Favorite
Movie of the Month: Casino
Royale
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November 30, 2006 -
Still
freezing... I came home early from work yesterday,
and held off on going back in today until it seemed
like we weren't going to get hit again. Work was
hectic, seemed like anything that could go wrong
did, cept for the server, it was happy. By five
the place seemed like a ghost town- after work
I went to Todd's to look at his computer.
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November 29, 2006 -
It's
freezing.... It's like an Andorian summer out
there. I came home at lunch today to try and escape
the freezing rain most of which fell south of
Topeka, but we still got enough freezing drizzle
to make it slick.
British
Airways grounded three jets today because they
showed signs of low-level radioactivity. Two were
in London, and the third was in Moscow. They were
tested after the assassination of former KGB spy
Alexander Litvinenko to attempt to trace where
the polonium-210 came from. I'm unsure how much
further the investigation can go as far as following
the trail on Russian soil, but it appears to stop
at the doorstep of the Kremlin.... I see the worst
case scenario being Putin ordering the assassination
of someone that was critical of his government,
and to do so with an extremely dangerous substance.
And in the best case scenario, the Russians just
have really poor security in their nuclear facilities
and such substances are easy for bad people to
get their hands on. Either way, Putin has questions
to answer.
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November 27, 2006 -
Today
Mom & Dad had Smally put to sleep. We adopted
her knowing this day would come, so we are grateful
for all the time she had. Smally had lymphoma,
and her first owner put her in a small confining
area after they tired of her; we hope we made
up for that misery in the last two and a half
years that we have had her. She had a very long
tongue that would always hang out, and she loved
anyone that had a sweatshirt on that she could
climb up in.

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November 26, 2006 -
Sunday...
rather boring today was- I did laundry, used the
steam cleaner on the carpets, watched Sara's TNG
season one DVD set, & worked on Brent's photography
website some more.
Today
marks another milestone in Iraq; The US has been
involved in the conflict now as long as we were
involved in World War II.
A
buying frenzy.... I just don't understand the
logic of any of it! Huge savings are being given
out on a limited number of items, causing people
to wait in lines and stampede into stores to grab
the bargains before they sell out... and why?
For what reason? A lot of those hot ticket tech
items if the price were marked down $150 instead
of $300 people would still buy whatever... Instead
they mark things down so much to create the frenzy
so that people will buy other things that are
overpriced... it's like chumming the water for
sharks... whip them into a frenzy and they'll
bite at anything. Bah I say.
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November 24, 2006 -
State
jobs are nifty- today I have off! I made a to
do list and have started to work my way through
it. I processed the rebates for the hard drive
Brent wanted (which was undamaged by the kitty
after all) I had to fill out three rebates for
it, one for the drive, and two for the free* anti-virus
software that came with it... they have so much
you now have to go through it took me over half
an hour to go through it all. Bah.
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November 23, 2006 -
Thanksgiving,
we went to Brad & Ashley's this year... and
as always, we were the last ones to arrive. It
was a very short event, but was very nice, and
Ashley proved herself (and Brad helped out as
well) to be very proficient cooks.
In
London today former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko
had his final statement documented that he believed
Russian President Vladamir Putin ordered his assassination.
Litvinenko died later in the day having been fed
a near microscopic amount of polonium-210, a rare
highly radioactive element that could have only
been refined in a special lab with a nuclear reactor.
Litvinenko was a harsh critic of the Kremlin,
so with the motive to silence him and having used
such a rare and difficult method to carry out
the assassination it will be interesting to see
how far Scotland Yard will go to solve the case.
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November 21, 2006 -
Today
ranked a 3.25.... "I SHALL KILL YOU!"
is what I told my kitty this morning as he lay
on my bed lounge'n... He had just knocked a new
250GB hard drive off my desk and had cracked some
of the plastic on it and bent a row of pins....
Not a good way to start the day off is this. Work
was marginally ok, we discovered that two UPS's
(battery backup) that we ordered were not the
right ones, and now have to send those back. It
was also a bad day for my stocks.
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November 20, 2006 -
I
rate today as a six on a scale of one to ten-
slightly better than nominal, but a nominal day
is a good day.
