Posts from — March 2002

We decided to go for Easter Brunch this morning. Without reservations. Pam got back from church early so we could get a head start on the crowds. One place listed on Citysearch.com for brunch was closed. It turns out the place has been closed for over a year. Update your site, Citysearch. We drove to a couple other places (it seemed like hours) and ended up at Wolverine Golf Club. For $21 each, we had a great meal. Stuffed and happy we went back home for a nap. I love lazy Sunday mornings.

Pam’s Dad had to be placed in a nursing home yesterday. Bummer. He fell ill and is there for rehabilitation. It should be no more than a month and he’ll be back at his own place. I wish him well. Go John Go!

Ze’s page is worth another visit if you haven’t been there in a while. I love this guy. His irreverance and talent inspire me to do great things. Right after my next nap.

I’ve settled on this design for my page. Of course I will continue to fiddle with this and that, but I’m happy with the way it turned out. It’s all CSS and layering instead of tables and cells. Note how the boxes on the page are dynamic when you make the window smaller or larger.

After a morning of fiddling with Greymatter, I went back to Moveable Type. There were too many features I missed that GM didn’t have. Also, not having my old entries really bothered me. So I’ll stop for a bit and try to get a new template working.

Imagine projecting a keyboard almost anywhere, even mid-air. I want one of these things! Read about it here.

These cheap plastic solar cells are even better. And more useful.

This is very gross. Poor guy. It does remind me of the old country song I used to sing. “I sent my nose to California, I sent my liver to Peru. I sent my eyes and my kidneys for the summer to Sydney, but I’m sending my heart to you.”

The 6 DVD set of Lord of the Rings has been announced for release later this year. Yippee. But I think I will wait for the second set in November that has an added 30 minutes to the already 3 1/2 hour movie.

Happy Birthday, Mark. Nice talking to you. Even though its my twin’s birthday, I still forgot to get him a card. Sheesh.

Goodbye Moveable Type, hello Greymatter. I’m making the switch sometime this weekend. M’kay?

This has got to be the greatest webcam there is on the Internet.

Here is what I am going to do on my day off tomorrow:

Remind me to tell you about the hassle Nat City Lease is giving me and why you should never do business with them.

Enterprise was especially good tonight. It featured the never before seen Ferengi. The actors playing the Ferengi were Ethan Phillips (Neelix on Voyager), Jeffrey Combs (Weyoun on DS9) and Clint Howard (Baylok on the original series). They were as hapless and greedy as ever and it was fun seeing the actors again. Next week, Rene Auberjonois (Odo) is guest starring.

hello jeff how are you doing?

Last weekend I de-winterized the garage. I put away the snow shovels, stored the snow blower and took the snow brushes out of the cars. Now there is 3 -5 inches of snow predicted.

Update: Storm Team 7 (and the others) have once again over-hyped the coming snow. Actually there wasn’t any snow. They KNEW it would only be in a line south of the city but CONTINUED to warn us of the impending disaster. These jerks will do anything for a story. “Winter is back, the complete forcast at 13 minutes after the hour.” Too bad they didn’t tell us it doesn’t apply to all of their viewers.

When are these idiots going to get it? They are dumbing down the general public who sit like robots on the edge of their seats waiting until 13 minutes after the hour. Guess what plays while you are waiting? Endless self promotion ads about other hyped-up stories. It never ends, but I still tune in. At least I used to.

Site update. Excuse the dust while I play around with various templates. I promise to get the old rants, mortisms and maybe a gallery running over the upcoming long weekend.

Note to Chrysler. You should consider shutting down the place on Thursday, my birthday. The date is important enough to warrant it. If you do have to work that day, please take a moment and reflect upon the day’s significance. Thank you.

One last item. I was going to comment on the issue of the women suing several large corporations. She is seeking reparations for their participation in black slavery. Um, yeah.

This will be a short week for me. It’s my birthday on Thursday so I thought I would take the day off. Then we have Friday and Monday off for Easter. A nice long relaxing weekend will be great. Now I just have to get through 3 days of pre-holiday work.

Three people have asked me for laptops to take for the long weekend. They can’t stand to be out of touch with their email for that long. I can’t stand to check it every minute when I’m out of the office. The work will be there when you return people. The days before a holiday are always busier for me. The last-minute users ask me for this and that. It’s like the end of the world is coming and they are trying to get one more thing done before it’s here. Take a pill and relax, I say.

We tried to see The Time Machine at the theatre yesterday. Our plan was to go to the 4:30 matinee at our usual theatre. We waited in line to get the tickets and were told the film had a scratch in it that showed on the screen about halfway through the movie. The employees said it could be fairly annoying and that it didn’t go away for the rest of the movie.

No problem. We’ll just see Blade 2. It was sold out. So we went to Blockbuster, rented The Last Castle with Robert Redford and went home. It was a good film and I recommend it.

I’ve been playing around with various templates and decided to settle on the one you are viewing now. It uses CSS layering instead of tables for a more customizable interface. I can drag the nav panels on either side around the page and they resize themselves depending on the screens resolution.

Now I will spruce it up a bit and add some MT code on the right.

What do YOU think about it? Let me know. Click on the comment link below.

I receive (like everyone) a ton of spam in my email. Since the public and our government allows these annoying messages to continue, I figure there must be some benefit to spam. So I read some of the messages that came to me recently:

“A Simple Home Business” promises to have me earning up to $50,000 a year. Now I can quit my job and I won’t even have to leave my house to go to work. Everybody should do this. How could I have ignored this for so long.

“Tired of all those bills? Get out of debt fast!” tells me I don’t have to take responsibility for my purchases. Using their services will clear my debts so I can go out and spend more money. This is too good to pass up.

“Completely fix and protect your computer” is another email I got the other day. If I use it, I will never have computer trouble again. How can I go wrong with this? Sign me up!

In the news today, several top K-Mart execs were shown coming out yesterday’s bankruptcy hearings. They arrived at the meeting in lavish style on 2 of their 12 corporate jets. Reporters asked what kind of signal they are sending the thousands of K-Mart workers traveling around in jets and getting paid millions of dollars in bonuses. K mart’s new chairman, James B. Adamson, with a stupid smirk on his face stood mute to the questions being asked by the press. Say something, jerk off. But he doesn’t care. Adamson received a $4 million bonus in addition to his $2.5 million salary.

Do you want to know how to bring business into your stores? It’s simple. Customer Service. Along with a clean, uncluttered and well-stocked store have people working there that will actually help you. There are too many other places to go for the same items. What will bring people back are friendly employees who enjoy their jobs. Pimping them by handing out these excessive bonuses to the executives of the company is pissing them off. Can anyone guess where they will vent their frustrations?

A 15% bonus was announced for any employee staying with their closing store to the end. Hmmm, 15% of $20,000… not quite what the bigwigs got, is it?

Some outfit from Paris is rumored to be interested in buying K-Mart. Just what we need, rude French people running the stores. Oui, blechhh.