Internet Exploder Sucks Balls

I frequently run into people who only use Internet Explorer 6. I can't understand it. When people ask me for help with their computer, and I see that is what they are using, my first thought is that is their problem. Not only is it a huge security headache and an entrance point for all kinds of crap into their computer, but it doesn't have any of the features or enhancements that have been created over the past few years.

For instance, Firefox now has a built-in spell check, which checks in real-time:


Regardless of any other feature or security enhancement, I would switch just to get that. To me, using IE 6 is like going back to using a version of Office which didn't have a real-time spell checker.

I can't figure out why more people haven't switched.

Lithium 24

I've discovered a new satellite radio station (I subscribe to Sirius) that I have fallen in love with. All they play is 90's alternative rock -- Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, Foo Fighters, Lenny Kravitz, etc.

In other words, shit music.

That's right, it's like a whole marathon of shit music. And I love it. I have spent most of my life listening to crap like that and Guns 'N Roses, Weezer, Queensryche, Black Crowes, etc. I'm basically admitting to all of you that I have no taste in music whatsoever.

I mean, if I were a music snob, I probably would insist that my MP3 player only contains songs from the Ramones, and whatever else. But screw that. Anytime I hear some shit song by Liz Phair or Soundgarden playing, I'm a happy man. My MP3 player is chock full of just total crap music. I know every word to every Motley Crue song ever recorded, and I'm proud of it. I own every Oasis CD. I even own a Hole CD, and I LIKE IT.

Bring it on. It's going to be a shit music marathon at my house this weekend.

Workouts Make Me Go Pee

Remember that elliptical machine that we bought last year?

I guess that I should have posted a longer term review of it... But anyway, it's been working out great, and I still work out on it 3-4 times per week. I get a great workout, and I can squeeze it into my day (because I don't have the added constraints of having to drive to a gym, etc).

Here's the thing that has been going horribly wrong... I, of course, work out in the evenings on weekdays. I already get up earlier than anyone else that I know, so I'm not going to get up an hour earlier to work out. Because I wake up so early, I already have to go to bed ridiculously early. I have the schedule of an elderly person.

So, I work out in the evenings. And because my body is like a furnace (Universal Soldier: "I have to cool down"), I sweat a ton, and therefore have to replace all of that water. I have a 24oz water bottle, and I typically drink that full amount between the workout and the cooldown period afterward.

Which makes me have to pee. A lot.

After my workout, I take care of a few last things, take a shower, and then try to go to bed. But I can't just go to sleep, because it seems like I have to get up every half hour to go to the bathroom. Urrrrgh.

To compound the problem, it takes me a while to wind down and relax to the point where I can fall asleep. And every time I get up, I have to start at the beginning of the relaxation process all over again.

Those Know-It-All Ph.D.s

Every once in a while, the following scenario occurs:

I'm in a room, full of people who don't have Ph.D.s, who I don't know very well, and someone feels the need to point out to everyone else that I happen to have one. That is kind of annoying, because inevitably everyone turns around and looks at me. Most people who don't perform research don't understand why anyone would want a Ph.D. And when these people turn to stare at me, I know what they are thinking:

"Wow, he must really like school."
"Does he think that he's better than us or something?"
"Are all Ph.D.s that ugly?"

Ok, maybe that last one was a result of my over-active imagination.

The point is that I know some people think they are doing me a favor by pointing out that I have a Ph.D., when really, they are just causing people to pigeon-hole me.

No Really, I Don't Wear Lipstick

For the past few months, a tube of lipstick has been sitting on our coffee table. It actually turned out to be a chapstick, but it looks like lipstick (which is what we thought it was all of this time). It has a MaxFactor cosmetics brand logo on it, which makes it look even more like lipstick.

It has been sitting on our coffee table for months, because I thought that it was Heimlich's, and she just left it in an odd place around the house. I recently found out that she didn't move it, because she thought it was *mine*, and thought that I had just left it in an odd place around the house.

Here's where things get really amusing...

After we figure out that it belongs to neither of us, she sent an email out to all of our friends, telling them that we had found this lipstick in our house, so if any of them are missing one, we can get it back to them.

