CFL lights

A friend recently blogged on Compact fluorescent lights and how much better they are (Green etc). I have purchased them in the past. In my case I found they cost alot more and lasted a very short period of time. Of the six pack I got (sylvania brand) only one is still working after six months.

Then I am reading how you need to take pains to dispose of them. (http://www.earth911.org)
Seems they have to be crushed in a negative vacuume environment with mercury screens.

Next we read that there are a lot of bulbs out there that have no safety rating on them.

Finally if you accidently drop one the EPA recommends the following:
EPA recommends the following clean-up and disposal guidelines:
1. Open a window and leave the room (restrict access) for at least 15 minutes.

2. Remove all materials you can without using a vacuum cleaner.-- Wear disposable rubber gloves, if available (do not use your bare hands)-- Carefully scoop up the fragments and powder with stiff paper or cardboard.-- Wipe the area clean with a damp paper towel or disposable wet wipe.-- Sticky tape (such as duct tape) can be used to pick up small pieces and powder.

3. Place all cleanup materials in a plastic bag and seal it.-- If your state permits you to put used or broken CFLs in the garbage, seal the CFL in two plastic bags and put into the outside trash (if no other disposal or recycling options are available).-- Wash your hands after disposing of the bag.

4. More-- The first time you vacuum the area where the bulb was broken, remove the vacuum bag once done cleaning the area (or empty and wipe the canister) and put the bag and/or vacuum debris, as well as the cleaning materials, in two sealed plastic bags in the outdoor trash or protected outdoor location for normal disposal.

YIKES!!! no more 'be careful of bare feet". Or you can even look at this poor lady. And figure you might be shelling out $2,004.28 for a blub.

Looks like your 'safer' with those LED light blubs. Although, I still need to check into those.

Online Fun and Games

I really enjoy the MMORPG genre. It is fun and costs less then some other game habits. I enjoy that they are ongoing and you do get chat with people all over the world. I also like some of the funny situations that occur.

Running a person accidentally off a cliff

Having your pet wander off only to come back with half of the denizens of the dungeon chasing him.

Winning a duel by someone jumping to thier death.

Asking an innocent question in such a manner that its meaning is innunedo.

That moment when someone realizses they made a terminal error. Like attacking a giant with a dagger.

Cumputer blu's (part deux)

After the last OS crash I installed a 2nd hard drive in my wifes system. I loaded the OS on that and set up Connor with a limited access account. I lowered his internet access and restricted the XP log-in account as well. I even put in a simpler interface and had on ly his icons.

Somehow with this in place he was able to get an unrecoverable error....

So I had to re-re-load the OS on saturday. It went much quicker this time.

I clamped down his access even more. I think my error came in the form of the kodak software icon in the lower right corner. It would throw up error messages due to his limited access. I am going to lock him down even further and move the kodak from all users to just tina.

Also, I got the icons down there perm hid.

Lets see him break THAT!!

How the Dance began

Ogre took me by suprise.

Money $$$

There are two people I trust with my money. First is my wife, I come a close second. I trust my better half so much that when dating I gave her a credit card of mine, this is generally a pretty stupid thing to do. Luckily she is more fiscally responsible then I am (except, for a water filter incident).

We have been fairly busy and gotten a couple of days behind in looking in the mailed letters of the people who want us to pay them back (read Credit Card companys). We have been paying off the balance and avoiding the sometimes stupidly high rates they charge for using thier money. The current card was due today and we needed to assess if we could avoid the stupidly high rate by paying it off.

Now then I do not trust Quicken either so I actually keep two sets of books for our main account. One that Quicken handles and one that I handle. This works for my peace of mind but sometimes something crops up that just requires time to look through and fix.

Last week I noted a wider then usual discrepancy between my two sets of books. So I could have delved into the accounts and seen where the problem(s) are or wait for the statement and use that as a starting point. I got the statement and had planned on delving this week.

With the stupidly high charge nigh, I had to do the delving this AM before work. It took an hour and 15min but I found and resolved the issues and got Tina an accurate balance in which we could assess and pay off the card and thus avoid the stupidly high charge.

So it was a win but made for a very busy no coffee morning..

