All posts by Duf

Homey turned me on to the Windows Media 9 encoder. He asked me to open a URL in windows media player. I did and shortly there after I was looking out the window of his office in what looked to be realtime! Thw new encoder allows you to become a mini streaming video service. It really is amazing. With 250k of bandwidth you can get 30 fps video. You really need to see it to believe it. I set it up on my home box and had Charlie test it. It worked great. I set it up as a test on my parrot this morning, but for some reason it isn’t working right now. I need to mess with some settings. Next week I will have a test up for you to check out. It really is cool.

As I mentioned previously, last weekend I installed a cat door so the the cats have a safe haven from the puppy. The door has a plastic swinging door on it. The cats would not go through it so I had to rig it to stay open. Last night I spent 45 minutes trying to get our one cat to understand the concept of a cat door, to no avail. I sat there on the floor and repeatedly demonstrated how the door easily swings open. All she would do is look at me and meow. Then I put her inside the room so the only way she could come out was to go through the cat door. I sat on the other side coaching and encouraging her. No luck. I walked away. She sat on the other side meowing for 45 minutes and would not walk through the damn door. I finally broke and wired the door back up again. Dumb cats.

This weekend has nothing noteworthy on the schedule besides watching some DVD’s and doing house maintenance chores.

Last night was a puppy setback, although it was probably due to our negligence. She pee’d in the kitchen after we got home. Normally she has to go after long car trip but we didn’t make sure she did. Later in the night Ali took her out and she did a number 1, so she brought her back in and went back to take a shower. I came walking out of the office and discovered 5 large turds in the middle of the carpet. I had to control my rage. The initial urge is to hammer the dog but I know it is because Ali did not let her outside long enough. I cleaned up the mess and then put the dog in the bathroom with Ali. The puppy held it all night again without making a mess in the cage so hopefully it was just an isolated incident.

This morning I reported my first reckless driver to the police. It was just ridiculous and I have decided instead of catching up and shooting the idiot the finger, I will be much better served by getting his license plate in front of the police on a regular basis. The moron passed me on the right in a right turn lane, cut me off and then crossed the double yellow line and passed a truck illegally on the left. Who knows if the police will actually do anything but I hope they do. I was sure to give an accurate description of the vehicle, all the way down to the “Good Ole Boys” windshield sticker.

The war coverage almost is too much. In the rush to be the first to report information, a lot of the first reports on things later turn out to be inaccurate. I’d prefer they wait a bit and get the news right. I saw the POW tape that was shown on Iraqui TV. Bad stuff.

We had a good weekend. On Saturday we went to a Red Sox spring training game versus my hometown Phillies. The Phillies won in a game with 5 or 6 homeruns. The stadium was PACKED and it had a nice aura about it even though it is smack dab in the middle of a residential neighborhood. The stadium was old but I preferred it to Hammonds stadium which we attended last year for a Twins spring training game. We could only get general admission seating which meant we either got to stand or sit in a old style bleacher area in the right field corner. It was shoulder to shoulder but we had some nice folks around us. It brought back memories of my youth when baseball meant EVERYTHING to me. I used to know everybody on every team. I hardly give it any thought anymore. I don’t know if it is the disappointment of my own failed aspiration of playing pro baseball our just my disgust with all the player strikes and greed in the game. I just don’t care much about it anymore. Even so, it felt good to be back in the environment again.

On Sunday we hung gutters for our neighbors and then did a number of little home projects. It was dreary and rainy all day which is a rarity in Fla, so we took advantage of it. We put in a cat door in the utility room so the cats have a safe haven from the puppy. The puppy has been ok. She is a handful that requires a LOT of our attention but we are sort of getting used to it. Maybe we don’t notice just how much our our focus is on babysitting her since we have been doing it for close to a month now.

I got a bunch of flights in with my RC planes in, including an onboard video flight session with my new SlowStick. You can check out the videos at my RC site.

We watched two movies this weekend. Bowling for Columbine, a limited release documentary that focuses on guns and violence in America and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Crouching Tiger was a unique flick that had some unbelieveable fighting scenes with WOMEN! They were truly amazing. Overall the film was average but it was a nice change of pace. BFC was VERY good in my opinion. It really opens your eyes regarding why America is what it is. It is amazing how violent and fearful our society is. If you have a chance to watch this one I would recommend it. Unfortunately the director, Michael Moore really turned me off at the Oscars. He won for best documentary, but then decided to use his speech time to spew anti-war propoganda, something the recepients were specifically told not to do. It was very distasteful and he was booed off the stage. Good.

Tempering any good feeling I had about the weekend was the war coverage. Things are starting to get real. POW’s, loss of life and the realization that this is not going to be a walk in the park. I really feel terrible for the people involved. I often wonder how I would react in a situation like that. I would hope I would respond favorably to the call of duty but I can imagine it has to be terrifying to realize that you are literally throwing yourself into a potential meat grinder. I have faith in our preparation, technology and personnel. I hope that translates into a swift resolution to this.

