PS-If you click, you will get the original size photo. They are huge. HUGE. (5mp)
I talk to PepsiCo first, and the lady who assisted me ends our call with, "Thank you, and have a Pepsi day."
I'm pretty sure I said something very eloquent like, "Err...," because I don't know how the heck to 'have a Pepsi day.' Didn't matter, because she just hung up the phone anyway.
Then I called Coca-Cola Enterprises, and after getting me straightened out, the gentleman there says, "We at Coke appreciate your business, and I hope you have a Classic day."
And I was like, "Yeah--I think I will, thanks."
Somehow having a classic day sounded easier, I guess.
I think I like Coke better...
]]>Time for bed; I'll clean up the mess tomorrow.
]]>My opinion, the best football games are the ones where you have strong feelings toward the opposing teams; to really feel the passion that makes football so engaging, you need unwavering devotion for the good guys, and bitter hatred toward the opponent. With your emotional well-being hanging on every play, what seems at first a simple sport takes on new depth and--if you are very lucky indeed--your team wins in the last seconds and gives new meaning to your life. You get to experience all this passion and excitement and it feels like you're really living to your fullest even though the outside observer can only see you eating an extra 900 calories while wasting three hours sitting on the couch.
That is how I'm going to be spending this evening, after quite a lot of preparation to get there. You see, yesterday I had the question asked to me, by about everyone I know: "What are you doing for the Super Bowl?" My response was always the same: Nothing--no one's coming over this year as far as I know. I guess everyone's busy with the kids or other hobbies or they just aren't interested...
Turns out I was wrong, because half of the people that called to make inquiry yesterday have emailed and called today to say that they weren't doing anything either, so let's make something of doing nothing by doing nothing together. Fine by me. Now I plan to have seven visitors and my godson around, which has invoked a flurry of activity around the house. I spent a couple hours early in the morning doing the usual household stuff: Running the vacuum, my least favorite chore of all time, mainly because of the ear-splitting caterwauling that comes from the Dirt Devil. (I think I'll start saving a jar of spare change to help offset the pain I know is coming because I have grand plans for buying a Dyson.) Then I tidied up the trash outside. When no one was coming over, I felt alright with it just sitting it out by the curb, but with visitors involved I decided that the one bag that couldn't fit into the garbage can had to be forced in by whatever unnatural methods I could devise. Luckily I was successful. Then I used the mop and looked around to see what I have to feed a small herd of people.
I put barbecue sauce in the Crock-Pot and put some of those little bite-size sausages in there, because everyone loves those. Then I made a layer dip with salsa, sour cream, beans, and beef and gathered up some huge bowls for tortilla chips. And I contacted Papa John's and got my pizza order in. They inform me that today is their big day, all hands are on deck, and the pizza will definitely arrive right on time just before kickoff. The local Papa John's here is awesome. I like to get their pizza more for the service than the quality of the pizza, although it is perfectly good for a chain.
That's got me all set for the most part, but some of my friends like to eat Kosher as much as possible, so I'm putting the cheese that I usually put in the dip on the side. I now have planned a trip to the market after church to get kosher wieners for pigs in blankets, and a bag of ready made chicken wings, and that should have everyone covered. I think next year, I'll send out invitations, that way I know what to expect with more than an 8 hour notice, because to be honest, I'm so tired now that I might sleep through the first half. *wink*
]]>And I'm a fan of Neil Diamond, and I don't care who knows it.
That's pretty much all there is to say about it.
]]>PS-If you click, you will get the original size photo. They are huge. HUGE. (5mp)
Time for the Mac talk: I hated--neigh--absolutely loathed OS 8 and 9--hated almost everything about the "flavored" iBooks and iMacs. But now I use OS X, somewhat for development purposes, but more and more because I really like it. I don't know how this happened, but I think I'm going to have a go at saying why.
Explorer sucks. Finder does not.
Simple as that. Sort of.
