SoCal adventure, Day 1

I enjoy traveling from east to west. And I don't mean from Capital to Glenwood, I mean from Raleigh to SoCal. The thing about leaving early is that even though you spend what feels like most of the day traveling, once you arrive, you still have plenty of time to do things because of the three hour time change. In my case, I arrived so early, I almost had too much time.

I decided to go spy out some famous streets in North LA, in an area known as Hollywood. Maybe you've heard of it.

I got a couple of pictures of the famous Hollywood(land) sign, but this may have been my best angle.



After spending some time finding a place to park, I stepped out of my rental car (which, by the way, is a red Mustang--truthfully, I don't really care for it) and found myself at Hollywood and Vine in the midst of the "Walk of Fame." I took a few pictures of the stars with names I recognized.














One of the more interesting things about this to me was that this was in an area full of regular stores. Below is a picture of a line of stars along Hollywood Blvd next to a tire store. But this is just a downtown area. The stars continue around Sunset Blvd and several of the connecting streets adjacent to a CVS, a Borders, an auto repair shop, a McDonalds, etc.



Another feature of this area are the homeless people. This caught me off guard as you had a surreal mixture of touresty people like me, taking pictures of the side walk, regular people scurrying from place to place to either shop or go to work, and homeless people asking for change. The whole juxtaposition was not at all what I expected.

The whole reason I hung out in this area of town (not specifically to see the sidewalk, I can assure you) is because I had arranged to meet my cousin, professor Joe at a restaurant. He is teaching at USC in San Bernardino, and teaches mostly Children's Literature. It sounds like he's enjoying it. We had a great time talking about families, interests, and life stories. I was surprised at how similar our interests in understanding things are, but with specialties in different disciplines.

We had decided to meet at Taix French Restaurant on Sunset Blvd. in part because I thought I might go to see the Dodgers play the Indians. We were SO CLOSE to the stadium, but we didn't finish up until after the game started (we were chatting nearly three hours) and I was beat up, having gotten up at 3:50 that morning.



I had about an hour drive down to Orange County where I am staying. It was fun to listen to the legendary Vin Scully call the CLE/LAD game on the radio. He's been their broadcaster since 1950. Once I got back I stayed up a bit, finished the game, discovered I had a full-sized refrigerator, sink, dishwasher, microwave and two stove top burners in my room (it's a Candlewood Suites hotel) so I went and got some food before I went to bed.

Saddleback Worship Conference

I am looking forward to attending my third worship conference at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA. I can't believe it will be my third time going. I originally did not make plans to attend this year because I just went last year. But once I found out my buddies from Akron were going, I decided it was too hard passing up hanging out with them again.

I am leaving RDU Friday morning at 6:00AM. Day one is a personal day, looking forward to visiting with my cousin. I hope to update this blog with my experiences as I attend several services in Orange County and Los Angeles churches over the weekend. Follow me here, on Facebook, Youtube, and of course on Twitter as I constantly update my status with the events and workshops I hope to attend.

If you do anything in church music, either as a staffer at a church or as a volunteer, at a small church or a large church, this is a great conference and I hope you can attend it some time!

This conference looks to be well-connected with my buddy Rich Kirkpatrick already setting up the official worship conference blog. The conference site is here, the macro schedule here, and you can download the individual workshops we have to choose from here.

No More Google Browser Sync

Just minutes after posting a twitter that I'm considering moving to Firefox 3, I read this post from Lifehacker about how Google will be discontinuing support for their own Firefox extension, Google Browser Sync for the new version of Firefox.

This tool, which I have written about before, synchronizes your bookmark and password data across all the computers you use. It usually worked pretty well too, as I have had four browsers all synced together with it.

It was a tough call, but we decided to phase out support for Browser Sync. Since the team has moved on to other projects that are keeping them busy, we don't have time to update the extension to work with Firefox 3 or to continue to maintain it.

So, since I've become so accustomed to this feature, I've began to look for other options. Fortunately the article already provided a few suggestions including one for Foxmark, which not only allows synchronization across your several computer's browsers, but allows you to log in from anywhere on any computer and access and edit your bookmarks.

We're big Foxmarks fans around here—in fact, we always thought that Foxmarks beat Google Sync when it came to bookmarks.

So I've registered one computer so far with Foxmarks and I'll try it out on a couple of other machines and see how it goes. Oh, and Foxmarks is very much looking forward to the release of Firefox 3. One more thing to try to smooth the transition! Do you sync your browsers?


UPDATE: I don't think I will make the move to FF3 until the Silverlight/MLB bug gets fixed. Apparently, Major League Baseball games cannot be watched in FF3!

From the office of redundancy office

We had an interesting portion of the afternoon today getting the kids' pictures taken. The photographer was great, the kids were great and they actually seemed to be having fun getting in the various poses and laughing at the photographer's corny jokes.

As we stood around waiting for the pictures to "upload," so that we could choose the prints we wanted (the result of which yielded a customer service experience I don't even want to get into now as a colossal rant would ensue, raging against bad training, under-empowered employees, presumption that the consumers are technology idiots, and frankly a deliberately executed formula to undermine any integrity), I spotted this sign at the desk stating the hours of operation. I couldn't resist and snapped a picture of it with my phone.

Tell me if I'm missing something. Wouldn't it have been easier to just indicate the hours as Monday-Saturday?

The Life of a Bullet

Several weeks ago we rented "The Kingdom." It is a movie I would recommend, though not for the kids. It depicts a fictional terrorist attack on a military base in Saudi Arabia and the ensuing American response. The movie is raw, which for some reason I typically interpret as realistic. I guess that's exactly what the director is hoping for.

The American government team sent to "investigate" the crime scene goes without proper authority, but in a fit of emotional fervor the leader puts together a team committed to bringing a kind of justice to a fallen friend and comrade. The story depicts experienced and maybe "smarter," self-assured American investigators jumping into the "crime scene" evidently oblivious to the culture, and even cavalier regarding it. Acting as if the Americans have a thing or two to teach the Saudis about how to run a proper investigation, they are constantly frustrated and their progress is blocked for religious, cultural, and political reasons they never grasp.

