I have been battling with what I originally thought was an injured thumb. A couple weeks ago, I went to my GP, and alas, the tendons seem fine, but the x-rays show that there is a bone spur, and what is likely the beginning of arthritis. Groan. Heavy anti inflammatories and a brace to immobilize the thumb. A week later, the brace was not helping (if anything, it was beginning to damage the...
Last night, I had vivid dreams. This is not unusual in itself, but the subject of the dreams were “odd” to say the least. I dreamt that I was in France, riding (for fun) stages of the Tour de France. On an old, unreliable 3-speed bicycle. So unreliable that I was breaking cranks, pulling spokes, and snapping chains. Yeah, that is pretty bad. But add to that we were using these same...
I am a huge SciFi fan, been reading it since I was in high school. I have lately become a fan of Neal Stephenson (ok, not so recently, I read Snow Crash shortly after it was published), but it has taken me forever to read the the books in the Baroque Cycle. Today, I finished the second novel, The Confusion, thinking that I was finished with the set. WRONG. It seemed like a funny place to leave...
I spied it gingerly. It was a couple seat away from me in the waiting area at the Southwest gate in the SanJose Airport. I wasn’t sure what it was at first, but I finally figured it out. It was the first Microsoft “Surface” tablet that I had ever seen that wasn’t part of a store display. Someone was actually using it. Not sure if it was the RT version, or the PRO version...
The other day, walking my dogs in the morning, someone was taking their early 1970’s Monte Carlo out for a drive. Ah, the sound, the rumble, the rough idle of a carbureted 454CID engine in a sedan was enough to make me wax poetically. There is something about late 60’s and early 70’s heavy metal (American muscle cars) that just goes to the core of my being. The mechanical...
(well, poopies. This is post # 300) I travel a lot for work. (well, usually, when we don’t have restrictions). This morning, I was taking the early flight, PHX to SJC, easy 1:40 hop, but I had a day chocked full of meetings, so I took the 6:25 flight. Ugh. That means I needed to wake up about 3:30 and get my butt out the door. Ok. I get my pastry and starbucks coffee, and sit in the gate...
One of the joys of getting older is that I no longer bounce back from even minor injuries. Case in point: About a month or a month and a half ago, I jammed my left thumb. I don’t remember what I did, just that it hurt like hell and was tender for a few days. Usually, these things pass, and in a week or so, you forget that you ever did it. However this time, it didn’t quite go that way...
Last friday night we had one of those upgrade events. Supposedly to improve our broadband connection, and improve the experience of using both the internet and the internal network. I have to say it is a resounding failure. Sending 750 MB of data to a server in Colorado Springs (intranetwork), has taken 45 minutes, and is still only 75% complete. It used to be faster. Guess I will have to submit...
So, I run a website for a great group of people. It is a non-profit that rescues greyhounds. Sometimes, they need to post something, so I get a file in Microsoft Word, and I need to get it HTML formatted. Their website is based around Joomla, and I use the JCE rich text editor. In general, it works pretty good, but sometimes it is thrown for a loop by what Microsoft outputs as HTML. An example:...
In the past I have pitted Spotify against Google All Access, and while the Google offering was slightly cheaper, it had enough warts to drop it into second place. At that time, I mentioned that I looked forward to Apple’s offering, and would revisit when it was officially launched. iTunes has long supported internet radio stations, but they were all third party, and of quite varied quality...