Actually, I'll back off a little from saying that Explorer sucks; some things about it are good. I like that it remembers my favorite folders off to the left. I like that I can click on the toolbar at the top and go back up the folder hierarchy. I like the little helpful shortcuts that it puts for your different file types, so that if you click on an MP3 file, it might suggest Play, Burn, Send to Portable Player, etc. That's handy. I don't like, however, how hard routine file maintenance is. Getting organized if you have even a moderate number of files and folders to sort through is almost painful. You highlight the stuff you need to move, and then you cut, switch folders, and paste. Or you open up both windows to begin with, then you highlight, then you drag down to the taskbar, wait for the second folder to pop to the top, then drag up into it and let go. Hopefully you haven't had a hand twitch, or you've dropped everything and have to go select all you files again. Your other choices are to either buy a large monitor and try to feng shui your windows so you can drag it over the border and into the destination folder, or turn on the folders pane and try to figure out how to properly waggle your cursor so it will make the sub folders drop down so you can access them. I don't know any other way of dealing with it except to tough it out, or download an explorer replacement.
You know how you deal with it in Finder? There's a little button you click that puts panes all the way across the windows you're already working in. Then, when you open a folder, its contents flow into the next pane, leaving you able to drag anything as far up or down the folder hierarchy, or in any folder, whether you've opened it or not. Simple as it could be, but very powerful, almost deceptively so. I now frequently find myself switching over to the Mac box, mapping my Windows drive through the network, and doing my file maintenance that way.
This is the first case of my preferring the Mac to my PC. Could this be a harbinger of things to come?
I'm wouldn't hold my breath. But I would give myself kudos for becoming more open-minded...
]]>That was my first thought when I logged into MovableType after finishing up the 4.0 upgrade. This is by no means a very large or very popular web site, but somehow I managed to hang my shared server when it was upgrading my database. The web host killed the process, and it wasn't done doing whatever it does. The result: my blog was hosed.
Yes, I neglect it. Yes, it is so often the object of spam attack that it sickens me.
No. I did not want to just start again.
So I spent quite a lot of time the past few days erasing the database, creating new ones, and importing the blog.
But then my templates wouldn't work.
Crap.
So I got rid of those too.
And now I have this. It's ugly, gray, and impersonal, and yet it's growing on me.
I think I'll get used to it.
Oh, and the spammers are having trouble with the new features, so I may actually be able to blog unfettered for a month. Well, a couple weeks. Er, for now.
]]>
The pair in the middle is the old set. Possibly you could tell being that it has only one arm instead of two. The upper and lower are the new ones I just got. Really, there isn't much difference; I've been locked into my style for a while. My prescription is a little worse than most, so I had to wear the one-armed pair around for nearly two weeks while I was waiting for the new ones to come in special order, which is not something you really want to do, but the old set I kept for a spare was so far out of date that I was pretty sure it would have been illegal to operate a vehicle while wearing them. It was either wear the one-armed pair or wear my prescription sunglasses indoors. That's why I bought two pairs this time. I'll definitely have a good backup now. I'm not sure which I prefer the best. Probably the bottom ones-they're shiny, altough they're so similar I think it's pointless to play favorites. If you have an opinion, you can leave it in the comments.
One weird thing: the coating on the new set, either the anti-glare or the scratch guard, is making reflections look green. See the middle pair? Normal reflection. Top and Bottom new pairs? Green. How am I going to know if a lady is looking deeply into my eyes because she's feeling a genuine connection that could move the heavens and the Earth, or just seeing what she'd look like cast in a Zombie movie? It's going to lead me into some awkward situations isn't it?
]]>"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
-Mark Twain
Looking though the news for the day in FeedDemon, my favorite feed reader of all, and I notice from Wired News that Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 has been delayed until January.
Normally this would bum me out, because I live half my life in Office, whether we're talking Mac or PC, but I have to say that I really don't care. Why? Because the new Office 2007 ribbon interface wasn't going to be migrated over anyway, which is a shame, because I find myself far more productive in my office apps now that I've become familiar with the ribbon. The layout just makes a lot more sense now, and things you do every fifteen minutes when editing a document have gone from four clicks to one. It's completely awesome once you get adjusted, which I will admit takes about two weeks.
