What’s All This Then!

In fact, it’s my only Christmas present. I guess I picked a bad time to join the Jehovah Witness protection program. Just kidding. Every time is a bad time to join JW. And, once you’re a member, even your friends stop answering your knocks at their doors.

Again, just kidding. I haven’t made any religious life changes. But returning to this blog is, in fact, a present to myself. I needed to switch from everyone’s demands and visit projects that I put on the back burner.

So today, I upgraded my blog to WordPress 3.3. Will it finally let me preview a post before publishing? Let’s see………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Nope! Swing and a miss! Still getting “Uups, not found. Sorry! Maybe use our search?” error message. Oh well, back to the burner you go.

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In a few weeks, you can squeal in delight as the next installment of the “Twilight” series splatters on movie screens across the country. In this episode, Bella gets married to that vampire guy. That’s gotta suck. What happens if she goes on a job interview just before the wedding and get asked, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” “Not in a mirror!”

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I laughed when I read this study by the Canadian Research firm, AptiQuant. They gave a free, online IQ test to over 100,000 people, and then compared the results to the browser used by the test participants. Ready for AptiQuant’s findings?

• “Internet Explorer 6″ users had an average IQ score just over 80,
• Firefox and Chrome users had average IQ scores around 110,
• users of Opera and Camino users had score overs 120.

Your mileage may vary, of course. And I am willing to bet that, if you are reading my blog while using Internet Explorer, I am confident that you are a highly intelligent exception to the results of this study. Aren’t you …

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! UPDATE – 3 August 2011 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Amazing what some people will do to try and persuade you into other courses of action. Take the story mentioned above. Sounds good but it’s falser than a politician’s promise.

A web-business owner became so irked at people using the troublesome IE6 to visit his site, that he began the myth of IQ-to-browser-type. At major news agencies, their crack team of fact-checking journalists jumped on the story, skipped some major flawed facts. Vital facts, such as “The test that was mentioned in the report, “Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (IV) test” is a copyrighted test and cannot be administered online.”

This, my fine friends, is how we get duped time and time again by family, friends, and our beloved elected officials. They all mean well … just not well enough.

Of course, the biggest idiot is me for posting this to begin with.

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Big news today … a hot 25 year old woman decided to not marry a old, wrinkly, but rich 85 year old man. In other news, my teenage daughter woke up in an unusually great mood this morning. She probably also heard that Hugh Hefner is now available again …

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A few months ago, I bought a used Kindle One for $25 from my wealthy friend. He had just purchased a fancy iPad for his wife and was about to throw her Kindle away. So I did my part for the green movement and recycled his trash into my humble home.

All in all, it has been a great deal except one area – apparently, Amazon did not develop this handy reader and audio player with library users in mind.

You probably already know that you can download digital and audio books from your local library (handy when you have an insomniac hunkering for “War and Peace”). Almost all of the books have a copy protection built in. As a result, I have to use the library-and-publisher approved program called Overdrive in order to listen or read these books. After a week or two, Overdrive automatically un-checks my electronically checked-out material from my laptop. It’s as if I physically returned the book back to its safe home on the library shelf.

There are several players and E-readers that give you access to audio and digitally printed material. Yet, in spite of its popularity, the Amazon Kindle is not one of those labor-saving devices. Don’t fret! After a little investigation, I learned that the Barnes and Noble’s Nook would handle electronic versions of library books. Well, some of the books. Actually, just a few that exist in a MP3 format. I didn’t learn about the low quantity until after I picked up a refurbished Nook for $99.

Fortunately, this unnecessary obstacle to knowledge turned out to be a minor speed bump. I just spent about $26 for a program called MelodyCan. Now, I download any of the library’s audio books, convert it to a MP3 file, and loaded onto my Kindle or Nook for my listening pleasure.

Let me point out that I understand why book publishers forced libraries into distributing copy-protected books. They didn’t get to be billion dollar giants through charitable means. So, just as library material deletes itself from my laptop, I must remain honest to the spirit of the system (and to myself) and delete the books from my E-readers. Aside from that minor chore, I now have access to my library from the comfort and convenience of my home — as it should have been from the beginning of this electronic revolution. But this is what happens when companies, run by bean-counters, spend five dollars to save themselves one dollar.

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I know! It sounds ridiculous! Yet, with all of your hard work to keep your Facebook page full of your witty insights and extremely important events in your life, some unthinking soul will unfriend you from their Facebook account.

The nerve of some people! In fact, they won’t even have the courtesy to let you know about their cruel actions. So what can you do?

Here’s how to track who unfriends you through your Firefox browser:
- Follow the instructions at this site to install Firefox and Greasemonkey.
- Now install this script which will add an “Unfriends” to your Facebook menu.
- Sign in to your Facebook account and let the games begin!

Of course, this add-on won’t tell you whose unfriended you in the past. It will only work for those rotten, mean SOBs who delete you for here-on-out.

Have fun!

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It’s a little frustrating to watch Hip-hop ‘artists’ take great songs, add a little nothing to it and then make millions. Technically, they haven’t done anything special. Most of the time, their resulting songs aren’t any more creative than gluing a Popsicle stick to the frame of the Mona Lisa painting and calling it a ‘remix’.