But as is the case with many of these types of emails that people send, she included way too much detail, and threw in the part about how we are emailing people now, because for the past few months, we had assumed it was the other's lipstick.

As a consequence, now all of our friends think that Heimlich wouldn't think it would be weird for me to have lipstick (whereas, I assure you, it would be). I have a feeling that I'm going to be the subject of a lot of lipstick-related ribbing for a long time...

Dryer Doors

My clothes dryer has been pissing me off.

The floor where our washer and dryer are is tilted slightly to one side. As a result, gravity pulls the door to our front-loading clothes dryer closed. It's pretty annoying to try to transfer something from the washer to the dryer that requires two hands, because I have to stand on one foot, while holding the dryer door open with the other foot, and then take both hands and transfer the stuff over. It's a delicate dance that I'm sure would draw endless ridicule if a video of me performing it were posted to YouTube.

I wish that dryer doors worked in a similar way that car doors do -- where there are discrete locations where the door comes to rest in. That way, when you are parked on a hill, the door will still stay open, even if gravity is trying to pull it closed.

Maybe I'm just whining. This weekend, one of my goals will be to strategically place a magnet that will hold the (metal) door in the fully open position, so that the problem will no longer annoy me (as much). I haven't looked at new dryers in that much detail, but I don't remember any of them having doors that resisted closing.

Nightmares about Photoshop

John wrote a post the other day about having nightmares about work [citym.org].

Thankfully, I haven't had one of those in a long time. That reminded me of a dream that I did have over the weekend, though. In the dream, I was talking to various people. It was kind of a party scene, where there were lots of people around, and people were generally divided into groups, who were having conversations amongst themselves. The exact setting or circumstances wasn't clear in the dream, though.

So, you know how at a party, you will talk to one group of people for a while, and then move on and talk to a different group for a while? Ok, in the dream, there were points when I decided that I was going to move from talking from one person to another. But instead of actually walking away from one person, and walking up to another person, I was using Photoshop.

It's not really clear to me how that worked, but I guess I was taking a mental snapshot, importing that into Photoshop, removing the person I was talking to, and pasting in the person I wanted to talk to next. It was very surreal.

I don't know if the dream made me feel more self-conscious about my social skills, or just made me think that I have been using Photoshop waaay too much.

Stupid Windows

One of the other things that took up all of last weekend was reinstalling the Windows installation on one of my computers.

I think that I've mentioned this before [fluggart.com], but on every computer that I have that runs Windows, I reinstall it about once a year. Windows just accumulates all kinds of cruft, and reinstalling maintains optimum performance.

To speed things up, I make a backup of a clean installation of Windows on that computer. When I want to reinstall, I just wipe the hard drive, and copy the backup back onto the clean partition. That way, the actual OS part of the reinstall takes about 5-10 minutes, instead of the hour that it takes to actually reinstall through the Windows installation media.

The thing that makes the process take forever it reinstalling all of the applications. Now, you're probably wondering why I don't just back up the Windows installation after I have installed all of the most common applications. There is a reason why. It's because there are always new versions of all of the things that I use by the next year. So, I end up reinstalling the clean install of Windows, and then going straight for the install of the newest versions of all of the applications, which reduces cruft.

Plus, the applications that I use change so rapidly from year to year. When I make the backup in the first place, there is no way for me to tell if any of this crap is really going to be useful to me a few years down the line (assuming I'm still using the computer).

I just keep thinking that there has to be a better way to go about this process. It would be great if Windows didn't need to be reinstalled every year, but I don't see that happening. It seems like everyone else gets around the problem by buying a new computer every time theirs needs to be reinstalled, but that goes against everything that I stand for...

I Want to Cast a Spell!

So, I had the nerdiest of nerd weekends. While everyone else was probably outside, enjoying the nice weather and doing whatever else, I was inside, creating a new Dungeons and Dragons character.

The thing that makes it nerdy isn't necessarily that it's Dungeons and Dragons (although that doesn't help). And it's not that I'm inside, rolling all kinds of weird dice by myself. Or reading needlessly expensive books, describing all of the aspects of some fantasy land that my character exists in.

It's that I have to sit there and do things like research all of the fictitious deities. As if it weren't enough that the character that I am creating worships a deity in the first place. But now I have to figure out which deity that character would most likely worship. As if it matters...

