My brain... ees no workie...

Wow! Today was a mental midget day for me. I feel dulled and uninspired... like much of my brain has shut off on me. The cool part is that my mood isn't being affected by it - I'm actually in pretty good spirits.

Was supposed to go out and join some coworkers for happy hour tonight, but just can't seem to get myself motivated to go. I guess my introvertive tendencies are ruling my decisions today. Going to a noisy bar to yack just isn't something I wanna do right now...

This entry... duh...

Performancing... it's back!

Performancing came out with an update (version 1.2 now). Apparently they fixed the problem with being able to log in to blogger (aka blogspot), so I can resume using it to write blog entries. For those of you (probably none) that are interested, this is why the subject of Performancing went dormant for awhile. This is my first post since the update, so it's a short and simple one.

This entry is about as interesting as a paper clip.

He's not a little boy anymore

As I sit here, trying to put together my thoughts, I'm resisting tearing up - but I'm smiling. There is just so much to say that it is difficult to put it into words.

Rece is 11 now. He's a great kid, with a caring personality. He's smart and very funny. He likes what every other kid his age likes: video games, pizza, movies, riding his bike, playing with toys, etc.

Yesterday we went for a bike ride after I got off work, and we went to find a geocache. It used to be that Rece would putter out on a hill, or whine that his legs hurt - this time proved different. He kept up (and a few times led) along the ride. He did slow down quite a bit going up one hill, giving me a good enough lead ahead to stop and wait for him at the top. What caught me off-guard was when he got to the top, he waved me on and kept going - not wanting to stop and rest as he used to do. He did comment that is legs were burning a little, but not as a whine or complaint; more as just an observation. If I don't watch out, I suspect that I'm going to be the one lagging behind pretty soon!

The other day I was watching an excellent show called Coupling (the BBC version) on DVD. The subject matter is definitely mature with very quick and witty (and often complex) humor. I thought Rece was in his room playing, but as it turned out he was watching behind me. At one hilarious point, both of us burst into laughter... to which I realized that he was watching. I asked him to sit down and watch it with me. To my surprise and delight, he was able to follow the story and gags at every point, barring the strictly sexual content which he hasn't any context to associate with yet.

The fact that Rece is able to enjoy a show like that with me is both appealing and depressing, in a way. It has become apparent that his brain is no longer just occupied by toys and games and distractions as I've grown accustomed to. He has now begun to navigate the path toward becoming a man.

As a father, I'm so proud of my son - even though it means having to watch the little boy I've known for so long slowly disappear.

This entry looks back upon fond memories of Legos & Hot Wheels.

Confuse a Cat

Another tid-bit of Monty Python goodness...

This post was not, is not, will not, and will never admit to ever being confused.

10 Things I Hate About Computers in Movies & on TV

Computers are now a common item to see in homes, offices, and schools. This fact hasn't seemed to change the way they're depicted in films and on TV. In fact, computers don't do most of the things that we see them do within a movie or TV program, yet many people still seem to accept these things while watching.

I've been using computers for more than 20 years now. I'm an I.T. person who deals with fixing and operating computers on a daily basis. I use computers as a source of entertainment and information at home. I'm also one of those annoying people who seem to notice all the things wrong in a movie ("hey, that glass was empty in the last frame!"), so it is no surprise that I've chosen to put together a list of the things that bug me about computers in movies and on TV... so here goes:

1. Windows into the soul. With around a 90% market share, Microsoft Windows (one version or another) is clearly the operating system that is most likely to be found on computers no matter where you are in the world. So why is it so exceedingly rare to actually see Windows in use on a computer in a movie? Linux is great and all, which is what appears to be used most often (probably because they can get it customized to look and do whatever they want for the movie), but the truth is - most people cannot use it because they've never even seen it before!
2. Psst... what's the password? This is one area that has improved over the years. In older movies, we used to see a blank screen with 'Enter Password:' on it. It didn't seem to matter what was trying to be done, you just had to enter a password to do it. Now the password screen has been livened up a bit, but the same old problem still exists: poorly chosen passwords. It seems that computer experts and evil geniuses still haven't learned the virtues of a strong password. No matter what, it always seems to be a word from the dictionary or a name of a pet or person (or in seemingly smarter films, a highfalutin name like 'Sisyphus' might be used) or some title of a book/project, but whatever is chosen - they always seem to figure it out. What really gets me annoyed is when the password has a self-destruct mechanism that wipes out the data or does something else bad if the password is entered incorrectly too many times... see, they're smart enough to think of a system like that, but not smart enough to come up with a stronger password. It may be that a password like 'z^21R*9iB.g%u7' isn't as thought-provoking or interesting to an audience as 'KRONOS' might be. Hmm...
   
