Sing along if you know the words.

So long, sweet Summer,
I stumbled upon you and gratefully basked in your rays.
So long, sweet slumber.
I fell into you; now you're gracefully falling away.

Hey, thanks. Thanks for that, Summer.
It's cold where you're going
I hope that your heart's always warm.
I gave you the best, I gave you the best that I had.
You passed on the letters
and passed on the best that I had.

So long, sweet Summer,
I stumbled upon you and gratefully basked in your rays.
So long, sweet slumber.
I fell into you; now you're gracefully falling away.

I hate the winter in [Buffalo]
I hate the winter in [Buffalo]

I'm driving home from work and blasting Stevie Wonder, a first for me (meaning not hiding it in the headphones). And it feels goooood. How can anyone listen to this and not feel happy?

Before you ask, I'm composing at red lights, so spare me.

...but I finally used the Windows XP System Restore to save my machine. My internets have been acting all goofy so I called Verizon Tech Support and this incredibly courteous gentleman assisted me in corrupting my computer's TCP/IP stack. Or at least I think that's what's been causing it to reboot every time I go online.

So yeah, thanks India. Thanks, NetShell. Thanks, Verizon.

Anyway, after struggling the past few days with constant unannounced reboots, it occurred to me that trying the System Restore feature might work. I've been browsing for about 25-30 minutes with no ill effects.

So far, so good. Thanks, Micro$oft!

There was a day when I used to thrive on this kind of stuff. Tinkering around with my computer(s)... Tweaking this, modding that. Not anymore; life is too busy. I just need this thing to browse the web, build a website here and there (even then, I pretty much use my work laptop for that anyway), and play the occasional Madden.

So am I the last person in America to hear this song?

My kids are absolutely in love with Little Einsteins. It's one of the few shows on TV that I have no reservations about letting them sit through.

Each episode teaches them about art and classical music, citing specific artists' works of art and composer's pieces, with problem solving thrown in for good measure.

The fact that it's obnoxiously cute doesn't hurt either. Whether you have kids or not, you should at least check out one episode. Kind of restores your faith in childrens television a little bit (Spongebob Squarepants, I'm looking at you).

Don't get your hopes up TOO high though. It's no Planet Unicorn, mind you.

So, based on a recommendation from a friend, I decided to flash my computer's BIOS tonight in hopes that my Ethernet ports would stop randomly turning themselves off and then back on again.

Well, it worked. They're not doing that anymore -- now they're just off. But that's because my computer's not booting, or at least getting past the RAID detection that follows POST.

I decided to use Gigabyte's "@BIOS" utility that downloads the latest BIOS from their site and then installs it for you. How convenient, WHEN IT WORKS. It started to write the new BIOS when all of a sudden a Windows dialog box comes up and says "BIOS Write Error!" and then my machined reboots. And that is where I'm at now.

Talk about terrible timing. We're going to Disney next week and I'm trying to get a bunch of things in order, one of which was organizing all our photos. All of which are inaccessible at the moment. Now I'm going to have to take out my C: drive, plug it into an enclosure or some such thing and get at everything that way. Thank goodness for my work laptop. But even then, this is going to infringe on time that I don't even have at the moment.

Ugh, what a mess. This, coupled with my laptop fiasco from the spring, is making 2007 a really lousy year for me and computers.

Has anyone heard of this? It's getting NO media coverage whatsoever.

Free the Jena Six

I guess I'm naive, but I find it hard to believe this kind of stuff still happens today.

Where's Al Sharpton?

I guess typing "al sharpton jena" into Google would have been wise, before asking where he was...

I guess I'm just used to seeing his face all over the Today Show and the cable news channels whenever he's involved with something. I'm probably just watching too much ESPN lately.

My bad!

...because I actually saw a feature on the Jena Six this morning.

I guess 500 tour buses packed with protestors is hard to ignore.

I should note that Al Sharpton was featured on there as well today.

As the adage goes, "If you have a favorite restaurant, don't look in the kitchen."

Mardi Gras: Made In China

Globalization 1, Humanity 0.

Bonus: There's an article on Digg that I can't bring up currently since the server it's pointing to is buried (gotta love Wordpress) but I'm going to include it here for consumption later on:

Photos from Toy making plant in China

This just seemed kind of timely to post what with all the toy recalls that have been going on the past few months.