Sleep. Get Up. Work. Repeat.

David Weber.

He writes books.

He writes very good books.

I tried Off Armageddon Reef from Audible. It was a gamble. The story sounded like a good one although it seemed heavily based on something like a medieval type time period. Not my thing. I tried it anyway. I loved the story.

The story didn’t end and I quickly found out that there was another book.

By Schism Rent Asunder. I bought it.

This book wasn’t quite as long but it was even better.

It’s still not the end. Now, I have to wait for another book.

David Weber. I will wait for your book. I will complain about the wait. I may even curse your name.

I will still buy your book because your books don’t suck.

Stuck at home today. Taking medication and hoping that it clears my congestion away.

It’s hard to do the job I have without being able to walk around. The congestion is making that task amazingly hard and difficult.

Hopefully, I’ll be up and around tomorrow morning. In the meantime…

…let’s catch up on blogging, shall we?

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Yet another update.

Apple Menu –> Software Update…

One of my favorite authors has passed.

from The Chicago Tribune…

LOS ANGELES - Michael Crichton, the doctor-turned-author of bestselling thrillers such as “The Terminal Man” and “Jurassic Park” and a Hollywood writer and director whose credits include “Westworld” and “Coma,” has died. He was 66.

Crichton died in Los Angeles on Tuesday “after a courageous and private battle against cancer,” his family said in a statement.

For nearly four decades, the 6-foot-9 writer was a towering presence in the worlds of publishing and filmmaking.

“There was no one like Crichton, because he could both entertain and educate,” Lynn Nesbit, Crichton’s agent since the late ’60s, told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday. “His brilliance was indisputable, and he had a grasp of so many subjects — from art to science to technology.

He will be missed.

I’ve been sitting at my desk in Hershey PA watching friends and co-workers getting laid off due to the slow economic conditions and due to the fact that Hershey Gifts isn’t really selling as much as they’d like to.

I’ve been wondering when it was going to be my turn to get laid off. This afternoon, the radio squawked as my boss asked me to join him in his office. I expected really bad news. It didn’t come.

I got really good news instead.

My boss requested that I be transfered to our corporate headquarters. It’s a step up and I am still a little taken back by it. In a move to keep key personnel, my company has decided to move people around rather than to remove them. It is a part of their core beliefs and philosophy.

I’ll be moving from the Hershey location to a brand new office building in Lancaster, PA. (Amish Country)

This is nothing more than a complete blessing to me and my family.

This election night, I really do know what I am thankful for.

Update (11-05-08): Obama winning the Presidential election…not so much of a blessing.

Sorry for the wind in the background. Couldn’t be helped!

I went to leave work today and the unexpected happened…

…car trouble. My car sounded and felt like I was missing a few cylinders.

The frustration.

The “I’m not sure what I’m going to do right this second because my car JUST stopped working and I didn’t have time to write a dissertation before I called you for help” thing.

I saw you drive by me Christina while I was walking back to work so my ride could pick me up! You snickered. I saw it!

No. I don’t know what’s wrong with it.

What does it sound like? Not sure. It sounds bad to me.

Mac had an update yesterday. I captured the window like I usually do and was ready to post it to the website and then…

…I forgot all about it.

I’ll post the details below after I get home. I’m still working and stuff.

Update: The Pic…

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*** My dad shot the video this morning ***

Love this one…

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Another few days, another update.

Although I can read the update summary as well as anyone else, I’m still not sure what this update actually does.

I’m sure it’s important though.

I’m sure you’ve all heard of “beer goggles” but here comes something really cool and really necessary for a few folks. (I used to need this but since I don’t really even drink an occasional adult beverage anymore, it doesn’t apply to me.)

If you have Google Mail or GMail, this option can be turned on inside of your preference settings. It’s under “Labs.”

The idea is that before you are allowed to send an email, you must first answer a few math questions. Obviously, if you’ve had too much to drink you will not be able to answer them and can avoid sending an email that you possibly shouldn’t.

Here’s Tekzilla’s Patrick Norton explaining the feature.

Get er done!

Ha!

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Prepare to be either pleasantly surprised or possibly disappointed.

I liked the book. If you watch Bones on Fox then the Temperance Brennan you see will be slightly different than the one in the book.

The Dr. Brennan in the book is more real and much more human than the one on television. She doesn’t have an FBI love interest although she has better relationships in the book. In fact, her relationships are most of what you’ll read about while she investigates her case.

The book version of Temperance also has a grown daughter.

The book version is not a walking lethal weapon either. She is a real woman with real issues. She’s not as cold as the character on television.

