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.

World of Warlocks.

I play MMORPG's (Massivly, Multiplayer, Online, Role, Playing, Games). Which means using my computer I can log into an internet based game along with 8-million other people and pretend to be various sword and sorcery type characters. My current MMORPG of choice is World of warcraft (WoW).

In warcraft you can choose to be Good and tolerant Hoard or Evil and imperialistic Alliance. You choose a race and Gender. Hoard are Orc's, Trolls, Blood elfs, Forsaken and Tauren, all diverse looking and vast culture differences all comming together in a wonderful melting pot. The Alliance is almost xenophobic in its options of Humans, Dwarfs, Gnomes, Night elfs, and the Deamon spawn Draenie.

You can pick from different classes of characters as well. Warriors, Paladins, Rogues, Priests, Hunters, Shaman, Mage, Druid and finally the Warlock.

Warlocks are Warlocks were mages that delved too deeply into the roots of demonic power. Consumed by a lust for dark knowledge, they've tapped into chaotic magics from beyond the world. The Burning Legion now feeds them their powers, allowing them to channel destructive energies and call upon the powerful emissaries of their demon masters.

So not generally nice people and at the same time the most popular class currently. Having one along in a group can be very advantagous. They can fulfill many different roles and aid greatly in getting people to your location.

They can also get you killed. Recently I had the chance to have a warlock in my group. There was some terran that if able to bypass would have cut some time off of our journey through a dungeon. We tried to jump to a ledge that was just out of range for us. Not for the Warlocks demon though. The creature being seperated by elevation like that meant it would have to run back to its 'master'. This pet is a blueish void walker, that is known for being a threat and having other creatures attack it. This was the case as it meandered around the dungeon. It gathered up quite a few bad guys. When I say quite a few, I mean more then 10. Possibly 20 where lead back to our group of four...

We can take on several bad guys at once, four or five? No problem. We like keeping it to three or less. In this case out manned and out gunned thanks to our warlock buddy we had one choice. Die screaming. This is called a 'wipe' in the MMORPG world.

Never trust a warlock.

Faith = I have a pretty good idea.

First off I believe in God. I also believe that the biblical writings were divinely inspired. Further I am a practicing Catholic Born and raised. Just so ya know where I am comming from.

Subject: the Supernatural. Is everything in the universe explainable by the sciences? Or will it be as our knowledge of Physical science advances?

Are there things\ideas\concepts\phenomenon that exist outside of the realm of understanding?

If everything in the universe is explainable does that leave room for a God?

Let's assume that everything is explainable and all a function of various energies and chemicals. Human life itself was just a series of reactions that produced carbon based cellular constructs due to the way the universe works. In otherwords stuff happens in a cascade of reactions with no real purpose or plan. It simply is.

or

There is a pattern or order beyond our understanding that defines the scope of everything?

Cartoon Heroes - Aqua

This song came to me as part of dance dance revolution. It's a real kick:

We are what we're supposed to be
Illusions of your fantasy
All dots and lines that speak and say
What we do is what you wish to do

We are the color symphony
We do the things you wanna see
Frame by frame, to the extreme

Our friends are so unreasonable
They do the unpredictable
All dots lines that speak and say
What we do is what you wish to do

It's all an orchestra of strings
Doin' unbelievable things
Frame by frame, to the extreme
One by one, we're makin' it fun

We are the Cartoon Heroes - oh-oh-oh
We are the ones who're gonna last forever
We came out of a crazy mind - oh-oh-oh
And walked out on a piece of paper

Here comes Spiderman, arachnophobian
Welcome to the toon town party
Here comes Superman, from never-neverland
Welcome to the toon town party

We learned to run at speed of light
And to fall down from any height
It's true, but just remember that
What we do is what you just can't do

And all the worlds of craziness
A bunch of stars that's chasing us
Frame by frame, to the extreme
One by one, we're makin' it fun

We are the Cartoon Heroes - oh-oh-oh
We are the ones who're gonna last forever
We came out of a crazy mind - oh-oh-oh
And walked out on a piece of paper

Here comes Spiderman, arachnophobian
Welcome to the toon town party
Here comes Superman, from never-neverland
Welcome to the toon town party

You think we're so mysterious
Don't take us all too serious
Be original, and remember that
What we do is what you just can't do

What we do is what you just can't do
What we do is what you just can't do
What we do is what you just can't do
What we do is what you just can't do

We are the Cartoon Heroes - oh-oh-oh
We are the ones who're gonna last forever
We came out of a crazy mind - oh-oh-oh
And walked out on a piece of paper

There's still more to come
And everyone will be
Welcomed at the
Toon - Toon
Town - Town
Party

My Grandpa

My Pop's dad was a very interesting fellow. He did things his way. He lived through interesting times. Thanks to a few vacations back east and my Grandfolks heading out to visit I have quite a few fond memories and quite a few stories about them as well.

At one point in time I was in Florida experienceing humidity and swiming in lakes, trying to get the hang of shuffleboard.

I had an interest in performing magic and in talking with Grandpa he revielve that he had seen Houdini perform a straight jacket escape while suspended upsidown from a building.

Wanting a first hand account I pressed him for details. He went on saying there was a large crowd and you could barely see this guy up there squirming around like a worm on a hook then he dropped the jacket. My Grandpa was not sure what all the fuss about this guy (houdini) was.

Pretty much what you would expect from a first hand account of something...

I miss Grandpa. Shoulda talked with him more.

My mind

As I walk the two miles to work I have 30minutes to myself. So I tend to think. Having no first hand knowledge of how other peoples minds function I can only guess that mine is typical. I go from subject to subject in rapid succession. I get itdea's and store them or discard them as they get thought through.

I gain some insights into subjects, I simplify others and all in all just enjoy the tumult that goes on. Yes, if feels like I am observing my brain at work, Not sure if that makes sense to you or not.

On todays walk I jumped onto the often thunk issue of what I would do with the sudden influx of vast amounts of fundage. The thought occured to purchase homes near mine and give them to my friends, Hopefully setting up an interest bearing account to pay the property tax...

Anyways, having Shoo and Robert as close neighbors has a lot of appeal to me. And nostalgia. The families interacting would be a hoot and just being able to sit around talking over dinner or such would be a blast. Seeing as how I was the one that moved away from where they live I guess its some kind of compensation.

Then my mind goes into the situation from the viewpoint that Rob and Shoo are not just single guys, they are family men with wives and kids. Now I LOVE living in a smaller city (27k). I like the slower pace of life and the sheer amount of nature that we have around us. My question is how thier families would react if suddenly moved into this place. The shopping here is statistically nil compared to the OC. The venues for entertainment as well (we have two movie theaters or 11 screens). Companies here are 'different' as well. Most places dont have employees leave for two weeks to hunt Elk. The schools would be a dramatic change for the kids. There is a lack of diversity but a greater acceptence of people.