Except that it does. Since my character (a Cleric) receives all of his abilities and powers as a divine gift from the deity he worships, it is important that the appropriate one is chosen, to optimize things like spells that he is able to cast, and what the deity's favored weapon would be (which, in turn, becomes my character's favored weapon).

Pity me.

If most of the people I know knew how much time I spent reading about how to combat fictitious creatures, and reading about different spells that my character could cast, they would be horrified...

Winking Lizard

So, I used to go to the Winking Lizard (Tavern) all of the time. There were a few years in there when I used to go at least once a week. The food was decent, they had a huuuge selection of beer, and they nad all kinds of NHL games on their TVs that I couldn't get at home.

But I haven't been there in a few months. Until this past weekend, when I stopped in to grab a bite to eat. They apparently have changed their menu. Now, I was only at one Winking Lizard, so maybe the one I went to was an odd one, but in my experience, all of the restaurants in the chain use the same menu.

Half of the pages on the menu were ads. You opened the menu, and the entire left side of the page was a huge add, and the food was listed on the right. It was incredibly annoying to me.

There is no way that you are going to tell me that they needed to make more money to pay the bills. That's just ridiculous. How can any place that sells alcohol and has as many customers as they do have any problems making money? They're just being greedy now.

I have to think that eventually, we'll get to the point where our environment is so saturated with ads that they are no longer really effective, but I have a feeling that it'll be a long time before we get to that point.

Pet Peeves -- People Who Are Oblivious

Over on Lost City [blogspot.com], I caught a post [blogspot.com] talking about how people with iPods and cell phones no longer pay attention while they are walking down the street and they fail to notice when they are in someone else's way, etc. It's an amusing read. Here's a quote:

"So, let me add this to the endless list of modern societal maladies that blight our thoughtless and rude culture: the death of peripheral vision. Due to the overuse of cell phones and i-pods and whatever other gadgets that help us created our own little, self-sustaining personal environment, your average citizen has no idea there are other people in his or her vicinity. Not even if they're standing at the busiest intersection in the busiest city in the Western world. There's no glancing about, no tension in the shoulders that tells you they're alert to the world around them, and that they know errands may be in progress in front, in back and to the side of them."

I would have to say that they are probaly correct in identifying one of the causes, and I could see how that would be annoying. However, I don't think that people's behavior can be attributed completely to iPods and cell phones.

Around here, there is a lot of pedestrian traffic, but you don't see that many people listening to iPods or walking while talking on their cell phones (I mean, you do, but not at such a rate that it causes a problem). But people still stand right in the middle of things, right in everyone's way. People who are walking side by side don't make room for people trying to walk the other direction. People in the supermarket block the entire aisle, when they could easily stand on one side or the other and allow people to pass. And they're not distracted by iPods or cell phones.

My point is, don't go looking for an overly complicated reason behind human behavior when people are just assholes.

Kill Me Now...

There are a bunch of TV shows that I watch on DVD only -- meaning that I wait until they are out on DVD, and then I rent or borrow them. There are a myriad of reasons why I do this. With the episodes on DVD, you don't have to watch commercial breaks... If there is a cliffhanger, you don't have to wait for a month to see the next episode... Plus, I can watch TV shows that come on channels that I don't get (like Six Feet Under and The Sopranos, which are on HBO).

And I miss a lot of shows, because I never watch shows in real-time and they might be up against another show that I need to record. For instance, I was debating about watching The Office this season, but it is up against Smallville, which is Heimlich's favorite show.

And then there are plenty of shows (like Firefly), which I never watched when they were being broadcast, because I didn't know about them, or they didn't sound interesting at the time.

Consequently, I am WAAAAY behind the curve with a bunch of shows. I finally was able to start watching Season 6 of The Sopranos on DVD. In one of the first episodes of the season, Tony Soprano (the main character) gets shot and falls into a coma. And while he is in the hospital, the doctors tell his wife that he can probably hear them, so they should keep talking to him and play his favorite CDs for him.

