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10/09/08 04:24 - 65ºF - ID#46021 pmobl

public service announcement

Back up your hard drive. Like right now. Read the rest of the post once you're done.

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You didn't do it, did you? Today was the second time my MacBook's drive failed in the 2 1/2 years I've owned it. They said it was a known issue and the replacement was free, warranty or no, but my last backup was Friday so I'm out a week. Could have been worse.

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Now that you're back from actually backing up your drive, here's some other MacBook problems that are covered out-of-warranty:

1) when your power cord shorts, melts the insulator, and starts shooting sparks
2) when the outer edge of your top case cracks and falls off
3) the repair for 2) will also replace your touchpad and mouse button, which may have become unreliable in their age.

- Z
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Permalink: public_service_announcement.html
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Location: Buffalo, NY


Category: food

10/07/08 05:05 - 62ºF - ID#45981

there's no accounting for blasdell

OK, so I really need to get out of the house, so we decided on barbeque. I'm a Kentucky Greg's man but the place is a bit small and I'm feeling a bit cooped-up already, so. There's always Fat Bob's and although their sides are excellent I'm not a fan of their ...um... ribs. We'd gone to BW's once but my memory of it faded behind my memory of driving the hell around Blasdell trying to find it. So BW's it is.

In an effort to avoid getting lost again I looked up the turnoff from Rt 5 on Street View. On one side: an unmarked garage; on the other: an unmarked factory. Great. I backed up the street a little: A sign that says mumblemumble ... POGS? Zoomed in. Sure enough, ALL ADULT POGS.

What is the deal with Blasdell.

- Z

_______________
ps. Yeah I know, it says 'All About Dogs,' but you can't stop me from believing there's an entire store devoted to selling fifteen-year-old porn-pogs.
pps. BW's ribs are cooked perfectly but KY Greg still wins on sauce.
ppps. All About Doug definitely looks like the kind of place that sells porn-pogs.
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Location: Buffalo, NY


Category: geeky

09/29/08 11:47 - 55ºF - ID#45855

not a schrodinger joke

B's younger sister is gradually moving in with us. She brought her cat Remington with her first stuff a little over a week ago. But you know how you never see Clark Kent and Superman in the same room together? We don't have two cats now, we have one quantum cat. She is always gray and adorable, but sometimes she's Remi and sometimes she's Chita Rivera. Late at night you can hear her quantum states growling at each other, but when you come into the room, they collapse into one or the other with a flurry of galloping feet.

- Z


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Location: Buffalo, NY


Category: booze

09/28/08 03:53 - 65ºF - ID#45826

prepared to take a drink on day one

As the 1972 election results came in, my uncle locked himself in his bedroom and drank one shot of whiskey for every state Richard Nixon won. He was very drunk indeed (WIKIPEDIA - United_States_presidential_election,_1972) I'm much more of a lightweight than he is, but in his honor I introduce the Sarah Palin Drinking Game. Since this will play out over the next week or two, the drinks will become payable at the Halloween party.

1. If John McCain doesn't fire Sarah Palin, take a drink.

2. If Sarah Palin is 'allowed to resign,' take a drink.

3. If the campaign cites sexism as a contributing factor to her departure, take a drink.

4. If the campaign cites liberal bias in the mainstream media as a contributing factor to her departure, take a drink.

5. If campaign spokesperson Tucker Bounds names the New York Times specifically as a contributing factor to her departure, take two drinks.

6a. If Thursday's debate is cancelled because the campaign has not yet appointed a new vice presidential nominee, take a drink.

6b. Alternatively, if Palin hasn't mercifully dropped out by the debate, drink heavily throughout.

7. If the campaign replaces Sarah Palin with Rudy Giuliani, take three drinks - you'll need them.


- Z


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Location: Buffalo, NY


Category: politics

09/26/08 08:51 - 50ºF - ID#45798

everybody loves politics!

If you don't love politics read this instead.

I try to steer away from political stuff since there are already too many commentators on the Internet. But I can't resist now that McCain/Palin has jumped the shark and half a dozen schoolbuses on a motorcycle while wearing a wookiee suit and singing Blaze of Glory.

First we got John McCain over here calling his second time-out of the game. No man, you can't stop the roller coaster when you want to get off. If he's trying to grab headlines, the liberal press just keeps giving him the wrong ones. Yesterday a Google News junkie such as myself would have seen 'agreement in principle' in the afternooon, 'John McCain arrives' in the evening, and 'partisan chaos' by nightfall.

And then there's the debate tonight. Seeing as how you can't have a debate without two people and a moderator, I'm totally geared up tonight to see Barack Obama, Jim Lehrer, and King Friday XIII.

Then we got Sarah Palin over here. She's been a VP nominee for a month and they still won't let her talk to the press. Now we know why. She finally gives an interview and manages to make Joe Biden look like William Jennings Bryan. The VP debate is going to be a train wreck with tankers full of vinegar and boxcars full of baking soda.





