Monthly Archives: March 2006

If life were a movie…

Posted on March 25, 2006 | 4 comments

So you know how when you’re watching a movie and something stupid happens with a computer, this is either:

  • A person saying something dumb about how it works.
  • Someone type some command or run some software that just doesn’t make sense.
  • The computer gives some weird error that just doesn’t make sense (or that it wasn’t given enough info for it to give an error like that).

    The attempt to burn a disc failed. The device failed to calibrate the laser power level for this media.And of course you think “that doesn’t make sense” or “people are actually going to believe that now”! I know I’d think something like that if I saw a message like this one, “The device failed to calibrate the laser power level for this media” , I mean how crazy is that? You’ve never really get a message like that, right?!?

    My Powerbook (12 inch, 1.5GHz, superdrive) gave me that message today and I just couldn’t believe it. I had to try two other CDs from the same package and then go try them in another burner (which worked fine). I stuck another CD in here and it worked just fine, how bizarre?

    • 4 Comments

    Tagged ,

    Still looking for The Spaghetti Harvest

    Posted on March 24, 2006 | 3 comments

    SpaghettiSo it’s almost April Fools day and once again I’m looking for a copy of The Spaghetti Harvest.

    …a segment about a bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland. The success of the crop was attributed to an unusually mild winter. The audience heard Richard Dimbleby, the show’s highly respected anchor, discussing the details of the spaghetti crop as they watched a rural Swiss family pulling pasta off spaghetti trees and placing it into baskets.

    I’ve been trying to find this for ages and someone must have a copy somewhere that I can get.

    The BBC played this on April 1, 1957 on a serious show (which upset some people). I saw it as a child, a local theater ran it instead of cartoons before a movie, and I’ve always remembered it. Most people don’t even believe me when I say that there is a such a documentary so I’d love to get a copy. FYI, there is an small (awful) copy of it at the above linked sites.

    3 Comments

    Posted in general

    Tagged , , ,

    Rent Me, I’ll Dress Up For You!

    Posted on March 23, 2006 | 3 comments

    So I’m up for auction again! You can bid on a basket of Cat in the Hat paraphernalia (book, movie, coloring book, crayons, etc) which includes a visit to your house from the Cat in the Hat (that’s me) to read to your kids or a party or whatever…

    Last year I go to go to a birthday party for a 7 year old, their mom did the who party as a Dr. Suess theme so I was the hit of the party!

    The basket I made got in the local paper (it’s in the lower right). So if you’re not doing anything tomorrow come to the auction in Redford, MI. FYI, it’s NASCAR themed so they’ll be all sorts of non-Cat in the Hat stuff too!

    3 Comments

    Posted in general

    Tagged , ,

    Another Podcast Test – The long way to JFK

    Posted on March 23, 2006 | 2 comments

    So I’ve got this podcast with the enhanced images working!

    Two kinds of podcasts:
    this is the “better” enhanced AAC podcast (for iTunes, iPods and Quicktime).
    this is the mp3 podcast (for everything else).

    The enhanced file is a AAC/MP4 (m4a) file so you probably need an iPod or iTunes (or Quicktime) to see the images. The MP3 will just be on it’s own for any software/hardware player.

    I now have both a Enhanced RSS Feed and a MP3 RSS Feed set up.

    (If you get goofy characters you’ll need to save it to the computer first, sorry. This should be fixed, but you never know…)

    I apologize to those using feed software, this (and the feed from the next podcast or two) will be goofy as revise and work out the bugs…

    2 Comments

    Posted in Egypt 2006

    Tagged , , , , ,

    Product Placement Dreaming

    Posted on March 22, 2006 | Leave a comment

    So I was going to finish up the followup to the Alex Rider post before I hopped in the sack but then I remembered I didn’t mention my dreams!

    So I’ve had odd dreams lately (the last two days) with lots of advertising. This is odd for several reasons, I generally don’t remember my dreams and when I remember them as well as I did this morning they’re usually normal, as in I’m not sure if the stuff really happened or not.

    So back to the advertising dream: I think I was in Cingular (which I actually needed to go to today) and there were people there in Dominoes’ uniforms trying to sell me a Dell. They made a phone call to their friends who were at Taco Bell and wanted to meet up with me and we were going to go eat and get eggs or omelets or something like that. Oh and I think the friend’s played on a baseball team, which I would assume is the Tigers since Dominoes’ owned them at one time.

    Leave a comment

    Posted in me + myself + i

    Tagged , ,

    Alex Rider and Harry Potter

    Posted on March 22, 2006 | 8 comments

    First we digress: This post was supposed to be a follow up to a post that I thought I did but can’t find the message but I can’t really do the follow up first now can I?

    So I’ve always thought there were connections between Alex Rider and Harry Potter. Young English boys who are orphans and get to go on the adventure of a lifetime. Harry gets to be a wizard and Alex gets to be a secret agent. Both had father’s in the business but didn’t get to know them (or all the secrets). Plus they’re always getting injured…

    SPOILERS! If you haven’t read book four, Scorpia, don’t read on, I’m going to give the ending away.

    Continue reading →

    8 Comments

    Posted in reviews

    Tagged ,

    The Crummy First Day of My Trip

    Posted on March 22, 2006 | 1 comment

    Dtw atl jfk flightSo while I don’t have the tickets I now have my flight arrangements. To put it mildly the first day of my trip is going to suck. I’ve got a direct flight from New York to Egypt (5800 miles) but I have to get to New York (JFK) from Detroit (just under 500 miles). Here’s the sucky part, to get to JFK from Detroit they are flying me via Atlanta, GA so I’m going 1350+ miles instead of 500 miles, plus it’s probably an extra half traveling to do all the connections. Now I’m not a travel expert (or a geography expert) but it just seems odd (see the picture) that there isn’t some better way to route me less than 750 miles out of the way. Next time I’m make that part of the reservations myself and pay the extra for two different airlines one way or something.

    Continue reading →

    1 Comment

    Posted in Egypt 2006, holidays + events

    Tagged , ,

    My Tickets!

    Posted on March 20, 2006 | Leave a comment

    So I got an envelope from the travel agency today. This is the one that’s supposed to have the tickets for my flights in it. Did you see that, I said supposed to? Yes, there were no tickets in my envelope. Nor was there a receipt for an eTicket of any sort in there either. How annoying was that?!? And of course I didn’t see it until after they closed for the day. I see this as being one of those crisises that make me crazy until a few days before the trip leaves.

    Of course they’ll tell me this is normal that they don’t have them yet, but the confusion is easy enough to solve: just don’t include the memo that says they are in the envelope! At least include my flight info (I see that’s on-line, but that’s another story). I didn’t see a name badge in there either which is listed as mailed (but it might have been mixed in with the luggage tags, although they weren’t pre-printed, I’d assume the name badge would be).

    And in the envelope there was this carrying case for your ticket (but no ticket) that just screamed “I’m a tourist”, I don’t know if I’ll actually use it. They sent me some other little gift thing like that before (I want to say some kind of wallet). Send me something useful, like a plastic power adaptor and a list of WiFi hot spots!

    Continue reading →

    Leave a comment

    Posted in Egypt 2006, holidays + events

    Tagged ,