The movie's climax ends with a dramatic chase and shoot out among the terrorist group in the city, including women and children (used as manipulative pawns). Without giving too much away, one of the last things we see is the patriarch master-mind passing on his legacy to a grand child close by him in his dying breath. In essence, he tells his kid to never stop killing the Americans until they're obliterated. The movie ends, though it was never intended to end this way, and the tragedy of children involved in violence and wars much bigger than them and ones they don't understand is perpetuated.

This ending reminded me of the brilliant opening of Lord of War. This portion of the movie has ironically been called "The Life of a Bullet." Ironic, because the sole intent of a bullet is to squash life. Follow the path of a bullet from a Russian manufacturing plant, into the Russian military, then eventually handed over into corrupt hands.

"You know, when I was your age...."

I was both surprised and disappointed when I heard myself say those words to my nine-year old the other day. As the words fell out of my mouth, what I had to say seemed really meaningful and relevant to the conversation. For a fleeting moment, I imagined Austin would actually be interested in what I was about to say.

I pictured him leaning forward in his chair, "Yeah dad, what were you going to say about what it was like 30 years ago when you were MY age?" It never happened like that.

The context was what fun he had at the library that day. Not because he enjoyed perusing the books but because he serendipitously met his buddy Lewis there. Why was that fun? Because they got to play on the computers together.

Next came my well-intentioned, but heartily ignored statement: "You know, when I was your age, libraries didn't have computers."

Austin, again, can't picture a world without Mario, much less computers. This is a kid who takes pictures on a digital camera, and uploads them to Picasa so he can view them and organize them. He knows about Janet's diligent posting of our family photos, and this has led him to ask me if he can have a blog.

Are you kidding me? "You don't even know how to type," I said. What are you going to do with blog? "Put up pictures." He said. "And I can too type."

Back to the library without computers. Raise your hand if you remember card catalogs. Try explaining the concept to a nine-year old.

"Well, there were these drawers with little cards in them. And the drawers were divided up by the author's name, the book title, and the subject of the books. That way, if you knew the thing you wanted to look up information about, but didn't know a book title, you could search in the subject cards. If you like a book somebody wrote and you wanted to see if he had written others, you can find out by searching through the card catalog by author."

Using a card catalog is nearly an obsolete skill. Austin will never need to learn it, and I will probably never need to use it again. Just go to the computer, type in what you're looking for in the little box and all the possible options will be brought to you. Amazing.

To continue on down this rat hole, consider for a minute other skills that have become obsolete. Here is a web site with a growing list of obsolete skills. Some of my favorites are

• Setting up a modem using AT commands
• Putting a needle on a vinyl record
• Operating an overhead projector
• Using a rotary phone
• Blowing dust out of a Nintendo cartridge
• Autoexec.bat editing

Feel free to add more to the list!

How to Take a Nap

The art of nap-taking may seem self-evident. Let me shed some light. There are two kinds of naps. There are the kinds of naps we take because we have to. We're utterly sleep deprived, exhausted from our week, or our days, and very soon after half-laying down on the couch or bed, or plane seat, we uncontrollably doze off. I have had many such naps. They usually aren't so rewarding because they are squeezed into our busyness or they sneak upon us unexpectedly and set our minds in a foggy, groggy state upon awakening.

The other kind of nap is the kind you don't need. It's the more desirable of the two. It involves freedom to indulge or ignore. Here are some steps I have discovered regarding the ideal nap.

1. Get a good night's sleep. Don't be fooled. The last thing you want is to be dozing off in the middle of something important, like a prayer meeting, when you've had your eyes closed for 15 minutes and then suddenly come to consciousness and hope that the thing you just half-dreamt, half-thought wasn't said out loud. Be well-rested for your nap. Remember, a good nap is not a necessity, it is a luxury.

2. Use the lotion style of sunblock. SPF 30 at least, especially if you're not out in the sun a lot. Nothing ruins the reward of a great nap like a bad burn. The aerosol style sun block is far less effective. Plus it's more expensive.

3. Try to face the ocean directly. This gives you the best chance to get a lush, even roar in both ears. It's really cool when the waves are coming in slightly crooked. You hear them crash on the left and then slowly work their way in front of you, and then to the right. Over and over and over. Very soothing.

4. Try to sink your feet into the sand. This is kind of a bonus. It is optional, of course, but cool feet will ease you away while the sun beats down on you.

5. Eliminate potential distractions. Your kid isn't drowning. It's OK. Keep your eyes abstructed with a hat or something that keeps you from looking up at the slightest out-of-place noise.

6. Find a chair that can lean back, but not all the way flat. This is important. You need to rest your head back on something, but you don't want to lay all the way back or you miss the cool sea breeze.

7. Find a great book. The book shouldn't put you to sleep. Remember, the sleep is optional. Read a few chapters, close the book, doze. Awake, read a few more chapters, stand up, stretch, put your feet in the water if you want, come back, doze. Repeat as often as you'd like.

Hopefully you will find this brief tutorial helpful when you decide to seek a good nap.

Top 10 Musicians

Recently we held vocal auditions at church and one of the questions I glibly added to the questionnaire was something like "List your top ten favorite musical artists or groups (secular or Christian)."

We had a good time reading through the list and got responses that ranged from James Taylor to Reliant K to Aaron Copland. As I was driving home, I began to wonder how in the world I would answer that question. For sure the answer is an ever-evolving one, but for now, I have come up with ten names, in no particular order that I would consider among my favorites and the best musicians I've ever heard or studied. Here we go:

Bill Evans - [dead] It's hard to know where to start with Evans. I can listen to his stylings all day long. A true master of harmony and structure. One of my "most favorite" recordings of him is his this performance of "Here's that Rainy Day." Just about every beat has a passing harmony that is rich and intentional. His voicings are so efficient. Some day I hope I can play like he played. If you're into harmony, one of the most enlightening and revealing recordings is his appearance on Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland. This, I believe was recorded just months before he died in 1980.

Oscar Peterson - [recently died] I was sad to hear that Oscar Peterson died recently. A truly amazing pianist, who I think lives completely on the opposite end of the spectrum from Bill Evans. As a pianist, he could swing hard. He was fluid and flashy. His technique was dazzling. One of my all-time favorite recordings is The Oscar Peterson Trio Encore at the Blue Note, and this is my favorite cut from that recording.

