Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

It’s funny, ’cause it’s true.

I thought I’d do the Friday Five tonight.
1. What are your favorite ways to relax and unwind?
I like reading, playing games, and goofing around with the kids. Being outdoors is always a plus. The key to me being able to relax is some peace and quiet. If everything around me is loud and busy, I have trouble relaxing.
2. What do you do the moment you get home from work/school/errands?
I put down my briefcase, unload my phone, wallet, keys, etc. Then I talk to the girls and see how there are doing. Usually it’s time for dinner, then the girls bath, then putting them to bed and reading. By around 8:30 or so, I get some time to myself.
3. What are your favorite aromatherapeutic smells?
I don’t like a lot of smells. I do like a hint of vanilla, coconut, or mint. Anything too strong is irritating to me. Poor Michele, she can never wear much perfume or I complain.
4. Do you feel more relaxed with a group of friends or hanging out by yourself?
Hard to say. Some times I like the peace anf quiet of solitude, but having fun with friends cures much stress.
5. What is something that you feel is relaxing but most people don’t?
Playing videogames. Michele refers to it as ‘killing nazi’s’. When I play games, my mind is focused on doing well on the game and nothing else. My thoughts of work, money, and other stresses disappear for the moment and I am in the moment of the game. I don’t think Michele or the rest of my family understand the relief I get after playing games for a bit. They all want me to sleep. Sleep sucks. As Warren Zevon said, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

I stumbled over to Bush Rant for a sec and saw this wonderful graphic.

Thanks to Sandra W for bringing it to my attention.

Being Daddy is being updated again.
Don’t tell Michele I had Der Weinerschitzel for lunch today. I had my hair cut at the stylist she makes me go to these days. Much hair, odd smells, wierd people, and other strangeness. I felt the need to get in touch with my manliness. I felt a chili dog would be just right to recalibrate me from the trip.
The company store is out of Kingdom Hearts. Dang nabbit! I was hoping to score the discount on the game. The girls finally asked for a Playstation game unprompted by me. When I say the girls, I include Michele. She wants Kingdom Hearts too.

Scriptlogic
Scriptlogic vulnerability
Nothing to see here, move along…

At the office, the five day attempt to install Gentoo Linux ended in victory. After giving it a good try, I continued to get a kernel panic upon boot. Our resident hacker, Yoshi, was unable to unfuck it as well. I gave it a shot and I like the idea behind Gentoo, but unless you are already a *nix guru, don’t attempt it.
I pulled out the Mandrake Linux CDs and reinstalled that. Fairly smooth. I struggled a bit the rpmdrake software manager. On a whim I installed the Ximian/Gnome Desktop. I loved the fact that the install was a command line instruction for lynx to run a script remotely. That install was smooth as glass. I then checked out Gnome for the first time in several years. Holy Finland! IT looks great now. Back when I chose side in the great KDE/Gnome debate, Gnome looked terrible. Now it looks great. I played with the Red Carpet software manager. Red Carpet is incredible. It is, dare I say, easier to use than Windows. More today in my quest to get Evolution working as a corporate mail client with our Exchange servers.
I finally got the license for Spam Assassin at work yesterday. I’ve been using it at home and it does a fantastic job of blocking Spam. Hopefully this morning I will find a small Inbox and full Junk Mail folder. It’s well worth the money.
This morning I spent my 30 minutes on the stationary bike in the garage and watched the end of the Better Off Dead DVD. THe movie finished with about 5 minutes left to ride. I was quite pissed off that there were no bonus materials on the disc. What a ripoff! You know there were some good deleted scenes and outtakes from that flick.
The weather here is quite strange. It’s foggy, there is ash falling from the sky due to the fires in the hills, and it’s supposed to hit 90+ degrees today. When does Autumn arrive? I’m ready!
Lastly, there’s a great movie from Ikea. It’s worth the download wait. Click on the TV.

So I know I should be working, but what the hell. The fargin plans for the email migration and the latest round of signatures can wait.
So I ask you all if you like the linkage at the top of the page. What response do I get? My mom posts that she likes the old way better. I’m shocked! Mom isn’t down with change? Who would have thunk? Brad walks into my office and says he doesn’t like the link of weblogs on the top. Just two people?
In any case, after looking a few other sites, I realize that my design skills are PATHETIC!
Take a look at Escribitionist, Very Big Blog, and Doc Evil. Go ahead, look. I’m be here when you get back…
See how their shit just sings style and attitude? My stuff sings ‘engineer learning basic CSS’.
Enough bitching, I need to finish up around here.
Lastly, I finished creating my mother’s weblog last night. The URL is supra-sekkrit until she want’s it public. Heaven help us.

I’ve been messing around with the banner linkage.
Good? Bad? You don’t care?

After 4+ years of reading slashdot, I finally was able to give a little back. I submitted a brief item on California banning spam from mobile phones. It was deemed worthy.


In other news, Zoe’s soccer team, the Black & Yellow Dolphins, won their game today with a score of 5 to 0.

It appears that my friend Paul, has taken me at my word and created a couple Cruft logo buttons. Paul roxxors.
I am proud to present them to you, my loyal readers:




Can you better? I doubt it… You are all worthless and weak. It’s not like any of you can run Photoshop or know how to animate graphics…
In other graphic news, I updated Michele’s site with a new graphic. Enjoy.