3. Backdoors galore! This computer cliché seems to almost be a thing of a past. It seems that this could have been a way of avoiding the previously mentioned password problem in shows. See, why try to figure out a password when you can get into the system using a little-known backdoor into it... which always seemed to be put there by software writers 'just in case'? Well, in this day and age we call that a security hole/vulnerability (not to mention a legal liability) and it just isn't done in the real world.
   
4. Everyone is an expert. Having "officially" worked in the I.T. field for the last 8+ years has given me some insight into the amount of computer knowledge the general population has. What I have come to learn is that most people really don't know how to do much more than operate software that they use at work and/or at home - and at a limited capacity, I might add. I'm talking about a word processor, an email client, a browser, games, maybe a photo editor, etc. Beyond that, most people just don't have the time, interest, or inclination to figure out what else their computers are capable of doing ("what, exactly, is defrag?"). The movies would have you believe otherwise. We are often led to believe that a character in a movie is able to sit down in front of a computer, that uses an operating system they've probably never seen before, with software they've never used - but somehow they intuitively know how to not only crack the password (or find the backdoor), but to then pull up the information they need, and sometimes even find useful correlating data.
5. Six degrees to Kevin Bacon. I don't know about you, but I've often wondered where this expansive super-database about people can be found (since we now know that the FBI doesn't have one) and how it can be so easy to query for exactly the data you're looking for without even knowing the database structure! Movies will try to convince you that there is this massive collection of personal data, residing somewhere out there that's accessible to almost any government agency, big corporation, or hacker. This database apparently contains everything from photos and relationships to dental and phone records... all easily accessible from one interface and in an easy to discern and understand format. It also conveniently happens to be that the character within the film knows how to use this system with ease as well.
   
6. Universally compatible. Movies and TV try to tell us that every computer is able to communicate with every other computer system out there... no matter how different or foreign. Remember the movie Independence Day? Jeff Goldblum's character has an Apple PowerBook G3 that is not only compatible with the invading aliens' computer system, but it is also able to upload a computer virus (I'll get back to these) to them that brings down their force fields, allowing our primitive weapons to take 'em out. YEAH! It's a good thing for us that alien programmers use the same programming software, language, and operating system that we humans use - yet they don't bother to use anti-virus software!
   
7. Resolution of image clarity. This is probably one of my biggest pet peeves in movies and TV: No matter how low the resolution an image or video is, regardless of how far away an object within it was; a computer can refine, adjust, tweak, restore, zoom-in, and correct it - often in near-perfect clarity. The first time I noticed (and then balked at) this was during the movie No Way Out (1987), starring Kevin Costner. They scanned a damaged Polaroid (yeah, remember those?) negative into their computer system - a behemoth that took up nearly an entire room - and it was able to recover the image perfectly. Or how about a security camera 2 blocks away that picks up a crime that ends up helping investigators catch the "perp". We've all seen what these videos look like on the news - the quality is abysmal at best. Yet time and time again in movies and on TV they process these through a computer and are able to zoom in and "enhance this area" with perfect clarity.
8. Graphic violence. So much eye-candy happens on the systems in shows. Windows and screens slide and move behind or in front of one another. The interfaces are slick and very eye-appealing, using some very cool-looking visuals. The movie Hackers really annoyed me because they made hacking/ cracking seem as though it were a cool interactive 3-D videogame where you flew in and out of graphically represented filesystems and saw other users (and hackers) floating around doing things. To most, hacking is rather dull looking - scrolling through code, running scripts, sniffing packets, and the like. What bugs me about all of this is that not only is this all happening on a system that nobody has, but the hardware requirements alone would make the system incredibly slow to use (oh - I forgot to include that computers are impossibly quick and responsive in shows... nah, no need to make another number). At this point I'm tempted to drift off into a tangent about obvious or over/mis-used CG (computer graphics) in movies, but that would take an entirely new entry to go over. I almost didn't include this one because Linux & Mac systems already do a few of these nifty visuals now - and the upcoming Windows Vista will also do a lot more (if you fork over the cash for a very fast computer with a kick-ass video card), but I'm writing this based on movies current and past. Mostly computer-fiction (CoSci?) now, but some of this stuff is definitely on the horizon.
   