But wait--why did I say 'dang' if I'm not bummed out? Because I've realized that it's not the ribbon that's causing me not to give a crap. I just don't care about this stuff anymore. I remember back in the day when I was first introduced to computers everything was new and exciting, and everyone felt that way as computers were becoming more mainstream. There was crazy public pandemonium when Windows 95 was released, remember? Rock bands, huge advertisements, celebrities everywhere... And it was all anyone was talking about.
Every time something new came along, I was signing up to try it, downloading the betas, and exclaiming about how neat it would be to have something new. But I don't have that sense of adventure anymore. The computer has stopped being an exciting hobby, and has become just another tool. When I think of new software, I just worry about whether it will be compatible, or if it will crash my system and make me lose time that I could be using to do work. It seems like it's just a chore, and for some reason I'm feeling nostalgic for the days when it was all fresh and exciting.
I'm making it my goal to try and find that spark of interest and excitement again. Maybe this is why people are using Linux. Maybe there's excitement there. But it's not here on Vista, nor is it on OS X, both of which are great, but neither of which is very exciting.
]]>Read the article here.
I dumped Firefox completely when I migrated to the final version of Vista, in favor of all things, IE7. It's prettier, faster, and so far just as secure.
If you have XP though, IE7 doesn't run quite as well, so I'd stick with Firefox. Or my other favorite browser substitute, Maxthon. It's still IE, but double pumped to be actually productive. Novel concept that, IE6 productive...
]]>Actually, I take cooking pot pie pretty seriously, and I have a couple tips about it, which I think I will share, because frankly it's two o'clock in the morning, so what else do I have to do if not carry on about pot pies?
Number one: Make your own crust. Use a little bit of actual lard, like from a pig, even if you think it's gross, and then use the rest butter. Lots of butter. Keep this crust very, very cold for the crispiest crust. You might think lard is bad, but trust Dennis: Wilbur is good for your pot pie.
Number two: The white part of the chicken has practically no taste. If you never eat dark meat from a chicken, you don't know what chicken tastes like. It's so bland that you probably think everything tastes like chicken because you don't know what the chicken taste is supposed to be. Get a whole chicken, boil him for a while, then pick all the meat from the bones. This is the maximum chicken flavor. Some of the broth you will use in the filling for the pot pie. Save the rest in the freezer and turn it to dumplings next week.
Number three: Veg-All is cheating. Buy some vegetables that still look like vegetables. Cut them into pieces that are the same size. They don't have to be real small--as long as they're the same size they will cook evenly. This adds a lot of flavor. Especially important are fresh celery and carrot. Oh, if you get to looking at the carrots and realize they're twice the size of the potatoes, no biggie. Just cook them in some of the extra chicken broth on the stove until they change color, let them cool, and then use them. No reason to panic.
Number four: Put more onion than you think. I don't know why exactly, but if you feel like you might have slightly overdone it with the onion, you have put just the right amount. The onion and celery gives you get the most aroma from your pot pie, and smelling is half of the tasting.
Number five: Outsmart your oven, don't fight it. I have a cheap oven. I know that if I put a pot pie in it, the top crust will be done before the bottom crust gets really crisp. So I cook the bottom crust unfilled for about five minutes before I put in the filling. Don't do that crap where you turn the temperature up and down and battle constantly with your oven. It will never work. Just cook the crust a little beforehand. By the way, the pan will be hot, so it helps if you have bakers fingers like I have.
Well, that does it for the 2 A.M. pot pie dishing. Hope everyone has a pleasant week.
PS-The more seasoning the better. The longer you bake, the more mellow the flavors get.
]]>In related news, I will not be participating in YahooGroups until I get this cleared up with them, as they blocked my IP address.
Update- too much mail to be a prank. Definitely spammers.
Spammers: you suck. You really, really suck.
*sigh*
I think I feel violated. It was my name.com that looks like a dirty perv.
*sigh*
]]>Don't worry, though, I didn't go crazy. So far I've just reworked the main page. All the other stuff is just like it ever was. Still, I think it looks alright. Oh, and it won't matter to the majority of people, who just get updates to their RSS readers in the unlikely event that I write something.
Well, 3 AM is getting close to bedtime, so I'll be signing off. Maybe there will be an actual entry here sometime soon. *grin*
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