I found a misspelling in the hymn book on Sunday. Hymn 173 and 174 are both entitled "While of These Emblems We Partake", and thus have the same words, yet different tunes. In 174, it uses the word "splendor" in the fourth verse, while in 173 it was printed as "spendor" (no "L"). I also noted that this only occurs in the newer 1998 Second Edition version of "Hymns", not the 1985 First Edition.
Well, for the end of the year I got a cold. Not too bad, though. Just some congestion and sneezing.
Saturday, December 28, 2002
I recently listened to two copies of Ernest Hemmingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" - the first: a cassette reading from the library; the second: a CD reading available free at Waldenbooks. It's a pretty good story. What I was interested to find out is that the actual snow on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro is melting away at an alarming rate. Apparently, this story was also made into a movie with Gregory Peck.
I was trying to figure out what an advent calendar is for, when I stumbled across some websites that contained a lot of background information on some of the mythology, legends, and traditions we take part in sometimes unknowingly. I guess Advent is a Catholic religious holiday. I also learned that the Catholic church, itself, isn't quite sure whether or not "St. Nicolas" is real or not. Did you know that tinsel (garland) supposedly originally came from a spider's web strand, and that holly berries apparently started out white (or yellow), not red?
UPDATE: in my Sept 13th blog, I asked about Heinz and their 57 varieties. I've now found an article from the Straight Dope that asks and partially answers the same question, including providing some badly needed background research.
The 'Ensign' magazine recently changed their fonts - 1 thumb down, in my opinion. I like the old ones better. I also just finished listening to two vintage Sherlock Holmes audio plays: "The Blackmailer" and "Scandal in Bohemia". You know, I suspect the Holmes mysteries used to be all the rage, but they seem to be a little too simple and undeveloped to me. Maybe I've just seen too many mystery movies or something, but I expected the plots to be more developed and entangled. 2 thumbs down for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
I've had a little bad luck with library audio tapes this past round. Two of the audio books I've checked out were hosed: "Unguarded Moment" by Louis L'Amour, and "Dragon" by Clive Cussler. L'Amour's tape was cut in half, and Cussler's was crinkled and folded upside down so all the audio was played backwards.
Two of the albums I recently obtained didn't live up to expectations. "Home" by The Dixie Chicks, and "Cry" by Faith Hill. Earlier albums by both were much better. I found two hilarious sites that ultra-condense books and movies down to their bare essense: Book-A-Minute and Movie-A-Minute.
The El Pollo Loco across the street from Parkland Mall sucks compared to the one on Prater in Sparks. Their Chicken Tostada Salads don't even compare. We recently watched Adam Sandler's "Mr. Deeds", a hilarious film with Winona Ryder. I also just started participating in Project Dolphin. (Check out my stats.)
Just saw a cool Animal Planet program on the 10 toughest survivors on the planet. The Water Bear is virtually indestructable. It can survive the vacuum of space, extreme temperature variations (-350*F to 300*F), being frozen solid, in a desert with no water, etc., and can come back to life over 100 years later after retreating into a death-like state. Simply remarkable. I also didn't know that Komodo Dragons are extremely stinky animals. Hmmm.
Christmas photos coming soon...
I was trying to figure out what an advent calendar is for, when I stumbled across some websites that contained a lot of background information on some of the mythology, legends, and traditions we take part in sometimes unknowingly. I guess Advent is a Catholic religious holiday. I also learned that the Catholic church, itself, isn't quite sure whether or not "St. Nicolas" is real or not. Did you know that tinsel (garland) supposedly originally came from a spider's web strand, and that holly berries apparently started out white (or yellow), not red?
UPDATE: in my Sept 13th blog, I asked about Heinz and their 57 varieties. I've now found an article from the Straight Dope that asks and partially answers the same question, including providing some badly needed background research.
The 'Ensign' magazine recently changed their fonts - 1 thumb down, in my opinion. I like the old ones better. I also just finished listening to two vintage Sherlock Holmes audio plays: "The Blackmailer" and "Scandal in Bohemia". You know, I suspect the Holmes mysteries used to be all the rage, but they seem to be a little too simple and undeveloped to me. Maybe I've just seen too many mystery movies or something, but I expected the plots to be more developed and entangled. 2 thumbs down for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
I've had a little bad luck with library audio tapes this past round. Two of the audio books I've checked out were hosed: "Unguarded Moment" by Louis L'Amour, and "Dragon" by Clive Cussler. L'Amour's tape was cut in half, and Cussler's was crinkled and folded upside down so all the audio was played backwards.
Two of the albums I recently obtained didn't live up to expectations. "Home" by The Dixie Chicks, and "Cry" by Faith Hill. Earlier albums by both were much better. I found two hilarious sites that ultra-condense books and movies down to their bare essense: Book-A-Minute and Movie-A-Minute.
The El Pollo Loco across the street from Parkland Mall sucks compared to the one on Prater in Sparks. Their Chicken Tostada Salads don't even compare. We recently watched Adam Sandler's "Mr. Deeds", a hilarious film with Winona Ryder. I also just started participating in Project Dolphin. (Check out my stats.)
