There’s a computer wholesaler in downtown Hackettstown… a -real- computer wholesaler. They’re not interested in selling systems to me for my clients… they only sell computer systems by the pallet. Nifty. GoCWI.com
A romantic comedy with Zombies and VC
I saw Shaun of the Dead with VC last night. Quite an enjoyable movie, especially with a great person to see it with. :-)
More with the Ass Kicking: Mozilla Firefox
I’ve been using it for 3 days now and can definitively say that Firefox kicks Internet Explorers ass. I just started playing with extensions and… yeah. Good bye IE. (though I’ve been having a little trouble viewing some videos in Firefox. I’m sure I’ll find the right extension shortly to make that problem go away)
Get Firefox. It will make you more productive.
I’m going to have to figure out how to put myself on an RSS feed soon. I’m simply in love with the Sage RSS reader in Firefox. I can see why some of my friends have been bugging me to produce an RSS stream.
The Red Sox Win The World Series!
Was I right? I was right! Lee Gavin has lifted the curse! Thank you Lee!
My Favorite Screen Saver: Burning Man
This has been my screen saver now on and off for a few months. I’ve got to say that it was a major contributor to my pre-burn excitement. The photos are excellent… a real joy! Thank you, Burning Man Screen Saver Project!
Google Desktop Kicks Ass
Old way of looking up old data
- Double-click Windows Search icon
- Wait 8 seconds
- Type the text I’m looking for, IE: “xmas 04″ (My Christmas shopping list)
- Wait 3 seconds
- Double-click ‘xmas 04.txt’ to start Notepad
- Wait 2 seconds
- View document
New Way
- In IE or Firefox, click on bookmark for Google Desktop
- Type the text I’m looking for
- Click the cache-link
- Wait 1/2 second
- View document
Time Saved: 12.5 seconds. I do this search 5-20 times per day.
Old way of looking up archived emails
- Open Outlook
- Wait 30 seconds
- Hit Ctrl-Shift-F.
- Type in search criterion
- Wait 45 seconds
- view results
New Way
- Click on bookmark for Google Desktop
- Type in the search criterion
- wait 1/2 second
- View email
I often leave Outlook running, so I’ll just say I’ve saved 44.5 seconds. I do this search 2-10 times per day.
Dreaming of Flying
This is some crazy dream I had this morning. Don’t feel you have to read it.
I woke up this morning dreaming of flying. I’ve had this kind of dream many times before. This one was especially vivid. I remember being with friends… family? by the ocean. The shoreline sloped quickly into the ocean. At one point, I threw myself down the incline (not a dangerous incline, except to fall onto the sand and ultimately the incoming waves) and I recall that my limbs remembered the hint of previous dreams. The first time, I remembered enough to be able to not fall… and in the middle of it, my toes felt uncomfortable having not landed on the ground or the surf.
I decided t
o practice the movements. They are a sort of gyration of each joint in appropriate succession. I recall trying to explain this to someone in the dream. I told them it was like that hand dynamo you might have played with as a kid. It’s sort of a ball inside another ball. You grasp the thing in your hand and get the inner ball spinning. Once it’s going (and making this interesting whining noise) you have to gyrate your wrist against the gyroscopic forces that the inner ball is generating (yes, this thing exists, I’ve got one in storage… See http://www.dynaflex-intl.com/gyro_info.htm) Flying is sort of like that… pushing against forces that you didn’t know were there until you tried pushing in just the write way in the right rhythm. Thinking about it, my flying experience was a bit more like the Dyna Flex in other ways. I remember the feeling like I was really doing it. It’s an uncomfortable feeling… I have to bend my limbs in ways that would have locked my joints and hurt if I were putting weight on them. As I got better at it, I started to realize that the ‘pushing’ was some combination of mental effort as well as physical… It’s possible (though I’d have to do it more to be sure) that, if I practiced, I could fly without much physical effort at all.
I recall the experience of Arthur Dent flying in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. This might be the origination of this dream. I read the book when I was about 12 years old. Actually, I read the entire 3 book series, cover to cover in a single sitting one Christmas day. Arthur flew by “throwing yourself at the ground and missing” and there was something else about gyrating his wrists and ankles in a particular manner.