9. The bleeping computer is making funny noises again! When was the last time text scrolled across your screen and you heard some sort of magical blipity bleep buzz sound accompany it? I'm not talking about system event sounds or when using a Flash interface on a webpage, either. I'm talking about hearing a descending zipping muted phaser sound when you zoom in on something - even the amazing Google Earth doesn't do this. The answer is most likely "never" (sorry, the voices in your head don't count). For the most part, computers are quiet things; sounds happen only when certain things occur - like to acknowledge a click, a dialog pops up, an error occurs, etc. Computers in the movies or on TV have all sorts of cool interactive sounds while they do stuff, don't they? This used to be something they could get away with when computers were a novelty and people didn't have them in their homes, but the practice of adding sounds to a computer's operations in a movie persist. I find this distracting and odd nowadays.
   
10. Diagnosis: Computer Virus. Yep, these bugs are always out there... lurking in the shadows... ready to pounce upon an unsuspecting user and cause their computer to smolder or explode in a magnificent fireball. Why is it that people seem to think that computer viruses are these extremely complex things that can cause an entire city's traffic signals to go haywire while make a building's lights turn on and off and display a dancing character that pops up on screens singing a song (don't mind the fact that there aren't even speakers on some of these computers - you still hear it, along with those strange sounds I mentioned earlier). Viruses are rather simple in nature - they delete files, cause computer system instabilities, sometimes monitor keystrokes in hopes to capture passwords or other private data, or they open a Backdoor (yes, I dismissed these earlier, but it helps illustrates why legitimate software programmers don't put them in) allowing outside intruders to do a bunch of other things to an infected computer. They won't cause your computer to overload and explode, either - unless your computer contains C-4. They're made to do very specific things and try to be as uncomplicated as possible to help avoid detection. Getting infected with one of these is no picnic, for sure, but they're not as big a deal as movies and TV tend to make them out to be... nor could they infect a system they weren't specifically designed for - like say, an alien's forcefield systems...

This entry was bleeping, flashing, twisting, and turning
before I reminded it that it wasn't on camera.

Global (not so) warming?

Read this interesting article a couple of days ago about global warming and how it has apparently stopped... as far back as 1998. Yet we continue to hear about it and how it's a very serious problem. What I'm not sure of is the validity of the author's claims or his viewpoints on politics/society or if he's one of those types of writers that will put together a story opposing a subject just to get people to read his stuff or not. He may be correct, he may not... but the article does give something to ponder.

Then today I came by another article from what appears to be a more reputable source. It is in the "Opinion" part of the "Editorial" section of the Wall Street Journal - so that might temper the ideas presented. Again, just something different to think about.

This entry brought to you by the melting polar ice caps.

... and a special appearance by Bruce Lee's cousin.

Something I watched awhile back that had me laughing so hard I was in tears. I found the video on YouTube and thought I'd share it...

This entry was filmed in FUNKAVISION.

Awesome!

Found a link to this today and got all excited. After checking out how much my blog is worth, I became even more excited!

My blog is worth $0.00.
How much is your blog worth?

This entry brought to you by an absolutely worthless blog.

Give it back!

The hour we lost this weekend... I want it back. Why do we still go through the daylight savings time change in this day and age? It had its place once, but now it is time to let it go! I often wonder how much loss of productivity businesses go through during the first day or two (or more) after we "Spring forward". Folks are just a bit more sluggish than usual, and even more so because it's a Monday. It's doubtful that the extra hour we get in the fall does anything positive, since it's just like sleeping in an hour extra on a Sunday morning.

For us night people, having to readjust to wake up even earlier (internal clock speaking) is even more of a pain. So there you have it... my daylight savings whine.

While you ponder this, check out this picture of a kid sitting in a box, wearing a bicycle helmet, eating a sesame parmesan breadstick, while snuggling with a tiki...

This entry was brought to you by a second cup of coffee.

Wonderful Wednesday Webcam Wackiness

It's no secret that I have a strange fascination with webcams. So friends and family probably weren't surprised when I told them about the one that I set up at home. Primarily it is used to keep an eye on Rece during the time period he's home after school, before I get home. He knows that it is there and can tell when it is on (the blue light on it turns on when it is active).

Aside from doing his chores when he gets home (which take less than 15 minutes or so to do), Rece has been told that he must do his homework in the living room on the sofa, which is where the webcam is set up to capture. I have informed him that his mother and I (and sometimes our friends, too) will be checking the cam to make sure he's doing his homework and not goofing off.

Of course we can't just sit at our jobs and stare at him to make sure he's staying on task, but we do check in from time to time. Occasionally we see him goofing off instead of doing his homework, and in some cases, we don't see him on the webcam at all - which is against the rules (except in regards to the aforementioned chores or when he goes to the can). At these moments we'll give him a call and remind him to get back on task.

