I sit down with a cup of coffee and light a cigarette. 

Join me and listen to my ramblings. 

Monday, Sept 12th 2005

Life on other planets?

I woke up the other night at 4:30 AM.   It was a crystal clear night with more stars than I've ever seen in this area.    It got me thinking about these stars and the planets that most likely orbit them.   Then I began thinking about all the billions and billions of stars that are too far for their light to reach us and those beyond them.   The cosmos seems infinfite -- and if it truely is, the chances of conditions for life on other planets are impossible to ignore.   Do I think we are visited?   No, not really.   Do I think alien life forms are out there?  Absolutely.   In fact, I believe that frozen life forms on meteors that are proven to have hit our planet millions of years ago brought life here.    We, in fact, are of alien origin.   That theory is interesting because if our DNA came from meteors crashing into Earth, then there is most likely life forms similar to us on other planets.  However, I do not wish to even contemplate the conditions that placed those life forms hurdling on chunks of frozen rock through the galaxies *shivers*

Wednesday, Sept 14th 2005

It's the end of the galaxy?

I admit it, I'm a Science Channel (and its sister channels) addict.   Last night featured lots of not-for-the-faint-of-heart "end of the world" programs.   From our sun becoming a red giant that turns us into crispy little snacks to asteroids slamming into us.    If that weren't bad enough, even if we were to escape the 100% possibility of an asteroid or comet slamming into us, there is always the inevitable collision of our Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy.   Pretty stargazing opportunities will abound -- however, we will not survive the asteroids travelling at millions of miles per hour across our path or the black holes.   If by some miracle we did -- there is always the mother of all black holes (that actually caused our galaxies to be created) sucking us into itself and obliberating all that comes near it.   On top of all that good news, a scientist even described what would happen if a person were to be sucked into a black hole.   We would be ripped in half, those halves would be ripped in half and so on and so on until we were simply a sprinkling of atoms hurdling in towards it's gaping black mawl.    On the bright side, we may be thrown into a global volcanic winter by Yellow Stone National Park and will be too cold to care.

Fun Times.

Thursday, Sept 15th 2005

Are hauntings real?

Watched SciFi Channel last night and there was a new program on called Ghost Hunters.  It is the first time that I believed the evidence of paranormal activity.    There was an unmanned camera in the upstairs bedroom that was being monitored from downstairs.   They caught the closet door,which they demonstrated to be a bit sticky and hard to open or close, open a few inches from being tightly closed.  Twenty minutes later, the door opened all the way and then closed almost abruptly.  The door was completely closed, which takes a bit of effort, upon investigating the door.    What made this all believable to me was that they had debunked other suspected activity at other locations and their reaction to this new activity seemed quite sincere - they were amazed -- a bit spooked even.  

The investigators in this series are called TAPS and they have their own web site you can visit here.

In the next episode they investigate an abandoned insane asylum ... OOO!

Friday, Sept 16th 2005

Our Boys

My son wants to join ROTC.   Oh man, what a nightmare that is to a mother.  This is worse than those cheery programs I've been watching!  Obviously, the military has been visting my son's high school.   There is a 4 year active duty service required after graduating.   I told my son -- are you kidding, we're going to be at war with the middle east FOREVER ... then asked him if he really wanted to go to Iraq.    His reply, which was the wrong answer by the way, was "they attacked America, they need to be attacked back".    I nearly fainted.    I told him that him going to war would kill me.   I tried to guilt him but he wasn't buying it.  He just rolled his eyes in that teenager way and gave me a "oh you don't know anything" smile.   I keep having images of my little boy running down the hallway and into my arms on Christmas morning -- his amazingly bright smile warming my heart and filling me with so much love that I could nearly choke on it.   Then the image turns ugly.   I see a war torn middle east, my little boy lying in rubble and bleeding ... then me spending the rest of my life without him.   My heart aches for all the mothers out there that have lost their own little boys -- whatever the reason. 

A man, no matter how old he is, is always his mother's little boy.

Saturday, Sept 17th 2005

Music Possession

Got an iPod Nano.  My son got one as well.  But forget him for a second.

I have to admit, much like when CDs first came upon the scene, I resisted the new technology.  I figured then, as now, that I really didn't need it.   I should have taken note.     The first 2 seconds of listening, I was HOOKED -- from tapes to CD and from burning Mp3 CDs to using an iPod.   I'm just going to say --  WOW.    This thing is so tiny it fits into a wallet (don't sit on it) and the music sounds amazing.

There was one thing about getting the iPod that made me feel old.   I must have done something weird during installation and setup because I wasn't able to find the damn songs that I had transferred.   It took me a number of hours (and reformats of iPod) to finally get it right.   Now, here's the really sucky part -- my son had his working in a matter of minutes.    Ok, for most people that aren't total geeks like me, that may be a normal thing.  But, I'm not just some USER!  I am an IT Professional that can figure out new technology in seconds without a manual or much fuss.   Rather than think that my son has the upper hand here (god forbid, get better at computers than I am), I am inclined to convince myself it's because the iPod is made by Apple and Apple SUCKS.  

