More pics up

Also, more pictures up at Flikr, including Christmas pics.

Matt's Right...

After spending two days mainly just watching Katie and doing housework, I've decided that Matt's right.

Life *is* just a more efficient means of spreading chaos.

Man, how can such a little girl mess up a room so quickly?

Leeroy Jenkins

What: The famous (among geeks) Leeroy Jenkins video Summary: Leeroy Jenkins ignores his parties detailed battle plans, choosing instead to use the "Damn the torpedos! Full speed ahead!" approach. His flabberghasted party has no choice but to follow, finding themselves in a horrible situation. Why I'm Posting it: George W. Bush is Leeroy Jenkins. (See my "Stared Items" for a link to a link to the person who made that connection.

Late to the Digital Music Party

Up until very recently I have to admit I didn't get it. I didn't understand all the fuss about having your music in MP3 format or something similiar. While Matt was eating up terabytes on his "music server", I was happily still listening to my music primarily on CDs.

My problem at home was that I'm not sitting in front of my laptop enough to justify ripping my music and listening to it there. Typically when I did want to listen to music it was easiest to either turn on the radio (either the in the car or at home), or pop in a CD (again, works in either). Vicki and I had a travel pack that holds about two dozen CDs or so always at the ready.

As iPods got incredibly popular a few years back, I did start to feel like I was missing out on something. Then when the Shuffle became available for $99, I felt like it was a good time to jump in. I asked Vicki for one my birthday. Instead of an iPod Shuffle, she got me a really nice "Skullcandy" MP3 player with a built-in FM tuner and something like 512MB of flash. I had just started dabbling with ripping my CDs to MP3 and putting it on this player when disaster stuck and I left the little bugger on the bus.

I was so mad at myself I swore I was unworthy to carry one.

Then at some point, Matt was praising Last.fm to me. I checked it out and it was really nice, but I reminded myself of all the above reasons why I didn't keep my personal music collection in magnetic format.

Then this last Christmas, I got a couple of CDs that I enjoyed. One day I got the idea to take them to work and rip them to my work computer so I could listen to them at work without carrying them back and forth. That worked so well pretty soon I was raiding my old CD collections for an assortment of music to match up with any mood I was in at work. I now have almost 1GB of mp3's on my work computer, and it's growing quick.

It's great - I can choose a particular artist and just listen to his music. Or I can choose a genre. Or just a random shuffle. Spin my own radio station according to my current whim, all without commercials. Hmmm... hasn't Matt been trying to convince me of this for like 10 years or something?

Of course now the next problem is that my music is all stored on my work laptop. I was just thinking how great it would be to put them on a portable USB drive that I could use at work, or plug into my Xbox 360 for playing during games, or even my home laptop if so inclined. But then what if I wanted to listen to it on the go? And sure enough, I find myself thinking that what I really needed was a nice big iPod or Zune that would function as both MP3 player and USB drive with multi-gig storage.

Yup, the problem with all this stuff is that it always makes you want to buy more things you really don't need. Boy, marketing plus convenience does add up to a consumeristic society, doesn't it?

Presidential Signing Statements

I don't know if I've written about this before, but it's definitely something I've been concerned about for a while.

President Bush has used executive signing statements more than all the other Presidents combined, and has used it in essence to rewrite portions of the law that Congress has passed. His latest, has caught the attention of many for it's similiarities to the domestic spying program that has many civil rights guardians on edge.

Here's the story on NPR.And a summary from it:

Bush has issued at least 750 signing statements during his presidency, more than all other presidents combined, according to the American Bar Association.

Typically, presidents have used signing statements for such purposes as instructing executive agencies how to carry out new laws.

Bush's statements often reserve the right to revise, interpret or disregard laws on national security and constitutional grounds.

"That non-veto hamstrings Congress because Congress cannot respond to a signing statement," ABA President Michael Greco has said. The practice, he has added, "is harming the separation of powers."

New Pics Up!

Here are some pictures I took in the earlier part of Decemeber - Christmas preparations! A keen eye will spot the picture we used for our Christmas cards this year. More to come soon.

Flickr Dec 2006 Album

All my Flickr photos

Blog 2006 Review

March – 4 entries
While I technically created my blog back in October 2005, I really didn’t start blogging until my birthday March 20th. A fact that I totally don’t remember, and that seems odd to me. Oh well, not the first time I’ve forgotten something. Ironically, on the same day, I wrote about a woman who never forgets anything.

I promised to blog more often (limited success) and to post pictures online more often (horrible failure).

April – 5 entries
In April I wrote a little bit about what I think is cool on the Internet, and what having everything iin our lives in digital format means for the future. The silence was deafening. The real highlight of the month was Katie’s 1st Birthday,

May – 7 entries
In my opinion, I did some of my better writing this month. Main highlights worth noting was Vicki and I celebrated our 10th Anniversary and our first “Parent’s Retreat.”

June – 3 entries, 2 on one day.
Busy month, I guess. I believe this is the month we attended a wedding with Katie as well.

July – 2 entries.
Hmmm – busy summer? One of the entries should have been pretty cool, but I really needed to spend more time working on it. Matt and I had a pretty discussion on it afterwards via IM that I ended up posting in the comments. The second entry? Oh, just a short note that I had finally uploaded some pictures.

August – 2 entries
Ahhh – a content packed month. The infamous “blove” entry and another message that I had managed to upload more pictures – two months in a row! I haven’t posted any online since.

September – 7 entries
My best month since May in terms of both quantity and quality: the Katie wedding vow “oh-oh” story, my commentary on the 9/11 anniversary, Katie’s first steps, and a cute little story about me cutting down a tree, among other things.

October – 1 entry
My inner child was ranting. Vicki finally shut it up two months later.

November – 3 entries
In contrast I talked a little about enjoying growing up. Then some gibberish, and feelings of geek inadequateness.

December – 2 entries
A simple reposting of a YouTube video, and a single post that covered resolving the inner child crisis, the joy of Christmas through Katie’s eyes, and well wishes for my loved ones.

Total entries (being generous) – 36 over a 40 week period.
Not very good. I’m making my goal for 2007 to post at least one good entry per week (not just a “Check out this YouTube video!” link) and also to post my pictures monthly.

There: it’s in writing. You can hold me to it.