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10月27日 Scooby Doo Zombie FighterOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2009/10/27/scooby-doo-zombie-fighter/
Found this via a Boing Boing Post — http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/onp-hU6L814/zombiescooby-doo-mas.html The original is located here — http://www.flickr.com/photos/zom-bot/3919819005/ 10月22日 A Series of Tubes - Does It Ever Get Not Funny?Ted Stevens infamous speech from 2006 describing the Internet, and obviously failing badly. We all knew the Internet was not a big truck, we also know that the tubes.…er Internet does not get clogged in a fashion that can be cleaned with Draino. …sigh… Poor Ted, I didn’t think things would ever get much worse, but then there was that huge kickback scandal. So does “A Series of Tubes” get tired as a meme, or is it still alive and kicking. You decide. 10月2日 Photos For Memory Enhancement
I was going through and organizing my flickr photo’s and looking at quite a few of the pictures of when I was growing up. I was saying to myself during different times “that was the day that such and such happen”. Now photographs have always been a doorway into our past, a visual representation that can spell things out better then our own memory can sometimes. It can also jog our thoughts and remember that specific with better clarity then what you can describe with the written or vocal. So how many pictures would it take to give yourself a near representative photographic memory? This is the question that I’ve posed to myself.
We throw out things like sitting by yourself watching TV or staring at a computer monitor and there goes a few hours of the (for argument and since I’m an IT guy) we’ll say that eats up 9 hours of a weekday. If you keep all your emails you’ll recover most those days anyway if you are so interested. That leaves 5 hours left in the day, if we say you take a picture of the right key moments every 15 minutes – that leaves you with 20 pictures of that day. Would those 20 pictures be enough to remind you of that specific day for the rest of your life? What if you did this every day? Would you be able to remember your life completely from your earliest memories until the end? Going back earlier then age 4 the memories are mostly lost in the time of age. I think though at age 4 and up I remember most the days and circumstances that pictures were taken (with the exception of school and studio pictures).
Now other people are doing this to some extent, some are using video and some are blogging about it. Both of these I think are inefficient. Looking through hours of video to find a moment takes just that, hours to search through. Even a blog or diary will take a little bit to search through posts and narrow down what you are looking for. 20 pictures, you can take only a few seconds and see all of them which may or may not give you a quick reminder. Pictures give you that primal visual connection without the wasted time. It’s something for you, while videos would be for others and writing it down would just be muddy. The only problem I could see that has not been tested, how long and how unique memories can you handle? So would you being willing to do this? What is your memory and your ability to recall worth to you? 10月1日 Scorpy Goes Down To Georgia Farscape Music VideoI don’t do enough shout outs to Farscape, and it’s my second favorite sci-fi series of all time (Star Wars always wins). So enjoy the video I found while browsing YouTube. Looking Forward To The Weekend
I’m not sure what is happening this weekend (other then Alumni Band practice Saturday morning), but I’m ready for it to get here. I obviously won’t sleep in on Saturday, but I’ll be able to sneak up to Vermilion early and get breakfast at McDonald’s before an Alumni Band event. It’s my yearly tradition. I’m assuming I’ll also be doing some work on the house, I still have stuff to clean up from the paint job last weekend. All I know is I’m tired and I’m worn out. I’m looking forward to this upcoming weekend. 9月29日 100 Greatest Hits From YouTube in Four MinutesFor the meme loving but attention deficient netizens across the globe, Dvorak Uncensored had this recent post to a YouTube video that I thought I would share. Enjoy! 9月28日 Over The WeekendOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2009/09/28/over-the-weekend/
Weekend was long and short at the same time. Essentially there was a lot and very little was accomplished. Friday night we picked up paint to redo one of our rooms. Xie assumed this was going to be a quick adventure that would be over in a couple hours. It lasted over 12 hours all things considered. There are still some spots that need some touch-up work, and I need to sand down and stain the trim. So there is more touch ups to do, but two coats of paint are up on the walls. Other highlights of the weekend:
A weekend full of a whole lot of nothing that was taken up by painting. Blog Has New LookOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2009/09/24/blog-has-new-look/
I’ve spent the last few days picking and plodding over the blog. I actually made a few posts also. Heck I’ve posted on my sons blog more then I have my own the last few months. Part of this is laziness, the other part is wondering what to write. I have a few segments I need to write out and take to conclusion, maybe that’s part of the nagging. I do need to get those done in the next 2 weeks. I have deadlines that some are not even aware of. I’ve wanted a clean blog template for awhile and the one I’m currently trying on is close, closer (while maintaining a work functionality that doesn’t cause me to redo all my posts) then anything else I’ve dealt with so far. I have decided a new thing. I’m not going to worry about the long winded posts, I’m not going to worry about the topic. I’m going to use my blog to not just do posts, but to showcase videos and pictures. In a way I already do that, but normally I have more behind something then just posting a unique picture. Normally I offer commentary, or at least some more of myself to the blogosphere. I