miscellany category archive

The “History” of Storms

We had some severe thunderstorms move through the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area yesterday afternoon that pelted my house with marble-sized hail. (There were reports of “tennis ball” hail in the area, although the largest I saw on the news was closer to “golf ball.”)

I heard sirens and along with the rattle of chunks of ice raining hard against the windows upstairs, I decided I better wake up my 16-month-old daughter from her nap and head to the basement with the dog and whatever cats I could collect along the way. (My wife was at work.)

By the time I got down there and logged in to an old computer to check the radar, the heavy stuff had passed. I went up to see what TV news had to say about the whole thing, and was treated to this …

Google’s Matt Cutts Hacked!

I’ve been reading and enjoying Matt Cutts’s blog for several months now. I have some interest in the topic of SEO, which Matt writes about. I like it because Matt seems like a good guy and he shares a lot of insights in to how things work at Google.

I noticed in my feed reader (Google Reader, of course!) that he had upgraded from WordPress 2.0.x to 2.1.2 last night, and then just now saw this:

Site acting weird

My site has been acting a little slow and weird today. I checked my logs, and I’m seeing a lot of GET requests causing strange errors. Most of the requests have escaped Unicode characters, but they don’t appear valid. Sorry that the site is kinda slow; I’m going to be away from the computer until around late Monday,

…

40-year-old Choppers

We had a well-behaved snow storm here last weekend. It arrived on Saturday and left a foot of snow on the ground by Sunday morning, allowing time to dig out and for the snowplows to do their thing.

While I was out shoveling and snowblowing, I noticed some holes and unraveling seams in my old gloves. These were my Grandpa Louis’ Choppers. He died about 30 years ago, and I imagine they were at least 10 years old at that time, so these are some family relics.

I bought new liners once, and over the years I’ve stitched seams back together several times. With another storm on the way and a snow-tubing trip in the works, it seemed like a good time to sit down with needle and thread and get to …

Assorted Miscellany

I must be crazy. I just got a call from a market research firm looking for men between the ages of 18-44 to participate in a study about snacking. They would pay $75 for a 2-3 hour session. I’m a terrible snacker–probably just the kind of subject they’re looking for. Imagine being paid to snack and talk about snacks! But I turned them down. That would be selling a precious evening cheap for such a shallow end.

The days slip by and I deeply regret the neglect to which you’ve been treated here. And still tonight, I have only light fare to offer. Not that it ever gets very deep here. Well, it might get deep, but more in the way of what you’d find in a …

Turkish Star Trek

Please, forgive me another YouTube:

Turist Ömer Uzay Yolunda

Deliciously incomprehensible. The captain appears to be related to Dieter from Sprockets. Awesome transporter and phaser effects. A first class production.

It’s when I encounter things like this that I truly appreciate how great the Internet is.

And speaking of cool things, I should mention that I found it via the forum for the excellent Starship Exeter fan production.

And then I look around and see that Ömer made the rounds over a month ago. Oh, well, I guess I’m just not meant to be a breaking news blog.

In a discussion at digg, it’s pointed out that this was made in the 70s and that it is a parody. I don’t speak …

Little Tiny Baby Steps

I mentioned taking a run at the walls of GNU/Linux last weekend, but maybe it’s more like little tiny baby steps. I’m thinking about how to write about this. One of my core goals with this site is to write about my progress in this move from Windows to GNU/Linux, but in what way? Technical details? Philosophical thoughts? Angsty ramblings?

I’m stalling because again the time has passed by and I don’t have time to properly get in to my subject. But I really hate to let the blog grow cold, and want to get in the habit of posting more often for y’all. At the same time I realize these kinds of posts aren’t especially helpful.

I’ve spent time posting several comments around the web, and maybe that’s where …