Another influential figure from the 20th century fades into the abyss… rest peacefully, President Ford.

Is it me, or does this news just make you want to watch some old school SNL?

More to come later in the day…

Had a very nice holiday weekend… the quick synopsis:
– Spent 12/23 at the Behling’s house in S. MKE w/ the Bock family. Good times. Quote of the evening for me was from me, on my cousin Aaron and his current physique– “Yeah, last year you were thin. This year, you look like you could kick somebody’s ass.”
– 12/24 we were at Grandma Markowski’s house. We had a delightfully filling meal (per usual), and made use of the Polish-basement-bar to an unprecedented extent. I laughed the hardest when Grandma opened her first gift– a book, titled “50 Uses for Your Cat”
– Didn’t get to sleep @ Michelle’s house until about 4AM on the 25th, and after that, slept in for a good portion of 12/25. Had more gift-exhangey excitement w/ her fam. I got back to Vegas around 7:30.

Anyway, during the course of the weekend, I had a few occasions to surf a little on the internets and mess around w/ my laptop, and I noticed that the boot-up time is POSITIVELY EXCRUCIATING. I’ve defragged and refragged and uninstalled this and reinstalled that, and I just wasn’t satisfied. I do have a theme-mod packager sitting on top of Windows, but in and of itself, this software doesn’t really eat resources. I came to the conclusion that what really needed to go was some of the installed shite that I never use, and as much of the proprietary bloatware that I could get rid of.

The nice thing about de-bloatifying your system is that, even if it doesn’t result in a marked increase in performance, you probably didn’t need that disk-sucking mess on there anyway. So, everybody wins. The first two items I removed (links point to the alternatives):
– Adobe Reader
– QuickTime

In the past, what with owning a Stinkpad, I’ve kept the IBM tools (many of which *are* useful) up-to-date as well. But, I notice that there are a number of Thinky-processes that kick in at startup, and maybe I don’t need all of ’em. I’ll probably trim some fat in that region next…

If you’re at work– try to stay awake, and if you’re at home– put some pants on for chrissakes!!

Check out this story: Military Deaths in Iraq Exceed 9/11 Toll.

Here’s hoping our elected leaders can show us some real progress before next Christmas…

Howdy…

I have one more last-minute gift to pick up before we head over to Grandma’s this afternoon… But I didn’t want to leave the holidays without a little message saying “Merry Christmas” and all that. I left in sort of a sour mood on Friday…

Hope that your Christmas is filled with relaxation, good times, and good company. Remember the “reason for the season,” and may God bless your family in the coming year.

See ya after Christmas…

Just a couple days before Christmas, and I really should be in a better mood. Nothing is going to happen at work today, but at the same time, I am trapped here. I have to stay, even though I would be infinitely more productive if I left to take care of my own business. My boss (the big one, not the psuedo-supervisor boss) says to me when I walk in this morning, “I thought you were off today.” Well fuck. Why did I bother coming in?

I finally got the reimbursement check for my glasses in the mail yesterday. That was a fiasco. Couldn’t come at a better time, though, as I was down to my last one hundred-three cents in my checking account til the end of the month. Of course, I have to wait for lunch to run it over to the bank.

But I was going to at least enter this in to my check register, and write a check for the *grr* parking ticket that I got in Tosa last weekend (first time ever getting a ticket for parking on the street at Jen & Joe’s, BTW). But my computer wanted to upgrade some Java crap yesterday, and now my banking software is all messed up (it is java-based). So I’m trying to re-update, or de-update, or something to make the mother work again.

What really has me chapped is that one of Michelle’s gifts, which I ordered last week, and should have had plenty of time to get here for Christmas, still hasn’t arrived. I would be more understanding if I had been given some warning when I placed the order that I may not have it in time, but there was nothing. I’m extremely not pleased. I’m working on a solution, but I don’t know. Dammit.

Have I mentioned that it’s pouring rain today?

I really need to try to settle down a bit, but my morning is not starting out very well.

I’ll probably be back later. If I miss you, have a pleasant Christmas weekend…

Hey, I’m not the only one who’s scared of robots.

Slow day; more to come…

In the meantime, think about this:
Reading stories about ever-spiraling world conflicts, chronic failures in adequate wildlife management, man-made destruction of the environment, overpopulation and starvation, and not to mention astounding technological innovations that prompt writings like the story linked above has made me ponder the ultimate reality of the human condition– what if we are fighting against our ultimate destiny and natural evolution?

