Posts from — March 2003

I'm pretty surprised. No, I'm shocked. The Rangers are above .500 so far this season. Better yet, they're leading the AL West! YAHOOTIE!

Bringing me back to Earth is the realization that they've only played one game this year. The little red shoes spoiled the Angels home opener last night 6-3. A-Rod went yard and Juando showed he is definitely in the condo.

What does all this mean for the Rangers? Nothing. There are 162 games and you have to play all of 'em. It's just nice to think that there is no way that can lose 'em all now. I'm sure Merrin and I will make a couple of trips out to the Temple this year. We always do regardless of the record.

But, hey, a win's a win and (for today anyway) the first-place Rangers are undefeated!

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At least one new skin is coming soon (perhaps later this morning). If you want to take part in all the fun, please be sure to reset your skin preference. If you don't like it, you can always choose a different design by here.

ACT NOW:
OK, Kev. You talked me into it. I'm clicking here to reset my skin preference.

**UPDATE**
The new skin may be a skin revision. I have a love/hate with one of them. We'll see.

**UPDATE**
The "Hello My Name Is…" skin has been updated and is now the new default. I've implemented some layers into the menuing so it should be a cleaner layout for everyone. Tested with several versions of IE, Netscape, & Moz for Windows. If you Opera users or Mac folks spot a problem, please let me know. Thanks!

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The fact that the laundry room currently smells like an overly chlorinated indoor pool reminds me of the fact that I need to pay more attention when adding Clorox to the wash. I've done my own laundry for years, but I still seem to have this difficulty in guestimating the proper amount of liquid bleach to use. Hopefully Merrin's delicates will all come out OK. :wink

But certain smells (accidental or not) seem to unlock chapters in my mental history book and today is no different. Thanks to my daliance with scorching holes in my socks, I'm reminded today of my first experience with an indoor pool. As a very young boy, my family was spending the weekend in Cincinnati, Ohio (or at least I remember it as being Cincinnati!). We stayed at a Holiday Inn and it had a Holidome indoor pool & recreation area. Basically it was a big indoor pool surrounded by a lot of Astroturf with a putt-putt area and a bar. It may not seem like much, but to my brother and I, we were in heaven!

So the almost overwhelming smell of chlorine always takes me back to that weekend when we could swim indoors despite the miserable Cincinnati weather and play putt-putt all day for free! It wasn't all milk & honey, though. That was also the weekend that I made first contact with little people…err…dwarves…err…midgets…err…the vertically challenged. Neither my brother nor I had any previous experience with dwarves. (note: I'm not trying to be offensive here. I confess that I do not know the current PC term. Apologies all around.)

My brother and I were shocked and probably a little scared to find out that there was a Little Person Convention taking place at the Holidome. I don't recall having ever met a dwarf before that day, let alone the hundred or so conference attendees. I can specifically remember my mom explaining to my brother and me that these were not misbehaving children who were drinking, smoking and carrying on, but just shorter adults having a good time. It certainly seemed to explain the moustaches, which –until it was explained to me– definitely had my little sheltered upbringing spinning violently out of balance.

So today, with memories of my first Little People Convention and first indoor pool fresh in my mind, I offer up this simple prayer: "Lord, please don't let there be too many chlorine burns on my socks."

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Please don't ask me why everyone seems to be drawn to the single, white halogen that is Blogshares. My best guess is that everyone is a little bit wiped out because of all the war coverage and this is certainly not that.

Anyway, in order to even "claim" my own blog I had to post this, so just count me in…one more moth.

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Totally amped to get this loaded into our websites and ((hopefully)) speed up our weblogs for those of you with modem connections. This tutorial, written by PhotoMatt and posted on Scriptygoddess by the lovely Christine, shows how to compress your webpages for faster loading. I spotted it over @ my Tampa hookup and had to do it.

Using the gzip, I was able to take my blog from (Buffett-esque design layout) from 39K html to 11K html. Awesome!

Think your page could use some speed? Check your site's size and see if your page is already gzip'd and then follow the tutorial.

Room-a-zoom-zoom!