Rob Mathes - [very much alive!] I've had the privileged of meeting Rob. When you hear the phrase "consummate musician," picture Rob. He's a marvelous guitarist, pianist, singer, song writer, orchestrator, performer, arranger. He has done and continues to do it all. He has arranged music for "The Three Tenors" productions, the "Kennedy Center Honors" music for the last few years, and I believe he's also the current music director for Vanessa Williams. You've heard his string arrangements on Christian and popular recordings. I love that he is not a Christian musician, but a musician who happens to be a Christian, rubbing shoulders with a lot of people. This and this are two of my favorites from him.

Gustav Mahler - [dead] If you've ever taken the time to sit and listen to one of Mahler's expansive symphonies, you'll understand why he's on my list. I live his orchestral color. I love how he stretches harmonic expectations (non-harmonic tones one expects to hear resolve a certain way are prolonged unexpectedly until the harmonic context around them changes and in turn the context ends up resolving). Mahler lived from 1860-1911. He conducted the NY Philharmonic for a time and (unrelated) was obsessed with death. Mostly his own death. After completing his 9th symphony, he was really worried that "fate" would deal him the same blow it dealt Beethoven, his German predecessor of the previous 100 years, who died after completing his ninth symphony. He wanted to avoid his end desperately (so the story goes) so he began working on his 10th symphony. He died, however, well before he ever completed it. Still, he composed enough of a slow movement to give us a glimpse of where, had he lived, he might have taken tonality. You may find what appears to be a complete 10th symphony, but it was expanded upon by others based on his thematic sketches. Probably my favorite Mahler, which I find so beautiful and haunting, is the slow movement from his fifth symphony. Listen to it when you can do nothing else but sit and take it all in.

Darcie Roberts - [alive] Who? Yeah, I know. This may be unwise of me, but I was smitten by this girl's live recording for a radio show of Moon River. I first met her (figuratively) when Jason took us to see "Thoroughly Modern Millie." She was Millie. Great voice, great sound, great artistry. I downloaded the mp3 of her singing this song from her web site several years ago, but it is no longer available. If you ever get a chance to hear her, don't pass it up.

Stevie Wonder - [alive!] What a great writer, singer, and player! I love his music. So soulful and a blast to play. Several of his songs have migrated into the jazz standards book, and no doubt many more will be played as "American Standards" for generations to come. Some of my favorites: "Ribbon in the Sky" "You Are The Sunshine of My Life" "For Once in my Life" "Isn't She Lovely"

Roger Bennett - [dead] When I was a kid, like 11 and 12 (and a little older) I completely wore out a cassette of the Cathedral Quartet. "The Cathedrals: Live in Atlanta." I think it's out of print now. Roger was a really good pianist. To be honest, I never really listened to him much outside of this album. It was very recently, however that I realized that he influenced me far more than I knew. I hear myself imitating his fills and licks quite frequently. When I flip into "Southern Gospel" mode or even "Black Gospel" mode, some of the things I play are inadvertently what I imagine a good pianist would play. And those ideas are rooted in my memories of the piano parts from that album.

Johannes Brahms - [dead] I love Brahms' works. His music often is a convergence of metric confusion and grace, harmonic complexity and melodic simplicity, and always a mastery of orchestral balance. Two of my favorite from him are his second piano concerto in Bb and his piano trios. This one in particular resonates with me for some reason, No 1, Op 8 in B. I really like the voicing and the melodic material.

Miles Davis - [dead] Miles could say more with just a few notes than most players would try to say in an entire chorus. His music was always evolving and I like him because he never kept doing the same thing, even though many wanted him stay locked in to the 1950's era style. He kept pushing the envelope. Another thing to like about Miles is how many people he directly influenced by moving people in an out of his groups. Bill Evans, Canonball Aderly, Herbie Hancock (who should also be on this list!), Chic Corea, even Jimi Hendrix! Listen to this great recording with John Coltrane of Cole Porter's "Love for Sale." Now listen to a cut from one of his last albums, "Amandala." This is moving closer to what we would probably think of as "smooth jazz."

Van Cliburn - [alive] It was 1987 and I turned 15. My dad got me my very own CD player. And four CDs to go along with it. One of these CDs which was unknown to me at the time, was the classic recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto in Bb minor, and Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto in C minor, both performed by Van Cliburn. Cliburn, it turns out was a bit of a celebrity in the 50's. He went to the Soviet Union as a kid--maybe 20 years old or so, to compete in the first ever Tchaikovsky competition. This of course was during the cold war and the competition, though international, was designed to show the cultural superiority of Russian music. The problem was that Cliburn was too good. He won it and was given a ticker tape parade in NYC upon his return, the only time this has happened for a classical musician. This was the first of many purchases of Cliburn's recordings for me. He is influential to me because not only do I think of his performances when I think of a work, but I know many works because of his performances. I listened a LOT to those concerti, Brahms (above), Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Prokofiev, Listz, etc. It's a good thing you can't wear CDs out from playing them over and over because I surely would have have had to replace LPs or cassettes of these recordings by now. When I was 17 or 18, I got to hear him play some of these works with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Mann Music Center. That was very memorable. He played several encores of Chopin Polonaises.

So those are my top 10, what are yours?

Followup Philly Cheese Steak:

There just may be something to the assertion that part of the unique qualities of the Philly Cheese Steak being proprietary to Philly is in the water. Check out this article from Wired Online about NY pizzas being unique to NY because of the water!

"Water," Batali says. "Water is huge. It's probably one of California's biggest problems with pizza." Water binds the dough's few ingredients. Nearly every chemical reaction that produces flavor occurs in water, says Chris Loss, a food scientist with the Culinary Institute of America. "So, naturally, the minerals and chemicals in it will affect every aspect of the way something tastes."

Facebook Chat

I awoke to find that chat has come to the Raleigh/Durham network on Facebook. Is it in your area yet?

Philly Cheese Steak

If you've ever spent any time in the Philadelphia area, you probably have picked up on a local food tradition that is unique to that region: The Cheese Steak Sandwich. Now, before you object, let me just set the record straight on this issue. You will walk into national chain restaurants such as Subway, or Applebee's, and you will see a menu item that they call a Philly Cheese Steak or something like that. But be warned. It is not a Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich.