think I take too serious sometimes. That everything has to actually mean something. It doesn’t. Like life and the things around us, things can be fun an empty instead of serious and deep. Things don’t always have to make you ponder something. It helps that the spammers writing on topic are my biggest commentors these days. I get a faux interaction with the community, but I’m not speaking to a specific audience. I’m not even sure who my audience is any more. It’s been a long strange year so far. The baby being born definitely changed things, but like band, I need to do this for me. If I don’t leave my mark for him to read someday in the future, then I’ll always be grumpy dad. The guy who never understands anything. At least showing him the blog in twenty years I can point to the fact that I’ll have been through similar life experiences as him. It’s late – so far tonight I failed on my task to get a LAMP server up and running. That’s OK I’m only going to be configuring to backup my “cloud” data anyways. It can wait awhile longer. So to all those readers out there goodnight (I’m only getting to bed an hour later then I had wanted to). 9月23日 Peek A BooOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2009/09/23/peek-a-boo/
This is a mirror shot that I did a week and half ago. 6月26日 Michael Jackson Was My First Hero
When I was eight years old and the Thriller album came out, this was the first album I was completely in love with. Nothing topped it. I remember getting a pair of red parachute pants as a present and thought they were the greatest thing in the world. About a month later I had put holes in the knees of them from constantly sliding across the floor. I lusted for a few years after that to get the red jacket, but it never emerged. I would have still bought one up to a couple years ago - it was never meant to be though. I was in Greenville at my Godmother’s house and her son staying up and waiting when the Thriller video had it’s world premiere and we thought it was the greatest thing ever made. I think they aired it a few times that night and we watched it everytime - to think this was on MTV back when they actually showed music videos. Lastly I participated in Hands Across America - Michael was into it and through this chain of millions of people I would be connected with him and everyone else in the world. Even though we lived in Elyria at the time, our place in the “Hands” line was literally about 2-3 miles away from the town we would eventually move it. We were at the Ford Plant on route 6 in Lorain, which is a literal stones throw from Vermilion. I remember thinking that Michael organized the whole thing - I know better now. He was one of the prime reasons I was into it though. As I remember people were just mulling around, no one wanted to hold hands until it was time. When the correct time happened there was this line of people holding hands as far as I could see to the east and the west. It was a moment in time that struck me even at the age of ten that this was a monumental thing. Time passed and I can say any fascination with Michael passed out of my life. We’ll skip the controversy years, but slip in that I loved that he owned a monkey. Recently I heard about his gearing up for the London concerts and was hoping that if toured the states that I would get a chance to see him. He is a concert I would have paid 100-200 to see. To capture a bit of that childhood - the memories of the parachute pants and never getting moonwalking down. Some people have gone so far to say he is our generations Elvis or Lennon. I may give him Elvis, but he was no Lennon. Either way he was a larger then life superstar that did have an impact on me, and it will be with me for the rest of my own life. 6月18日 VCMA Is Performing At The Vermilion Fish Festival SaturdayOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2009/06/18/vcma-is-performing-at-the-vermilion-fish-festival-saturday/  This Saturday (6/12/09) the VCMA Community Band is performing at the Vermilion Fish Festival at 3:00PM at the main (only?) stage. Come on down, listen to some music, and say hi. 5月12日 Back To The BlogOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2009/05/12/back-to-the-blog/
Back to the blog. It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything (56 days since my last post), and that’s quite a bit for someone that was doing multiple posts a day. My lifestream shows I was doing something online, but nothing with the blog. I did apply for a blogging position with Geekdad (since I now qualify) when they had an open invitation for any and all to sign up. I did not make the cut, since it was a non paying position there wasn’t much I really lost, but I did get my hopes up. I still have to write about Lex’s time in the hospital. I have other projects that I’ve done that I need to write about, so much writing to do and so little time. My wife who only writes once in a blue moon beat me to writing about the birth experience. She was sure I was going to get it done first, but time and effort One thing I have noticed is that the longer you go without writing the easier it is. You can say well I have written this long, what is one more day - then it’s one more week. What was planned to be two-three weeks turned into just about two months. I have been doing emails, responding on Facebook and Twitter, and other low time (and creative) investment activities. Being lazy is way too easy. It also makes me understand the other side of the coin. Xie has asked me many times how I have so much to write about. I always responded that once you get in the forced habit of spending time and effort in putting something down it becomes routine and it’s easy to do. You can pick up stories that you remember or just inane chatter that gives you practice in writing. It’s the practice that makes you better and gives you the stories that really stand out. It goes the other way too I’ve found out. Without getting deep into the habit ofregularly writing it becomes a struggle. Heck this post alone has been almost 3 weeks in the making and went through different revisions. In the end