombie War. If you do undertake the book, be prepared to want to re-read it. The narrator re-interviews a few people and it can make you want to go back and check who a certain person is. I figure I will wait until about Christmas to try my reread, just so it is at least a little out of my head.

Something I wanted to mention last time: As I had mentioned, the iMac is now aluminum. This makes the MacBook the last polycarbonate Mac remaining. Now, as the low end portable this may last for a while, but I think it is just one step closer to my prediction now about 18 months old, that the MacBooks will eventually go to anodized aluminum enclosures, similar to that or the ipod nanos. Maybe not, maybe just regular aluminum, but there is a chance. Either way, by the mid-2008 update, it will be very hard to resist buying a new computer. Between new iLife just out, OS X 10.5 in October, Office 2008 in January, big upgrades due to the MacBook line, and my iBook turning 5 on December 5th, it will certainly be hard to resist.

OK, that’s all I have. As I said last time, we will be in Alpena for the weekend. Probably leaving in the next 18 hours or so at some point. Will update when we return, whenever that happens. Hopefully no dead fish to report on.

nick

Reminder Reminders

TV, Tour, Food, Poll, and Book.

Just in case anyone forgot, Feasting on Asphalt 2 begins tonight at 9 on Food Network, lasting 6 weeks. Tuesday at 9 on Discovery is the Mackinac Bridge episode on Dirty Jobs, and Friday at 9 on Discovery is SurvivorMan Season 2.

I just finished making my first batch of pickles of the year, we will see how they turn out in a day or 2.

Tour de France finished with Team Discovery taking 1st and 3rd. Alberto Contador took first, Cadel Evans was 23 seconds behind him, and Levi Leipheimer (my fav to win, the american on an american team) was another 2 seconds off. Fourth place, Carlos Sastra, was a full 7 minutes and 8 seconds off of first. It was a sad Tour, with Vinokourov stripped of his yellow 3/4 through by being fired by his team, doping scandals all around, and still no real answer as to who won last year.

We ate at Bob Evan’s tonight, which I think is the first time I have been there in about 4 or 5 years.

A new poll will be coming up soon, I just didn’t see the point over the summer, with people having different schedules.

I started reading World War Z. It is pretty good so far.

OK, I think that is good for now. More after the weekend.

nick

TV News

Upcoming TV events on FoodNetwork and Discovery.

Several TV related notices:

  1. Feasting on Asphalt – Season 2: August 4 on Food Network (Six episodes this year, up from last year’s 4)
  2. Dirty Jobs – Mackinac Bridge Painter: 9:00 PM, Tuesday August 7 on Discovery
  3. Survivorman – Season 2: 9:00 PM, Friday August 10 on Discovery

Also, I see if you order the Feasing on Asphalt Season 1 DVD set from FoodNetwork, you get a free ViewMaster, since AB loves them so much.

nick

It Broke

Template problems and tubing.

So, I upgraded WordPress from 2.2 to 2.2.1 last night, and all hell broke loose. I had my 7 themes set up so one had all the template files (the actual code that said where things go, what shows up, what is in the sidebar, etc…) and the rest just had stylesheets (that specify colors, fonts, sizes, etc…) and specified to use that one template also. It was a very nice setup, and I liked it, but for whatever reason it wouldn’t work, it claimed all 7 were dead.

So, I post to the WordPress support forum, and they tell me that feature was killed off back when 1.5 came out. This of course perplexed me, as I had used this system for almost a year, through 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, and a few of the higher 1.x releases. In fact, I hadn’t even implemented it until after 1.5 was out. So how the hell was it working?

Well, nobody really knows. I ended up having to duplicate the template files into all 7 themes to get everything back up.

Yeah, nobody knows what the hell I’m talking about, and that’s fine, it just annoys me. How does a feature that was killed over a year ago continue working right up to a minor revision?

Anyway, Jenn and I went tubing again Wednesday. We actually bought out own tubes too. If we go one more time they will be pretty much paid for, so it works out well.

I think that’s about it. See you when I have more to say.

nick

Evil Charter

Me being pissed off.

Charter decided to intercept all DNS errors as a “service” to users. This means they take you to a Yahoo!/Charter sponsored results page that provides 0% relevancy to what you were trying for. If you accidentally type ayomicow.org, it gives you results for buying beef online. Any decent search engine, including Yahoo! is capable of properly searching for and finding the correct result.

This, however, is not the point. I don’t care that they are using a shitty search, I care that they are doing anything period. Even if you opt out of the “service”, you don’t return to normal DNS errors, you still are redirected to their page. This means you can’t just go up to the address bar and correct your typo, because you are suddenly at a charter.net address. I don’t want their damn search, I don’t want to opt out, I don’t want anything.

Anyway, this is what I sent them. If you have charter, please do the same from their support page on charter.com. If you have another ISP and they are trying to pull this shit, send them a similar letter.

My internet connection is not working correctly. Whenever I miss type a website address I am redirected to a charter search page. At first, it was quite annoying because the search results were far from what I was looking for, and consisted primarily of unrelated sponsored results. Having found the opt-out option, I attempted to use that but still am not satisfied. Even having opted out of this useless service that I never requested, I am still not receiving the correct result. I do not receive my browsers error page, instead receive your copy of an IE error page. Please, I implore you, return the DNS error results to what they were, end this annoying and useless “service” that nobody ever requested.