At a certain age
you’ll find it extraordinary
the compromises
one is willing to make
for even the possibility of love.

That’d be Denny Crane from Crane, Poole and Schmidt in Boston.

From Monday’s a Bitch.

When Meredith walked into the room I really thought that somehow she was going to fix it!

Stupid. People are stupid…

Originally uploaded by Mindaou.


Click for a larger image.

So I was looking at flickr photos (not mine) and saw this interesting building. I’m guessing it’s in Egypt (but I’m not really sure…

I’ll let you know what I find out. From the comment I was able to find out more.

It’s the Memorial of the Unknown Soldier build in 1975 in the Nasr City district in Cairo.

It looks as if Anwar Sadat inaugurated the statue, was assassinated near it and was buried there also.

So it’s always a hassle to view web sites on your phone / PDA. Google has been making this smarter when you search from their mobile site. If you search for “gary said” you get this list and when you click my link (which is first) you get a pretty nice stripped down page. Now I offer my site as a PDA/cell phone version but the graphics are still full, I noticed Google strips them down a bit and removes animated gifs (which is a mostly good thing). The other thing is Google continues to alter the pages as you follow links keeping your browsing experience zippy (I don’t do this but my lower pages are sort of small screen friendly).

So did I tell you for sure that I am absolutely positively going to go to Egypt this spring? Details to follow…

I can’t remember if I mentioned this before, but my buddy who smashed his car decided not to replace it at this time and the other day we were talking about a scooter-type thing. Moments after having one of these discussions someone drove by in a Velux Diamo so we chased him down to get some info. So we went to look at one yesterday, and hours later walked out with one! It’s an electric start convertible 150cc motorcycle with CD/MP3 player (the things that look like armrests are speakers) a “trunk” and it gets 75-80 MPG and goes 65 MPH. There’s an optional LCD GPS/DVD you can get too! More photos of scooters here. I’ll get some photos of him on it later!

So eight people at a meat packing plant split the $365 million PowerBall prize. After taxes it was about $15 million a piece! That’s great I’d hate to see one person get all that (unless it was me) it’s just so much money. It’s going to affect so many more people this way. The people ranged from 26-56 years old and some had played for years and some played just a few times. This is the way I like to see the wealth spread!

I’ve got more info (and how I’d start spending $365 million) in my earlier post. Read the full story at CNN.com

Here is an audio file of me talking on the way home from the Aimee Mann concert (it’s got a slight disclaimer on the quality at the start). It’s not polished nor is it what I plan to have as a podcast once I get there. It’s me talking over Aimee playing on the car stereo, I’m recoding it on my digital camera.

So I’m testing audio enclosures with MovableType and MT-Enclosures. I’m just playing with it (it’s only supposed to be in the RSS 2.0 feed as of now, does anyone else use MT-Enclosures in other feeds?). The file is too big, but it should have good ID3 tags (names and info) including album art. Can anyone tell me if it’s working? (In your feed, with your podcast downloader or anything?)

Question of the Week – 2006/02/20. More about how you sleep!

From QOTW.

So Panera (which in my opinion is the fastest restaurant ever) has implemented using those little pagers they give you at restaurants when you have to wait to get a table. Usually they are calling my name before I even get to the pickup area so this seems like a total waste. It’s something else to handle while getting change and your drink and napkins and stuff. Plus these pagers are the ones shaped like coasters, you don’t really have anything to “coast”…

This post brought to you via free Wifi at Panera :)

So Aimee Mann was in Ann Arbor tonight. It was in the Michigan Theater, I kept thinking Hill Auditorium and then I realized it was somewhere else. Obviously I figured it out, it was right around the corner, a really nice small venue and I was in the front row. It was a great seat, no one could even really be in front of you. I’ve been there before but I can’t remember for what (maybe something jazzy with Lou?). I got a Philly Steak sandwich and then a Long Island at the place that used to be Dooley’s. And the whole town appears to have WiFi (blogging and booze, now that’s just a bad idea).

Aimee was great!!! She was excellent to listen to and interesting to watch. It was the last show of the tour so she kinda blamed the technical glitches on that. This would be the guitar (from hell) that wouldn’t tune, she thought it sounded so bad she stopped in the middle of the song and then apologized about a gazillion times. I didn’t get any pictures (that’ll come in Audra’s review) and he didn’t play some of her classics: Red Vines, Voices Carry and the 3rd one I had in my head when I started typing this sentence.

