One positive thing that’s come out of this recent health business – not eating for almost 3 days led me to lose another 5-6 pounds. I got on the scale this morning and was 158. I cannot remember how long it has been since I weighed that much, I think I was around that weight or just over it when I graduated from high school almost 20 years ago. That completely blows my mind. Now to keep it off 😉

The latest in my seemingly endless series of health issues seems to be basically done. Here’s what happened. I woke up Monday morning feeling pretty nauseous but forced myself to eat a normal breakfast. By the time I got to work I was starting to have a bit of a stomach ache but nothing serious. I had to give a brief presentation at our staff meeting and went to get coffee before the meeting. As I started the presentation my stomach was starting to really hurt. After about halfway through I stopped sipping the coffee because I thought maybe it was causing the problem. I soldiered through the presentation but basically couldn’t wait for it to end, by the end of the meeting my stomach was absolutely killing me. I left work shortly after this.
Continue reading →

Out of the blue last night Lisa called me. I haven’t spoken to her since the night we said our goodbyes in (February? January?). Nothing too remarkable about the call really – she had heard I was looking to buy a house and she’s losing her apartment in October and wondering if I would pass the lease on my house on to her if I move out. I will if I actually manage to find a house by October. What’s funny though is this morning I woke up at like 5:30 from a nightmare. In the dream, I woke up to the sound of clanking plumbing noises and ran downstairs to find lisa on a stepladder removing plumbing from the cieling in the bathroom. Scattered around the living room, kitchen and bathroom were most of the houses plumbing in a wet dirty jumbled pile. Lisa was flustered – she climbed down off the ladder sort of apologizing….right as I woke up.

What the hell that meant I have no idea. Too frigging wierd aye?

So…I’m not a praying kind of guy. But my sister’s beloved dog is critically ill. Kirsten is very attached to her and so it follows that she’s pretty upset about it. If you can spare a moment of your day to offer up a positive thought or two for the poor poot, please do.

They’re not sure what’s wrong with the dog. It’s some kind of bacterial infection, possibly (probably?) attacking her heart. Apparantly the dog has a 50/50 shot at making it at this point. She’s only about 7 so hopefully her constitution is still strong enough to help her pull through. I have to admit that I didn’t like the poot when she was a puppy, but she’s mellowed as she’s aged and I like her well enough now. Keep your fingers crossed, if we’re lucky she’ll be giving me cat turd kisses this weekend 😉

(don’t ask)

Check this out. Are you sick of the same endless drivel on your radio? Have you heard the same Aerosmith tune 3 times on 2 different stations during your morning commute? Do you wish you could wander in to the ClearChannel world headquarters and pummel the fuckwit executives responsible for the mess that is commercial radio? This project may appeal to you. There’s a slight ‘loophole’ in FCC regulations about radio broadcasts that allows anyone, without a license, to broadcast FM Radio from their homes, provided it is at .01 watts/200 foot radius restricted. What good is that you ask? Well, if you apply the same mesh network principles that activists are using to provide free internet access over 802.11 networks in urban areas, you can build a radio mesh network from these .01 watt microtransmitters, thus bringing fresh radio to the huddled masses who crave something beyond 24×7 Brittany. And it’s very cheap to do, $40 or so and even less if you’re handy with a soldering iron.

Is this a practical idea? Ha! Still, I love it. Anything that tweaks Clearchannel is ok in my book. Of course if this project achieves anything near minor success you will see the FCC fall all over itself to amend the laws that govern personal transmitters.

It’s Friday so it’s time for a fun and completely useless link. Today we’ve got cool fonts that look like people for your computer. Ever wanted to punctuate a sentence with a superhero throwing a punch for an exclamation point? Now you can 😉

As most of you probably know, the layout of the QWERTYUIOP keyboards 99% of the eastern world uses were designed with the keylayout they have because of a need to keep the original manual typewriters from jamming and not from a usability standpoint. Those of us who are not accomplished touch-typists would probably agree that the layout is not the best. There have been attempts to modernize the design of keyboard, with approaches like the Dvorak layout and novel approaches like the vertical layout and the chording keypad. I’ve investigated most of these at one time or another (ok, aside from the vertical one) and am still interested in a better way to get text into the computer. I found a new one today, the frogpad. The basic premise is similar to the dvorak keyboard – make the layout based on your finger’s proximity to the most frequently used letters in us english, but it also combines aspects of the chording keyboards in that some characters require the press of more than one key.

I’m interested enough in this one to want to try it. The one downside with all of these though is price – since no one buys these solutions in significant numbers, they cost $$$, most of them cost more than $150 and some are as high as $250. Now I’ll confess, I once dropped $150 on an Apple Extended (the old, excellent model) but I don’t want to drop so much cash on a Frogpad without being able to try it first, so I’m stuck with keyboard envy and the hope I run across one of these on someone’s desk. Anyone else using a novel keyboard?

Nobody, and I mean nobody, seems able to remember my domain name. I don’t see what the problem is, but I’m so immersed in net culture I guess it just comes easier to me. So….I need to get a domain name. What do you folks think of:

obbie-chops.com [from infamous story when I was but a lad]
the-dave-cave.com [from when I had the coolest rec-room on the east coast, in a basement. Ok, I’m exagerating maybe a little. But it was cool!]

Those are my two leading candidates. Do you have a clever suggestion of your own? You can look it up to see if it’s available here:

swhois.com

Silicon solar cells have been making steady performance gains for the roughly 20 years I’ve been paying attention. I first got interested during the oil crisis in the 70’s and have paid at least passing attention to them ever since. To this day the issue that keeps them from achieving mainstream usage is that they are more expensive than the power they generate in all but the sunniest of climes, and even there it’s more like a break-even at best proposition.

It’s looking hopeful that things are about to take a really positrive turn. Scientists recently made some advances in material sciences that should lead to solar cells at least twice as effective at converting sunlight into electricity. The remaining key issue is how much will they cost to manufacture – if they can maintain current cost levels or even reduce them, this is extremely positive news. Who knows, we might all have a solar cell roof in 10 years of this all pans out.

Keep your fingers crossed.

You know, if it wasn’t for the boxing on Saturday nights I think I would have cancelled my HBO by now. I catch the first run movies before they show up on Saturday nights, and since the last new episode of Larry David ran I haven’t been watching their Sunday night lineup. I don’t care for Six Feet Under and everything else has been re-runs. But last Saturday the new season of The Wire began and I was solidly reminded of why I like HBO so much. The Wire’s new season has started out just as good as the first season – on location shooting, excellent acting from a large cast, and absolutely first rate writing. This is tv for adults, none of this brain dead lowest common denominator pap they spew out on the regular broadcast networks. The first season must be out on DVD by now; if you never caught it it’s well worth checking out. It’s a self contained season as well – there’s a story arc that completes by the end of the season.

Anyway if you do have HBO, no excuses, check out The Wire, if you like intelligent drama you’ll almost definitely enjoy it.