Back at the com

The computers are logged in, I have over 200 emails, Monica just came in with a list of phone messages, there’s an inch of paper in my inbox, and the red voicemail light on the phone is blazing like a road flare.
Looks like I have some work to do.

Kickstart

Ready? Here we go.
After a several day posting hiatus, I am back. I’m not quite back in the groove, but I’m back.
Thanksgiving was fun. We enjoyed the traditional roasted turkey and a smoked turkey as well. I brined the turkey and Martin smoked it. It was kind of fun to start smoking the turkey the night before. Martin, Casey, & I drank a few beers and poked at the fire for a while. It was nice for me since I went home and went to sleep. Poor Martin was up tending the smoker all night.
My father loved the smoked turkey, so I expect we’ll be smoking another one next year.
I finished reading Vanishing Act last week. I really enjoyed it. It was a solid read with a good story arc and plenty of surprises that kept me guessing as to what would happen next. Thomas Perry’s writing about the underworld is fantastic. I still think Metzger’s Dog is his best story, but this one ranks up with Butcher’s Boy and Sleeping Dogs.
On the linkage front, go read this Being Daddy. It’s funny ’cause it’s true.
Geocaching front: We went geocaching on Sunday. Here’s the story of the Where the Wild Things Are cache. I did another geocache today, but I haven’t written it up yet.
Children front: As a Hanukah present, we took the girls on a trip to Build-a-Bear. People without children may find this strange.
Technology front: I picked a new toy for Michele. One of the drawbacks of the MSN Companion we have in the kitchen is that it does not play audio. I bought a modded Virgin Webplayer as a replacement. It has a hard drive and Windows 98 installed and is a full computer. After a few minutes of fiddling, I had it playing MP3s and streaming audio. Michele is happy.


Television front: In the last 3 days, I have watched 5 episodes of the Sopranos. I had let them build up in the Tivo and to the point that I was way out of date. I am super-saturated with Sopranos at this point. I think they are going to leave us hanging in the finally and not wrap up any loose ends. All I can say is that Paulie Walnuts is crazy.
Over the last several days, there were several other things that I considered post-worthy, but right now, I am too tired to remember them. More later.

Universal Geekage

Some have said the my weblog roams in the area of the geek fringe. This may be true. It has also been said that sometimes my technical posts need translating. This also may be true.
But I see that every hobby out there has it’s strange lingo.
Consider what I saw when looking the description for a bike. A bicycle, not a motorcyle mind you…
New lightweight A1 Premium Aluminum comfort designed anatomic frame.
Shimano Acera 21-speed with 11-34 MegaRange drivetrain.
New Body Geometry therapeutic soft triple density grips.
Super-soft Comfort Plus mattress base spring saddle.
Specialized 700x38c Nimbus EX tires with Flak Jacket puncture protection.
Specialized 700x38c No-Flat Airlock tubes.
Nimbus? I thought Nimbus made brooms for flying?
Flack Jacket? What does a Flak Jacket have to do with a bicycle? Will someone be shooting at me?
Those bike geeks are weird.

Lukwam

They mentioned someone I kinda know in the Wall Street Journal. Lukas “Lukwam” Karlsson is a friend of James “Trikster” Ho, cousin of my wife.
The article discusses Tivo profiling and how it can lead to some strange results.
I’ve noticed the same thing where I need to counter-program Tivo to get it to stop recording programs I don’t want. I don’t want Spongebob Square Pants.
On a different note, here is an interesting article on predictions from 1992.

Answers

Several loyal Cruft readers have asked questions recently. I will answer.
Q: Ya’ll boil crawfish out there??
A: See the story.
Q: tooth fairy LOOT? what are you trying to do?
A: Don’t blame me. My idea was for shiny coins only. Scarymommy is the one that insisted on a present. This time it was the Spirit DVD, a pack of sugarfree gum, and two gold dollar coins.
Q: What’s the BTU rating on the burner?
A: After extensive research by Top Men, it have been to be 1.21 gigaBTUs.
Q: are those phillies blunts? what are the co-ordinates?
A: Yes, Phillies Blunts we were supposed to smoke on this geocache, but we had already broken several rules and I didn’t feel like starting a forest on fire. The new cache is posted.
Q: Your power failed and THEN your UPS thingy failed too?
A: No, we were upgrading the UPS thingy and it broke. We were on the power generator at the time. We didn’t lose power, but we did stay up to 2AM fixing the UPS thingie with the replacement whatchamacalit.
Ok, that should answer your questions for now. If you have more, let me know.
For all those concerned, I am working on my holiday greed list, so save your pennies and keep on the alert.
Lastly I would like to remind you TANSTAAFL.

Err, what time is it?

A productive day…
This morning I prepared an ammo box to place for a geocache. I put some good stuff in it.


I placed the cache with the girls at a local park. I’ll post the URL once the cache is approved.
We headed down to my parents house for a visit. I spent a large part of the day trying to move my mother’s contact database from ACT 2.something on a Umax Mac clone running Mac OS 8.something to Outlook XP on a Dell running Windows XP. What a pain. Trying to explain the issues of data conversion and field parsing to my mother is tiring. Mom cares about the end result, not the method to get there. I did my part, I got her contacts into a modern platform. She can export the database into anything whe wants now.
Other computer support I performed include running Ad-aware on my dad’s machine to clean out Gator and some other spyware. I did the WinXP service pack one on my mom’s computer. My pay was dinner.
Zoe lost a tooth today while we were at my parent’s house. She was quite proud of herself that she pulled it out herself.
When we returned home, I was sent out to get tooth fairy loot. I just happened to go to Target. I just happened to stumble across a turkey fryer on sale. I just happened to buy it.
You ask, “What do you need a turkey fryer for?”
Ah, it’s not just good for frying turkeys. It’s good for brewing beer and boiling crayfish. I have big plans.
Later. I need to go rub blinding ointment into my eyes.