Is it possible that mankind’s true “natural” progression is just to continue breeding, and growing, and sweeping across the planet, wiping out everything in our path? And that at the same time, we will innovate so quickly and efficiently on a technological level that we will create a sentient artificial lifeform that will reasonably see fit to wipe US out? After all, human beings need food, water, air to breathe, etc. Machines would not. The barren wasteland that our planet will one day become could be a more ideal environment for our robots than for us. Wouldn’t it make sense to think this could be another chapter of Earth’s natural evolution? No one thinks of it, because preserving ourselves is so important to us, but how much easier would it be (and how often in natural history has it been seen) to replace the planet’s dominant species with one that can thrive under whatever conditions might exist?

Suck on that for a while, and have a Merry Christmas.

So I have a meeting with the other counselors in the office every Tuesday morning. We talk aobut anything that the others need to know, or go over what we’re working on, etc. It’s also an opportunity for the assoc. director, who is basically the “campus-at-large liason” for financial aid, to tell us about the goings on in his various meetings and trainings and stuff like that.

So one of the things we looked at today was a list of “core values,” that are apparently “valued by the university community,” and also a list of “personal values” that “ideal candidates” for open positions “will” “have.”

And you “can” quote me “on that.”

Anyway, the point I want to get at is, why do we need a list of things that traits that people need to have in order to hire them? Why do people need to be so happy about going to work? I don’t like the trend at all. So on top of being qualified for a job and knowing how to do it effectively, I need to shoot rainbows out of my ass while I’m doing it (?).

And yes, I mean, looking at this list, there are a lot of good things on it, OK? But I’m looking at this and saying, “these are qualities that good human beings just have by nature…” Why the hell did we have to get a commitee together to write them down, when non-dipshits should just have these things subconsciously within themselves? I’ll go to church to get reminders of how I should be living my life, or what sort of attitude I should take into my daily interactions with others. I don’t need to waste time on it at work.

I’m doing my job, I’m doing it right, and other than that, I just want to be left alone. If there are people that have so much time on their hands, maybe the answer isn’t to make work your religion or therapy group– how ’bout we trim the fat a little bit, save some people a little money, and try to do our work more efficiently?

I’m loading up F-Spot for the first time in my Linux system (it’s sort of an open-source Adobe PhotoAlbum?, or maybe Picasa, I guess) and I told it to just index the “My Pictures” directory on my server. I didn’t think there would be that many pictures. Of course, these are not just pictures I’ve taken, but all the pictures I’ve collected over time, too.

Still, it’s a lot.

Had a nice weekend, for those that were wondering. Jen and Joe and Michelle & I and Christy over for dinner and holiday libations. We ate, drank, and played dominoes. Later Jen and I sang loudly and Michelle got stuck to the floor. Photos to come.

Work could not possibly have been more boring today. I sat at the desk in a haze. I have to come up with some other things to get done while I’m there or it’s going to be a long January.

Meanwhile, speaking of Linux, I was thinking, “hey, let’s put up or shut up about this Free software crap,” so since I’ve had a lot of success so far with Ubuntu on my desktop, I’m gonna give it a go ’round on my lappy and see if it can *really* be an every-day replacement for me. I think it could. I find that it’s hard for me to think of every little thing until I sit down and try to run something tho, y’know? I have a list of essential tasks that Ubuntu will have to keep up with if this transition is going to “take”:

– obviously, wireless has to work, and it has to work pretty much flawlessly– that is, no extra effort when I go from place to place, and no extra steps when moving from a wired to wireless connection
– Internet, Email, and office-goodies can’t miss a beat (I’m already certain this will be no prob)
– full compatibility with a variety of little devices: camera, phone, webcam, ext HDD, PDA, and USB drives
– stinkpad ‘Fn’ keys and features have to work. I will settle for the biometrics not making it, but only because that thing is so finnicky as it is.
– graphics driver better play nice with everything

Ho-hum, nuff boredom for today. If you’re in Vegas and on any sort of ‘vacation’ during this holiday season, give a ring…

I have such a long list of things that I should do, but don’t necessarily *have* to do, and I find my mind so often preoccupied with the volume of items on that list, none of them really get knocked off.

I assume this is a problem that a lot of people have (?).

Just for a couple trivial examples: I have loads and loads of music on my server that people have given to me that I’ve never listened to. I have a mess of DVDs that I’ve never watched. I have a mitful of ideas for stories that I’ve never started.

If you care to comment (which you would have to log in to do), I’m curious to hear feedback about how you either:
A) deal with a similar reality in your own life, or
B) have devised a plan of attack for this list.

SIGH. At least I have VNC so I can clean up some files on my laptop at home from work.