The formula is not complex, nor are the ingredients scarce, yet for some reason, folks outside of a, say, 60 mile radius of South Street have no idea what they're doing. What you need is a roll. Just the right kind of roll too, not hard, not too soft. Locals claim the secret to making the rolls just right is found in the Philly water. (or "wuter") as it often comes out.

Next you need thinly sliced beef, onions, tomato sauce, mushrooms* (these are optional, of course) and let's please not forget the CHEESE. This is where so many others falter. You cannot forget the cheese. And it must be melted. Not little squares or triangles neatly lined up on the side of the bread.

Why am I investing a post on this glorious food item? First, because every time I go visit my parents in West Chester, I make certain to get one. Second, I the last time I was there, I was so excited about indulging I took a picture of it. For you.

Now I don't know what is worse, really, the fact that I took a picture of a sloppy (but very delicious!) Cheese Steak Sandwich before I ate it or that I ate the whole thing on the day after Thanksgiving. As if I hadn't had enough food to eat already that weekend. Thanks dad for being easy to convince that I need proper nourishment!

*This is the pizza steak variety found with mushrooms and tomato sauce. Mmmmm....

Disposal Reversal

A while ago I posted about the city of Raleigh's decision to ban new and replacement garbage disposals. Now there is word that the city council may vote to reverse this decision next week.

Jerry Ryder, the president of disposal manufacturer InSinkErator, who flew to Raleigh from Wisconsin last month to lobby for ending the ban, brought reinforcements Tuesday to support his effort.

Kevin Keener, a Purdue University professor of food science, and Kendall Christiansen, a member of New York City's water board, both told Raleigh council members that there was no link between ground-up food scraps and clogged sewer lines.

Some council members said Tuesday that they felt they didn't have all of the facts when they voted for the ban on March 4.

Seems like we should try to get our facts before we make a vote on an issue, yes?

Can You Name the Elements of the Periodic Table?

I just spent the last 15 minutes of my life trying to recall what I had once completely memorized my junior year of high school: the periodic table. I remembered plenty of obscure elements and forgot some of the most obvious ones. If only I had a chance to review before I took the test, I probably would have gotten twice as many. Don't cheat. Name as many as you can in 15 minutes. Just start typing the element names in and if entered correctly they will appear in the table.

Take the test here.

I could recall only 27 of 118 elements. How did you do?

Plaxo solves my sync issues

If you have multiple computers in several locations, and portable "smart" devices that carry a lot of the same information as your computers, you'll drive yourself crazy trying to keep the data on all devices current.

Keeping my data current has been an ongoing quest for me since working on a Windows PC at home and a Mac at work. At first it didn't matter much to me. Then I saw how valuable keeping mailboxes synchronized could be. Soon bookmarks became an issue. For a while, I would export my bookmarks from my work computer by html to a zip(!) drive, carry it home, import it into my home browser.

Over the years, my expectations have grown regarding keeping my devices in sync. My device quantity has grown as well. I currently work from a PowerBook G4, a desktop G5, a Windows XP P4, and now, thanks to my dad off-loading his Treo, a Windows Mobile device.

I have already written about the value of using the Google Browser Sync plugin for Firefox. This not only uses your existing Google account to keep your bookmarks synchronized across however many computers you want, it also will sync your history, cache, and site logins and passwords. This is very handy!

I also sychronize my Mac iCal data with my Google calendar using Spanning Sync. This allows me to update shared calendars that are shared with our staff, published publicly for our volunteers to see, and personal family calendars with my wife.

Further, my iCal, Address Book, Yojimbo, Mail settings, Transmit Favorites, Notes, Dashboard Widgets, and Keychains between my two Macs are synchronized through .Mac.

All this synchronizing is a delicate balance to maintain. One innocent failure and entire calendars are duplicated, erased, or corrupted in some other way. The problem to date has been the Treo. Windows Mobile does not make any software to synchronize data with Macs. Third party apps I have tried (three to be exact) have failed miserably to sync to Windows Mobile.

I don't care about my calendar or bookmarks syncing. All I care about is my contact list. I just want to see that show up on my phone and then when I make an edit on my phone, see it reflected back into my address book on my computer(s).

After trying yet another attempt at syncing with a third party app, I decided it wasn't meant to be. I seriously began considering the iPhone. (But I'm with Sprint!)

So PLAXO steps in. A bizarre web site that syncs all of your social web apps: blogger, facebook, flickr, twitter, even Amazon wish lists and puts them into one place. It also synchronizes your calendar (perfectly, I might add) AND your contact list. This wasn't important to me, and frankly scared me a little bit when I pushed the sync button the first time (what if it disrupted my perfect little world of sync harmony?), but I like to try new gadgets and services, and couldn't resist. I pushed the "go" button.

I'm glad I did! It worked perfectly, and continues to work with no troubles. Then I discovered this little sync tab on their site that included all these other services--including Windows Mobile. Really? I thought. Since it worked so well with my Mac, I thought I'd try it. So I took my Treo cradle home, put it on my home computer, found my copy of Office 2003, installed Outlook, downloaded the updates to outlook, and ....success! I now have two-way syncing from my phone to my Address Book in a very unusual way.

Track this "signal path" for adding a new contact to my Address Book beginning with my desktop at church:

Desktop -->thru .Mac --> Laptop
Laptop --> thru Plaxo --> Outlook on PC at home
Outlook --> sync services --> Treo

The cool thing about it is that if I make an edit or a change on my phone, I can stick it in the cradle, and within 30 seconds, my laptop is updated with the new data. I feel like in some ways the whole thing is a hack, a huge bandaid that really only partially works, because it only synchronizes my contacts, (so far) nothing else.

However, if you are not on Plaxo, I would recommend checking it out--even if you only use the sync services.

A Good Start....

....If you are an Indians fan. One game down, 161 to go. It was a good day for offense, not what one would expect when looking on paper at a pitching match up featuring CC Sabathia and Mark Buehrle. I rounded up some poor guys who could care less about baseball and we met at Champs, requested that they put on the game, and watched the whole thing--at least I did.

The two things that I don't care for are highlighted above. First, Victor pulled a hamstring (evidently) while running from 1st to 2nd on a wild pitch. Pulled up short and was tagged out. He's a force in the line up and you hate to see him go down. Something similar happened to him in game one last season when he pulled a quad while running to 1st.