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The very narrow-footed Camille has the skinny on the supply drive being conducted to benefit our troops.

The D/FW Red Cross will be sponsoring a one day only donation drive to supply some much needed "quality of life" items to our troops. This is a one day only deal, so snap to it, people.

At five different collection drives from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday, March 28, the Red Cross will be collecting only the following items to be sent to the troops: (printer-friendly list here)

• Individually wrapped pieces of hard candy (Twizzlers, Tootsie Rolls and Tootsie Pops, Bubble gum, Skittles, Lifesavers, Sweet Tarts, etc.) NO CHOCOLATE ITEMS

• Microwave popcorn, peanuts, pretzels, snack foods
• Sweetened Kool-Aid, Gatorade and other sweetened drink mixes
• Coffee, sugar, creamer, tea bags, hot chocolate
• Toiletry items such as shaving cream, razors, toothbrushes, toothpaste, shower soap, hand lotion
• Wet Wipes
• Sunscreen and lip balm—Wrap-around sunglasses
• Batteries (all sizes)—Non-Lithium type
• Blank greeting cards for birthday, anniversary, Get Will, Miss You, Mother/Father’s Day
• Videos, DVD’s, music CD’s and cassettes
• Small board games such as Chess, Checkers, Dominoes, Parcheesi, Yahtze, Uno, Cribbage, puzzles
• Recent paperback books (mysteries, action, drama and science fiction are highly read), Crossword Puzzle books and comic books

Items can be dropped off on Friday, March 28 from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. at these five sites:

Grapevine Mills Mall - 3000 Grapevine Mills Parkway, Grapevine, TX
American Red Cross - 4800 Harry Hines Blvd., Dallas, TX
American Red Cross - 1450 Redbud Blvd., McKinney, TX
American Red Cross - 412 S. Carroll, Suite 1001, Denton, TX
American Red Cross - 109 Tejas Drive, Suite 700, Terrell, TX

This is a one-day collection event only. The Red Cross is not only limited in its resources to process, warehouse and ship these items, but the Military has placed limits on the amount of items we can ship weekly. Given these limitations, and knowing that other Red Cross chapters are collecting items also, we feel that we'll more than meet the current need for items and our capacity to process the items during this one-day event on Friday, March 28. If more items are needed in the future, we'll announce future collections dates and sites. If you are unable to support the collection of items within this time frame, please consider supporting our efforts with a financial donation to facilitate the mailing of these items ($2 per pound on average) or read more about the many other ways they can support our troops through the Red Cross.

For more information, contact the Dallas Area Red Cross at 214-678-4800.

If you live in the D/FW area and are looking for a way to do your part, here's your chance. Merrin & I will be working this into our regular Friday Night "date night" activities. You should too.

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Dude, I am so busted. Merrin has finally come clean on my extreme acts of marital terrorism.

Yes, I admit it. Proudly. I can torment my wife just by humming or softly singing the chorus to any of a thousand songs. She can't help but pick up on them and –for the next day or so– just be slave to the "Groundhog Day" of having that song repeat over and over again in her mind. It's not my fault completely. It wouldn't work if she didn't know so many brutally addictive songs.

For example, I just hum a little, "Wake me up, Before you go-go," and she's off to the races with Wham! reverberating inside her head. It could last for days. Generally, I'll rescue her by resetting it with another equally painful song. For example: Starship's "We Built this City", "Who Let the Dogs Out", Lionel Ritchie's "Three Times a Lady", just about any BeeGees song, or any one of a thousand others. It doesn't have to be a terrible song, just an incredibly catchy song.

I'm pretty sure you can play this little game with friends and co-workers, so those of you who aren't married can enjoy it. Heck, you might even be able to play it with your blog readers! Let's see here: "You…light up my life…you give me hope…."

Yep, you can play it with blog readers. Don't panic. Come back in a few days and I'll give you another! Just don't tell my heart, my achy-breaky heart. :wink

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OK. Some how my little personal website has become the de facto search engine king for people wanting "information" about the Miller Lite Catfight Commercial. I had blogged about it during football season and somehow that put me at the top of most searches.

