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February 29, 2008
I *knew* it was too easy...
I always do our taxes early - and if the government owes us money, we file early.
I'm usually really good about making sure we've got all the documents we're waiting for, and taxes are pretty much a non-issue...
Well, Dawnise came in from getting the mail and said "we got some tax information."
Sweet!, I thought, our refund arrived...
Continue reading "I *knew* it was too easy..."
Posted by dberger at 7:15 PM
February 27, 2008
Are They Made With Real Girlscouts?
One of the guys at work was selling Girl Scout cookies for his daughters troops - so yesterday I came home with a couple boxes.
Ahhhh the smell of thin-mints.
Posted by dberger at 8:26 PM | Comments (1)
A $200 what?
Dawnise was kind enough to sacrifice what turned into most of her day to take the BMW into the shop. The driver-side headlight (one of the Xenon high intensity jobs) had been failing intermittently, and while they had it I wanted them to install an AUX input for the stereo.
She got it there at 10:30 this morning, and they informed her it wouldn't be ready 'till "at least 4pm."
Continue reading "A $200 what?"
Posted by dberger at 3:56 PM
February 25, 2008
My Other Transport...
While finishing up the extras disc of Doctor Who Season 3 this evening, Dawnise suddenly comes out with:
"It's too bad your mom doesn't still have her license plate frame. It would mean something again."
It took me several seconds to figure out what she meant.
When Dawnise and I first met - around age 15 - my mom had a license plate frame that read:
My Other Transport...
Is a T.A.R.D.I.S.
Knowing my parents, there's a good chance it's in a box, in their basement.
Now I'm thinking of getting one made for our new Subaru...
Posted by dberger at 9:40 PM | Comments (2)
Clean Vehicles Run Better
In honor of a whole weekend of absolutely beautiful weather, Dawnise gave me a hand washing all three motorcycles yesterday afternoon.
I had considered riding to work this morning but I woke up with a back-ache, which I had been working on prior to washing the motorcycles.
Now I need to buy another garage door opener (for the bay that the bikes are in) and figure out where I can put the big recycling bin so it doesn't interfere with getting the RS in and out of the garage.
Posted by dberger at 8:00 AM | Comments (3)
February 21, 2008
Ravioli
We just finished Good Eats: Use Your Noodle (2) - about Ravioli.
It made me miss my parents (and my mom's ravioli).
Posted by dberger at 7:52 PM | Comments (1)
February 20, 2008
Thieves Suck
Last night - around 10 - I put three DVDs in our mailbox - headed back to Netflix.
Dawnise just informed me that there was a note from the postal person saying that the outgoing flag was up, but there was nothing in the box.
Continue reading "Thieves Suck"
Posted by dberger at 5:00 PM | Comments (1)
What's the Bad Stuff?
Dawnise and I enjoy a card game from Steve Jackson Games called Munchkin - it's sort of a stripped-down parody of the typical D&D dungeon crawl. The tag line - "Kill the Monsters, Steal the Treasure, Stab Your Buddy" - pretty much sums up the essence.
If you meet a monster you can't kill, it does something bad to you - this deleterious effect is described on the monster card as "The Bad Stuff."
"The Bad Stuff" ranges from losing items, to being dead (at which point, the other players go through your pockets looking for loose change).
Continue reading "What's the Bad Stuff?"
Posted by dberger at 8:51 AM
February 19, 2008
Just a Little Bit Warmer...
It's working.
Not riding the motorcycle to work in the nasty of winter has totally renewed my interest. And springs taking her own sweet time to get here, but it was almost warm enough to put the top down on the way home yesterday.
I'm itching for the days to get a little warmer, and the snow in the passes to melt a bit so we can start planning some road trips.
I suspect watching the first few episodes of Feasting on Asphalt probably helped, too.
Posted by dberger at 8:24 AM
February 18, 2008
I Don't Mean To Go Off On A Rant Here...
Someone needs to kick the so-called "content owners" in their collective head.
Five minutes of searching reveals I can either wait for Doctor Who to start airing on SciFi in April, wait for an as-yet unannounced DVD release date, or I can steal them - or at least the Christmas Special - now, as in this moment.
I mean come on people. I'm willing to pay for access to the content - why are you (the collective you) being such complete and udder idiots about releasing it?
Yea, I know, rhetorical question...
Posted by dberger at 10:32 PM
I'm pretty sure this means I'm crazy
We watched the final three episodes of the third season of Doctor Who this evening.
The Master, and ...The Face of Boe...
Awesome.
I'm sitting here seriously contemplating getting cable so I can watch season four in April (and Sarah Jane, too!), rather than waiting for the DVD release.
And I'm considering spending $70 each on the three seasons released thus far.
This must be what going mad feels like.
Posted by dberger at 10:21 PM
February 13, 2008
Crappy Television, Redux
The last couple episodes of Torchwood we've watched have been "downers" - and after getting the second "holy-crap-I-don't-have-that-sort-of-money" bid on the kitchen, and learning that a good friend had to fly back to S. Africa to be with her terminally ill father, "downer" wasn't what we were looking for to distract us for a couple hours this evening.
So we cracked open Season Four of The West Wing.