Isn't that right, fellow geeks?   Hello?    *crickets*

Guys ...  ?

At least I NEVER resorted to consulting the F.M. and figured it out my own damn self.

Sunday, Sept 18 2005

Internet Servers and Microsoft Woes

I did a search for montage-a-google when his server was throwing errors.    I wasn't able to find another google montage thing (a mirror would have been nice) but I did find hundreds (maybe more) of blogs, articles and new and noteworthy links TO his cool tool.  I am  going to contact him and see if I can pay him for a copy of it.  I don't expect to get anywhere.   He could sell it to Google Inc for a nice chunk of change.  He should too!  Their servers are more reliable. 

A very frustrating IEXPLORE.EXE process hang is driving me nuts.   I am not able to find the true error -- though I've removed several suspicous suspects.   I've run vscan in safe mode, have searched registry, have cleaned registry, removed Sun Java, made sure that IE cache wasn't huge, checked with several different spyware programs and virus scans and even cleaned up machine but no dice.   When I click on an Internet Shortcut from the quick launch bar, the desktop or the start menu, it either hangs and freezes up explore.exe or gives me an error such as "windows cannot find "http://www.google.com/" make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again.  To search for a file, click the start button, and then Search".    Yeah right.   That's it.  

The most frustrating thing about it is that it does not do it all the time.   It happens sometimes right after rebooting, when no programs are running but then sometimes it will work for a while with no problems -- sometimes it will work but very slowly. 

Microsoft Knowledge Base has nothing on it.  

Grrr

Update:  As I was writing this, I had an intuition.  I went through the registry to figure out what is going on with IE.  I kept thinking to myself, "clicking on shortcuts opens a new window".   I saw in the registry that I had popups blocked by IE.   Now, one would not think that IE would block opening Windows Shortcuts ... but by George, I think that's it.   I tested it.   Shortcuts are opening just FINE!   However, that does not mean anything.   It just means it's not acting up at the moment.   This has fooled me before.   Testing for the next few days to see if this really is the culprit. 

Monday, Sept 19th 2005

Fuck it.

Well, the pop-up thing worked -- sort of.  Shortcuts work as long as they are not on the task bar.   The quick launch toolbar seems to be FUBAR.  I tried making a new toolbar and the entire system froze.   I think it's related.   I remember reading somewhere on some technical site about it, but tired of the issue for now.    Fuck it.

Has anyone else ever noticed that k.d lang's voice is hypnotic?

save me ...   save me ...

Tuesday, Sept 20th 2005

What's showin'?

Hey, it's Tuesday.   In my pathetic little patch of life, that means a new movie release at the local video store.  Yay.  I'd tell you the name of the place but the store sucks, the entire chain sucks and the only reason I use it is because there is no other place around here.    I'll give you a hint though ... it starts with B and ends in lockbuster.

Anyway, the exciting part is that I may have a new addition to my soon-to-be-taking-over-my-entire-frontroom DVD collection.   Ok, that's an exaggeration and my boy Dane Cook hates chicks that exaggerate.   Don't want to do anything that might knock me even further out of the maybe-it-could-happen-a-zillion-billion-to-one chance at him ;).    Funny, huh?   Well, there is always John Mayer ...

Dammit, what's new at the video store anyway????   I can't even check because my FUCKING IE won't OPEN ... FUCK!

Wednesday, Sept 21st 2005

iPod Dreams

Well, there was nothing exciting at the video store so I spent my leisure time backing up my hard drive.   If you don't know why, you haven't been reading :)

I fell asleep around 11 pm with my iPod.   It was funny because I was playing standup comedy of George Lopez and Carlos Mencia.   The standup routines ended up in my dream -- in the dream, I was listening to them on my iPod and kept trying to turn it off.  I kept pulling out the earbuds but was still hearing it.   I turned off the iPod (still in dream here) but it was being played on loud speakers in a war-torn/post-apocalyptic area.   I finally woke up -- it was getting quite annoying!   ha ha ha

Thursday, Sept 22nd 2005

Enciting Panic

The news broadcasts are going to encite panic with their reports of gas prices raising to 5 dollars a gallon due to Hurricane Rita.   Guess we'll have to get our bikes out to go to work.   I've heard that sales of scooters, motorcyles and mopeds has risen greatly.   If we weren't about to have our 9 month winter, I'd get one of those too.   

I'm seeing some hard financial times ahead for us all.  Again. 