Audra Kubat was the opening act. She was great too. I’m not even going to try to describe her, if I did it’d be some kind of quirky earthy tragic(?) poet chick, (that’s a compliment) and I think that’s what makes me like her. She’ll get a separate review later.

So I’m watching a rerun of Las Vegas on TNT and when they started the intro I was ready for the Elvis song they play (“a little less conversation…”) and I got something totally different. I wonder if they didn’t want to pay the rights for the syndication or what…?

I can’t even imagine winning this much money. It’s the biggest pay-out ever, $363 million was the highest before but that was two winning tickets. According to CNN.com ‘the cash option is $177.8 million, or $124.46 million after taxes. On the installment plan, over 30 years, the first payment would be $6,507,986 after taxes.’

As long as you you don’t blow it, it seems like you’d be better off taking the $124 million and earn the interest over the 30 years. Not even factoring in the compounding if you could get 5% a year return on $100 million you’d get $6 million a year, that’s pretty much the payment you’d be waiting for (if you did a little better on the interest it’d be a lot more). Over 30 years that’s $150 million more. Even if you didn’t get that interest rate you’d still get significantly more even at 3%.

What to buy for family and friends:

So I’m at the Burger King that has free wired internet but no wireless. So I go to pull out my trusty Apple Airport Express out of my backpack. Or at least I try to. It’s gone!!! I dig and dig, I’ve got everything in this thing. If McGuyver carried a Powerbook, this is all the stuff he’d have “digital duct tape” and all that.

It’s not here. But then I notice neither is my mini retractable ethernet cable, the last time I used both was (you got it) at this Burger King. I ask if they have a lost and found and they don’t (how weird is that?). But I describe it to them, they go to the office and sure enough they’ve got it!!!

FYI, if you don’t know what an Apple Airport Express is, you’re missing out (even if you’re a windows user). Read my earlier review about this wireless router / repeater / music streamer and printer adaptor (it’s really small only 3.7 x 2.95 x 1.12 inches).

Since Aimee Mann disappointed me the other week by canceling her concert. I thought I better speak up since things are now way better at my end. She’s rescheduled for tomorrow in Ann Arbor and I managed to get a seat in the front row!!! I’ll post a review later (hopefully with photos).

So if any one reading this is going, drop me a note and maybe we can say “hi” before or during or after or something…

This week in Circuits with David Pogue he’s interviewing Scott Gaidano president of Drive Savers (a hard drive recovery business):

This is our most famous computer: it’s a laptop that was rescued from the bottom of the Amazon River. A cruise ship hit an underwater barge, and sank down to the bottom. And the woman, an amateur diver, several days later, against all international law, broke in with a Maglight flashlight. Went down two flights of stairs underwater. Green, dark water. Found her stateroom. Remembered to bring her key, and rescued her laptop, and got it to Drive Savers. And we recovered all the data for her.

What makes that one extra interesting is that message came through while I was planning and trying to decide on the 3 or 4 day Nile cruise of my Egypt trip. Maybe just the 3 day (and I’ll back up all my data).

So today Woot is having a Woot Off, this means instead of having one deal a day (at 1 am EST) they change the deal every time they run out of it (if they don’t run out, it only lasts 12 hours). A Woot-Off generally lasts 24-72 hours and happens once (or twice) a month. Sometimes these are refubs so pay attention (it’s listed up near the price, so you can’t miss it).

What’s this mean for you? Great deals all day long (as long as they keep selling out) for a few days. More about Woot.

I was a little disappointed with the opening ceremonies with the olympics. A few neat things but I wasn’t enthralled, even with TiVo to get me through the slow spots. The fireworks and sparkler type things were awesome!

And who’s this guy who’s doing some of the commentary for the skating? Dick Button? They act like he’s some hotshot but so far (IMHO) he’s just this dorky guy who’s annoying (seems kinda mean).

Later: Okay, so I looked him up, he’s won a few gold in skating (over half a century ago), but he’s still kinda gruff for figure skating.

So I don’t consistently or the same place. Especially since it means I have to get up on Sunday early to go to the place I like best. Besides, I don’t like my organized religion too organized.