Just saw a cool Animal Planet program on the 10 toughest survivors on the planet. The Water Bear is virtually indestructable. It can survive the vacuum of space, extreme temperature variations (-350*F to 300*F), being frozen solid, in a desert with no water, etc., and can come back to life over 100 years later after retreating into a death-like state. Simply remarkable. I also didn't know that Komodo Dragons are extremely stinky animals. Hmmm.
Christmas photos coming soon...
Saturday, December 21, 2002
I recently played my best game ever in Monopoly (via Playsite) - click to see screenshot. I don't like the new Denny's logo - I like the old one better. We've recently had a couple of power outages because of snow and wind storms lately. On the latest one all but one circuit in our apartment went out - very strange. We have now driven over 33,333 miles on our car. We went shopping at the mall again today. We got a wonderful 'strawberry blast smoothie' from Gloria Jean's Coffee. Something at the mall has something to do with Green Dog, but I still haven't figured it out yet. We recently watched the James Bond movie 'Goldeneye' on TV. Had somehow missed it in the past. It was interesting to note that one of the women in 'Goldeneye' is Dr. Jean Grey in X-Men (Famke Janssen).
Wednesday, December 11, 2002
We hear all the time about computers having bugs, but you've never heard about this. If you like Star Wars, but have forgotten some of the older episodes, you've got to see the refresher films - each episode is around only 5 minutes long! Does anyone actually know where "The Lakes, Nevada" is really located?
UPDATE: Yeechang to the rescue! (He served his mission here in Nevada, so he was uniquely qualified to answer the question.)
UPDATE: Yeechang to the rescue! (He served his mission here in Nevada, so he was uniquely qualified to answer the question.)
Sunday, December 08, 2002
Well, I just got back from a short business trip to Oakland, CA. I stayed at the Marriott on 11th and Broadway, just a block away from Oakland City Center, and across the street from Verbena and the 12th St BART station. The training, itself, was held at Preservation Park. I flew Southwest Airlines both ways, and noticed that the peanuts on the flights were provided by Kings Delicious Nuts.
I didn't get frisked at the airport on the way there because I learned my lesson the last time - remove my belt and shoes and send them through the X-ray machine along with my carry-on, jacket, and pocket contents. It was always the belt and shoes that beeped me before. I did, however, get accosted on the return trip because my boarding pass had the 'checkerboard' pattern on it. =(
In the movie 'Shrek', Shrek at one point says the phrase "Hapaya, hapaya!" (according to the subtitles). I looked it up, but couldn't find much. Apparently, 'hepaya' (spelled slightly differently) means "restaurant" in the artificial language 'Sona'. 'Hapaya', however, is not translatable at Babelfish, nor recognized by Merriam-Webster or Dictionary.com. Further documentation is available at these sites: DreamWorks SKG Fansite, and Shrek Script.
Apparently, the term 'hapaya' might be a Sri Lankan (Sinhala) word that has something to do with chewing betel. It might also be a Russian word (or name), but not likely. I'm still looking into this one.
I find it hilarious that the movie '10 Things I Hate About You' contains so much post-secondary vocabulary (seeing as how it's a high school movie). Uncommon terms found in the film but not in most peoples' vocabularies include: vapid, rampallian, turgid, tumescent, repartee, genre, defeatist, misogynist, and a few others.
I didn't get frisked at the airport on the way there because I learned my lesson the last time - remove my belt and shoes and send them through the X-ray machine along with my carry-on, jacket, and pocket contents. It was always the belt and shoes that beeped me before. I did, however, get accosted on the return trip because my boarding pass had the 'checkerboard' pattern on it. =(
In the movie 'Shrek', Shrek at one point says the phrase "Hapaya, hapaya!" (according to the subtitles). I looked it up, but couldn't find much. Apparently, 'hepaya' (spelled slightly differently) means "restaurant" in the artificial language 'Sona'. 'Hapaya', however, is not translatable at Babelfish, nor recognized by Merriam-Webster or Dictionary.com. Further documentation is available at these sites: DreamWorks SKG Fansite, and Shrek Script.
Apparently, the term 'hapaya' might be a Sri Lankan (Sinhala) word that has something to do with chewing betel. It might also be a Russian word (or name), but not likely. I'm still looking into this one.
I find it hilarious that the movie '10 Things I Hate About You' contains so much post-secondary vocabulary (seeing as how it's a high school movie). Uncommon terms found in the film but not in most peoples' vocabularies include: vapid, rampallian, turgid, tumescent, repartee, genre, defeatist, misogynist, and a few others.
Saturday, November 30, 2002
The day before Thanksgiving, Brad and Emilie invited us over for a fish barbeque, quite possibly the last one of the year. We went over armed with some Alaskan pollock and a wonderful recipe. Brad barbequed a nice huge salmon fillet for themselves, but desecrated it with Bullseye BBQ sauce. Oh, the humanity!
I just finished another awesome audio book, "Merrick" by Anne Rice. This book was even better than the rest of her books, because it's a crossover book between her two main storylines (the Vampire Chronicles and the Mayfair Witches books). A few days ago at work I did 7 HQS inspections in one day. I think that's a personal record for me.
