Four days ago my cd/dvd drive was crippled while ripping a disc with iTunes. It was pronounced dead after several reboots and firmware re-flashes failed to fix the problem. After spending about 30 hours turned off, it now is able to play a dvd!!! I love when computer problems fix themselves. Any ideas what caused/solved this?
It has come time to head south for the winter. As the days get longer but the weather continues to get colder, I'm heading to Tucson. I'll be here in Oklahoma City visiting with Erin's family for a few days and then drive the rest of the way to mecca of domestic cycling winter training.
It just so happened that Nat had a last minute business trip that took him to Chicago yesterday night. Ben had today off and decided to drive up to Chicago, and we all met up. When school finished, I didn't think that I'd be able to see everyone this frequently, but we've been out of school only a matter of months and it seems like at least a few of us get together every month. There's more pictures on Flickr.
So I don't understand the "pre-worn" look. Who wants to buy clothes with holes in them? That's when I know it's time to get new clothes. Some companies calls this "destructed". I like to buy my clothes new, and eventually make it to destructed. I guess I'm a no-holes kind of shopper.
When you go to see a Bond movie, what are you looking for? As Q said in the 007 spin-off Never Say Never Again, "some gratuitous sex and violence." There was comparatively little of the good stuff in Casino Royale. First, the pre-credit sequence should be Bond killing some people, or performing a daring escape. They left that for the post-credit sequence. The typical Bond movie would proceed as follows. Bond confronts the main bad guy and the plot is clearly laid out. He sees the hot, evil female role, coerces her to defect, and goes after the lesser henchmen. All this time, the main bad guy gets frustrated with how Bond won't "be a good boy and die". Eventually there is a confrontation, Bond gets captured, the bad guy spills his (or her) guts about the genius of his/her plan, Bond escapes, kills the bad person, and has sex with whichever female he happens to see first.
THERE WAS NONE OF THIS. The new Bond had too many facial expression closeups over poorly composed music. The movie may have been closer to Ian Flemming's vision of Bond, but give me some Moore, Connery, or Brosnan.
Link to Joe's blog for a clip of Toby vs. Motorboat. It should be noted that Toby's de-clawed, MB's not, and if Motorboat had wanted to, he could have put the hurt on Toby.
This year's winter solstice actually (apparently) occurs on Dec. 22 at 12:22 AM (link). This is usually the 21st, and because it's so close to the 21st, I'm going to count it as if it's on that day. For those stuck in this winter darkness, the December Solstice is the day with the least daylight of the whole year. It's the day, after which the days begin to get longer. This is good news, and we're only 5 darkening days till the outlook gets brighter.
Lacking my usual lunchtime accompaniment, I decided to read USA Today while over my salad. At the back of the front section of the paper was a piece reporting indited politician Tom DeLay has a new blog. DeLay's goal for the blog: "Over time and the long term, we hope to drive legislation through Congress. I know how to do that." The USA Today article stated, "He named some of his chief goals as ending abortion..."
It goes to show that anybody can sign up for one of these blogs.
This evening I was fortunate enough to find a good deal on a much needed hard drive via craigslist. Now, I didn't know who the seller was, but it turned out that I was able to purchase a 300GB drive, 7200 RPM, 16MB Cache drive for less than 27 cents a gig. Not only that, neither the seller or I had to go outside to make the sale. Now that's a good deal.
It could be worse. As some may know, my dad is General Superintendent of Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. As a refresher, water reclamation, or sewage treatment, is taking the sewer water and cleaning it up enough for discharge into the regional water table. One of their sewage treatment plants is the largest treatment plant in the world. The Stickney Plant uses giant electrical pumps to intake the sewage. No electricity, no pumps. That's a whole lot of cold, cold sewage.
It's been tough to get outside due to all the ice, so I've turned a portion of my attention to Toby. Erin and I have decided that the cat is bored. He sits inside all day, every day. I've taken to trying to create some new toys for him. He seemed to take a special interest in the tape measure.
You'll notice him looking at the camera toward the end of the video. I'm not sure he really noticed me recording him until then.