I scrapped everything I had written before and going through the grueling task of getting something out there. I never thought that taking a break would lead to this. I have had a mountain of things to write about, concerning the baby, concerning politics, concerning technology, etc. etc. The problem was taking the time to get it down on the screen. The cop out answer for all of this is the birth of the baby. That really isn’t a good excuse since I learned I can pound out a 500 word essay in 12 minutes. I could have easily written something in that great span of 56 days, heck a good portion of my posts are not even 500 words long, so under a ten minute sneak here or there would have gotten the job done. I am extremely busy because of the baby, both directly and indirectly but if I have time to watch a video - I have time to pound out a blog post. What is what it’s going to be for awhile. What does this mean though? Well first don’t expect multiple posts a day for at least a couple months from me. I don’t have the time to write drafts for future publishing, so I can’t queue up enough to get a weeks straight of posts done. I have some plans for that, and there is going to be some possibly uninteresting writing ahead. One of the things that may turn out boring (or awesome) is that I’ll work through all the Plinky prompts I’ve been ignoring. I subscribed to their feed for writing inspiration, but the questions never really felt like they fit in the tone of the blog, well they do now. Motivation is weak and to get back in the swing of things, this what I have to do. The most interesting thing I’ve noticed is that while my RSS feed has had a bit of a falling off of subscribers, my normal web hits are only down 20-30%. I guess I’ve written enough stuff that Google has indexed that has been deemed hit worthy. That at least makes me happy, or you guys just miss me so much that you are reading my old stuff over and over again (I guess you like to torture yourself). I’m getting into ramble mode now, while good for my writing - it’s bad for a coherent post. I’ll stop. My toes are dipping back into the water and I’m sure I’ll be swimming like a fish again in no time.
3月17日 Taking A Net BreakOriginal URL: http://creeva.com/2009/03/17/taking-a-net-break/
I took a week off after the baby, I worked a week from home, and now I’m back to work. You would think in that time I would have had time to write something. That I have so much going on that I should be sharing and contributing, giving you information - either the mundane, interesting, or where you think I am on crack. I do have ideas, just little effort right now. You could say that my energies are directed at other things, but it’s not really that. It was only yesterday that I caught up on e-mail from over two weeks ago. I did manage in the last week to catch back up on my RSS feeds (that was a huge pain and some feeds I just did the blanket mark as read). So right now I’m taking the rest of the month off. Yes you may see some twitter comments here or there, you may see me comment somewhere. This is me digesting information. Looking into the reflection pond of the interwebs and seeing what echos back. I do plan on next month gearing back up to speed. I do hope to do some writing in what is left in this month, but anything I do write will more then likely get put off from being published until next month. Of course if there is an “OMG WTF” event I may still do an article. Alone getting this out for now is just enough. It is enough effort so no one thinks I’ve vanished. It is enough effort to make it to completion. It is enough to reach out ot the community that follows and interacts with me. I’ll see you in two weeks.
2月26日 LeVar Burton, The Internet's Latest Superstar
Image from here Outside of Star Trek LeVar Burton has not done much acting in the last 10 years. One thing that he did keep going until the last couple years was Reading Rainbow, a show myself and my siblings all grew up with. I’m kind of disappointed hearing that it is gone, on the cusp of my child being born any day now, he won’t be able ot the experience I had growing up with the show. Between Star Trek: The Next Generation and reading rainbow is where I (like most geeks) have had my exposure to LeVar Burton. He is the guy you recognize and want to see things from, but has kind of disappeared from the spotlight. Well he is back, he has embraced the internet revolution (is it really a revolution still??) and in the last few months has shown up everywhere. Since I’m not sure where it started, I’ll give my details as I noticed his latest new fame. It all started when he popped up on an episode of Diggnation: When I saw this clip show up on Digg I just had to track it down later when I was at home and watch it. I would say it gave me chills, but that is the wrong word for it. It was exciting, refreshing and took me back to being an eight year old kid watching Reading Rainbow in the first few seasons. Then he popped up on Twitter and I immediately followed him. He is currently (among other things) covering his struggle to stay a non-smoker, something that I’m going to have to fight myself very soon when my child is born. Most recently as I was catching up on my back episodes of This Week in Tech, behold LeVar shows up there. Wil Wheaton has managed to talk his friends over ot the medium he has done so well at in the recent years. LeVar has shown that this level of internet stardom is not unique to a single Star Trek star. Here is wishing you luck LeVar and I’ll keep reading your blog. I’m hoping Brent Spiner manages to leverage this as well as you. 2月23日 Car Shopping Over The Weekend
With the imminent (meaning any second now I may have to be speeding to the hospital) the baby, we needed to get a baby friendly car. I’m not getting rid of the Miata, and I don’t want any more car payments - so used it is. I would say online we’ve gone through a few hundred cars, we’ve gone out and looked at about 20 or so cars, and so far we’ve test driven 1. We did quite a bit of looking yesterday, and all the dealerships were closed, so no test drive.