For Thanksgiving, Misti, Becca, and I went over to my folks place, as did Neal and Megan, too (Ginger wasn't able to make it because Paul was being released from long-term care and returning home - Yeah!) We enjoyed the usual turkey, potatoes, fruit salad, etc. Afterward, we watched "A Knight's Tale" (starring Heath Ledger), a hilarious film about medieval jousting. In tribute to the film, I wanted to include here a short poem by Geoffrey Chaucer:
Today, I did a little maintainence on the site (on the Neopets page and the blog [obviously], but mainly in our family history). I received a message from Alan Smith (not the Allan Smith I initially thought it was), and he led me to a wealth of online information about the settlers of Grouse Creek, Utah - on which are biographies of the Kimbers (Misti's great-great-great-great grandparents). Very cool.
Today we braved the mall crowds and tried a little Christmas shopping, but only met with partial success (still more to be done). Try as I might, my score on Playsite (speed Monopoly is such an awesome game) always hovers in the 1,220-1,240 range. My goal is to break the 1,300 mark, but that might take some doing.
Some recent movies we've seen include "Spiderman" (with Willem Dafoe and Tobey Maguire), "The Scorpion King" (with Michael Clarke Duncan and 'The Rock'), and "The Sum of all Fears" (with Morgan Freeman and Ben Affleck). I forgot to mention in my last post that we used the 'Fandango' online ticket purchasing service for the first time a couple of weeks ago (when we went to see "Harry Potter II" at the cinema). It's great because you don't have to stand in line when you get there, you just walk right in! Very nice.
I was completely impressed by the fact that the IMAX edition of 'Star Wars, Episode II' is expected to consist of approximately 7 TB (terabytes - one terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes) of data, and would fill around 13,000 DVDs!
I just finished another awesome audio book, "Merrick" by Anne Rice. This book was even better than the rest of her books, because it's a crossover book between her two main storylines (the Vampire Chronicles and the Mayfair Witches books). A few days ago at work I did 7 HQS inspections in one day. I think that's a personal record for me.
For Thanksgiving, Misti, Becca, and I went over to my folks place, as did Neal and Megan, too (Ginger wasn't able to make it because Paul was being released from long-term care and returning home - Yeah!) We enjoyed the usual turkey, potatoes, fruit salad, etc. Afterward, we watched "A Knight's Tale" (starring Heath Ledger), a hilarious film about medieval jousting. In tribute to the film, I wanted to include here a short poem by Geoffrey Chaucer:
"Ther seen men who kan juste and who kan ryde.
Ther shyveren shaftes upon sheeldes thikke;
He feeleth thurgh the herte-spoon the prikke;
Up spryngen speres twenty foot on highte;
Out goon the swerdes as the silver brighte;
The helmes they tohewen and toshrede;
Out brest the blood with stierne stremes rede;
With myghty maces the bones they tobreste.
He thurgh the thikkeste of the throng gan threste;
Ther stomblen steedes stronge, and doun gooth al;
He rolleth under foot as dooth a bal;
He foyneth on his feet with his tronchoun,
And he hym hurtleth with hors adoun;
He thurgh the body is hurt and sither take,
Maugree his heed, and broght unto the stake."
Today, I did a little maintainence on the site (on the Neopets page and the blog [obviously], but mainly in our family history). I received a message from Alan Smith (not the Allan Smith I initially thought it was), and he led me to a wealth of online information about the settlers of Grouse Creek, Utah - on which are biographies of the Kimbers (Misti's great-great-great-great grandparents). Very cool.
Today we braved the mall crowds and tried a little Christmas shopping, but only met with partial success (still more to be done). Try as I might, my score on Playsite (speed Monopoly is such an awesome game) always hovers in the 1,220-1,240 range. My goal is to break the 1,300 mark, but that might take some doing.
Some recent movies we've seen include "Spiderman" (with Willem Dafoe and Tobey Maguire), "The Scorpion King" (with Michael Clarke Duncan and 'The Rock'), and "The Sum of all Fears" (with Morgan Freeman and Ben Affleck). I forgot to mention in my last post that we used the 'Fandango' online ticket purchasing service for the first time a couple of weeks ago (when we went to see "Harry Potter II" at the cinema). It's great because you don't have to stand in line when you get there, you just walk right in! Very nice.
I was completely impressed by the fact that the IMAX edition of 'Star Wars, Episode II' is expected to consist of approximately 7 TB (terabytes - one terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes) of data, and would fill around 13,000 DVDs!
Monday, November 25, 2002
Well, I recently passed the 2,300 mark on Seti. In an ironic twist, Brad is back in our group's Top 10, because Astroboy (the one who pushed Brad out in the first place) ended up quitting the team. Also, Yeechang Lee, a long-time participant in our group (and somewhat of a famous LDS web celebrity), quit the group at some point in the recent past.
We went to Sears a few days ago and had our annual Christmas portrait taken. Here's a low-quality preview from the SearsPortrait.com website (they let you preview them online):
Well, I recently had another birthday, and got a fabulous Baskin-Robbin's ice cream cake. I didn't age at all this year, however, mainly because I thought I was 33 this whole past year, but when I stopped and did the math, I actually was really only 32. Thus, when my birthday arrived, I became 33 (again). Pretty good, huh?
Misti and Becca treated me to some really cool movies for my birthday. We went and saw "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" the day after the opening day, and it was really awesome. The spiders were creepy, but this movie has more 'teeth' than the first one. Lucius Malfoy (Draco's dad) is really good in this movie (i.e., Jason Issacs, the guy who plays him, is really excellent).