The 2nd thing is "Progressive Field." I'm not a fan of that. It's nothing against Progressive, it's just hard to think of the place as anything other than Jacob's Field.

How did your team do on opening day?

A glimpse of my future

This will be me in 30 years....

My chat with Leo

The back story, for the two people reading that might be interested is this: When we bought our first house, I opted for Dish Network over cable. It was new-ish, it was 1998, and hey, we had a house! We had the basic packaging that at the time included this obscure but wonderful TV channel called Tech TV. This is where I'm losing most of you.

Well, on Tech TV there was this show called "The Screen Savers." It was hosted by Leo Laporte and Patrick Norton (among many other soon-to-become-well-known-in-the-tech-world contributors) where they would review new gear, various websites, tips, tools, etc, and would also take calls and answer questions.

I watched it regularly-- much to my wife's dismay, but Leo and Patrick became my buddies --sort of. It was a one way relationship.

Years went by, we moved, I dropped dish all together and went to "free" TV. No more Tech TV, but it turned out that once G4 bought it, it kinda became a shadow of it's former self, most of the cast either were fired or moved on and it became history.

But Leo Laporte began doing podcasts--a new medium he kind of became the pioneer of in some ways, developing this entire network of podcasts (which he actually calls "netcasts") around the central "This Week in Tech," or "TWiT" for short.

So anyway, one of his regular non-podcast gigs, (though he does make it into a podcast) is a "Tech Guy" radio call-in show. He recently started streaming video of himself while on the air (radio) answering questions for callers, then opening up a chat channel for comments of anyone who wants to watch and listen to him streaming. I happened to catch it today and I was quite interested. When the radio show went to commercial, Leo turned his attention to the chat screen and starts having conversations with all the one-liners.

So I throw my 2 cents in today and totally side tracks him--Here it is below:



He answers my question with a "because I'm totally loaded on caffeine, derjazzmeister," and the proceeds to get up our of his chair, walk across the room while he's still mumbling (of course, we can't really hear him) and talks about this great coffee he's been drinking. Here's a screen capture of him holding the product below.



He seems to take advantage of any chance he can to promote whatever product he likes, whether they support him or not. I think this is the key to why he does so well, if he likes your product or service, he'll promote it whether you're paying him to or not!

Anyway, the highlight of my Saturday. Pretty exciting, eh?

In the Nick of Time

I heard this might be coming, and I couldn't believe it. I have never heard of such a thing, but it looks like more and more municipalities are adopting measures to eliminate Garbage Disposals.

First, can we all please agree on what these things are called? Are they Garbage Disposals? Garbage Disposers? or, Erators?

We have one in our house. The imprint on the drain collar actually says "InsinkErator" on top and "Food Disposer" on the bottom. All this is fresh in my mind because I just installed it last weekend.

I hated the one that was in there--probably the original one and praise the Lord, it quit working a couple of weeks ago. A perfect excuse to get a new one. This thing was amazing. When you turned it on, it sounded like the whole kitchen was about to take off--or fall apart. And to make things even better, it didn't ever seem to want to do it's job. Usually when you turn these things on, they suck down whatever food is lying nearby. But with this one, you had to run the water AND shove the food scraps down in there!

So, it quit working. First, it made a terrible rattling noise. I shined a light inside. Couldn't really see anything--not that I knew what I was looking for--flipped the switch, more grating noise. A day or two later, nothing. Just a buzz. Wouldn't move. PERFECT!

I bought a new one a few days later. A Badger. A $100, 3/4 HP, 3 year in home warranty, "noise baffling" disposal (disposer). I spent last Saturday afternoon taking the old one out, putting the new one in and it works great! It's so quiet! It chops up the food. I never knew I could be so excited over a garbage disposal (disposer).

So now, there is this news item informing me that I squeaked it in under the wire. The city is banning disposals.

Under the ban, homeowners can continue to use existing disposals, but no new devices can be installed and existing ones can't be replaced when they quit working....Violators face fines of up to $25,000 per day.

Why pick on the lowly disposal (erator)?

City officials said putting food and grease through a disposal and into the municipal sewer system clogs the lines and frequently causes back-ups and overflows.

Raleigh has had almost 100 sewer overflows in the last three years, with raw sewage sometimes flowing into area streams. The state Division of Water Quality has threatened to fine the city for each overflow if it doesn't correct the problem.

Really? So this is going to cause people to put less down the drain? Grease will slide down with or without a disposal (disposer) and whatever food items can go down the drain will likely be larger than if they had first run through an erator (disposal, disposer). I just hope ours lasts for years and years, or until they alleviate the ban!

Wait, Wha.....?

I created a little space by emptying my trash and didn't see this message the rest of the day, but that still doesn't make me feel much better...

Eclipse

These are the best pictures I got of the eclipse from last week. Yes, their blurry. They were taken with my little Coolpix S200 digital camera, on a tripod. Full digital zoom in play (hence the blur) ISO at 800, I think and the exposure set to +20.



Now that I look at them again, I realize of the 20 or so that I took, at various exposures and settings, even these pretty much look the same.

It is funny to me that I was so drawn to it--not in a howling ware wolf kind of way, but in a "Ooo cool, look at that, watch it before it's all over for two years" kind of way. I guess the simple fact that it is a rare occurrence prompted me to take the pictures. That, and you don't see a red moon very often. Even less than a blue moon, I guess!

Streetview comes to Raleigh

This is really cool. And no, I'm not concerned about privace issues--not until they come into my house and start taking Panoramic pictures of my living room.

Google has updated their streetview maps in 12 new locations. Here is a screen shot of my house. Looks like I was probably at work when the Google video van came by.

Using RSS

If you haven't tried using an RSS reader, I would strongly suggest you look into it. There are a variety of readers available for free (just type "RSS reader" into a Google search and you'll be able to choose from many). Readers are frequently built into email apps like Thunderbird or Mac's Mail.app, or you can find online varieties, where you log into a single web service that catalogs all your feeds for you.

RSS has been around for a while. For the uninitiated, RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. It is a simple (oddly enough) and automated way for you to keep up with some of your most frequented sites.