The system seems to be working rather well now. In fact, it may be that Rece has become a bit too accustomed to the webcam being there to the point that he forgets about it completely. Why do I suspect this? Well, it may have something to do with what I caught him doing today.

While checking the webcam, I noticed that Rece wasn't doing his homework, despite having been home for over 45 minutes. Since chores and bathroom don't take him that long, I gave him a call. As it turns out, he was messing around with his hair to improve upon the style it was done in for the "Wacky Wednesday" theme at school today. I reminded him that playing around wasn't what he was supposed to be doing and that he had to "un-do" his hair, then get on to doing his homework. He acknowledged my directive and this was the result...

He did this while I was still waiting on the line. The sounds of struggle he must have been going through to remove the stuff he put in his hair were so funny, it was all I could do to keep from bursting into laughter. In fact, I did let out a few snickers, which garnered the attention of the two coworkers outside my office door. After the struggle, he returned to the sofa and started on his homework assignments.

About an hour later I checked back in on him, and was happy to see that he was on the sofa, doing his homework... wait... what the...

As you can see, he was up to his elbow doing something other than homework. This activity continuted for at least 2-3 minutes before I could stomach it no longer - I called him again. "That has got to be the most disgusting thing I've seen in a long time, dude!" I chided. "What? Oh... uh... sorry," he replied, as he glanced into the webcam, realizing what I must have meant. With a gentle reminder that he was still on the webcam and that searching for buried treasure wasn't part of his homework duties, he went back to work.

This entry was brought to you by Big Brother - he really is watching you.

No! Make it stop! NOOOO!

Stumbled upon this video on YouTube. I'm not quite sure if I should laugh my ass off or puke... or both.

This entry feels violated somehow.

A scorching case of basket ass

As odd as it may sound, it appears that Rece really enjoys going to the laundry mat. Ordinarily I do my laundry in the laundry room at my apartment complex, but last night I went to the local laundry mat with my friend Jennie (she needed to wash a large blanket/quilt/comforter/thing). Rece was with us and having himself a great time. He likes putting the quarters in the machines and starting up the dryers. He also likes playing in the rolling laundry carts quite a bit. Who would have thought a kid would like what most adults find to be dull and tiresome?

Rece was a little bummed when we eventually had to leave and asked if we could come back again sometime soon. I told him we would come back some day... and people call me strange...

This entry was accidentally thrown in with the load of reds.

Performancing, take two...

This is my second entry made using the Performancing extension for Firefox that I mentioned yesterday. While it seems to work just fine for creating new posts, it has given me trouble when I attempt to edit an existing post.

For my next trick, I'll attempt to insert a couple of images and see what this thing allows me to do with them. Here goes...

The above images should be right next to eachother, with a single space (I hit the spacebar) between them.

Ok, so the left image was inserted without any resizing. The image on the right was inserted and then resized within the Performancing screen (grab a corner). The really neat thing that I noticed right away was that the image size (in pixels) was displayed as I was resizing the image. That's a very handy tool!

I also made the image on the right a hyperlink. I was disappointed that it didn't offer a target option, so I was forced to go into the HTML edit mode and add the target="_blank" tag manually. In the editor there's a blue border around the hyperlinked image, but I don't see any border tags in HTML edit mode, so we'll see if that carries over after posting.

Alright, time to post this and see what happens...

This entry was done while bored at lunch.

Testing... 1, 2, 3...

This is my second attempt at posting to my blog using the Performancing extension for Firefox. It should allow me to post to my blog without having to actually log on to blogger/blogspot. It also has a few other blogging tools that I'll explore at a later date.

This entry took a couple of tries to post.

OMG, Firefly!

Last week I ordered Firefly: the Complete Series DVD set and Serenity DVD as a package deal on Amazon for just under $38. Sweet deal. Well this sweet deal turned out to be even better for me, since I'm apparently a late-comer to the entire Firefly/Serenity scene.

Back when Firefly first aired on TV, I remember catching most of one episode (I think it was the pilot) and liking it. For whatever reason I never managed to catch it again and as it turns out the series ended up getting cancelled. So last year I see these previews for this movie named Serenity and it looks pretty good. My son and I never got around to seeing it in the theaters, but we vowed to catch it when it came out on DVD.

Back in December Rece and I went to the video store and discovered that it had been released on video, so we rented it. HOLY COW! This movie turned out to be one of the best sci-fi flicks I've seen. I mean, it ranked right up there with Star Trek: The Next Generation, in my opinion. We loved it so much that we watched all the extras (except for the commentary) and I learned about the Firefly history of the show. NO WAY! It was at this point that I realized that I must buy not only the movie, Serenity, but the entire Firefly series on DVD. Money around the time was tight because of Christmas, and then Rece's science camp tuition, etc, so buying them was out of the question. This month my expendable income was back to usual, so I ordered the set after following a digg link to the deal on Amazon.