I also got "Star Wars, Episode II - Attack of the Clones" on DVD. I had forgotten how long this movie really is! I really like it, though. It's my favorite so far, although I already know that Episode III is going to be the best one out of all six.
Becky says "olive" now, as well as "cat", "guh" (for dog), "muh" for cow (moo), and a few other choice words. David left for the MTC a couple of weeks ago, and we've been trying to catch a glimpse of him on the MTC webcam, but haven't yet been successful. My folks got a letter from him today, and he's doing well and his Espa�ol is coming along nicely.
We babysat Sarah a couple days ago whilst Marci, Brett, and Rachel went to also go see Harry Potter II. We went to Comstock Park, and the kids had fun running around and playing on the playground equipment.
Becca's first paper cut happened yesterday, and she was sad. The funny part, however, was watching her afterward fighting with the band-aid. It was really irritating to her to have something stuck on her finger that she couldn't get off.
I have joined yet another distributed computing project, Distributed Folding. Their DOS command-line client works really fast, which is nice because it lets you climb up the ratings fairly quickly.
I wonder how many Americans bite the inside of their cheek? I know quite a few people that do for various reasons, including stress, worry, or anxiety. I do, too, but I'm not really sure why I do. Hmmmm. I'll have to see what I can dig up on the web regarding the subject.
We went to Sears a few days ago and had our annual Christmas portrait taken. Here's a low-quality preview from the SearsPortrait.com website (they let you preview them online):
Well, I recently had another birthday, and got a fabulous Baskin-Robbin's ice cream cake. I didn't age at all this year, however, mainly because I thought I was 33 this whole past year, but when I stopped and did the math, I actually was really only 32. Thus, when my birthday arrived, I became 33 (again). Pretty good, huh?
Misti and Becca treated me to some really cool movies for my birthday. We went and saw "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" the day after the opening day, and it was really awesome. The spiders were creepy, but this movie has more 'teeth' than the first one. Lucius Malfoy (Draco's dad) is really good in this movie (i.e., Jason Issacs, the guy who plays him, is really excellent).
I also got "Star Wars, Episode II - Attack of the Clones" on DVD. I had forgotten how long this movie really is! I really like it, though. It's my favorite so far, although I already know that Episode III is going to be the best one out of all six.
Becky says "olive" now, as well as "cat", "guh" (for dog), "muh" for cow (moo), and a few other choice words. David left for the MTC a couple of weeks ago, and we've been trying to catch a glimpse of him on the MTC webcam, but haven't yet been successful. My folks got a letter from him today, and he's doing well and his Espa�ol is coming along nicely.
We babysat Sarah a couple days ago whilst Marci, Brett, and Rachel went to also go see Harry Potter II. We went to Comstock Park, and the kids had fun running around and playing on the playground equipment.
Becca's first paper cut happened yesterday, and she was sad. The funny part, however, was watching her afterward fighting with the band-aid. It was really irritating to her to have something stuck on her finger that she couldn't get off.
I have joined yet another distributed computing project, Distributed Folding. Their DOS command-line client works really fast, which is nice because it lets you climb up the ratings fairly quickly.
I wonder how many Americans bite the inside of their cheek? I know quite a few people that do for various reasons, including stress, worry, or anxiety. I do, too, but I'm not really sure why I do. Hmmmm. I'll have to see what I can dig up on the web regarding the subject.
Sunday, November 10, 2002
Recently watched Nicolas Cage and T�a Leoni in "The Family Man", and Karen Allen in "The Basket". For Halloween, I dressed up as a bumblebee, Becky and Bonny both dressed up as ladybugs, and Misti dressed up as me (greased back hair, my work shirt, and a pillow for a belly).
Recently finished another audio book, "Nightshade" by John Saul. This was definitely a creepy book, even for a murder mystery. Very suspenseful. Recently passed both the 2000 and 2100 workunit marks with Seti@home. You might also notice that Brad is no longer in the top 10 of our group. He'll be hard pressed to reclaim his position.
Well, I finally lost more than 10 pounds on my Herbalife diet (I have now lost exactly 11 lbs). I didn't want to talk about it until I had lost at least 10 lbs, because I figured that anything less than that would be temporary or too little to matter. It's going slowly for me, but I'm getting there. My goal is to lose 25 pounds total, so I've only got 14 more to go. Nearly halfway there. =)
I attended the 13th Annual Nevada Humanities Awards last Wednesday at Bartley Ranch, put on by the Nevada Humanities Committee. We are related to Earl, Beverly, and Steven James Crum, recipients of the 2002 awards. Other recipients included William Jacobsen and Warren d'Azevedo. After the ceremony, I was fortunate to meet some more members of my extended family, Katrina ('Kitty') and her husband, Naomi's daughter and son-in-law.
David's family 'farewell party' was Friday night, and he was set apart yesterday morning by President Earl. He enters the MTC on Wednesday. (I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the MTC now has a webcam.) Today during Stake Conference, Becky and David were named by name as Pres. Earl recounted yesterday's uplifting experience, much to our surprise. =)
In an ironic twist (considering my earlier post on why digital compression sucks), Dave gave me a Sony MZ-R500PC Recording MD (Minidisc) Walkman.