Back to the dream…. I vividly recall how it felt… Even if I lost concentration and stopped trying to fly for a few moments, I only lost a little altitude… as if I had lost just a little buoyancy or… mmmm parts of me lost their tethers to the balloons that were keeping me aloft. Yeah, I like that second analogy better because I could feel that each of my body parts were being held up separately. I didn’t start to fall… If I had tried, I probably could have fallen, but it was an experience that was as safe as say, driving a car.
The scene: it was terrific. When I got up high, I could see down to the surf maybe 500 feet below me. As I looked out along the shoreline, a slight mist limited visibility to about 2 miles. From the shore, the beach rose up at a fairly steep climb to a rolling hill. Maybe 200 yards in, the sand gave way to short grass or moss climbing the hill. The top was maybe 700 feet above sea level and 1,500 feet from the shoreline.
I don’t recall seeing the sun was and can’t tell which way was north. Let’s say the shoreline went 
east-west with the water to the south. About 3/4 of a mile east of my original spot on the beach, the shoreline abruptly turns south. The mountain/hill also follows the shoreline to the south.
Once I had flown about, above the water for a while, I found my way to the perch in the drawing to the right. I’m standing on top of a hill to the east and south of my original position, which is pretty much in the center of the drawing.
I recall the smell. The scent of fresh air above 100 feet or so was so refreshing. I recall thinking how I’d remember the smell. The scent perched on the mountain was fresh as well. But it was different once I landed. The difference might have been in my mind though. Sort of the difference between what a land lubber smells in the ocean air and what someone who knows the ocean well smells.
Starting from the spot in the drawing, if I were to draw what was behind me… over my right shoulder, you’d see… strange as it is, a few tennis courts. The courts were fenced in as is normal for courts. What was strange was there were bums sitting around and in them. And they didn’t like me. As I write this, my memory of this part of the dream is fading. I recall that they started running toward me, unhappy with me though I don’t know why they were mad. I decided to take off again. I looked down, took two steps and was off the ground again. (wow, I was really flying of my own accord! How amazing and crazy was that?!) I got a little ways into the bay… maybe 30 yards from my starting point and one of the bums picked up and threw a broken model airplane at me. I was pretty surprised when his toss got the thing to hit me in the back a few seconds later. So I reached behind me and grabbed the plane. I recall thinking a few times that it would be good if I brought back evidence of this most amazing feat of flying and, though I wished I could bring back something a little more convincing, a model airplane wasn’t the worst thing I could bring back (and yes, I realized that a model airplane is a crazy thing to show as proof of flight, but it was all I had readily available… and I’d be able to do this again anyway… so what the hey, the thing got thrown at me). Strangely (I found a small, thick bodied doll in my left hand… I don’t recall how it got there. It was stiff.. maybe made out of hard plastic. I didn’t get a good look at the face but it was probably a man or… some benign troll-like thing with crazyish hair.
So there I was, coasting back to the beach above the water, starting to smell the water again, with a doll in my left hand and a model airplane in my right… that had been thrown at me by some angry bums from some tennis courts on the hill. I was starting to really get the hang of flying. As I started to wake up, I tried very hard to remember how to work my muscles so I could fly. Maybe I have. I just need a nice slope and some big sky to try it out on.
Why the Red Sox are going to win the World Series
Two reasons
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page3/story?page=lateword/041020
Compiled by Page 3
With real life news reading funnier than made-up comedy bits, the Late Night kings are loving every minute of it.
Page 3’s top shelf team (OK, it’s one dude out on the west coast, but he’s still top shelf) compiled the best sports comedy riffs from the past week.
David Ortiz
Hey, Papi, can you perform your heroics a little earlier next time?“The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”
# Rob Corddry analyzes the Curse of the Bambino, beginning with grainy historical baseball footage from the turn of the century.
Corddry voiceover: “From 1903 to 1918, the Boston Red Sox won five World Series … through good pitching, great hitting and hilarious-style running. But in 1919, the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the rival New York Yankees … (Shows clip of ball rolling through Bill Buckner’s legs in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.) and they haven’t won a World Series since.
“They call it the Curse of the Bambino. A curse that Lee Gavin says he has broken.”
Gavin: “On Aug. 31, I went to the Red Sox game at Fenway Park. It was my friend’s birthday party. And in the bottom of the fourth inning Manny Ramirez, my favorite player, sliced one down and knocked out to of my teeth.