So far I've only had time to watch the first 2 DVDs of the series and I am thoroughly impressed! How this show ended up getting cancelled, I'll never know. I've seen som pretty crappy sci-fi shows go far longer than they should have, but this great show got canned. Go figure.

Anyhow, I'm about ready to go watch some more Firefly now. I just couldn't contain my excitement about the whole thing. If you're a sci-fi fan, then do yourself a favor and check it out for yourself!

This entry was boarded by reavers and never heard from again.

I'm rain

No surprise there!

You Are Rain

You can be warm and sexy. Or cold and unwelcoming. Either way, you slowly bring out the beauty around you. You are best known for: your touch Your dominant state: changing

What Type of Weather Are You?

Delete with caution

Found this interesting article about how a man is being sued for deleting information from his laptop by a company he worked for. It seems like a circular argument to me, so I'm having difficulty understanding how this is going to play out.

A company gives you a laptop for you to work on. You sign an agreement about not using it for personal business and also that you can delete information from the hard drive when you return it. You use it for personal business anyway, the company starts to suspect as much, you delete your personal business (and go so far as to permanently wipe it) from the computer, quit your job, and return the laptop. The company then attempts to recover evidence of your personal business from the hard drive, find that it's been wiped, then because they don't have the evidence that you used it for personal business, they sue you based on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, because you deleted possible evidence that they could have used against you - if it were even there at all. Hmm...

Part of it seems to be that the company wanted to get hold of some of his other business info/contacts, hoping to gain some knowledge to use for themselves. Anyhow, I thought it was an interesting read.

This entry was given a gag order, then it smirked, pulling out some handcuffs and a whip.

Good Night, and Good Luck

This past Friday we had a potluck lunch at work. It was themed off the Academy Awards Show, which was being held the following Sunday. Our staff was asked to bring in a dish and to come up with a name for it somehow derived from the list of Oscar nominees. As usual, I decided to bring my oriental cabbage salad, which has now become a regular dish at our company potlucks - if I don't bring it, people almost get upset with me!

I must have missed the part about naming my dish, so when I was asked at the last minute what my salad was to be called, I quickly came up with something. To accompany my salad on the buffet table, I made the following sign with the name on it...

(click image for larger version)

This entry was made possible by Nissin noodles!

100 Firefox Extensions Installed!

Found this funny link on digg this evening while surfing around the web. It just seems funny that somebody would try this. The amazing part is that it didn't slow Firefox down as much as I would have expected the guy to report it had. It really is an amazing browser!

This entry was written while waiting for a kid to finish his homework. Grrrr...

You twit. It's 'sponge', not 'plowed'!

Wow! What a week! So much has happened that I couldn't possibly cover it all. Lots of fun, lots of laughs, plenty über geekiness, a couple of nice surprises, and a lot of time spent with friends.

I got to help my best friend celebrate her birthday - twice. Her friends and family were able to surprise her with a birthday dinner 2 nights early. It was great to see her genuinely surprised and I could tell that she was touched by our efforts. On her actual birthday I took her family out to for some delicious sushi (all you can eat - YUM!), then I hung out with them for a few hours afterwards just doing whatever came next. There's no way that I can sufficiently express how much I appreciate the fact that she was born, which ultimately allowed for her to be such an important part of my life.

My life-long friend, René, was able to drop in for a visit this weekend, as well. We spent a couple of hours looking through my copies of our old junior and high school yearbooks. She's been experiencing a lot of health problems over the last 4-6 months, but she seemed to be doing much better, which was a relief to see. We had a great time spent talking and relaxing. She's been my friend since we were 14, which is the longest I've ever known anybody, outside of family. She means a lot to me and I'm so fortunate to still have her in my life after so much time has passed.

Today Rece and I went geocaching with a new friend. The three of us walked about 4 miles and found 11 geocaches in less than 3 hours. There were a lot of people on the trail, which meant that we had to be rather creative in searching for, retrieving, and then replacing the caches without attracting any attention to our actions. Stealth was the key. The variety of ways we went about accomplishing our objectives provided us with a lot of laughs and just an overall good time.

Those are just some of the highlights and I assure you that there were a lot more little moments in between that filled my week with a lot of fun and the enjoyment of time with my friends.

This entry was copied, moved, renamed, then organized alphabetically.