Recently finished another audio book, "Nightshade" by John Saul. This was definitely a creepy book, even for a murder mystery. Very suspenseful. Recently passed both the 2000 and 2100 workunit marks with Seti@home. You might also notice that Brad is no longer in the top 10 of our group. He'll be hard pressed to reclaim his position.
Well, I finally lost more than 10 pounds on my Herbalife diet (I have now lost exactly 11 lbs). I didn't want to talk about it until I had lost at least 10 lbs, because I figured that anything less than that would be temporary or too little to matter. It's going slowly for me, but I'm getting there. My goal is to lose 25 pounds total, so I've only got 14 more to go. Nearly halfway there. =)
I attended the 13th Annual Nevada Humanities Awards last Wednesday at Bartley Ranch, put on by the Nevada Humanities Committee. We are related to Earl, Beverly, and Steven James Crum, recipients of the 2002 awards. Other recipients included William Jacobsen and Warren d'Azevedo. After the ceremony, I was fortunate to meet some more members of my extended family, Katrina ('Kitty') and her husband, Naomi's daughter and son-in-law.
David's family 'farewell party' was Friday night, and he was set apart yesterday morning by President Earl. He enters the MTC on Wednesday. (I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the MTC now has a webcam.) Today during Stake Conference, Becky and David were named by name as Pres. Earl recounted yesterday's uplifting experience, much to our surprise. =)
In an ironic twist (considering my earlier post on why digital compression sucks), Dave gave me a Sony MZ-R500PC Recording MD (Minidisc) Walkman.
Wednesday, October 30, 2002
We watched "Smoke Signals" a few days ago and chuckled at the John Wayne's Teeth song. Rick, Darlene, Dave, Bonny, and the three of us went to the Nevada Corn Maze (again, as the three of us went last year), but the corn was dead this year. I guess we went a little earlier in the season last time. This year's maze was more difficult and took us longer to get out. We then stopped to eat at Heidi's Family Restaurant in Fallon before returning. Captain Porkchop wouldn't let us order pork chops.
We watched "Moonstruck" with Nicolas Cage and Cher. Pretty hilarious movie, but I'm sure glad I'm not Italian. They seem to argue too much. Was interested to learn that diesel cars and trucks can also run on free fuel instead of costly traditional petroleum fuel. In my estimation, anyone with a diesel car would be crazy not to convert their car over to start using waste vegetable oil as fuel. The conversion kits are inexpensive, and the fuel is free! The only downside is that your exhaust will smell like french fries. =)
I surpassed the 1,800 workunit mark a few of days ago for Seti@home, and just passed 1,900 today. I've been racing a guy named Robert Deadman for a couple of years or so (although he might not know it), first I was ahead, then he was, we were pretty neck and neck for awhile, and then he pulled ahead and stayed ahead for about a year, but now I've not only caught up, but surpassed him, and there's no way he can keep up now after our recent upgrades. Feel free to see what other distributed computing projects I'm involved in.
Was amused to hear that a guy was sued for squirting soy sauce on another guy. We truly live in a litigious society.
Another recent site update: I just added the work cam page. I previously had a link directly to the live video feed, but now it's a little more user friendly with a snapshot and directions, too.
Misti and I were the witness couple for the first time in our session at the Reno Temple this past weekend. It was neat. I was saddened to hear that Richard Harris (Prof. Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter movies) died a couple of days ago from Hodgkin's Disease. =(
We watched "Moonstruck" with Nicolas Cage and Cher. Pretty hilarious movie, but I'm sure glad I'm not Italian. They seem to argue too much. Was interested to learn that diesel cars and trucks can also run on free fuel instead of costly traditional petroleum fuel. In my estimation, anyone with a diesel car would be crazy not to convert their car over to start using waste vegetable oil as fuel. The conversion kits are inexpensive, and the fuel is free! The only downside is that your exhaust will smell like french fries. =)
I surpassed the 1,800 workunit mark a few of days ago for Seti@home, and just passed 1,900 today. I've been racing a guy named Robert Deadman for a couple of years or so (although he might not know it), first I was ahead, then he was, we were pretty neck and neck for awhile, and then he pulled ahead and stayed ahead for about a year, but now I've not only caught up, but surpassed him, and there's no way he can keep up now after our recent upgrades. Feel free to see what other distributed computing projects I'm involved in.
Was amused to hear that a guy was sued for squirting soy sauce on another guy. We truly live in a litigious society.
Another recent site update: I just added the work cam page. I previously had a link directly to the live video feed, but now it's a little more user friendly with a snapshot and directions, too.
Misti and I were the witness couple for the first time in our session at the Reno Temple this past weekend. It was neat. I was saddened to hear that Richard Harris (Prof. Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter movies) died a couple of days ago from Hodgkin's Disease. =(
Monday, October 21, 2002
And now, here's Misti with a few words: "Each month, I'm going highlight a product from Herbalife because even though they have great weight loss products, they also have many other products that are wonderful for helping keep your body healthy. There are products specifically for women, men, children, elderly, active (people who play sports or work out a lot), the heart, the immune system, and so on and so forth. And to begin, this month, I'm going to highlight Kindermins vitamin drops.