Its Time to Bomb Saddam – Flash ebaumsworld.com This is some funny stuff. If you need some good laughs surf around this site. TONS of funnies.

Nothing much new to report. Like most others, I have been following the war coverage closely. All indications so far have been positive and there is still a chance that we may have taken out Saddam and/or some of his top leadership. I saw on Fox News they actually had a reporter in an army convoy of tanks heading into Iraq. That was interesting to see from the battlefield, live action.

Brainless tv update. American Idol definitely has more talented people in the finals this year. There are at least 6 that are real strong singers. Last year, there may have been 4. Survivor has been interesting. Every week I continue to marvel at how disgusting Heidi is. Picture in your mind a skeleton with D cup breast implants. That is what she looks like. Horrible looking. The ironic thing is how she keeps grouping herself in the “young pretty girls with good bodies” classification. She looks like a total HAG. The women merged with the men already, they were falling apart and it had to be done. The immunity challenge this week was disgusting, perhaps more disgusting than the cow blood drinking stunt from Africa. The survivors had their hands tied behind their back and then had to rip off as much meat as possible using only their teeth in 10 minutes. It was bad. Emaciated, smelly people with their faces covered in raw meat. Who thought that makes good tv?

Spring training baseball, cleaning, puppy madness, neighbor gutter hanging and watching Bowling for Columbine are on the weekend agenda.

Been feeling really low energy this week. Sleeping like a rock but still feel tired. My strength at the gym is waaaaaaay off. I am not sure if it is a side effect of the antibiotics I am still taking or some left over aspect of the ear infection. I have one more day of antibiotics to go. Hopefully that will be end of the lethargy.

The puppy had accidents in the house each of the last 2 evenings but she also made it through the night last night without making any mess in her cage. A first. She still flusters us. Even though we may feel like just crashin on the couch and watching some tv, if the puppy is wound up and ready to go we have to entertain her. Does anyone sell puppy tranquilizers? 🙂

This weekend we are going to a spring training game between the Red Sox and the Phillies. It should be fun, last year we saw a Twins spring training game. Tickets for the Sox are VERY tough to get. I ordered mine nearly a month ago and could only get general admission seats.

On Monday night while I was out with Nicki, there was a surreal sky. We had thunderstorms earlier but part of the sky was clear. The moon was in this clear area, very full and super bright, lighting up the sky. On the edge of the horizon you could still see the thunderheads of the storms and they were lighting up all over the skyline. It was really something to see. Quite often I don’t take the time to really appreciate stuff like that. I need to do it more often.

War is coming. As soon as Iraq launches their first chemical munition at our troops the UN can all offer a collective “oops, our bad, I guess Iraq DID have weapons of mass destruction”. Even good old France said they would back us if Iraq used chemical weapons. How nice of them. I just hope it ends quickly. I don’t want Saddam exiled, he should either rot in an American jail or be 6 feet under. Some of the Iraqi troops are trying to surrender already but have been sent back because they had to wait until we were officially at war. Crazy world.

I was determined to call the Doc on Friday if my ear still wasn’t better. A week of ear pain was way above normal for me. Luckily it started to break Friday. I used less pain meds on Friday and then by the weekend I was off the pain meds completely. Crisis averted. I MUST protect my ears in water at all times, this is just too much of a pain in the ass.

Saturday I put in 15 hours at work. Yep 15. I was undertaking a project I hadn’t done before. I have a server that had 2 hard drives configured in a non raid fashion that is running a very complicated application. The server was running out of drive space. Not only did I want to increase the drive space but also convert it to RAID 5 hardware WITHOUT having to reinstall all of the applications (which would have been next to impossible without the vendors help) After some research I found a technique to do this on MSFT’s knowledgebase. The steps outlined in the instruction did work but I ran into a number of obstacles I had to tackle to get there. To make a long story short, it all works. Something I will keep in mind the next time I want to migrate a server.

So my one day weekend was spent doing a lot of house/yard work. We mowed the grass for the first time in a long time. (Well 3 months) One of the downsides to living in Florida is you can expect to be mowing grass around 9 months out of the year. The weather has turned summerlike with temps in the mid 80’s and high humidity.

The puppy has been improving. She holds it better and seems to be adjusting to a routine more or less. She is still a bundle to deal with but we are managing. Again, Ali is doing the majority of the supervision duties. However in an effort to allow Ali to get back into her gym schedule, I am working out over lunch and then watching the puppy from 5-6 while she gets a workout in. Not very convenient but until we come up with a better way, it’s better than her not going.