Well, you want to find more about The Miller Lite Catfight commercial, Kitana Baker, and Tonya Ballinger, I aim to please.

Q: Who are the girls in the Miller Lite Catfight commercial?
A: The two girls fighting in the Miller Lite commercial are Kitana Baker (brunette) and Tonya Ballinger (blonde).
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If you've ever met a Texan, you know we're never at a loss to talk about Texas. And nothing means more to most Texans than the State Flag of Texas. Heck, that Cody guy from Survivor chose the State Flag of Texas as his luxury item.

Tonight I'm proud and more than a little touched to tell our troops that all six historic flags of Texas have been lowered and replaced with six US flags at the Six Flags over Texas park here.

I have no idea if this means anything at all to those of you outside of Texas. But for me, on a night when Iraq holds at least seven POWs (all of them from bases in Texas), I'm really, really proud to be a Texan and I'm really, really proud to be an American.

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Merrin is watching the Oscars. I'm boycotting the Oscars in favor of watching the news.

My only thought for the night is that the military might be putting the kibosh on some of the embedded reports since last night's live video feed near Umm Qasr and the Benedict Arnold grenade toss last night. Yesterday we were seeing live shots of every Marine that stopped his truck to take a leak. Tonight there's nary an embedded report to be seen.

I like the idea of the embedded reporters being able to send live feeds shortly after events happen, but I confess to being a little paranoid that enemy commanders can learn a lot from these TV reports.

That being said, there was something almost SNL about ABC's "wetpants" Richard Engel version of "Shock and Awe" versus Nic Robertson's Gene Kelly impersonation.

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I'm really fighting the temptation to post about the rallies going on in our country. I'm trying to adopt my best Voltaire impersonation and let people have their freedom of expression. I think a lot of protesters have questionable motives and I think there are a good number that don't know what the heck they're talking about. But, they have a right to express themselves - even if doing so just confirms my previous statement. So, I'll just go "Voltaire out" over here.

One "voice" that isn't being raised loud enough (at least for my liking) is the single, clear, unified show of support for our troops. If you feel the same way, here are some tools:

Printable US Flag Poster

Send an Email to our Troops

VFW's "God Bless America" Support Our Troops Campaign

VFW's Operation Uplink - Donate a phone card for our troops

Buy a Flag from the VFW

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Our troops, our leaders, our country and our allies are in our hearts and prayers.

Send an email to a US Troops

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Go out to your local Barnes & Noble and pick up today's New York Times. Turn to page 10B. You'll see a full page ad for Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code. You'll see the blurb reviews from some of the six of the country's most respected authors and reviewers.

Merrin's review blurb is just before Nelson DeMille's. Seriously. Seriously. Seriously.

See for yourself:

Congratulations, Merrin! I am so proud of you! I know how publishers & authors have been coming to you for (literally) years and asking you to read drafts, manuscripts, editors' copies, advance copies, etc. I know that you've always been asked to review these and your suggestions have made it into books. I'm so proud that they are recognizing all you've done over the years. I know Dan Brown is glad & proud, too!
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I cracked up when I saw this over at NSLog. It's a link to a quick little story about how to & how not to potty train your puppy. Cracking me up!

Fury.com: The Puppy Mind

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There are a lot of people out there that would like to upgrade the hard drive on their DVR. Well, one of the absolute best resources is Hinsdale. Heck, he'll even do it for ya if you're a know nothing.

Upgrading your Tivo hard drive is easy if you follow these simple steps.

A couple of caveats:

1. This is not supported by Tivo or DirecTV. In fact, if you open your Tivo, it voids the warranty. You might want to think twice before you go further.
2. The Tivo is a essentially a Linux computer. To upgrade, you will need a computer that can boot to the CD-rom. If your computer can't boot to CD, stop here. Game over
3. Again with the Linux, all the instructions to upgrade are sent to the Tivo via Linux. It's not hard, but it might be unlike what you've seen before on your computer.
4. This involves opening your computer and your Tivo. It's not hard, but you do need to exercise caution. Upgrading is not for everyone

OK, with that being said: UPGRADE YOUR TIVO HARD DRIVE

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