The one car we did test was a 2000 Buick Lesabre (or is that LeSabre or Le Sabre?) (similar to the picture above) anyways the ride was great in it. To give you a brief background, we did background research on things that can go wrong with the car and what to look for. One of the major problems with the 2000-2005 Lesabre’s seems to be window regulator motors. Many people online have complained that these fail quite often and some people have had to replace all of them multiple times. This was one of the things I knew I had to check out for. The dealership we test drove from has a mechanic’s inspection of all cars (since they are trade-in’s at their main new car lot). The salesperson set us down and discussed the issues they had found with the car before we took it for a spin. The only thing somewhat major that he mentioned (and stuck with me) was that the rotors would need to be replaced soon. He scanned my driver’s license, made sure the car started and handed it off to me. It ran strong with 109k miles on it, then the problems started creeping in. Problem number one when entering the car, the driver’s side seatbelt wouldn’t latch. It seems it got stuck in the locked position and wouldn’t relatch or open at all. I even got out of the car trying to jury rig this to work. Nothing, no way - so I got to break the law by driving without a seatbelt (ok I’m not the biggest wearer of seatbelt’s - but I expect them to work when I do). Getting down the road, the pick up was good and the ride comfort was great. We parked at a local mall so I could find a dry area where I could look to see how much rust was underneath the car (got to love Ohio). We popped the trunk open and it seems that the one of the motor mounts was probably going to go within a year or so since there was unnecessary movement in the engine when the car was sitting still and idling. The next thing I checked was the rear windows - they didn’t budge. This didn’t bother me too much, since they were stuck in the up position I could replace the motors at 49.95 a pop (aftermarket) in the spring. I could also get them done at the dealership for 500-600 (not something I would like t0 do). The driver’s window worked perfectly fine. We then tried the front passenger’s window. It went down, but never came back up. So at this point, that was all she wrote for this car. We drove back a couple miles in the middle of an Ohio winter with the passenger side window down (at least the heating in the car was good). I told the salesman about the windows and he acted like he didn’t believe me. He attempted to lower the rear windows and blamed the switch on the driver’s side door (it wasn’t the switch). He managed to lower the rear driver’s side window about an inch and then it gave up. He didn’t manage to get the passenger side window up at all. He then went on about the great ride a buick has, and I agreed as we shuffled away.
Later today Xie is supposed to be test driving a Cadillac similar ot the picture above. We’ll see how that works out. 2月19日 A New Blog - Maybe?Original URL: http://creeva.com/2009/02/19/a-new-blog-maybe/
Don’t be fooled by the title - Creeva.com is going nowhere, nowhere now, nowhere tomorrow. Maybe in 2070 however, things will be re-evaluated and it will no longer exist. I just sent out an idea about a new blog (the only hint I can give you is think disco, but without the suck) to two people I’ve wanted to collaborate with. Along with this blog comes a podcast. Since this would be easier for me to do with the participants, this may open up to do a second podcast with someone I used to work with. Logistical issues takes me to do this project first (though I really want to do the other podcast). I’m not sure I even have a podcast voice - so it all may just fall flat on its face right there. We’ll see the feedback I get from the two I’ve e-mailed and go from there- I’m so bad at reporting. I haven’t given you a single who, only a vague what, and there is no where. I’ll keep everyone updated though with less vagueness (maybe) as we go forward. 2月18日 What's For Lunch Today?Original URL: http://creeva.com/2009/02/18/whats-for-lunch-today/
Of course while I chew I have nothing better to do then upload pictures of what I am eating (actually I’m running reports in the background). So here is what I am having for lunch today.
A salami sandwich on some sort of healthy bread from Trader Joe’s (I didn’t pick the bread I prefer white bread)
Here I have some Dill Mustard from Grandpa’s Cheese Barn
Dill mustard, please meet mister sandwich - of course the contrast in this image makes the mustard look really nasty (it isn’t).
Add in some Low-Fat Cheezits
For desert a Little Debbie Nutty Buddy.
I have this if I need a snack later…
And to wash it all down with. |
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