- Z


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Location: Buffalo, NY


Category: hell, handbasket

09/23/08 11:42 - 63ºF - ID#45769

on sober analysis

Mr. Bernanke, how's the economy?

image

If Enron and WorldCom are proof that the system works, what are Bear Stearns, FNMA, FHLMC, and AIG?

Edited to add Ron Paul and the Chamber of Commerce

- Z
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Permalink: on_sober_analysis.html
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Location: Buffalo, NY


Category: a series of tubes

09/18/08 11:51 - 63ºF - ID#45722

what's the deal?! with? microsoft?!

I'm going to take an unpopular position: I liked Microsoft's ads. I don't even like Jerry Seinfeld, but I liked the idea of Bill Gates as a warped Dave Thomas. I liked the idea of two out-of-touch dudes trying to reconnect with America in the most awkward way possible. They weren't funny. They weren't supposed to be funny. They were weird, but I guess weird doesn't sell.



Here's an even more unpopular position: I kind of like Bill Gates. He's really chilled out since Steve Ballmer took over. He no longer sounds like some college sophomore who's just discovered Ayn Rand. Now he's just some dude you might find hanging out at a bridge tournament in grungy jeans. [True story: my brother-in-law played him at bridge, and won.]



But of course people hated the campaign so they're scrapping it for something that's clever but predictable: a bunch of people who are not John Hodgman, with not-combovers and wearing not-business suits, being not-pathetic, and holding up signs that say "I'm a PC." Lame.

- Z

_______________
ps. Yes, I'm famous for being lazy. I think that's worse than being famous for being fat.
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Location: Buffalo, NY


Category: food

09/13/08 11:18 - 73ºF - ID#45662

swedish wheatballs

I made a meatloaf last night and it smelled like hot dogs. I don't know how something like that even happens. )-:

Natalie Dee is funny in a way that is difficult to explain.

image
'dead in the eyes and coming for you specifically'

- Z

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Location: Buffalo, NY


Category: misc

09/04/08 09:27 - 79ºF - ID#45576

potpourri

1: WANTED: Stats geek to hang out with hot babes. Inquire within.

2: Q: When did Russians start being awesome? A: Once you click this !!!

3: The problem with me in living in the suburbs across the street from a very expensive private high school, is that I just don't have any empathy for anybody around here. A kid from the school was driving his Audi hatchback like a dickweed, and the person he cut off and/or tailgated followed him until he parked [in front of my house] and started yelling at him. Then her shirtless, shoeless husband started getting all up in the kid's grille. And as the argument got more heated, I realized I wasn't on the side of the kid or the 'adult'- I was really just hoping for mutual assured destruction, and maybe some fire. Instead, police were called and, in true Kenmore fashion, three squad cars showed up.
Moral: Don't be an asshat in front of my house, unless you have the courtesy to catch fire.

4: 'I forgot to opt out' email marketing is in some ways worse than spam. You can't mark it as spam in good conscience. I have a mailbox called Unimportant and a rule set up. The rule got so long that I had to split it in two due to a bounds error/distributed infinite loop in Gmail [good work guys]. My shit list:

image

5: Everybody seems to be talking about Chrome. I like that it keeps track of your most often visited sites, but I don't think that's enough to set the world on fire.

6: Cloud computing is keen but I wish it wasn't all in beta. Google App Engine is very tightly integrated and free, but how much can you do when you don't have write access to the filesystem and all your requests, responses, and database records need to be under 1MB? Amazon Web Services don't care about file or transfer size, but their database isn't totally online yet. And when Yahoo gets into the game I'm sure it will be totally awesome except that nobody will realize that it exists.

- Z
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Permalink: potpourri.html
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Location: Buffalo, NY


Category: misc

08/29/08 10:55 - 66ºF - ID#45495

born a ramblin man

1. In the United States, the word that precedes 'historic' is 'a,' not 'an.' 'An' precedes a vowel sound, and the 'h' is not silent. If you have thought enough about it to decide to use 'an,' you will probably also think enough about it to not pronounce it like a bad Shaw character. It ain't none of mine if you want to do that on (e:strip), but if you're someone who writes for a newspaper, you and your editor should both maybe have half a clue.

2. The last time I went grocery shopping I saw the potatoes labelled as 'pommes de terre,' and I thought that was kind of funny and evocative. Then my brain took a left-hand turn at 'noms de guerre' and ended up at 'pommes de guerre,' which sounds mischievous and awesome.

3. When I was a kid we had three pear trees and more pears than we knew what to do with. If you were on our shit list, we'd ring your doorbell and run away, leaving a grocery bag of like fifty pears on your porch. The ones that fell off the tree and rotted, we would dispose of by playing pearball ['poires de guerre?']. A soft underhand lob, an aluminum baseball bat, a spray of sticky mess. I wonder why I was always the pitcher?

4. We also had an apple tree that never produced any fruit worth eating for as long as I can remember. This summer - with my mom in San Diego and me mowing her lawn - it's apple armageddon.

...ramble on-

- Z
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Permalink: born_a_ramblin_man.html
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Location: Buffalo, NY


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