I resisted using a reader for a long time. Part of this was because I enjoyed going to the various blogs I liked to read, or news sites, or fun sites, and browse through them. After a while, however, selecting "open all in tabs" when you have 30 bookmarks under one subject heading not only takes forever to load, but it can become cumbersome to go through each site, only to find that there is nothing new in half of them since the last time you looked.

The beauty of RSS is that once you subscribe to a page, the data comes to you. Whenever there's a new blog post, a new news story, or whatever it is your favorite site is pushing through, you know about it because it appears in your feed. No need to continually check web sites over and over.

I first gave RSS a try at home in our Thunderbird email client. More recently with the addition of RSS in Leopard's version of Mail, I tried it in there for a while. The cool thing about the mail client is that you can be offline and read the feeds because they are stored locally for a period of time.

I didn't explore using Mail for my reader for very long, because I lost my settings when my HD crashed and I just never brought it back. You can see below some of the feeds I had. The thing I never explored in Mail's reader is how if at all these feeds can be organized. I never got far enough to see if you can create folders to put these various feeds in.



In steps Google.

Google reader has become my RSS reader of choice. Not only does it allow for organization of feeds into user-specified subjects, it lets me share my favorites (in fact, if you haven't noticed, I've installed a widget on the top right column of this page that shows my recently shared RSS items), email the articles directly from the reader, and customize its interface through Firefox extensions such as Better Reader. By the way, you can subscribe to my shared items by following this link.

So, for all of you wondering how to set up and subscribe to your very own reader, let me show you! I recently set up my wife's Gmail account and took screen shots along the way.

How to set up Google Reader

First, you'll need to go to the Google home page. Once there click the "sign in" tab in the upper right.



If you don't have a Gmail address or a Google account already in place, you can create one here, otherwise, enter your Gmail address and password.



Once logged in, click on the "more" tab.



Click on "Reader" at the bottom of the list.



You'll need to set up your reader account by verifying your Google account info again.



At this point you can add some suggested subscriptions. These are sites that Google has thrown together by category that are of general interest. Add what you'd like.



Next, go to your favorite news site, blog, etc, and look either for text on the page that says "subscribe using RSS" or push this little button if your browser supports it in the right hand side of the location window.



If you are given a list of options from which program you would like to use to assign this feed, be sure to select Google Reader.

Click "Add to Google Reader"



Once added, you can decide if you'd like to keep it as is, unsubscribe or organize your feed into a folder you specify. If the folder you'd like isn't there, select "New Folder..."



Finally, label the folder name you'd like and your feed will live there.

Now whenever someone updates their blog, you'll know if it because it will appear in this folder.

There are many more options and tricks with Google reader, many of which are shown to you from the main Reader page. I think it's a snazzy reader.

If you set up an account and begin sharing your favorite posts, send me your subscription url so I can add that to my reader!

"It would be in good taste to stop the music now."

Really? Who does this guy think he is? Come on, the music means you shut up and sit down - just like everyone else. Way to make your momma proud. (Watch the whole video and you'll see what I'm talking about--in case you missed it!)

Tax Rip Off

If you are filing your taxes using Turbo Tax, be warned: The fees they are charging now for the convenience of having your returned wired to you has increased.

It was just a few years ago they charged about $10 for the federal return to be wired to you. Now, the states have evidently caught on. It's now going to cost a lot more to get your money back using Turbo Tax.

Sleep, Sleep, Sleep

Experts say one of the most alluring sleep distractions is the 24-hour accessibility of the internet.

Well THAT explains a few things. Here is a list or interesting random facts about sleep.

I must be sleep deprived since I routinely fall asleep within five minutes of laying down.

How to Read a Book

Last weekend I had a nice opportunity to run a few household errands and end my time with about an hour at Borders. I had a partially used gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket and needed to get...something. It's not that I don't enjoy being at home. I'm rather a bit of a homebody. It's just that sometime we introverts need to get recharged by getting away from the din of the home team. Even if it means going to a place where there is a crowd of people. At least they're strangers.

The decision to buy a book was a difficult one. I already have several books sitting on my shelf, waiting to be scanned by my eyeballs. Do I really need to get another one? If I do, will it just go to the end of the long line and finally get read some time next year?

As I approached the store, there were several boxes outside. There was the $6.99 set of books in boxes on tables on the left hand side of the door, and there was the $3.99 set of books in boxes on tables on the right hand side of the door. I started browsing the $6.99 books. I probably spent a whole half hour outside browsing through the selection.

The first book that grabbed my attention was Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season. I flipped through this book and thought it looked very interesting. A lot of two things I like in there: baseball, and history. I flipped through, looked at old photos of ball players in their baggy uniforms, with cigarettes hanging out of their months, either smirking at the camera, or looking oblivious to it all together. I held on to that book for a while. It was a hard back and $6.99 seemed pretty good, even though it would leave about $10 on my card. I kept looking.

Next I saw a very intriguing book. Capone: The Man and the Era. It too looked interesting. Also some history. Also old black and white photos of guys with hats on, cigarettes hanging from their mouths, and sometimes even smiling. I put down the Robinson book. I flipped through Capone and saw names I recognized: O'Hare, Ness, and the notorious Capone brothers. As I looked through the book I realized that all that I really knew about Capone I know from the 1987 movie (and one of my favorites), "The Untouchables." What a cast that movie had! Robert Di Nero as Capone, Kevin Costner as Ness, Andy Garcia and Sean Connery as part of the "Untouchable" gang. What a great movie! I put the book down. I was never going to really read it. I had already seen the movie.

I remembered the book I had come for--or at least to look for and hold in my hand and flip through and see if I really wanted it, see if I could really stomach it. It was Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation. The atheist manifesto of "how dumb can you Christians really be to believe there is a god" rhetoric. I found it, flipped through it, and then decided not to buy it. Not here. It's not that I didn't want to be seen carrying it, it was that I didn't want to pay full price for it thereby endorsing his creed. Much better to buy it used on half.com or something like that later.

I was running out of time. What am I going to get? Then--I remembered. The book I had heard of for some time and never purchased. The book that will undoubtedly become the subject of future blog posts. The book with the ironic title: How to Read a Book.

Mac and Cheese Sales Increase Equals Recession?