Voiceover of a re-enactment: “The (expletive) curse is lifted!”
Corddry voiceover: “Why do Lee’s broken teeth lift the Curse of the Bambino? It’s because of where he lives.”
Gavin: “Babe Ruth lived in this house from 1916 to 1926. He built this house for his wife.”
Corddry: “Where are your parents?”
Gavin: “My mom is in New York right now, and my dad’s on business.”
Corddry: “So they’re not here?”
Gavin: “No.”
Corddry: “You wanna get high?”
Corddry voiceover: “Journalists jumped on the story and desperate Red Sox fans have jumped on the bandwagon because if the Curse of the Bambino is lifted it may be the watershed moment in lifting other curses.
“Like the taboo tiki that haunted the Bradys for three full episodes. Dick Cheney’s heated exchange with Pat Leahy. And who could forget the seven-year losing streak of the Chicago Mirror-breakers?
“But there are skeptics.”
Boston Herald columnist Mike Barnicle: “The real curse, if there is a curse, with the Red Sox is the curse of being owned by a bunch of crackers from Georgia.
“The Red Sox were the last franchise to have a black ballplayer.”
Corddry voiceover: “But if systemic racism is a curse, there would be a pox on the entire city of Boston.”
Corddry: “So you don’t believe there’s a Curse of the Bambino?”
Barnicle: “Yeah, there’s no curse. The Bambino was a big, fat bastard who could hit a home run and play the piano.”
Corddry: “So you’re saying poor Lee Gavin, a 16-year-old kid, put his face in front of a ball for nothing?”
Barnicle: “Yeah.”
Corddry voiceover: “Local fans have their own opinions.”
(Two fans are shown at a bar, talking to Corddry.)
First fan: “I’ve caught many balls in the face. Look at my face …”
Second fan, interrupting: “Ha, ha, ha. You’ve just said on national TV that you’ve caught more balls in the face than anybody. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha … That’ll break the curse!”
Corddry voiceover: “But if there’s no curse, how do you explain this?”
Gavin: “Since Babe Ruth was traded from the Red Sox, the Yankees have won 26 World Series and the Red Sox have won none.”
Corddry: “Twenty-six, isn’t that an interesting number?”
Gavin: (Looks puzzled, says nothing.)
Corddry: “Think about it, two sixes … Six, six, almost the number of the beast.”
Gavin: “The beast?”
Corddry: “You know, the evil one.”
Gavin: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Corddry: “You don’t listen to Iron Maiden?”
Gavin: “I don’t know who Iron Maiden is.”
Corddry: “You don’t know who Iron Maiden is?
Gavin: “No.”
Corddry: “You’re a 16-year-old kid living in Massachusetts. If you don’t know Judas Priest or Iron Maiden, how are you gonna worship the devil?”
Gavin: (With a blank look on his face, he just calmly sits, saying nothing.)
Corddry: (Shakes his head and sighs.)
Corddry voiceover: Back at the bar, everyone has their own theories.”
First fan: “Maybe if we all stop drinking, the Red Sox will win the World Series.”
Corddry voiceover: “But after 36 beers and 16 shots of Jager, we came up with a better idea.
(Shows interviewees roughhousing in the bar.)
Second fan: “You can finally come on Corddry and slap me in the face as hard as you can …”
First fan: “Slap him as hard as you can.”
Second fan: “Maybe the Red Sox will win the (expletive) World Series.”
First fan: “I’m not kidding, as hard as you can.”
Second fan: “Go ahead … Come on Corddry!”
First fan: “As hard ad you can. As hard as you can!”
(By now the whole bar is screaming at Corddry to slap the guy. Camera pans back to Corddry and the two fans. Corddry then slaps the guy who was asking for it.)
Voiceover, in a repeated voiceover from earlier: The (expletive) curse is lifted.”
Corddry: “Or is it?” (Finishing with a photo of Babe Ruth in a Red Sox uniform.)
Second reason: I haven’t been following them this year. I didn’t know they were even in the series until they won the first game.
So can I still go to Vegas and place a bet? This one is a sure thing.