So what’s stopping me from cashing in the mass horde who will buying because it’s the popular thing to do? Perhaps I can make some money in the same lazy fashion. I’ll start by writing children books in the style of gangsta rap. My first story will be based on Winnie-the-Pooh and called “Tigga Please”.

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After I watched this video, I still don’t understand how the “for Jesus” fits in. Still, if your church is considering the replacement of a few pews with shiny poles, don’t forget:

– All dancers should wear a J-string,
– All parishioners should pay the “pass the collection plate” cover charge,
– There should be a two-Amen minimum,
– There should be a two-sip maximum from the communal wine cup,
– While speaking-in-tongues is acceptable, licking is not.
– No, the dancers are not possessed, just spirited. There will be no laying of the hands upon any of them at any time.
– Sermons about riding biblical asses are acceptable. Talks referring to the dancers’ posteriors are not. (For the record, there are no such things as religious owls. Therefore, all mentions of “holy hooters” are to be completely avoided.)
– Remember that you’re in church. Anyone having fun will be smote, smoted, smittened, smoked, what is that word? … made a complete ash of when the time comes. Have a nice day…

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“They” try to use the computer and you think:

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This was an unusual storm and just in time for my birthday. It slammed in from the southwest and hit my work place with 8 inches of snow before dumping 4 inches on my home. That night, the ice came and placed a half inch of glaze on everything. I captured the NC DOT webcam photos and made this quirky video using the beautiful (and free) Pinnacle VideoSpin. Youtube has disable the audio for the time being.

I tried to use Windows 7′s latest “Live Movie Maker” but Microsoft did an excellent job of crippling what was once a great program.

I finally made it to work on Wednesday. Driving home, a suitcase sized chunk of ice and wood jumped from a passing logging truck and smashed in my windshield. I got stay and work from home for another two days. Tomorrow, I get a new windshield. Happy Birthday to me!

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making friends with a 7 foot snowman

So, a couple of shots of whiskey later, I was out in my winter wonderland building this beauty of snow person … no, snowman. SNOWMAN! There I said. And I know I’m right in saying so because exactly one week later, the unflattering warm weather had reduced my snowman down to his snow balls. By that evening, he was only a wet spot on the ground and a frozen memory in my thoughts …

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In March of last year, I found a great deal on a new laptop. Or so I thought. For $350, I bought an Acer Aspire 7736Z-4088 running Windows 7 64-bit. Since it came with 3 gigs of RAM, I thought I would upgrade as soon as I had some funds available.

Last month, I went to crucial.com and bought a 2 gig module for about $40. I did this after looking at Acer user manual that had been installed on the computer. I was confident that this memory upgrade would be a no-brainer. That’s when the magic started.

As soon as I receive the memory, I excitedly began the installation process. Step one involved discovering that the user manual didn’t actually cover my particular laptop. There was no bottom panel as most laptops have to access the RAM.

No problem I thought. I got online with the Acer tech support (located, of course, in India), A polite gentleman speaking in a rough version of English, told me about my two choices. I could take my computer to one of their authorized dealers or he would have one of his other support people call and walk me through the process. Naturally I chose the second choice. Soon, a second Indian gentleman from Acer tech support called me. The very first step was to ask me about which payment option I wanted to use to buy their help for my computer. I chose none of the above.

Apparently this is why my laptop was so cheap. Aside from boxing material, there is no printed manuals, no operating system CDs or installation CDs. Just a laptop. Right now I’m searching the Internet for instructions to upgrade my RAM. I went as far as searching WikiLeaks since Acer information seems to be classified. It seems nobody else has changed their modules.

As soon as I get a moment, I’ll put my electronic skills of reverse engineering to work. I’m reasonably sure that the memory has to be accessed through the keyboard. I will try and document this process so you don’t have to go through an unfortunate company such as Acer.

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So begins the start of a new year. This isn’t going to be one of those years full of unexpected twists-and-turns. No, there are going to be a few expected twists-and-turns to be thrown into the mix of things.

One of which involves marriage. I know that marriage is a great and wonderful institution. But given what has transpired during 2010, I’m not sure at this point if I’m ready to be institutionalized…

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Amazingly, some of you emailed me to see if I was still alive or had fallen victim to the Internet Zombie horde. First of all, I was amazed that you took time to write. That says a lot about our educational system and that you cared enough to get my attention. Second of all, I’m happy to report that I am not hording zombies (maybe Cheerios because of their crunchy goodness but definitely not zombies).

A lot has happened these past few weeks. To pay the bills (for myself and others), I’ve had to focus posting on my other blogs. At $5 an entry, it helps. All I have to do is spend a couple of hours slaving on wonderful, engaging assignment that the company sends to me — the same topics over and over and over and over. I don’t know how many ways I can write about diet pills and acne medicine and still keep them somewhat interesting. If you get a chance, visit my other two blogs and tell me what you think … if you can stay awake long enough before the zombie hordes get you. In the meantime, I’ll work on finishing posts for here while I eat this wheat bread. “Grains! Must have grains! ggrrrrrr” (what zombie Cheerios say before they drowned in milk …)

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