I loved the book. Now, I have to get more of these. I was pleasantly surprised and I’m sure you will be too.

I strongly suggest this book.

Amazon sells more than books. They also sell music. They don’t have a handy little app like iTunes to help you navigate and browse around looking for music but if you can type it in the search field and it exists, chances are that Amazon has it.

They have no DRM attached to the file either. You buy it. It’s yours. You can play it on any MP3 device you like.

For the past few years, even knowing that Amazon was selling MP3s without DRM wasn’t enough to sway me to buying my songs from Amazon.

Until…

I decided to change my credit card in iTunes.

I have tried numerous times to change my credit card within iTunes and I usually get a ‘your card information doesn’t match what the bank says.’ Meanwhile, literally everyone else is accepting my new bank card and as well they should, it’s a valid card.

Because of all of these needless iTunes problems with simply changing credit cards, I have made the switch to Amazon. I had to change my credit card information with Amazon and had absolutely no trouble doing so.

iTunes never even presented me with a number to call to help me fix the problem. Just gave me an error message and nothing more.

Now I give them nothing more too. Right back at ya!

270towin.com

This website will tell you how a state voted in the past presidential elections going back until the late 60’s.

They also have an indicator of how they think a state will go in 2008 based on the polling data. Needless to say, they expect Obama to win just about every state.

Fear not. They said the exact same thing before the last election and the polls and pollsters couldn’t have been more wrong.

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It’s my sister’s 40th birthday. It seems like only yesterday that we were both wearing matching “Winnie The Pooh” sweaters and getting our picture taken together.

Most folks thought we were twins. I was 5 years old. My sister was 4.

That was so long ago.

I had long brown hair and my uncle Dave called me “Hippie.”

My uncle Tom called my sister “Chele Belle” which she hated.

36 years later, my sister is a grandmother.

Wow.

Mac Heads. Run Software Update for the latest. Hopefully, they’ve fixed all of the buggy crap.

via email…

I couldn’t help but notice that my election countdown widget in the sidebar is saying “George W. Bush is EXIT.”

Me thinks that it’s been hacked. Stay tuned.

Update: (8:51 am) - I sent a message to the widget “distributors.”

You may or may not have heard about the Pirate problem off the coast of Africa. This region has been plagued with pirate activity for about as long as anyone can remember.

The international community is stepping up and now providing extra ships and manpower to combat this problem.

from the Times Online…

Europe is setting up an anti-piracy taskforce to help protect the lawless sea lanes off east Africa, where heavily armed Somali hijackers have overrun more than 30 ships this year and raked in at least $30 million in ransom.

At least 10 European Union countries have volunteered to contribute to the joint air and sea operation, which is expected to comprise three frigates, three surveillance vessels and a supply ship.

Britain has indicated its probable support for the taskforce, which could be in place within days to help combat pirates who have stepped up their hostile attacks 100 per cent in the last year.

This will effectively put the pirate trade out of business in the region.

The pirate trade was successful because it was small and relatively harmless in the grand scheme of things. I’m not downplaying the murder, mayhem, and other bad things they have done. I’m trying to put them in perspective. They stayed out of site for the most part and didn’t attract too much attention.

They didn’t need all of this attention and now, it looks like the party may be over. Whether by greed, a healthy dose of stubbornness, or a mixture of the two it looks like the pirates have attracted the wrong kind of attention.

It effect, they’ve made themselves “walk the plank.”

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There is also an HP Driver update that shows up after you do the Java update.

I’m just sayin’

I’m not making this up. This site exists. Go here.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry.

You’ll laugh mostly.

I’ve written about web bias before. The reason that I singled out Digg was because of the many occasions that I’ve heard the CEO Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose talk about how much Digg is user driven. While that may actually be true, I’ve always found it odd that when it comes to Obama and McCain, I never see a positive article about John McCain. Statistically speaking, Digg should have accidentally posted a postive McCain article by now.

This morning, I thought I’d look at my newsreader and see where we stand on our postive McCain articles on the Digg website. This is what I found.

I looked at the stories that landed on the Digg front page from 12:01am Saturday morning until this morning at 5:40am. The mission: to see how many Pro-McCain articles I could find and count how many Anti-McCain articles I found. Here are the results.

I left Sarah Palin stories out of it.

Pro-McCain stories = 0
Anti-McCain stories = 11

Of the 11 Anti-McCain stories, 6 of them were from huffingtonpost.com. Apparently, Digg is a Huffington Post mirror site. The other stories came from CBS News, UPI, Newsweek, New York Times, and Eyes On Obama.