Speaking of the gym, on my lunchtime visit today I had something happen that never has before. As I pulled up I saw some young guy apparently talking to cars as they go by and also to people as they enter the gym. Odd, I thought but I parked my car and headed for the door. As I got closer, I observe that this guy is animated, angry and accosting every single person he can. As I approach he backs off his last target and addresses me. He is talking fast and is difficult to follow. In a nutshell he said something about I should not use this gym because the owner is in jail for cocaine and the owner owes him money and his girlfriend in the truck can verify it. I just looked him in the face, looked away, expressionless and went inside. He was already starting his sermon to the next gym goer. I really have no idea what he was ranting about but he was spewing it to every single person in the vicinity. He was obviously very mad about something. Gym patrons were quite perterbed by the whole scene, including myself. Eventually the police were called and the guy left. I don’t know what the whole deal was about but it was a new gym experience for sure. The new employees I have seen around the gym are shady, at best so it wouldn’t surprise me if this guy’s rant wasn’t based on some aspect of truth. I will seriously be looking for other gym options when my membership comes due. All I expect out of a gym is to be not be packed to the rafters with people and be clean and organized. This gym fails poorly on the latter criteria.

I’ve been out of work for 2 days with the ear infection from hell. Not only is my ear infected but the area around it as well. The left side of my face has a noticeable bulge in it from the swelling. I am hoping the meds kick in soon and it starts getting better. Ever since Monday night I haven’t been able to make it through a night without being woken up by stabbing ear pain.

The puppy progress is slow. Of course it always has seemed better during the week because I see her less. This weekend will be the big test.

Ya know I always say how it would be nice to have off and nothing to do but it is damn boring, at least if you feel like shit and are at home. By the end of the day, I felt like a big worthless blob for not doing anything productive all day long. I don’t know how some people do it.

Added another plane to my fleet and promptly flew it into the shed. It was a low speed crash with minor damage but I just thought it was funny that I got my first crash out of the way on day one.

http://terrytate.reebok.com/watch.asp# Woops my funny link got hammered. Here ya go.

This is really funny stuff. I love these commercials.

I decided to make a pit stop at WalMart over lunch to replace my melted lunchbox milk container. I knew it is normally a mob scene there but I thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad today. Wrong. Wall to wall people. As usual I pick one of the slower checkout lines, I have a uncanny ability to do so. I am behind 3 mexican women, all obvious related. Each pays for their own stuff individually. The oldest woman of the three purchases not one, not two, not three but FOUR purses. I was trying to figure that one out for awhile, running scenarios through my head of why you would want to buy 4 purses. Hey it helped pass the time while the cashier opened all the pockets in each purse to make sure the old lady wasn’t lifting stuff.

Speaking of checkout lines. Has anyone else had any experience with those self checkout stations at Home Depot? Our one HD store recently got them. Being the computer savy person I am, of course I head right for the self checkout station when I see it on Sunday. It is quite interesting. You scan the item and then you MUST place it in a designated area on the machine. It MAKES you do this and tries to sense if you haven’t. I had the machine tell me I didn’t put the item there when I did, tell me I removed an item when I didn’t and I wound up having to have the clerk come over and clear an error. Not very self service at all. I guess if I had a simple checkout of a couple items it would have been ok. I had over 15 items, some that were quite small. Anyone else see these in other stores? I like the idea.

Puppy weekend number two. It wasn’t all that different from weekend number 1. By the end of the weekend we were stressed out and frustrated. Multiple accidents, incessant chewing, terrorizing the cats and crying when she is crated. It appears that Ali’s experiment with letting the puppy go through the night without being taken out is not working out very well. The cage has been getting progressively worse so I think she is going to have to go back to early AM dog walks. As cute as she is, it STILL doesn’t make up for all the drama, at least not at this point. I busted ass to get a floodlight in the back so we didn’t have to be eaten alive by bugs at night. Unfortunately it seems that she doesnt like going to the bathroom unless you are out there with her.

We had a VERY busy weekend. I got the pool all ready for regular swimming by putting in new filters. We totally cleared out the bedroom my mom is going to use when she comes down. I set up shelves in the garage and in the new storage shed to accomodate all the crap that was in this room. We still appear to have way too much STUFF.

On the plus side, I got to enjoy the pool a bit yesterday, we had some friends over Saturday night and watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding (surprisingly good) and I got in some time with my RC plane.

I had a very scary moment on Saturday. Ali asks me if I lighted a candle. I said no, why???? I came out to the kitchen and smelled it. Something was definitely burning. Instantly I had flash backs to my Buick burning up. Oh my GOD is my house gonna burn up next? I started frantically looking around to see where it was coming from. I now see the smoke, I am really crazy now. Ah ha! It is coming from the dishwasher! We throw it open. Smoke comes billowing out. The plastic lid to my lunch kettle milk container had fallen on the heating element and melted. Crisis averted, but man did that freak me out. I will never take the smell of smoke for granted ever again.