Well, I'd been debating picking up a guitar for a couple months - as much as I love the piano, it's pretty tough to take with you, and I thought trying something new would be nice. I'd mostly settled on a make and model, but today, genet and I were out and about, and decided to stop by the local music shop. Turns out they were having a pretty major sale, and this happy fellow ended up following us home:
( Read more... )

For every participant over 2 on a conference call, roll 1d4. If a 1 is rolled, roll percentile dice:
00-15 Testing of new ratchet on phone
16-25 Rearranging hollow metal trashcans in room
26-50 Obscene heavy breathing into headset mouthpiece
51-60 Standing in hurricane-strength wind
61-65 Bagel chips being eaten
66-75 Heavy road noise, including rumble strips
76-90 Noisy conference room speakerphone
91-98 Screaming children, barking dog in background of home office
99 Meeting moderator ends call early

I just took my first pass at a Genius playlist in the new iTunes. I started with:
"Fly" - Moxy Fruvous

I clicked the Genius button, and it quickly created a playlist with the following as the first three songs:
"Learning to Fly" - Pink Floyd
"Butterfly" - Smile.dk
"Flying Condor" - Cusco

Truly, this new functionality is stunning. I only wish I could get a behind-the-scenes peek at whatever complex algorithms they're using to build the lists!

(To be fair, it did better when I re-tried the same song, but that first one made me giggle - it's practically what I would've seen if I typed 'Fly' in the search window!)

As feren and jwz put it, "Dear Lazyweb,"

Do any of the tech-types out there have a recommendation for a good utility to turn an export of configurations into a formatted document? Essentially, I'd like a way to generate some system documentation, and I can get a list of all the configurations on the platform I work on (in raw text, tab-separated files, or HTML). I know there's tools out there like the older Rational stuff for converting technical data into documents, anyone have any current experience/recommendations?

I'd dearly love to reclaim some of my life, and this could at least help prevent losing even more hours ;)

This is for any company with a Multimedia Extravaganza(tm) for a website. Not just as an intro video, or as part of a side-menu, but for their entire site. My suggestion to you is; why stop there?

I mean look, your customers may still be getting useful information about you by calling your company. You remember phones, right? That stodgy IVR system you have? Picture this! A customer calls, perhaps in search of locations where they may buy your product.

"Thank you for calling OCP. We value your business! You are walking through a forest. Ahead of you, a light flickers among the trees."
"Press 1 to draw your sword."
"Press 2 to turn back."
"Press 3 call out to the light."
*BEEP*
"You have selected 1. As you unsheathe your blade, the light emerges from the trees. It turns out to be a torch, wielded by a kobold! He turns toward you, seeing your weapon at the ready. His face curls into a menacing snarl."
"Press 1 to attack."
"Press 2 to attempt parley."
"Press 3 to flee."
*BEEP*
"You have requested Operator Assistance. The Operator bursts from the nearby trees, and is quickly slain by the kobold."

My road-trip tale of DeLorme's awesome customer service made it onto The Consumerist today! Awesome!

http://consumerist.com/356192/delormes-awesome-customer-service-vastly-improves-road-trip

Update: Apparently now it's on BoingBoing too! I really hope this drives some business their way...not that they're hurting, but their handheld GPS isn't as recognizable yet as the older big-hitters like Garmin, Magellan, etc, most folks getting into the GPS market don't even know they have one.

I went to bed sometime around 11:30 last night, midway through an installation for work, with the intent of finishing it in the morning after some files copied.

I was awakened by a particularly loud train whistle at 4:30am. For about a minute, I was convinced that my dereliction of duty had caused a train derailment.

I think this is a good indication that I'm working too hard!

Delivering packages is hard.
Maybe ottr was right, and I need to show the driver how to navigate and gas up his truck?

..cause I'm off to California again.

Flying out Sunday afternoon, and returning home next Thursday. As usual, it'll be a pretty busy trip, but workload-permitting, I should be able to sneak off for dinner one night if any of the San Jose-ish locals are around. I'm thinking Tuesday or Wednesday are the more likely culprits.

Also, I need a vacation. Seriously...I have to find a way to use 16 vacation days between now and December. Maybe I'll just take December off :P

First off, thanks to everyone who posted on the last entry. Snark was indeed a good snake, and it was touching to see how many guests in our home remembered her fondly.

Other stuff has been changing recently, as well! For starters, my trusty old Saab was starting to have more and more trouble with the daily commute. So while it was still trade-in-worthy, I traded it in, and bought my first ever new car - a 2007 Subaru Outback:

I was gratified to see as I drove off that the Saab was already being cleaned up for sale at the dealership...It's in a college town, and will most likely make for an excellent student car. Happy retirement, old gal.

Work itself has been quite insane; not going to go too much into it here, but it's mostly been good stuff. Hopefully there won't be any more 300-hour months for a while, though!

Switching gears, sans clutch...I may be moving more money into investments starting next year. Before we bought the house, I had a Scottrade account; it's now inactive, but could be reactivated. I was fairly pleased with them, but it's been a number of years. Anyone have any alternate recommendations? I'd mainly be placing market orders, buy-and-hold, no Options or anything.