That that point, Heimlich and I shared a little chuckle... Because I can't think of many things more horrifying than being forced to listen to music that Heimlich picks out for me, and not being able to communicate that I HATE HATE HATE Sting and all of his crappy music -- and that his very existence is like an insult to me.

If I'm stuck in a coma, I'm going to want to hear Zeppelin, Floyd, and the Stones. But, of course, I don't really listen to CDs, so my pitiful collection wouldn't help anyone figure out what I listen to. And I don't think that anyone would be able to figure out the MP3 player I use now. And Heimlich thinks that all of my music just sounds like untalented jerk-offs wailing away on guitars (which I can't really argue with)...

Ugh, Snow...

I actually had Friday off work, so it was a nice 3-day weekend for me. Unfortunately, we didn't get much in the way of yard work done over the nice, long weekend, because it snowed the whole time:



The above picture was taken pretty early in the snowstorm. We got about a foot of snow over the weekend (!). I spent way more hours shoveling than I'd like to think about...

Two weeks ago, when it was 70-80 degrees outside, I actually had the snow tires unmounted from my car, and my all-seasons were put onto those rims (to save wear on the snow tires, which wear out quickly in warm weather). Looks like that was a complete mistake... I haven't decided how long I am going to be keeping that car, which is why I haven't bought a 2nd set of rims for the snow tires.

What You Always Wanted to Write on Your Exams

On digg the other day [digg.com], I saw a link to What You Always Wanted to Write on Your Exams, But Couldn't [scribd.com] -- supposedly, a collection of scanned images of amusing test answers students have written.

I don't even care if all of the images are fakes. They are still really damned funny. The people who wrote the responses were obviously total wiseasses. And many of the images are marked up with comments by their respective teachers ("Oh dear!").

European Food

Ok, by now, you're all tired of hearing me complain about traveling to Europe. It wasn't all bad, though. The thing that I look forward most about traveling is the food.

That probably sounds really stupid, but I love being able to eat out at great restaurants (which we rarely do when we're at home). Even in the mornings, tt was nice being able to get up early, walk around the corner, and buy fresh bread or pastries at a local bakery. Those Europeans sure have great bakeries, let me tell you... I still have dreams about some of the pastries that I had bought.

I also tried out Indonesian cuisine, for the first time, while I was in Amsterdam (at a restaurant called Tempo Deoloe [tempodoeloerestaurant.nl]). Apparently, since it is a former Dutch colony, there is a significant population of Indonesians living in Holland, and vice versa. The food was excellent (although insanely hot). I could certainly get used to eating Indonesian food more often, but there don't seem to be any Indonesian restaurants in Cleveland.

Stupid Taxes

A few months ago, I mentioned how I am opposed to using tools like TurboTax to figure out my taxes, because I don't trust them to do it properly.

Anyway, I eventually finished the federal forms by hand. I have no doubt that every single person reading this is shaking their heads or rolling their eyes at me. "Why, oh why, wouldn't you use TurboTax to fill out your forms?!?" Because I want the peace of mind knowing that they were done right?

Here's a little secret, though. I would buy and use TurboTax in a second if it could fill out my municipal tax forms for me. The federal forms are a piece of cake compared to our municipal ones. The federal 1040, while complicated, is at least (relatively) well-documented. I liken it to functions in Linux.

Our municipal tax forms, on the other hand, come with almost no documentation. They make no sense. And, of course, TurboTax can't produce those. When I was growing up, filling out a city tax form consisted of copying your adjusted gross income from your federal form to the city form, multiplying it by a flat percentage, and then paying whatever that number was. I wish ours were that easy.

It is completely ridiculous that I have no problems filling out the federal 1040, complete with 5 or 6 different schedules to accompany it, while I seriously debated about hiring an accountant to complete my municipal tax form for me.

Lazy Akron People

Check out this picture [msn.com], taken in the city where I work.

It's completely ridiculous. A guy wanted to take his dog for a walk, but was too lazy to walk himself. So, he's driving the car alongside his dog, and holding the leash outside the window.

That is ridiculously lazy. Not only that, but dangerous. The first time you try a stunt like that, how would you know that you wouldn't accidentally run your dog over?

I would never do anything like that, for the simple reason that I wouldn't be able to bear the embarassment I would feel if my neighbors saw me doing that.