Quotes from Hitchhikers Guide on Flying
The internet is a wonderful place. I found the flying excerpts I was looking for RE: my dream. It wasn’t exactly as I remembered, but close enough. Yeah, that was one of the foundations of my dream this morning.
Flying Exurpts from “Life, the Universe, and Everything” by Douglas Adams
“The Guide says there is an art to flying,” said Ford, “or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” He smiled weakly. He pointed at the knees of his trousers and held his arms up to show the elbows. They were all torn and worn through.
(more…)
Google Desktop
Search your PC like you search the internet with Google!
Staples Rebate class action lawsuit
In the last couple years, I’ve submitted about 10 Staples rebates and Staples hasn’t honored about 4 of them. And dammit if they don’t know exactly which ones I neglected to make photocopies of all the originals. Well I’m fed up.
If you’ve had a similar experience, then write to me and we’ll see what we can do about starting a class action lawsuit.
update:Â I submitted a $30 Logitech QuickCam webcam rebate on 1-11-08 and got the check today, just 2 weeks later on 1-23-08. Pretty impressive
My Phone Crashed!
ACMCJKDKCCKCKCKAATTTT!
My phone crashed just a second ago. And it isn’t even one of those high tech phones! It’s a Southwestern Bell Freedom Phone…. you know… your standard Slimline phone. I was winding my way though my health insurance provider’s phone tree hell…. pushing way too many buttons so they could save a few cents. So I was typing in my social security number and the number ‘6′ on my phone wouldn’t work. I could still hear the automated sexpot asking for my most intimate numbers.. I could hear my own heavy breathing in the receiver but the number 6 wouldn’t work. And then… none of the numbers would work! I started banging furiously…. Star, Pound, 1, 6, 9.. my phone was sick! Just as I was about to hang up, the phone comes out of it’s trance, “beep, bEEpbEEPBeepBEEPbeepbeepBEEPbeep, BeEp!”
Ahhhhh! The future of the universe is in the hands of chance.
Canadian Pharmacies
A couple weeks ago I ordered drugs from a Canadian Pharmacy, http://www.canadadrugprices.com. They said they might take up to 3 weeks to arrive. They arrived in 2 weeks. Although generic Lamisil isn’t available in the US, I got a generic from them. The brand is APO-Terbinafine - Terbinafine Hydrochloride Tablets - 250 mg. Made by Apotex Inc. Toronto Canada. The prescription for 30 pills cost $119 with shipping. In the US, it would have cost $365….. wait… WAIT.. Hey! a month ago it cost $365… I just checked CVS.com and it’s $307.
So, going through the Canadian pharmacy my 3 month treatment (for a yucky toenail fungal infection) costs $119 * 3 = $357. Going through CVS (my Medco insurance plan through Oxford doesn’t cover direct Medco mail order, so I have to order retail) costs $308 *3 = $924 …. My insurance will cover 1/2 of that…. $462.
Hmm. Going Canadian is saving me about 25%.
Wait a minute …. I just called my local CVS and they’ll charge me $353 for a 1 month supply (not counting insurance). But CVS.com will charge me $307 + $1 shipping. That’s $45 ($135 for a whole course of treatment) for nuthin’. Someone’s making too much money here. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m in the wrong fuckin’ business.
So, Canadian mail order saves me 66% off CVS retail, or 61% off CVS mail order. With my 50% copay insurance, Canadian mail order saves me 23% off CVS mail order. That’s not as much savings as I originally thought… but it’s still appreciated.
VC
I met VC in person last night. We had dinner and saw The Rivals. It went really well. :-)
Cemetery Plot
I just went with my father to the cemetery in Hackettstown.. Union Cemetery. He went ahead and bought 8 plots. We were both taken aback at the price of the lot… $4,000 gets a 16? by 20? foot space, 8 plots all together in 2 rows. That price also includes maintenance in perpetuity! That’s lawn mowing, tree trimming, road maintenance, etc… FOREVER. Like… in 1,000 years (assuming society exists) we should assume that our graves will be carefully mowed and landscaped.
With that kind of deal, I suggested that we make our front and back yard into a graveyard. What do you think?
C. Crane FMT Digital FM Transmitter with AC Adapter
I’ve been shopping for a mini-FM transmitter to send a signal from my PDA to my car’s radio and I found this curiosity. :-)
Like all mini-FM transmitters in the US, it has been range-limited to about 30 feet. But this one has a variable resistor on the inside… With the turn of a screw you can go from a legal (and wimpy) 30 foot range to a respectable 175 feet.