I continue to be impressed by the show - the acting and writing are so spot-on, that after a many month hiatus, it felt like we only been away a few days.
The line, in Bartlett's speech - "The Streets of Heaven are too crowded with angels" struck me with palpable force. And the fact that it wasn't created for that moment, but "borrowed" does nothing to reduce it's poignancy.
Janinne, our thoughts are with you and your family.
Posted by dberger at 9:33 PM
February 11, 2008
It's Worse Than That, It's Broken, Jim
That nifty-looking coffee maker I got the other day? Well it failed (as in cracked through) when I half filled it with warm tap water to clean it before use.
I dropped a note and a picture to sweetmarias where I purchased it, and they informed me that they can't replace it as Bodum has discontinued it - likely due to breakage issues.
"Give up bad design for good" indeed.
Too bad - it was pretty...
Posted by dberger at 9:57 PM
Technology Compromises
I've ranted about how Apple's hardware line doesn't offer me solutions, only compromises before - but to recap, despite being pretty sure at this point we'll be buying Dawnise a Mac, it's still terribly unclear which Mac we'll settle for.
Continue reading "Technology Compromises"
Posted by dberger at 6:03 PM | Comments (1)
A History of the Amiga - Re-igniting Passion
Jeremy Reimer has been publishing A History of the Amiga over at ArsTechnica.
Continue reading "A History of the Amiga - Re-igniting Passion"
Posted by dberger at 8:35 AM | Comments (1)
February 10, 2008
Why Do We Get All the Crap Television?
I'll just say up front that having not "had television" for a bit over three years, it's possible - however unlikely - that TV's gotten hugely, way, lots better since I last checked.
But I doubt it.
Continue reading "Why Do We Get All the Crap Television?"
Posted by dberger at 9:24 PM | Comments (1)
February 8, 2008
Waiting for a Shoe to Drop
After over a week of daily "hardware hiccups," I found some mail threads suggesting that the reason my hard disks were mysteriously vanishing was related to APIC I/O, so I added the "noapic" option to my boot flags and crossed my fingers.
Three days later, and the machine hasn't hiccuped once.
Andrew Morton thinks that apic handling is pretty broken, has been for a while, and isn't likely to get better (no motivation to find the problem as there exists an easy workaround).
I'd really like this to be the answer... 'cause then I could bitch about how software (even linux) sucks, and not go buy new hardware.
Posted by dberger at 10:23 AM
February 7, 2008
I... Am Not Left Handed
Shortly before we ended up moving out of So. Cal I took a fencing class with a friend (you out there Geoff?) - enjoyed it a lot, although my knees didn't.
So when Dawnise saw that Bellevue Parks and Rec were offering an intro fencing class, she encouraged me to sign up (and actually, she did the signing up for me, 'cause she's sweet that way). The first meeting was supposed to be two weeks ago, but it was postponed due to poor participation, so the first meeting was tonight...
Continue reading "I... Am Not Left Handed"
Posted by dberger at 8:24 PM
Death and...
Taxes.
It's (already) that time of year again.
Continue reading "Death and..."
Posted by dberger at 10:27 AM
February 6, 2008
An Unhealthy Obsession With Coffee (Makers)
I'm not generally a collector. I have a reasonable sized CD collection (around 700 CDs at last count), and I guess I share some blame in our sizable movie collection (several hundred, but I don't have that count in my head), and most of you know I collect fountain pens (numbering in the tens).
I'd have to say that the top of my "mostly useless" collection scale is my fascination with coffee makers.
Continue reading "An Unhealthy Obsession With Coffee (Makers)"
Posted by dberger at 5:35 PM
February 5, 2008
The Ongoing Saga of Flaky Hardware
Well, after being stable for a couple weeks, my home machine started acting up again, disproving my theory that the drive trouble I was having were power-supply related.
Continue reading "The Ongoing Saga of Flaky Hardware"
Posted by dberger at 10:09 AM
February 1, 2008
Sharing Access to Digital Photos
Dawnise has a Windows box, and uses an app called ACDSee as her image viewer of choice.
I have a Linux box, and use f-spot to access and organize our photo collection.
The pictures themselves live on our network attached storage, easily accessible from both her machine and mine, as well as our notebooks on the wireless network.
You can probably already guess this doesn't have a happy ending...
Continue reading "Sharing Access to Digital Photos"
Posted by dberger at 2:36 PM | Comments (1)
Mastermind
I found a copy of Tina Cousin's second release - Mastermind - on ebay, and despite having it shipped from Australia, it was way lots cheaper than Amazon (by half).
I really like her first album - Killing Time - and had high hopes for the second.
It's not bad, but none of the tracks really got under my skin the way the first album did.
Posted by dberger at 1:13 PM
Microsoft + Yahoo == Bye-Bye Flickr
You've probably seen that Microsoft made an unsolicited buyout bid to the tune of 44.6 Billion-with-a-b dollars for Yahoo!.
My very first thought, when I saw the headline on my yahoo page, was that should Microsoft succeed, I'll have to finally seriously look at Google's "personal home page" stuff.
My second thought - moments later - was that a successful takeover will spell the end of my relationship with Flickr, which up to this point has been overwhelmingly positive.
Posted by dberger at 8:03 AM | Comments (4)