President
Bush made a six hour stop in Vietnam today which
caused a number of comparisons between Iraq and
Vietnam.... Bush stated that one lesson we learned
from Vietnam was that we'll succeed if we do not
quit. Keith Olberman launched another fiery special
comment segment over it and compared the tragedies
that first gave Bush and Johnson overwhelming
support (9/11 & the assassination of President
Kennedy) the false claims that led us to war (WMB
and terrorist connections with the false claim
that Communist forces attacked one of our ships
in the Gulf of Tonkin)... and that we could not
leave Vietnam or the Communists would take country
after country until they were on our doorstep.
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November 19, 2006 -
Accomplished
stuff today... Cleaned the upstairs, worked on
my computers while I watched season one, disk
one of SG1... and made a failed attempt to fix
my medium sized fan for my HP... I have small
ones I could put in it... and a huge one... and
a nice medium sized fan which I put a hole in
the side of the case for... but now that that's
not going to work, I guess I shall go for the
huge fan! Course... I'll also need to get a new
power supply... or ponder some creative wiring!
Tonight
I began to move my website to my new Servage host...
Where I have my site now is on a friend's server
in Ohio, but sometimes it goes down, and since
I'm already paying for the 250GB of online space
I might as well just have all the websites I work
on all in one location.
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November 18, 2006 -
Saturday:
Today I went to Topeka to go shopping with Teresa...
it was kinda to start Christmas shopping, mostly
to look for ideas of what we should get people.
I got a couple shirts for myself though, and Teresa
got me a nifty micro maglight keychain. It's very
cool, and doesn't clank around in my pocket like
my old keychain did.
Later
on we went out to eat with Bob and Mary Lou at
Tuptim Thai (the yellow curry is oh so yummy)
and then we saw Casino Royale. It's been dubbed
a pre-quil/ remake of the 1967 Bond film of the
same name... but I don't like calling it a prequil
as it chronologically takes place last, and how
can something that dates last come before earlier
things? It's a remake set in current times- and
it's a very good one too, and I would dare say
the best Bond movie. It was like the normal Bond,
but with a lot more action, mystery, and suspense..
and less gadgetry & cheesy characters- a must
see! After the movie we were going to watch the
Leonid meteor shower but it was cloudy.
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November 17, 2006 -
An
action-packed day... well, not really, but it
was busy. I spent almost all of the day working
on Barry's Mac, it's been a bit on the quirky
side, course it is a Mac... so I spent the day
trying to make it happy.
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November 15, 2006 -
It
was a great day today... aside from the cold artic
winds that is. I took my new keyboard in to work;
it's the coolest keyboard in the world! My stocks
were all super-happy today too.
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November 12, 2006 -
It
was a slow day... I didn't accomplish very much,
but yesterday I did all sorts of work around the
house.
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November 10, 2006 -
I
have today off because of Veterans Day tomorrow-
The last of our WWI veterans are passing away,
there are now less than a dozen left ranging in
age from 105 to 115. There are only three left
who fought in the trenches, and none feel they
are ready to talk about when they experienced.
This
morning I ordered a new keyboard, USB hub, and
a hard drive for Brent.
Bipartisanship
is the new plan for Congress and the White House,
or at least that is the plan for now. I can see
the Democrats trying to work toward a common ground
on the issues, especially with the influx of more
conservative Democrats. I think immigration reform
will be a top issue since it was the more conservative
Republican members of the House who blocked the
bill the President hoped to sign... in some ways
I can see Bush working better with a Democratic
controlled Congress. Bush and the future Democratic
Senate leaders met today and the President agreed
to meet again to discuss raising the minimum wage,
immigration reform, & meet with a bipatisan
commission on how our Iraq policy should change
once the new session begins.
Find
someone else. -That is the message from the Senate
to the President on his re-nomination of John
Bolton as UN Ambassador. Bolton did not get his
first nomination approved, and Bush instead waited
for Congress to close and granted Bolton a recess
appointment. With the Republican majority soon
to slip away Bush sent the nomination again, but
a lack of Republican support is going to kill
the nomination again.
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November 8, 2006 -
I
updated my links page with Teresa's & Matt's
Blogs, and also nifty free software.