So we’re reading one of the the prayers out loud and there is a page turn in the middle of it. It’s something they print up with the hymns and readings of the day and a few things just happened to paginate badly. So I read it real quick to see if there are any differences (different churches use different versions) so I don’t actually have to turn the page in the middle of it and draw attention to myself. It’s one of those things everyone should know and I was just checking for variations and I’ve already set my booklet down. So we get to the part where it splits and I practically jump as everyone turns the page, it sounds like a flock of damn birds just took off.

It just struck me as pretty funny at the time. Although my writing here doesn’t really convey how humorous it was then.

I was starving towards the end of the service, I didn’t have time for breakfast since I was in a hurry to go. Now I’m at the goldfish cafe eating waffles right now. Yum!

For some reason that seems like it would be a nice thing, an Apple store open 24 hours a day. I suppose eventually I’d get burnt out if I hung out all hours of the day but it’s still a nice idea. If the Genius Bar were a regular bar…

Why am I even talking about this? Rumour has it that the Manhattan Apple store will be the first 24/7 location. Now, it’s not worth moving to New York for, but I can still dream about it.

Napkins are napkins, right? Sure some might be bigger or fluffier or prettier but they’re all generally the same. At least in my experience. I picked up some America’s Choice generic napkins the other day and every time I use them I cringe. They aren’t very absorbent and kinda non-porous. Their qualities reflect that of paper more than napkins. I could probably run these babies through my ink-jet printer except they might not absorb the ink.

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.

Robert Heinlein

For a science fiction writer, Robert Heinlein has a lot of great short quotes that have nothing to do with Sci-Fi.

Okay, she didn’t actually disappoint me because I didn’t actually see her. It’s the fact that she rescheduled and I didn’t get to see her was the disappointing part. She was supposed to be in Ann Arbor tonight at the Michigan Theatre, I didn’t have tickets but there were seats available and I usually do pretty good picking some up at the last minute. I’m not sure when the show got bumped to the 20th (not one-hundred-percent sure I can make that one, but I’ll try). Since I really enjoyed the Liz Phair iTunes Originals album I picked up the other day I thought I’d pull out my Aimee Mann iTunes Originals album I had never really appreciated them before Liz’s so I’ll have to check out the few others I’ve purchased (and didn’t purchase).

I first saw Aimee Mann in concert (and started listening to here) at the Lilith Fair test tour, this was the tour when Sarah McLachlan took some other female artists out with her to show the concert promoters that people would come. I think it was Aimee, Sarah, Lisa Loeb, Patti Smith and Paula Cole. It was a nice concert in that it wasn’t a madhouse with all these bands playing on all these difference stages, but (if I recall correctly) it seems the performances were cut a little short due to having five headliners….

On other disappointments today:

I just opened about 30 tabs to catch up on my blog reading and about a dozen wouldn’t work. And then I noticed a pattern…

I always forget how many of the blogs I read are at blogspot.com until blogspot is down and I’m trying to catch up. It’s odd, the ones hosted at blogspot but have their own url seem to be okay (I think).

So my favorite beauty got kicked off of Beauty and the Geek 2 tonight but not before she had a few breakdowns. First she was watching her geek while he was speed dating (he forgot she was listening) and he insulted her intelligence. Then he screwed up the apology (a few times) and made her cry some more and insulted her again (so she cried more). Plus they got sent to elimination (the third time in a row) so she cried a few more times. And then the part that made me sad, they lost the elimination round and won’t be back. She was just nicer than the others and seemed more normal that the other ones.

It’s interesting that the show and WB web site lists her as “Cocktail Waitress / Shot Girl” but her web site (www.tristinclow.com) says “Tristin is an aspiring singer and actress”.

I like the show since I know people like these guys, some from high school and some from college but I knew people like this (and a few traits might apply to me to) so it’s extra hysterical. PopMatters suggests that next season might be the other way around with (hot?) geeky women and self-absorbed dense boys. That might be appealing too…

The Wednesday Mind Hump seemed extra easy (and quick) so here we go:
Chocolate or vanilla? Chocolate.
Hot or cold? Hot.
A bunch of short weekend trips, or one long vacation? Bunch of short trips.
Almond Joy or Mounds? Neither!
Country or Rock And Roll? R & R!
Cosbys or Bradys? Cosbys (I always liked Bill)
Brand new car or brand new house? House.
Inside or outside? Outside.
Pepsi or Coke? Coke!!!