Here are the Huffington Post headlines…

1. Bush Official: Bailout Likely, McCain Lost PR Battle
2. First Debate: Reviews Go To Obama
3. Max Bergmann: Major Gaffe: McCain Said Pakistan Was a Failed
4. Debate Fact Check-McCain Lied About Financial Crisis Warning
5. Obama To McCain: On Iraq, “You Were Wrong”
6. Obama Slams McCain For Not Mentioning Middle Class

The remaining 5 headlines are…

7. CBS Poll: Obama Won The Debate
8. McCain dead wrong about Kissinger’s stance on talk with Iran
9. Freddie Mac Money Trail Catches Up With McCain
10. McCain and Team Have Many Ties to Gambling Industry
11. McCain Has Worst Attendance Record in Washington

At least, 4 years ago MTV was nice to him. Here’s a piece from that interview…

MTV News, 2004: Four years from now, whether or not the president is re-elected, is there a chance we might see the “Straight Talk Express” hitting the road again?

John McCain: I think it’s very unlikely. … We had a kind of magical moment [in 2000]. A lot of things came together that I think would be very difficult to do again. And one thing I would hate to be is somebody who goes back in and would lose. … It’s a long time away, but I doubt it. [Smiling.] I’m not gettin’ any younger!

Ahhh, on second thought, perhaps he will run again. Who knew?

I found this article during my morning read. I can’t say that I agree with everything 100% because of speculation on the part of the author or the “so-called” scientific expert.

Here’s a small blurb about alcoholism…

Even in alcoholics, alcohol use doesn’t actually result in the death of brain cells. It can, however, damage the ends of neurons, which are called dendrites. This results in problems conveying messages between the neurons. The cell itself isn’t damaged, but the way that it communicates with others is altered. According to researchers such as Roberta J. Pentney, professor of anatomy and cell biology at the University at Buffalo, this damage is mostly reversible.

He’ll be missed.

from the Washington Post…

Paul Newman, 83, the actor and sex symbol who surged to stardom by playing loners as well as criminal and moral outlaws — anything to downplay his astonishing looks — died of cancer Friday at his farmhouse near Westport, Conn.

Newman was an Academy Award-winning actor and acclaimed director, and he used his fame to propel his political activism, race car driving and philanthropy. He donated all the profits from his Newman’s Own food company — more than $250 million — to charities and social welfare organizations.

I’m just dumping a bunch of posts I’ve been holding onto because of a project I have been working on this week and my keyboard problem. (see below)

Sorry. It looks like I’m going post crazy but I’m really not.

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I just finished reading The Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer. By reading, I mean I listened to the audio version by Audible.com

This book is a long one to read and listen to but I have to admit that it’s well worth it. The author put at least 2 years of research into the book and it really came through loud and clear.

If you like hearing about the story of Cain and Abel, Superman, and World War II Nazi’s and their history all tied together in a great big mystery thriller, you’ll love this book.

Grab a copy in hardback on Amazon.com or grab the audiobook from Audible.com

It’s worth it.

I have (and love) my MacBook Pro laptop and use it for everything from podcasting to video production to…

…writing.

Right after I got the laptop on the very same day, in fact, the “N” key popped off. One of the plastic pieces that are used to keep it in place broke leaving me with an “N” key that is hanging on to the rest of the keyboard for dear life. After a few keystrokes, it would come loose and I’d have to push it back in place again.

Well, during the week the key popped off and this time, it refused to semi-click back into place. In essence, it is now no longer even semi-secured to the keyboard.

During this whole thing, my father offered to call Apple and see if they could send me a replacement “N” key to simply snap back into place. Apple’s response was…

…”ahh, no.” We’ll replace your entire keyboard but the “N” key by itself is simply out of the question. This exchange between Apple and my father went on for about a week. My father lost the battle. Apple will not send out an “N” key by itself. If anything happens to your keyboard at all, Apple will replace the whole thing.

I just didn’t want to be without my laptop for any length of time. The compromise will be waiting while a local technician makes the repairs and changes out the keyboard with me watching him/her.

I haven’t made the reservations or called the technicians yet. In the meantime, I bought a HP USB 2.0 keyboard at Wal-Mart to hold me over. Of all of the keys on your keyboard, the “N” key is one of the most pressed.

At least, when you don’t have it you think it’s the most pressed!

I’ll let everyone know how the repair goes. It should happen sometime this week.