Time Passages

Recently RBG posted a pict of his family on a recent vacation. As I expanded the picture I was wondering who that guy on the left was, must be an extended family member or something.

Then it hit me that it was my childhood chum himself. While planet revolutions and rotations mark the passage of time, the mind tends to freeze images in the state of last observation or preferred observation.

My mind see's my friends as they were .vs. as they are dispite that nearly 20 years have passed.

The Man Song (wow style)

Never heard of Bob and Tom but this was pretty dang funny. When placed with a gnome just adds to the fun.

LoTR .vs. Star Wars (Clerks II) Warning Language ahead)

If you hold Lord of the Rings in your mind as diety you may not want to watch this. Warning-heavy colorful metaphors in use.

Back in Action

Got Tina a new Hard Drive for her computer, then re-loaded her OS.

Connor whom I suspect aided in the corruption of whatever files that go corrupted is now set up with a limited use account on Tina's system. He seems to have taken to the new interface quite nicely.

only a small glitch in the setup when the CPU fan had become unplugged. Other then that, we are up and rolling with more storage then ever!!

Computer blues

Okay, so I get my new system. It's great works awesome. You should see my DivX copy of Torchwood on it! I had to figure out the damn sound card for teamspeak. Got that done by serendipity.

Now my wifes system is locking up. Add to that one of my kids 'decided' to reboot the system during a windows update.

So, playing with new system hat comes off and IT tech hat goes on.

Booted to safe mode, ran anti-vi, found boot sector issue. Booted to recovery console ran good ole chkdsk /p and repaired. Rebooted. System was running more stable but going on a web browser would crash.

I have IE.7 and could not figure out how to run recovery. Looked it up at MS.com and found the instructions (It was pretty much what I guessed). Nice to have that confirmation.

Now I just need to go try it and see if that resolves the issue. If not I may need to re-load the OS.

Final System Operational

Got my system from UPS last night. The box is frigging huge! And over 70 lbs.

I had taken time on Sunday and Monday to move all the needed files over to various family USB memory keys. Got the case upgraded the Ram moved the components from the old system (left running on our local network).

Then after all the updates etc. I pulled WoW directly across the network. Turns out that WoW has no registry entries so it just runs no problem. This saved me about 10 hours of downloads.

Pulled off the bloatware. Installed the software. More updates etc.

Ready to roll! Fired up WoW and maxed out the graphics. Worked like a champ! Not sure where teamspeak hid its settings but I have to re-enter those.

Code Name: Big Red Kitty is online!

Leftist thought control

I really enjoy David Limbaughs writings. I find he echo's quite a bit of my personal viewpoints and makes some rather pointed observations.

This quote: "Increasingly, from the left's perspective, there is just one acceptable viewpoint. " Rings so true.

Great read to share: Link to artical

Torchwood

Sci-Fi show set in England (made by the BBC). It's a X-files, tiny bit CSI Law & Order. Set in Cardiff England lead by an Immortal. Searching out alien artifacts and implimenting them for the defense of the earth.

Tough to find here in the US but well worth watching. Oh, be prepared for it being an 'R' rating.

Coolest video I have seen in awhile

Musical Mime


Watch Video

An excellent mime performance to one of the biggest hits of the 90's. Even better when the original performer joins him on stage!

New Computer time

Finally looking to replace my old Dell Dimension 8200 system. It's been a peach but has been showing its age quite a bit as of late.

Went the complete route and I am going to send the components down the family line. The wife gets my nifty 19" Digital flat panel and speakers. My son is getting the tower. I am keeping the keyboard and mouse.

Starting off I got a 22" wide aspect Samsung monitor. Killer specs. on this. 1000:1 contrast and a 2 ms response G2G.

System I got is a Dell XPS 700. To start out with it has a 1k power supply. 1066-MHz FSB, Dual Core Processor 1.86. 250 gb SATA. X-Fi sound card 256 nvidea graphics, DVD burner.

It's an SLI compatible motherboard and has plenty of room for additional hard drives and opticals. I got 3GB ram for it and some nice Logitech speakers.

Should be really spiffy! Now to wait till it arrives.