Find it at Amazon
Giovanni’s Restaurant, Dover NJ
I went to Giovanni’s restaurant for my birthday with my parents… well, I tried to. We showed up on my birthday, Wednesday Sept 22nd and there was only 1 person there, the owner. He was very nice and all. He said it would be no trouble for him to turn on the lights and seat us. Yes, you heard me… turn on the lights. He motioned us over to the seats we were in last time as he switched on the lights in the place. I don’t get it… seating for 120, excellent food and…. nobody was there.
It’s kind of funny actually. I had called a few days earlier asking if I needed a reservation if we showed up on Wednesday night. He said something like, “No, you should be alright.” Well, he was right.
I’m saddened because I went to this place a few months ago with PPG. There were only a few people in the place when we went back then but we were so hungry (and I had to pee soooooooo bad) that we stayed. The food was, in a word, perfect. He served us Italian standards in a straightforward manner, strachatelli, eggplant rolatini and a few other dishes. We were overpowered by just how…. fresh and … correct… the food was. No curve-balls, no “Bam!” just unflinchingly perfect.
Rrrrrreww! This happens so often to me. I discover a good thing and it turns out that it’s about to be closed. Earlier in September, I went to Montclair to see a play. Turns out the production company has just lost their lease and I was seeing one of the last performances. Hurumph.
I want to know what the story is behind this restaurant! Maybe I’ll go down there sometime and ask.
So we got back in the car and my dad became the worst backseat driver… It was awful. I got my relief by playing the race card: they wanted me to pull over and ask for directions so I did. I asked two well dressed, articulate Hispanic men for directions. While we’re talking, my mother starts yelling from the back seat to go because she’s scared. Dad does the same thing. It was as though I had two screaming children in the car. She was banging against my seat and screaming. He was barking orders at me. And I was talking calmly to the nice gentlemen. He didn’t know the restaurant but it was nice to have an intelligent conversation, albeit short with someone during my ordeal.
In case you’re wondering, my defense for stopping and talking to these gentlemen was: They were well dressed. Their movements were completely unthreatening and well mannered, they spoke well (though with a strong Spanish accent), we were in an almost exclusively Columbian part of town, and I kept the car in gear, ready to pull away if need be (as I do with most car stops at night).
So we ended up going to Charlotte’s Web restaurant. It wasn’t awful. But as usual, they declared that this was some of the best food they had ever eaten in their lives. I spent the majority of the evening trying to not be smothered.
But I will say that my birthday cake was terrific. I told Noni that my favorite ice cream is ice cream sandwiches. So she bought some… and on my birthday, she made me a cake that is layers of ice cream sandwiches, Cool Whip and fudge. Yummy kudos!
Tim Powers, GOH speech, Arisia ‘04
Tim Powers did the Guest of Honor speech at Arisia in January 2004. I’ve never read anything from him but I was really impressed with the talk. Here’s one little anecdote that I made sure to remember. As a background, he has written quite a bit of spooky/horror/sci-fi. He was talking about why people are afraid of spooky things in books even though we all KNOW it’s fiction.
I don’t believe in ghosts but I’m still scared of them.
They did this experiment. Some 30,000 chickens grew up indoors on this farm for generation after generation. They hadn’t seen so much as a tree or a bush or the sun in generations. So they took this cut-out of a hawk and ran it along a string across the top of the building. And all of the chickens went crazy, running for their lives.
So now if we could talk to one of those chickens and ask why she ran, she’d probably say, “I don’t know man. But it really freaked me out!”
Total Remodeling of Union NJ redux
I’ve gotten several emails from people saying how they found my site because I listed Total Remodeling’s phone number. (Here’s a reminder)
908-686-1443
Total Remodeling
Neil Parsons
1767 Rte. 22, West
Union, NJ 07083
Phone: 908-686-5788
Fax: 908-686-7810
I say to everyone that finds this message:
- Go to Donotcall.gov and file a complaint.
- Call Total Remodeling back at 908-686-1443 and tell them what you’ve done.
- Forget about it and hope that the Federal Trade Commission gets around to suing them.