From one of my favorites, the Freakonomics blog, comes speculation from this story about how the sales of Mac and Cheese may be interpreted as an economic indicator. What do you think?

I recall buying Mac and Cheese for 25 cents a box during special sales in college. Yes, better than just about any other meal a college student living off campus could possibly afford, Mac and Cheese became at least a weekly staple.

Yeah, right!

I get invited to join all sorts of little groups and applications on Facebook, most of which I usually ignore. And his one? I don't think so. I don't want to see my rating...! And besides, what would it say about me if I accepted this invite? Alright, fess up all you out there who have added this...!

Lost Season 3, Episode 23

I just finished watching the last episode of the third season of Lost. We needed a little refresher it had been a long time! Thanks Sheri for loaning us the DVDs! Yes, it's late, it's 12:38 AM, yes I'm going to regret it later, but I have to get this out there while it's still fresh.

I have a problem with these two technical issues. First, Charlie volunteers to go down into the Looking Glass sub station to disable the jammer. This radio frequency jammer was designed (evidently) by Ben and his crew to prevent any transitions off the island. It is a thorough jammer that is supposed to cover a broad range of frequencies. So my question: How in the world can the "others" communicate via the walkie-talkies all over the island? Shouldn't they be jammed too? Surely they would require a repeater.

Second, the Satellite phone or whatever device it was that Naomi, the parachutist brought onto the island could not overcome Rousseau's transmission. Now her transmission would be on a specific frequency, the Sat phone was new and certainly would be digital, and would not be affected by her transmission. Further, when Jack and the French woman enter the transmitter station (whose message, by the way, is still picked up in previous episodes despite the jamming), all she does is walk over and stop the tape. OK--first really? That tape has been running undisturbed for the last 16 years 24/7 and it still works? And second, stopping the tape from playing, while creating a silence, does not open up the frequency. It only makes the frequency quiet. We see no one actually turn off the transmitter.

Alright, I feel better now. Looking forward to season 4 which we will not be home to watch so we'll have to record it using old VCR technology and watch it Friday night instead.

My Nohari Window

This is the one nobody wants to do. But I'll do it. I'll be vulnerable! This is the inverse of the Johari window below. Where as the Johari window generally is kind enough to use positive characteristics to describe one's self, this one uses negative terms. Yikes!

You can be anonymous on this one as well! (And thanks to the couple of you who clicked away on my Johari window!) If you haven't done that one, please start with the my Johari window first!

State of the Union

In case you missed it last night (as I did), here is a convenient way to catch up on what you missed. A condensed version of the State of the Union address. Very condensed. One minute long. I have a feeling I didn't miss a whole lot.

My Johari Window

Thanks to Emily for discovering this. Take a second if you will, go here and click on five or six words that describe me. Don't worry you can be anonymous!

Blogger Label Cloud

Find out how to make the label cloud in blogger (like the one the right hand column --->) here. It's an excellent article.

Tooble - for Mac

If you've ever watched a video on YouTube and wished you had a way to keep it locally on your computer, let me introduce you to Tooble. This is a new freeware piece of software that I first heard about through this podcast.


It has an integrated search engine, as well as it's own preset categories. Once you find what you want, put check marks by the videos and click download. It will then download and convert the Youtube streams into Quicktime files and if you want, it will even import the files directly into your iTunes movie folder. Enjoy!

A little Humor

These are some pictures I have collected over the last few weeks while stumbling around the internet.

Mac users will appreciate this one.

Self-Explanatory

Highly Ironic

Is Your Computer On?

Of course it's on. You're reading this.

Do you leave your computer(s) on all night?

Read this.

I'm guilty. Four computers under my control in a day's work. I usually leave them all on. All protected, but all on--all night.

Maybe I should reconsider.

What would you do with $800?

I awoke this morning to news of the potential of an economic stimulus plan that would involve sending money our way. It could be as much as $800 for a single person, or up to $1600 for a couple.

Of course the details still need to be worked out. The political parties need to come together. There has to be some agreement. But hey, we could get a little tax refund, and then a tax refund advance. Cool!

OK, so what could we spend it on? We can't just save it. We've got to spend it. After all, it's an economic stimulus plan!

Maybe we could get a nice HD TV with it. That would help stimulate the economy.
Or how about a new iMac?

We need to do some little things around the house. Maybe a new garbage disposal. Oh yeah!

Paint. We need to paint some stuff around the house.

Curriculum. There's always something one of our kids could use to further their education.

A vacation. YES. We could make a nice trip with that! Now THAT would help the economy, wouldn't it?

But wait.

Is this a good idea? Not the vacation, the dispersion of dollars on families throughout the land. On the one hand, yeah, we wouldn't mind a little financial windfall (is there any other kind?) for our family. But from a macro-economic perspective, is this a good idea? What will be the long-term consequences?

This is probably like what a child must feel like when they fall and hurt themselves very badly or something and we attempt to pacify them with a lolly-pop. We can name more things that a wrong with the country's economic state than we can name that are right: The weakening dollar; The sub-prime mortgage crash; The lowest housing starts in years; The imbalanced trade deficit; The rising federal debt; The insurmountable consumer debt, etc, etc.

So does anybody really think handing out a few dollars to people is really gonna help? Proponents would argue that this same action in 2001 is exactly what it took to pull us out of a rising recession. But the circumstances this time around are quite different.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake said "Fiscal stimulus that comes too late will not help support economic activity in the near term, and it could be actively destabilizing if it comes at a time when growth is already improving," Who has the wisdom to discern if this short-term solution to an economic downturn is timed correctly, will yield the desired results, or even substantial enough to matter?

Thank you, I would like some cash, but no thank you, I don't think this is going to do our country any good. Are most Americans going to feel the same way or will they just thank Uncle Sam for the "gift." We'll pay for it one way or another.

Let it Snow

Yesterday we were to wake up to a "Wintry Mix." We got much-needed rain, but no snow...that all ended up in the Mountains and mostly north of us. But wait, maybe more? I'll believe it when I see it. It is January. But it is North Carolina! This is from the News and Observer:

I'm more better than you--evidently

From MacDailyNews, a study of some 7,500 Mac users suggest that Mac enthusiasts are "...more liberal, less modest, and more assured of their own superiority than the population at large." And, "...receptive to their own inner feelings and may feel both happiness and unhappiness more intensely than others."