Kindermins is one of my more favorite products from Herbalife because it is a great way for little children 6 months to 3 years old, to get all the vitamins they need. They're in liquid form, so you can just put them in a bottle, sippy cup, on cereals, or other foods. Also, because they are liquid vitamins, they absorb faster and better into the system. They really seemed to have helped Becky, in that they keep her little system working well. They're just a great way for little children to get their vitamins when they can't have the chewable vitamins yet." If you'd like to try some Kindermins, feel free to e-mail Misti for a quote. =)
David had his missionary farewell yesterday. We attended the Galena Ward's Sacrament meeting after going to our ward's Sacrament meeting (where I accompanied the young men and young women on the piano while they saing a musical number). Dave and Bonny gave great talks, as did my Dad and Mom (even if her's was a tad lengthy...) Spoony came down from the Lake, and Ginger, Megan, Marta, and Neal came up from Dayton and Carson for the event. After church, we all had a wonderful dinner and visited. Later that evening, Darlene (must've been beginner's luck) schooled the rest of us in a game of "It Came to Pass".
In other news, Saturday night was the first time that I recall having given food back at a drive-thru window: an apple core. While waiting in line at Burger King's drive-thru window, I was eating an apple (a Golden Delicious). It took so long that I had time to finish the whole thing, so when we finally got our food, I was left holding just the core. Not wanting to throw the core out the window or drop it on the floor, I politely asked the window employee if they had a garbage can inside to dispose of the core. She said 'yes' and kindly took the core. It struck Misti as being a bit strange, so I thought I'd mention it here.
Okay, here's a movie question: in "Monsters, Inc." when George Sanderson is involved in the "2319" with the contaminated sock and the CDA, they shave him and shower him during the decontamination scene. They then rip a band-aid off of his back causing him to yell. Since he was completely covered in fur just before the incident, and they shave and shower him in just a few seconds, when, why, and how did the band-aid get there? It couldn't have been there before because that area was completely covered with fur and no band-aid is visible before this scene. If it was placed there as a result of the shaving process, why put it there only to get wet in the shower and then get ripped off just moments later? Regardless of how it got there, why rip it off at all? That whole scene strikes me as odd.
I just found out that I'm not alone when it comes to spoonerisms. They're fairly common occurances, and sometimes just plain hilarious. =)
Kindermins is one of my more favorite products from Herbalife because it is a great way for little children 6 months to 3 years old, to get all the vitamins they need. They're in liquid form, so you can just put them in a bottle, sippy cup, on cereals, or other foods. Also, because they are liquid vitamins, they absorb faster and better into the system. They really seemed to have helped Becky, in that they keep her little system working well. They're just a great way for little children to get their vitamins when they can't have the chewable vitamins yet." If you'd like to try some Kindermins, feel free to e-mail Misti for a quote. =)
David had his missionary farewell yesterday. We attended the Galena Ward's Sacrament meeting after going to our ward's Sacrament meeting (where I accompanied the young men and young women on the piano while they saing a musical number). Dave and Bonny gave great talks, as did my Dad and Mom (even if her's was a tad lengthy...) Spoony came down from the Lake, and Ginger, Megan, Marta, and Neal came up from Dayton and Carson for the event. After church, we all had a wonderful dinner and visited. Later that evening, Darlene (must've been beginner's luck) schooled the rest of us in a game of "It Came to Pass".
In other news, Saturday night was the first time that I recall having given food back at a drive-thru window: an apple core. While waiting in line at Burger King's drive-thru window, I was eating an apple (a Golden Delicious). It took so long that I had time to finish the whole thing, so when we finally got our food, I was left holding just the core. Not wanting to throw the core out the window or drop it on the floor, I politely asked the window employee if they had a garbage can inside to dispose of the core. She said 'yes' and kindly took the core. It struck Misti as being a bit strange, so I thought I'd mention it here.
Okay, here's a movie question: in "Monsters, Inc." when George Sanderson is involved in the "2319" with the contaminated sock and the CDA, they shave him and shower him during the decontamination scene. They then rip a band-aid off of his back causing him to yell. Since he was completely covered in fur just before the incident, and they shave and shower him in just a few seconds, when, why, and how did the band-aid get there? It couldn't have been there before because that area was completely covered with fur and no band-aid is visible before this scene. If it was placed there as a result of the shaving process, why put it there only to get wet in the shower and then get ripped off just moments later? Regardless of how it got there, why rip it off at all? That whole scene strikes me as odd.
I just found out that I'm not alone when it comes to spoonerisms. They're fairly common occurances, and sometimes just plain hilarious. =)
Thursday, October 17, 2002
Well, I tried some more Dreyer's frozen fruit bars recently: the Lime and Tangerine flavors. What I've finally decided is that the only really good ones are the Strawberry, Wild Berry, and Coconut Cream ones. The rest, while they're not horrible or anything, really aren't all that special.
I've been watching some BYU Television lately (the high bandwidth feed is actually pretty nice). No, I haven't forgot about following up on the whole "offerings" topic in the Old Testament. I'm still not done yet. The more I delve, the more complex it gets.
Lance B. Wickman's talk in the October 2002 General Conference, entitled "But If Not", is so awesome. Each Conference, I tend to have a favorite talk, and his is my new favorite.