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I don’t know about anyone else but I’m sick and tired (mostly tired) of reading the same stories about “global warming” and how it’s melting the polar ice caps. Case in point…

from The New York Times today…

TO the relief of climate scientists around the world, it appears that the polar ice cap hasn’t shrunk as much this summer as it did last summer.

The ice cap usually reaches its smallest extent around now, and although the total area of ice in September fluctuates from year to year, in the last two decades it has generally declined, probably because of carbon-driven global warming. Last year, the ice cap shrank at a record-breaking pace; at its minimum it was almost 39 percent smaller than the average from 1979 to 2000. This year it’s down about 33 percent.

I don’t know about anyone else but I’m not interested in probably. What a bunch of sloppy reporting? The word “probably” indicates that what follows is the author’s opinion. I just want the report, not the opinion.

In a story from July 3rd of this year in the Register (the UK. No. I’m not making that up), Steven Goddard writes a piece about how wrong the so-called “global warming” evidence is as it relates to the melting polar ice caps. Here’s a sample…

Satellite records have been kept for polar sea ice over the last thirty years by the University Of Illinois. In 2007 2008, two very different records were set. The Arctic broke the previous record for the least sea ice area ever recorded, while the Antarctic broke the record for the most sea ice area ever recorded. Summed up over the entire earth, polar ice has remained constant. As seen below, there has been no net gain or loss of polar sea ice since records began.

Last week, Dr James Hansen from NASA spoke about how CO2 is affecting the polar ice caps.

“We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes… The Arctic is the first tipping point and it’s occurring exactly the way we said it would,” he said.

Well, not exactly.

Hansen is only telling half the story. In the 1980s the same Dr Hansen wrote a paper titled Climate Sensitivity to Increasing Greenhouse Gases [pdf], in which he explained how CO2 causes “polar amplification.” He predicted nearly symmetrical warming at both poles. As shown in Figure 2-2 from the article, Hansen calculated that both the Arctic and Antarctic would warm by 5-6 degrees Centigrade. His predictions were largely incorrect, as most of Antarctica has cooled and sea ice has rapidly expanded. The evidence does not support the theory.

Do yourself a big favor. Read the whole thing. If you are one of those folks who believe that man made “Global Warming” is real then please read the many articles that explain why it doesn’t exist.

Please don’t believe everything you read, even on this website.

Do you trust less than 2,000 scientists or over 32,000?

32,000 + scientists believe that man made “Global Warming” is a big bunch of crap.

I believe THOSE guys.

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I’ve been working at UPS for a little while now. I thought that I’d be used to it by now.

I’m not. My fingers even hurt. I’m chalking it up to age at this point.

Ouch!

I got home early this morning after working an hour and a half of overtime. I was exhausted and loading trailers by hand takes a lot out of you.

NOTE: When I’m NOT stuck at my desk, I’m stuck in a trailer.

I was soooo sore from the extra time last night, I fell asleep while playing with the kitteah on the office floor.

I ended up sleeping on the office floor for most of the day.

Bad Mike.

Years ago. My little brother found a class ring buried in the dirt near the corner stone of our church.

Our goal. To find out who owns the ring and to return it to it’s rightful owner.

We have almost no information to go on.

This will be fun.

UPDATE: 09/16/08 - I haven’t really had time to formally begin the investigation. I’ll keep everyone posted.

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This is a funny one.

from Fox News…

CHICAGO — The FBI is searching for the person who robbed a suburban Chicago bank wearing a large pink sun hat and a pink-and-black dress.

And authorities say he accessorized his outfit with long white gloves and a black metal handgun.

The gunman FBI agents are calling the Cross-Dressing Bandit held up the MB Financial Bank branch in Park Ridge on August 13.

Today, Special Agent Robert Grant asked the public for help in the search.

The FBI made public a wanted poster with photos of the bandit standing at a teller window in his unusual outfit.

It’s almost like watching a train wreck. I love watching scientists trying to figure something out only to turn around and claim that they really don’t know anything.

To me, they could save so much time if they just admitted their ignorance in the first place. Ha!

This story comes from National Geographic…

Far from besting their competitors in a long struggle to become Earth’s dominant land animals, dinosaurs may have just gotten lucky, new research suggests.

The first dinosaurs appeared during the late Triassic period about 240 million years ago.

Their main competitors were a closely related group of reptiles called the crurotarsans, from which modern crocodiles and alligators descended.

Crurotarsans and dinosaurs coexisted for about 30 million years. But about 200 million years ago, Earth suffered a mass extinction, possibly caused by rapid global warming.