We have two Tivos in the house. One in our office/living room and one in the bedroom. Just because I am in a list making mood, here are the shows we record via the “Season Pass” feature.
When I was a child there were two service stations a mile from my parents house, a Shell station and across the road a Standard station. (Who else remembers Standard stations?) These were full-service stations; when you pulled in next to the pump island your car ran over the annunciator cord causing a bell to ring inside the station itself. The attendant, dressed in an collared shirt with his name embroidered over the left pocket, came out and asked you what kind of gas you wanted, and should he check the oil. The front and rear windows were cleaned as a matter of course.
All of this service for 29 or 30 cents a gallon.
By the time I was sixteen the oil shortage had occurred and gasoline prices had passed the 60 cent per gallon mark. Before I was out of high school prices were $1.30. Once or twice while I was in college I remember the price dipping below a dollar, but only briefly.
This morning I had to fill our car up. When the “miles to empty” value that is displayed on the dashboard computer reads 80 or so, the car takes 20 gallons to fill. This morning I put 19.380 gallons into the car. It cost me $50.37.
Fifty bucks for a tank of gas that will last me until next Thursday or Friday.
Two dollars and fifty-nine point nine cents per gallon.
Un-freaking-believable.
One of the reasons I use Firefox when I am web browsing on a Windows OS machine is the ability to block popup advertising. Imagine my dismay to learn of a new exploit that allows the spawning of popup windows even with popup blocking enabled. It seems that using the Flash plugin we all have installed in our browsers it is possible to launch popup windows. The blocker doesn’t prevent this since it is aimed at preventing javascript launched windows.
Fortunately, you can get around this in Firefox. (Thanks to Pete Bevin for the original posting.)
The possible values are:
{{ $image := .ResourceGetMatch “SpamIsTheDevil.jpg” }}
Increasingly on television I am seeing Apple Powerbooks prominently displayed and yet camouflaged at the same time. Just this evening I watched Extreme Makeover: Home Edition where the crew was “watching” a video on an 15" Aluminum Powerbook; only the Apple logo on the lid was covered by a wide piece of tape stretched from edge to edge horizontally.
The West Wing is another show that frequently places Powerbooks in full view of the camera, only their emblems are covered.
What gives?
Any one who has ever seen a Powerbook up close will instantly recognize it for what it is, regardless of air brushing the frames, or applying a “White House” sticker over the glowing Apple in the lid.
I guess the television producers don’t want to give free advertising to merchants who aren’t paying for the privilege. Corporate America doesn’t make much sense some times.
In what is rapidly becoming a regular feature around here, I present to you, dear reader, a list of recently watched films.
The Sound of Music We added this classic musical to our collection this weekend. It maybe one of the best movies ever made with stunning scenery, outstanding acting, incredible music, and villinous Nazis for drama. There is true wit and humor, an actual romance, and some of the best music ever in film. The Sound of Music marked the end of an era; the era of fine film making.
Jumpin’ Jack Flash A light hearted romp for Whoopie Goldberg. Nothing deep or meaningful, just good comedy, with a mild dose of drama thrown in for spice.
The War of the Worlds I remember watching the original 1953 version on ‘Dialing for Dollars’ as a kid and being terrified as only an overly imaginative boy can be, so I was slightly disappointed in this remake. Sure the special effects today are better than they were 50 odd years ago, but the story itself got weaker, as did the overall acting.
The following, ah, collection of notes, found on various scraps of paper covering my desk, are presented here for your approval.
Originally I saw this article linked to from Slashdot; it’s so good I wanted to link to it here as well. I especially liked this:
Go read it yourself.
In the winter of my 7th grade year, call it early 1973, I had the extreme misfortune of having my right knee injured. The junior high school I attended brought the students inside the gym on cold or snowy days. We were supposed to sit quietly in the bleachers until classes started. On this day I was bumped or pushed from behind and accidently kicked the kid in front of me with my snowy boot. He took great offense and grabbed my foot and twisted through 180 degrees of rotation before I could do anything about it.
At the time it hurt but once he let go the pain seemed to go away too. The next morning I was unable to dress myself for school as my jeans wouldn’t go up over my knee; it had swollen to several times its normal size. I remember my mother being upset that I woke her; she just wanted me to “get dressed and go to school”, but when she realized that my leg was in such bad shape she took me to the doctor. The x-rays were apparently inconclusive, I have a vague recollection of someone saying there was too much swelling to see anything clearly.
I spent the next 3 or 4 weeks hobbling around the school on crutches - not at all an easy feat in a 1930s building with three stories and rather steep stairways. Over the years since then I have had some intermittent pain in my right knee. And I can flex the calf muscle and cause the knob at the top of the fibula move in and out of its normal position; kind of a circus freak show bit.
In my twenties and thirties I had sporadic bouts of knee pain, sometimes more debilitating than others, but never crippling. In college one of my roommates got lots of laughs mimicking my gait. Until he showed me how I walked I didn’t realize that instead of bringing my right leg forward the way most people did, I sort of threw it ahead of me in an arc. Thanks to the hard work of a good chiropractor I managed to lose most of the hitch in my get along.
Over the past few years I’ve been more and more aware of my knee (both of them actually) as they at times produce a crackling noise, like rice krispies when they bend. Again, more circus freak show than painful. But in the last few months I’ve noticed an increase in overall discomfort, pain even, walking or sitting. And one weekend about a month ago my knee was very painful and slightly swollen. I decided it was time to learn more about what was going on in there.
Today I had a visit with the orthopedic surgeon, who took several large format x-rays of my knee. Turns out that the injury from 32 years ago was a torn medial collateral ligament, the MCL. The x-ray clearly showed a healed bone chip at the upper ligament anchor point. His theory was the injury in 1973 was bad enough to tear the ligament away from the bone. Wow. No wonder this joint has been the source of so much pain and consternation.
His diagnoses for the current pain and stiffness is arthritis. So I’m taking two Aleve twice a day for the next two months to see if that relieves my pain. If yes, arthritis is the culprit. If no, an MRI will be necessary if I want to know more.
Since 1997 or so I’ve been reading the daily comics via the Internet. Most of the major daily strips are syndicated, and those syndicates all have online archives of the material. In some cases the archives is two weeks old, in others it is current with what is in the newspapers. Reading the comics this way pleases me as I get to see just the ones I like, when I want, and without having to get newsprint ink all over my hands.
Since switching to Apple over two-and-a-half years ago, I’ve been using a great aggregator called Comictastic, that manages a list of all the comics I like and downloads fresh content for me everyday. It’s like a Tivo for the funny papers. If you have a Mac, and like the funnies, get Comictastic.
About two weeks ago, however, I stopped getting updated comics from the King Features syndicate. It seems that they now want to charge for their content. I realize that the “Internet advertising as income” revenue model has never really worked for most companies. Charging for content that was formerly free is the latest effort to add an income stream by some outfits on the web.
If the content in question was critical to me, and they were the sole source providing it, I could see paying for having it. As long as my paid entry to their site removed all ads, flashing and blinking or otherwise. But if their content is not critical to my life I am less inclined to pay. And if their content is not unique, i.e., it is available from multiple sources, I refuse to pay.
Sorry, King Features, the comics you’ve now secured behind a paid subscription are available for FREE at the local library. So I see no harm in my reading them for free by pointing Comictastic to any one of several newspapers that make their comics available online every day, for free as well.