Yup, that's me.

Twitter

For some reason (it's Matt's fault, really), I've signed up for a Twitter account. You can follow me here. It also syncs with my Facebook status. I'm following far more people than are following me. Probably because I haven't gotten the word out.

Word is out. What's your Twitter handle?

More computer problems

Everything's back to normal. It's ok. This news is a couple weeks old. My laptop's hard drive died. This was not as big of a crisis as the home computer discussed in previous posts. The reasons for that are these:

1. All my financial data is on my home computer. When that went down, I almost didn't know how to pay a bill, or even what money I had (not much, I assure you)
2. I use iDisk. This is a really cool service through .Mac that keeps my data syncronized between my laptop and my desktop at work. All my finale files, word docs, pdf files, and everything are kept on an Apple server somewhere, plus the files are kept locally on my desktop hard drive and my laptop hard drive so I can work off line if I want to, then when I reconnect, the data is synchronized.
3. I back up fairly regularly. I have been using SuperDuper for some time, though when I went to Leopard, it no longer functioned. I am now trying out Time Machine, however, which is very cool.
4. I use the Google Browser Sync firefox extension. This is cool because any computer that I use keeps all of my bookmarks, passwords, cache, history, everything syncronized between my browsers. After installing Firefox on this machine, then installing that extension, all my settings came back and I was at home again.
5. Applecare. I walked in to the Apple store, they tested the computer, determined the hard drive failed, and replaced my hard drive for "free." Plus my fold hard drive was discontinued for this model laptop and they had to replace it with the next model up. I went from 100GB to 120GB. Cool! If you have a Mac, Applecare is worth the extra bucks. I didn't have to do anything except tell them the machine doesn't work and they took care of it.

Computer crashes are very inconvenient, no question, but as hard drive crashes go, this was far more manageable!

Computer Crash Update

I've been away from the interweb for a while, but while I was gone typed this update for all concerned about the restoration of our home desktop:



I know you've all been wondering.

The answer is that the computer of my "crash!" post is back and running. However, I had to go through a multi-step process to see it restored. And it's honestly not fully restored, but the important data has been recovered.

After running SpinRite, I was still unable to get the computer to boot. I got further along than I had previously, but still not able to boot. A disk error was encountered in the process.

By this time, I had taken the hard drive down to my other computer and was able to retrieve important info off of it. Mostly my Quicken data. I could retreive pictures from the "my pictures" folder too, so I knew the drive was not totally lost, even though it wouldn't boot.

This began another very irritating process. The re-installation of Windows XP.

I have a hollographic XP Home Edition install disc. After getting about 50% through the installation process (did I mention I purchased a new hard drive from TigerDirect on Capitol? A Seagate 250GB for $80!), I encountered a "cyclic redundancy error." A WHAT?

Apparently a Cyclic Redundancy Error is a fancy way of saying that an error has been encountered in reading the disk, and really what is going on is that the software suspects that the disk is not authentic. I restarted and tried again, and again. Every time I got to the screen that said "39 minutes to finish the install," I got this error. VERY very frustrating.

Let me just pause and say that a few weeks prior to this incident, I received a new copy of mace os 10.5 "Leopard." My installation on this laptop took about 3 hours total time. I went from 10.4 to 10.5 and had absolutely no trouble. All my data was maintained and the OS upgrade was flawless.

Back to the Windows machine. Thom tried to help me resolve this issue. He attempted to assist me with this issue, babysitting my machine during the week of dress rehearsals and trying to get it to go. But in spite of cleaning the lens on the DVD drive, cleaning the disk itself, it became clear that the error was not able to be overcome. Either a much deeper issue existed in the hard ware, or there really was a simple error on the disk. (Neither of us had an extra home XP disk lying around).

Thom recommended I take the computer to Intrex, where for $50 I could have them run a diagnostic on the memory, CPU, HD (new HD), and motherboard. They did, and they found now trouble.

Once they began to install XP however, they encountered the same error I encountered. HA! I feel a little vindicated. The solution? They simply swapped my install disk with theirs and it worked like a charm. Stupid.

So now I have windows machine up and running again on a fresh hard drive AND my old HD in the computer primarily to retrieve my old data when needed.

I've also tried something I've never done before. I'm running everything as a user rather than as admin. I have a password protected "admin" account, a "Janet" account and a "Brian" account. Since I like to use Google's firefox bookmark plugin, keeping seperate accounts between Janet and me will allow us to bookmark our browsing separately.

Computer crashes, life goes on. Computers are becoming like cars. We're very dependent on them to the point that if they crash we almost don't know what to do!

Alternative Sunday School

As you get ready for church tomorrow (or today, or next week depending on when you read this!), consider what some parents are doing to educate their kids:

An estimated 14% of Americans profess to have no religion, and among 18-to-25-year-olds, the proportion rises to 20%, according to the Institute for Humanist Studies. The lives of these young people would be much easier, adult nonbelievers say, if they learned at an early age how to respond to the God-fearing majority in the U.S. "It's important for kids not to look weird," says Peter Bishop, who leads the preteen class at the Humanist center in Palo Alto. Others say the weekly instruction supports their position that it's O.K. to not believe in God and gives them a place to reinforce the morals and values they want their children to have.

I am very curious to know what the basis of these "morals and values" are for those who don't believe in a Moral Law-Giver.

Read more in this article.

Time for Lord of the Rings

This is the time of year that I get the irresistible urge to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. I love these movies. I love the story, I love the grand scale of the movies, I love the acting, I love detail of the smallest minutia. I love the sound track. And I love the extended edtion DVDs (thanks, Jason!) with all the behind the scenes interviews and commentary. I appreciate the vision of Peter Jackson and I'm really excited that he is now going to be directing "The Hobbit." Rumors are that he'll be filming it in 3D as well!

Why do I get the urge to watch these movies this time of year? I guess because this is the time when the movies were released both theatrically and when the extended DVDs were released.

So far, I've watched the first disc of The Fellowship and I am nearing the end of the second disc. Right now, Boromir is trying to take the ring from Frodo. I'll probably watch the rest of the trilogy over the next couple of weeks.