So everyone knows that saccharin, aspartame, and sugar are horrible for your health, but has anyone heard anything bad about Xylitol? Everything I've read so far seems to indicate that it's safe, natural, and is actually good for your teath. I did see two articles that said if you 'overdosed' on it, the only side effects might be diarrhea or indigestion. All the products I've seen that contain xylitol are gums, mints, breath fresheners, nasal sprays, and even a baking mix, but how come you don't see it at the store in soda, frozen desserts, cereals, candy, etc.? Apparently it's also safe for diabetics, so is it in diabetic foods, too?
We almost went to the Reno Italian Festival a few days ago, but decided against it based upon a Reno Gazette-Journal article that said that there would be no food at the Italian festival on Saturday. What kind of a festival is that? (The whole festival is only two days, Saturday and Sunday - and why would anyone want to go on a Sunday when they could go on a Saturday?) I'm sure the RGJ will be pleased to know that their article trying to promote the event actually detracted people from attending.
I honestly don't think 2000 flushes actually lasts for 2,000 flushes. If you flushed 8 times a day, that would mean that it should last 250 days or roughly 8 months and 10 days. Whatever. The most I've ever seen one last is about 3 months. I suppose I'll have to conduct an experiment... UPDATE: I just checked their website, and it admits that they only last 4 months!!
We viewed "Tortilla Soup" [Hector Elizondo (from The Princess Diaries), Raquel Welch, Elizabeth Pena (from Rush Hour)] the other day. It's a pretty strange flick, but it's funny in a quirky way.
Other movies we've watched lately: "Emma" [Gwyneth Paltrow], "Mr. Nice Guy" [Jackie Chan], "Mr. Wonderful" [Matt Dillon], "10 Things I Hate About You" [Heath Ledger, Julia Stiles, David Krumholtz, Susan May Pratt], "Miss Congeniality" [Sandra Bullock, Michael Caine, Candice Bergen, William Shatner], and "Fools Rush In" [Matthew Perry, Salma Hayek]. "Emma" is a old-fashioned remake of "Clueless", both of which are based on the 1815 book of the same name by Jane Austin.
Recently listened to Andy McNab's "Firewall", but didn't like it. Too much bad language. Too long of a book. Didn't even finish it. The unabridged version was 12 cassettes long! It just kept dragging on and on, even by the 11th cassette it was just slow as can be. I don't recommend it. Another book I just finished today is entitled "McNally's Dilemma" by Lawrence Sanders, and it's okay. It was the abridged version, so it fit on only 2 cassettes. It started out a little too 'high society' with an overdone use of esoteric words and phrases, but it turned out fine and was a pretty good plot. A little unbelievable and way too convienient, but good nonetheless.
Recent site updates: added a couple new cam pics to the TV cam gallery, and added the desktop cam page. I got a weird haircut at Supercuts the other day. It's weird because it's still about the same length as it was when I went in, and yet I saw a bunch of hair fall to the ground. It's like they didn't even cut it at all. I think they're running a scam over there. Very strange.
We took a little mini trip to Ely and Baker (Nevada) on Monday and Tuesday. We visited Lehman Caves but, thanks to delays on the highway caused by the oh-so-industrious brainiacs chatting with each other next to some Nevada Department of Transportation equipment, we missed the last guided tour, so we didn't get to actually see the caves inside. We had to settle for the visitors' center, a National Parks Service film about the geological forming of the caves, and 'Too Tall Tony' on the side of the road (see photo, above). We did, however, eat dinner at a fabulous restaurant in Ely, "La Fiesta". I went down there to attend the annual conference of the Rural Telecommunications Task Force of Nevada (RTTF). We stopped by Gorman's Supermarket and got a Lindt Pistachio bar (Swiss milk chocolate with whole pistachio nuts in almond fillling) and some Henry Weinhard's Root Beer. Mmmmm.
I've been watching some BYU Television lately (the high bandwidth feed is actually pretty nice). No, I haven't forgot about following up on the whole "offerings" topic in the Old Testament. I'm still not done yet. The more I delve, the more complex it gets.
Lance B. Wickman's talk in the October 2002 General Conference, entitled "But If Not", is so awesome. Each Conference, I tend to have a favorite talk, and his is my new favorite.
So everyone knows that saccharin, aspartame, and sugar are horrible for your health, but has anyone heard anything bad about Xylitol? Everything I've read so far seems to indicate that it's safe, natural, and is actually good for your teath. I did see two articles that said if you 'overdosed' on it, the only side effects might be diarrhea or indigestion. All the products I've seen that contain xylitol are gums, mints, breath fresheners, nasal sprays, and even a baking mix, but how come you don't see it at the store in soda, frozen desserts, cereals, candy, etc.? Apparently it's also safe for diabetics, so is it in diabetic foods, too?
We almost went to the Reno Italian Festival a few days ago, but decided against it based upon a Reno Gazette-Journal article that said that there would be no food at the Italian festival on Saturday. What kind of a festival is that? (The whole festival is only two days, Saturday and Sunday - and why would anyone want to go on a Sunday when they could go on a Saturday?) I'm sure the RGJ will be pleased to know that their article trying to promote the event actually detracted people from attending.