Donald
Rumsfeld resigned today... It was
pretty much a given after the elections... not
that Rumsfeld and Bush came to this decision because
of the huge turnout for the Democrats; a large
number of the Republicans that were running for
office ran on a platform of "I will ask Rumsfeld
to resign as my first act." Now if we could
just replace Cheney!
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November 7, 2006 -
Election
Day! I voted before I went to work on the paper
ballot, which was the only option here in Holton,
but it seems to be still the preferred option
by many people. At work Matt Veatch found an "I
Voted" sticker and stuck it to me, and he
asked me if I voted and I showed him my first
sticker..... If there's one certain way to get
stared at it's to wear two I Voted stickers.
MSNBC
is on crack... Did they not learn anything from
the 2000 elections? They call races for one side
of the other when 1% of the vote has been counted...
they'll call it when 0% is counted... they'll
call a race for one candidate because of exit
polls when the other candidate has more votes
counted in their favor.
There
were some milestones tonight; the first Muslim
in Congress was elected to the House, and the
second black governor was elected, which is also
a first for the state of Massachusetts. Last but
not least, we have our first female Speaker of
the House (and also the first Italian American
Speaker).
Everyone
that was running that I was really pulling for
won; Sebelius, Boyda and Morrison... finally an
election that didn't feel like the end of the
world!
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November 6, 2006 -
What
a dreary day- it was foggy and cloudy and drizzly,
but at least it wasn't freezing. My sore throat
persisted, but I was able to scrounge a few throat
lozenges which kinda made me sick... medication
of that sort on an empty stomach always makes
me queezy. There was an excess of chocolate around
the office though, and that seemed to help and
I feel marginally better now.
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November 5, 2006 -
Washburn
played K-State last night in basketball, and narrowly
lost in tripple overtime.
What
did I accomplish today? ...I got a sore throat,
took a nap, printed tons of stuff for Carrie &
also for Mom, finished winterizing the fish pond,
set up my new computer to dual boot between XP
and Ubuntu.
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November 4, 2006 -
Today
I got up and started to tinker... I put dynamat
around one of the CD bays in my HP because the
hard drive in it was vibrating a little and I
didn't like hearing it... I also don't like to
hear the rear case fan come on, which it does
when the system gets warmed up after working on
a large video file for a while... when the side
of the case is off it won't turn on.. but when
it is on it will.... I'm starting to ponder it's
time the case had a run-in with my Dremel... I'm
sure I've got a nifty fan grill somewhere for
it too...
I
reconfigured my USB's in the new computer today...
I never could figure out why the rear USB ports
would not work, or any PCI USB card I tried...
there are four sets of USB2 pins on the motherboard
though, and those do work ok (which makes me rather
clueless as to why the other ports do not work...
it's the same driver for all of them) I've seen
it when a USB controller was shorted out, and
that lead to all the USB's on the motherboard
to go out, but separate PCI USB cards would still
work as they have their own controller chip...
I think I can get by with the ports I have though;
two in the back, and one in the front, and the
last one I have my floppy drive/media card reader
plugged into.
Today
marks a full month that Dad has been on strike
from Goodyear.
$28666.26...
that's how much each American owes as today for
their share of the national debt.
Don't
vote for Kathleen Sebelius, she just might quit
in a couple years to go work in Washington as
the Vice President... That's the message Jim Barnett
is now trying to push. Is that a bad thing I ask?
I think having the first woman Vice President,
and to have her come from the great state of Kansas
is a tremendously good thing.
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November 3, 2006 -
Tonight
after work Bob, Lou, Teresa & I went to Chez
Yazu- ...it was good.. but sometimes fancy food
is a bit wasted on me- I thought the bread was
the best- not that the food was bad; the teriyaki
chicken was good, but the eggplant stuff that
came with it had way too much rosemary on it.
My
stocks were very happy today and I managed to
make more in the stock market than I did from
going to work- those are always very happy days!
There are the down days too, but recently more
have been positive.
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November 2, 2006 -
It's
been a good week... starting to learn Linux; I
learned to hook up printers to my Linux system,
read a small book of vi, and read a 1/3 of a book
on Linux fundamentals... I probably spent more
time in my cubical so far this month than I have
all of last month.