Friday, Sept 23rd 2005

Stupid White People

In Livonia, they were having a meeting regarding a new Wal-Mart Super Center to replace an empty shopping mall.   Well, one of the white trash idiots attending this shin-dig said something about it bringing blacks, drugs and crime to Livonia.  

Oh come on.    I'm not niave enough to think that racism is dead, but to publicly announce such an ignorant, stupid ass thing -- in front of television and media, no less?   *sigh*  

That goes the other way too -- I'm getting tired of listening to people bash white people -- and it's not only OK, it's cool.   Are whites the ones to hate now?  I know that I am a good person, a loving person and I try to live my life with tolerance towards every type of lifestyle, culture or deviation, as long as nobody (unconsenting) is getting hurt.  Yes, I'm white.  I admit it. 

Leave me a alone.

PS  Still fucking with this stupid IE/Taskbar/Quick Launch process shit.  Ran a few other "fixes" and the issue is better than it was.   I can now create a new toolbar but the links on the quick launch seem to cause most of the hangs.  Yes, I know, delete all the crap on the quick launch and recreate them. 

Problem 90% solved.  I haven't even rebooted today!

Saturday, Sept 24th 2005

Hard Drive OverLoad

Got some hard drive conversion kits so that I do not need 5 computers plugged in anymore.   Yes, the LAN is a fun thing, but the amount of electricity and junk ...   Anyway, converting all my HDD to USB is something new to do.    I should have 6 HDD converted, eventually.   That is, if I like how the first 2 come out.   I went and ordered a 800 GB external Firewire/USB hard drive too.  Weee ... going nuts can be fun!   It's going to take a while before it gets here.   I'm such an instant gratification kinda gal.   Maybe it will teach me patience?  Doubt it ...

PS  The IE crashing thing -- I won't say it's fixed.  That would jinx me.   I will say that at this moment, it seems to be dorment.   I did so many things to "dorment" it, I'm not actually sure what it was that I did that made any difference in performance. 

Sunday, Sept 25th 2005

Just another day ...

Laundry, playing games, listening to music, messing with the computer, picking up around here... that about sums up this rainy Sunday.    Blah.

Having some weirdness booting up ever since installing tweakUI and uninstalling a bunch of crap that I didn't use.    Yes, IE has hung up on me a few times.   Grr.

Monday, Sept 26th 2005

Of Books and Bonding

Tonight I came up with a great idea for two problems I had.   The problems were that my kids don't read enough and dinner time together is rarely the bonding experience I that I hoped it would be.  The minute my son is done wolfing down his food, he's outta there.  Daughter is the same.  Solution?   I came up with "book club" for dinner.   Each night when we sit down, each person in turn tells of a book they are reading -- where they are at in the book, what they think is going to happen and what they think of the book in general.   Surprisingly, they were enthusiastic about this idea.   They even fought for second turns to tell more about other books they've read.    My daughter went to her school's book fair today and my son to Barnes & Noble.  They should both have something to share tomorrow night.   Cool!

Tuesday, Sept 27th 2005

Adventures in power steering and outlet malls

Had some vehicle issues -- seems the power steering was leaking and left me stalled and unable to steer -- as luck would have it, I was 2 feet from a gas station and was able to coast my stalled ass into it.   *whew*

Drove up to Birch Run for some shopping adventures, but the stores were pretty boring.   I wasn't in the mood for plates or other kitchenware and that's what they seemed to have in spades.    I'll have to try another outlet location. 

All in all, it was a GREAT day.    I even solved that pesky IE shortcuts issue .. it was McAfee Privacy Service!   I disabled that bastard (to test a theory I had) and I was cooking with gas once again!   WoOt!

Wednesday, Sept 28th 2005

GUI Goodies

Alright, let the fun begin.   Tried some new software ... Window Blinds, TweakUI, RightClick and LimeWire -- tons of fun, let me tell you.   My XP interface is so tweaked that it's unrecognizable.    I've added links to them -- check them out yourself, if you are so inclined.

Warning: Do not attempt to try these programs out if you'd like to go to bed (or work) within the next 5 hours,  if you have an addictive personality or if your kids are already whining that you haven't made anything for them to eat all day.

Thursday, Sept 29, 2005

Cute & Adorable

Building my daughter a website.   Unlike this one, hers is going to be uber cute in pink and green with music and animations galore -- she is only 10, after all.    My goal is to make it as interactive as possible. 

Whew, still relieved over this IE fix.   It was really stressing me out.  I can't just let something just be broken!   I'm so obsessive!

Friday, Sept 30th 2005

Birthdays & Sewage

Today is my younger & only sister's birthday.   Yay!  Go Sister!

Drain in basement is causing some stress -- got the rooter guy scheduled -- G-GROSS!

On a brighter note, my 400 GB USB mega-drive is in transit from California.   It won't be here until Oct 5th!   Dang, when I see truckers on the xway they are flying -- I must have the really old trucker... Wearing a hat!