And lastly, some may have noticed the adorable snake-face in my userpic. It's from an image I commissioned from the talented and snake-loving Bowrll, of a snuggle between my snake-character and genet's wah. Tooth-rotting, so be warned!
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/753549/

Snark ? - 2007


We never knew her origins for sure...or even if she was a she. She came from a pet store that swore she was captive-bred and less than a year old, but a visit to the vet confirmed that she was probably wild-caught, and already an adult when I took her in. For a wild African snake, you'd never meet a sweeter reptile.

Rest in peace, Snark...I hope the snakey-afterlife is full of plenty of warm cleavage to coil up in, and mice that aren't scary.

There's nothing like driving dark, twisting, forested roads with lightning flashing overhead and Mitternacht blasting on the stereo to make you feel like your life's a great deal more epic than it actually is.

Much as I try to avoid it, I end up at a Wal-Mart from time to time. Usually this would be the one right next to where I work, or the one close to home. Coincidentally, these are both fairly new stores, built at almost the same time.

I can't help but notice that the Wal-Mart by home is flush with 'U-Scan-It' (customer-operated) checkout lanes, while the one by work has not a single one. I got to pondering; somewhere, in some corporate database, there's a policy and a formula for determination of whether a new store gets customer-operated checkout lanes.

I would love to see it!

Edit: I meant to add, the one by home is in a fairly rural 'village', while the one by work is in a small city. So the areas are different across almost any demographic you can name!

Due to a power failure last Friday, the last of the bottle of KeKe Key Lime Pie Liqueur apparently met its end. This is very sad!¹ In honor of its passing, I thought I'd share a few facts I'd gleaned.

• The product description states "Taste the creamy flavor of Key Lime Pie with just a hint of graham." They might want to consider putting that last bit on the bottle, instead of just the website.


• According to the Wikipedia article on it, it will not curdle, in contrast to most other cream-based liqueurs. They state that it can thusly be mixed with acidic mixers, such as beer and coffee. Yum!


• Okay, it really wasn't that bad, but the whole graham liqueur concept is quite alarming. I think they should follow it up with other dessert liqueurs. If anyone wants to bankroll my 'Deep Fried Twinkie' liqueur concept, I'm currently accepting venture capital!

¹Not really

Well, currently at the house of haikujaguar and elusivetiger, along with two others from the local crowd. Our hosts were evil, and took us out to dinner, when we were hoping to take them out! Took us to Splash, a local seafood restaurant, which was gooooood. Midwestern boy misses his fish!

Course, as soon as haikujaguar and genet realized that the tablecloth was paper, and draw-uponable...

( The pens came out )

So, genet and I are down in Florida at the moment, visiting relatives. Pretty much as soon as we got here, Florida was hit with its first rain since January. A tropical storm, no less! The amusing thing is, everyone's been apologizing like this must be ruining our vacation, but...y'know? We didn't really have any plans to hit the beach. This weather is lovely! It's on the border between cool and warm, a lazy tropical rain that occasionally revs up to a driving thunder on the roof.

Yeah, I'm okay with this!

Tomorrow, we're off to see haikujaguar and elusivetiger, apparently following the storm north in the process. Let us know when the drought gets bad again, and we'll come back down!

Just a friendly little warning to some of the locals!

Some of you when visiting may occasionally stop at the White Hen Pantry at North Ave and 83, for gas or snacks. It is my recommendation that you no longer do so. genet stopped there this morning, for gas and a soda. This is normal enough; we're nearly regulars there, living fairly close by.

When she went in to pay, the clerk promptly accosted her, and told her she owed them money. The explanation was that, during a transaction last week, the clerk that day had undercharged her. The reason given for the mistake was that 'it was really busy'. They took it a step further, though, and said that she owed them $7, right then and there.

When she understandably balked at being told that she owed a business $7 for their mistake, based solely on their word that she owed it to them, they got quite belligerent. They told her there was store video, and had transaction logs, and implied that if she didn't cough up the $7 or a receipt proving that she'd paid the correct amount right at that moment, the cops would become involved. She had to get to work. So she paid. White Hen got their $7, and will never see the business of either of us again. And we encourage anyone else up in our area to avoid them as well.

Hope they enjoy the $7!

Here I sit in my favorite airport in the whole world. Leaving ample time for travel delays of course ensured that everything went smoothly, thus allowing me plenty of time to soak up the ambiance. Having already availed myself of some OJ from one of the kiosks (*premium* OJ, no less...I can only assume the ice cubes floating therein are premium as well), there's not much else to do but blather on a journal.

I can't help but notice that, as with at least the last two flights from here, they have an announcement repeated pretty regularly. Some gent speaks in the most dire tones:
"Ladies and gentlemen, the Department of Homeland Security has raised the threat level to...ORANGE!"
I'm serious, they leave just enough space before the word 'orange' for my brain to fill in the proper "Dun-dun-DUUUUUNNNN". Of course, a nit-picker might observe that 'raised' is a bit of a misnomer, as that would imply it being lower in recent memory.

It's a bit of a moot point anyways, as they have elected to use a two-point scale; essentially 'screwed' and 'hyper-screwed'. If they ever see fit to lower it to blue or green before scrapping the program, I'll eat my hat. I don't have a hat.

I'll eat feren's hat. I'm sure he won't mind.

Anyways, I've apparently wasted enough time typing on this matchbook-sized keyboard that we're boarding. Is it too early to order gin?

Just a little personal glee in this one. I'm sure genet, feren, and lady_curmudgeon will recognize this fine theatrical establishment!

Schadenfreude? Never!
( 1 image )