Favorite Movie of the Month: Casino Royale

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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!

- 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!

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.