Life is a State of Mind

I’ve just started watching Generation Kill on HBO (time delayed on my PVR). Right off it feels pretty much right; I was never a Marine, but I’ve worked with Marines, Army, and Navy when I was in the Air Force and people really talk and act this way. I am not very far into it, but it has promise.

Update: Now that is freaking surreal, one of the Marine snipers chants “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo” as he shoots an enemy RPG team, it happens about 45 minutes into the second episode.

We are cleaning house again, and have a few things we are giving away to anyone who wants them.

We can no longer use our XtremeMac AirPlay FM transmitter for iPod and iPod Mini from the original al the way through 4th generation. Note, the 5th gen iPods changed the ports on the top, so this does not work with iPod videos or nanos. Works great to send FM signal to an nearby tuner (typically your car).

The Apple Airport Base Station we gave away a few months ago has come back to us and is available again, this is an 802.11b wireless access point, conical, in original box with mounting bracket for hanging on the wall.

We have many, many bottles of Xango that is purported to be full of vitamins and healthy stuff. We like it, but it came in way to fast for us when we got on an auto-order plan with them. So help us consume it, please.

My latest favorite music fascination is Rodrigo Y Gabriela, metal/rock inspired flamenco and classical guitar influence original music by two guitar virtuosos. I am a little sad that I do not think it will be practical to see them live, but want to share the information that they will be touring this area of the East Coast of the United States soon!

Rodrigo Y Gabriela are playing The National in Richmond, Virginia on Friday, August 8th at 9:00pm. Tickets are $25 each; and a good show is pretty much guaranteed. The following day, August 9th, they will be playing the V Festival in Baltimore. That festival is more money for each ticket ($99 and up I think), but you get to see the Foo Fighters and many other bands as well.

In case you have not figured out how awesome they are, this is from their website:

If you are interested, but not local, check out the list of Rodrigo Y Gabriela Tour Dates to see what location and date will work for you.

Erci and I went to New York City for a long weekend of medieval exhibits at various museums with other members of La Belle Compagnie.

Trip details and photos after the fold…
Continue Reading »

Just got back from lunch with my co-workers. We ate at Cafe Antonios (Herndon, next to where Bamyan used to be and near the K-Mart). I had a seafood salad special an garlic mashed potatoes, and it was remarkably good. Every one I was with was a member of the clean plate club, and the arrival of the food brought conversation to a halt because it was that good. Most of their menu is online, and they do half portions to help the calorie and budget conscious. I will be going back.

It is astonishing that our Virginia Republican controlled House of Delegates is willing to continue to refuse compromise and block any sort of transportation relief for Virginians stuck in traffic. Perhaps they believe that voters will forget by November 2009 when they are up for election again… Heck, perhaps they are correct and voters will have forgotten. They had short memories last year when progress-blocking Republicans won re-election in 2007.

Please prove them wrong and remember this fiasco:
http://raisingkaine.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=14920

Remember how much this legislature cared about the hours you spend stuck in traffic when you vote in November of 2009. Throw the bastards out of office, please.

So a couple of weeks ago my employer replaced an obsolete Dell Latitude D800 (how the hell can a ~2004 era computer already be obsolete?) with a brand new Dell Latitude D630 also running Windows XP. The old machine was frustrating beyond belief; constantly resetting itself because of either a faulty power and volume button bar or faulty software.

The new machine seemed amazingly fast and more reliable until Windows automatically updated this morning (despite my setting Windows not to Auto-Update). Microsoft has effectively bricked my machine by disabling all network cards (wireless and 100baseT); preventing the update from downloading and preventing me from getting any work done. Thanks Microsoft. I’d already wasted about 5 times as many hours in the past two weeks getting the new machine set up than I’ve spent on setup and administration of my 5 regularly used Macs all year.

In fact, I have about 40 Solaris 10 and Open SuSE servers I maintain, and I don’t think I have spent as much time administering to their needs this year either.

Thank you Microsoft for crushing American productivity. Assholes.

This is just too freaking funny to be missed:

Tax Cuts Help Porn Industry

It brings a whole new meaning to the words “Economic Stimulus Package” doesn’t it?
Ruins my plan to invest it all in European companies and the Obama campaign, but it’s still kind of fun to imagine the heads of the Christianists exploding as they find out.

Toyota to add Solar Panels, how cool is that. I notice my mileage slips a little whenever the heater or air conditioning has to be run, so this will offset at least the air conditioner loss and keep the mileage high.

In other news, my Prius broke a new personal record this morning, it reached 506 miles on the tank of gas when the alarm sounded telling me to go get some more gas. Previous record was 499 on a single tank. I also plugged all the fuel records from my car into a spreadsheet and came up with 48.35 miles per gallon average over the two years I’ve had the car (35,790 miles/740.153 gallons).

I typically put ~9 gallons in the tank every time I fill up; and that is the cheapest gas at the pump. It was a bit of a shock filling up Erci’s Porsche with high octane gas this weekend, and putting in over 17 gallons (ouch).