A little over a year ago, we moved to Chandler as I took a job there. We bought a good house in a great neighborhood. However, I knew there were some things to fix. I already had the plumbing nightmare where every step of the way in replacing a bad bathroom fixture, and replacing a hot water heater valve, and ultimately replacing the main water shutoff valve. The concrete in the side yards looks...
Yesterday I was toying with the idea to give up the iphone and possibly go phone-less. Hard to imagine, as i have been a cell user since 1998 or so, but frankly, I rarely use the phone at all anymore. Of course going cell free is a crazy idea. 15 years ago you could walk a block and find 4 – 5 pay phones. But the ubiquity of cell phones has pretty much made the old staple payphones obsolete...
Well, my contract is up with AT&T Mobile, and not surprisingly it coincides with an Apple product launch. New iPhones are in the air, and I am due for an upgrade from my 4s. But instead of diving in and getting the new 5s, I have been thinking a different way. Do I really need a cell phone? Since I haven’t been traveling much I haven’t really used many minutes on my plan. I...
Sigh. This is getting tiresome. I have not had such issues with computer crashes since I first went to Windows Vista in 2007. I come in this morning and pop my computer on the docking station. It was sleeping happily, then I pressed the power button to “wake it up”. I get the familiar password screen, then BAM – blue screen. Fuck. Wait for it to finish the memory dump. Hmmm...
The local Fry’s Foods is a smorgasbord of people watching. A few days ago, I was in the mood for beer, so I maundered in the alcohol aisle. In front of the cooler with the microbrews and imports was a gentleman (and that is a loose interpretation) who was idling in front of the good US micros. I watched him hem and haw for a few minutes. I could almost see him thinking out loud: “I...
I have used several CMS’s over the years, from my time at Cisco with their internally developed system, and again starting in 2009 or so when I started working with WordPress and later Joomla! They are wonderful tools, but they do have some drawbacks. First the positives. Someone who is technically minded can setup a WordPress site, add a custom template, and have a pretty decent site in an...
While I am not a religious watcher of The Daily Show, I do take in 2 or 3 episodes a week captured on the Tivo, and I have long enjoyed it. Jon Stewart does a phenomenal job of entertaining, while actually achieving some semblance of journalistic integrity (mixed in with a healthy dollop of humor, there are many insightful perspectives). Jon had been out on a sabbatical to direct a film in Egypt...
A post I entered earlier got flagged by a friend’s work internet filter. I have been blocked! How awesome is that. He gets this when he tries to surf to this site: Clicked the link to read your post… while here at KT. Here’s what I got: Your requested URL has been blocked by the Global Threat Intelligence Reputation System. The URL is listed with a reputation that is not allowed...
I have been doing a lot of reading of history, deep into European history from the middle ages to present, as well as a pretty deep dive into US history. Sparked by a conversation with a colleague in Europe who was showing me where many historical events happened in Frankfurt-Mainz during a day of sightseeing on a trip last year. It reminded me that I knew very little about actual European...
My main domain, tralfaz.org was a compromise. When I first registered it in 1999, the tralfaz.com domain wasn’t available, so I grabbed the .org variant. I have often kept an eye on the .com domain to see if it expires, but the scummy domain squatter hasn’t budged. I wouldn’t have minded, but over the last 14 years, the owner has done nothing with that domain. It has moved...