I honestly don't think 2000 flushes actually lasts for 2,000 flushes. If you flushed 8 times a day, that would mean that it should last 250 days or roughly 8 months and 10 days. Whatever. The most I've ever seen one last is about 3 months. I suppose I'll have to conduct an experiment... UPDATE: I just checked their website, and it admits that they only last 4 months!!
We viewed "Tortilla Soup" [Hector Elizondo (from The Princess Diaries), Raquel Welch, Elizabeth Pena (from Rush Hour)] the other day. It's a pretty strange flick, but it's funny in a quirky way.
Other movies we've watched lately: "Emma" [Gwyneth Paltrow], "Mr. Nice Guy" [Jackie Chan], "Mr. Wonderful" [Matt Dillon], "10 Things I Hate About You" [Heath Ledger, Julia Stiles, David Krumholtz, Susan May Pratt], "Miss Congeniality" [Sandra Bullock, Michael Caine, Candice Bergen, William Shatner], and "Fools Rush In" [Matthew Perry, Salma Hayek]. "Emma" is a old-fashioned remake of "Clueless", both of which are based on the 1815 book of the same name by Jane Austin.
Recently listened to Andy McNab's "Firewall", but didn't like it. Too much bad language. Too long of a book. Didn't even finish it. The unabridged version was 12 cassettes long! It just kept dragging on and on, even by the 11th cassette it was just slow as can be. I don't recommend it. Another book I just finished today is entitled "McNally's Dilemma" by Lawrence Sanders, and it's okay. It was the abridged version, so it fit on only 2 cassettes. It started out a little too 'high society' with an overdone use of esoteric words and phrases, but it turned out fine and was a pretty good plot. A little unbelievable and way too convienient, but good nonetheless.
Recent site updates: added a couple new cam pics to the TV cam gallery, and added the desktop cam page. I got a weird haircut at Supercuts the other day. It's weird because it's still about the same length as it was when I went in, and yet I saw a bunch of hair fall to the ground. It's like they didn't even cut it at all. I think they're running a scam over there. Very strange.
We took a little mini trip to Ely and Baker (Nevada) on Monday and Tuesday. We visited Lehman Caves but, thanks to delays on the highway caused by the oh-so-industrious brainiacs chatting with each other next to some Nevada Department of Transportation equipment, we missed the last guided tour, so we didn't get to actually see the caves inside. We had to settle for the visitors' center, a National Parks Service film about the geological forming of the caves, and 'Too Tall Tony' on the side of the road (see photo, above). We did, however, eat dinner at a fabulous restaurant in Ely, "La Fiesta". I went down there to attend the annual conference of the Rural Telecommunications Task Force of Nevada (RTTF). We stopped by Gorman's Supermarket and got a Lindt Pistachio bar (Swiss milk chocolate with whole pistachio nuts in almond fillling) and some Henry Weinhard's Root Beer. Mmmmm.
Sunday, October 06, 2002
We were grateful to watch the 172nd Semiannual General Conference this weekend on T.V. Of course, my dad and I watched the Priesthood Session at the Stake Center, though. It's nice, however, to watch the proceedings without having to travel too far. I also accessed the broadcast via the Church website - and was pleased to see that they increased the stream bandwidth for broadband users to 250 kbps. As demand increases every six months, I look forward to a higher video resolution (800x600) at a higher data rate (like 500 or 768 kbps) hopefully in the near future.
Becca got a couple of new toys a few days ago, including Playskool® Stack & Nest Cubes and Fisher-Price® Snap-Lock Beads. She seems to really like them. We found some more CFLs that work even better in smaller lamps, Lights of America® Mini Twister® 5 Year® Bulb. They output approximately the same amount of light as regular 40-watt bulbs (570 lumens), but are shorter so they fit in our smaller lamps and only use 13 watts of power. =)
A few days before that, we also tried a different kind of CFL (the folded vertical ones, not the spirals) from G.E., mainly because Wal-Mart sold out of the other ones. This one, the G.E. Soft White 60 Long Life Energy Saving Bulb uses 15 watts, but outputs 800 lumens (about the same as a normal 60 watt bulb) - and lasts twice as long (about 3,000 hours).
Since I really like Dreyer's Whole FruitTM Fruit Bars, I've tried some more of their flavors during the past week, including Wild Berry, Lemonade, and Creamy Coconut. Honestly, the berry ones are the best (Strawberry and Wild Berry), while the other two aren't as great.
Yesterday, Misti attended a Tupperware party at Jennifer Gibson's house. Then we went downtown to check out the Reno Chili Cookoff, but everything was shutting down, so we grabbed some El Pollo Loco instead. Misti absolutely loves the Chicken Tostada Salad and pink lemonade combination. It's got to be at least 450% pure fat, but it sure tastes good. (Does that count as a "sensible meal"?)
There was a great interfaith discussion in between the Conference sessions on T.V. this morning. They had several different theologians discuss the virtues of 'Mormonism' and Temples. While the Jewish representative and some other professors had some really excellent comments, I was particularly impressed by the wisdom of the representative from the Lutheran Church, Bishop Krister Stendahl. He stated his "Three Rules" that must be adhered to in any comparitive religion discussion, viz.: 1) For information about a religion, ask representatives of the faith itself, not it's critics, 2) Don't compare your "bests" with their "worsts", and 3) Leave room for 'Holy Envy'. (The latter refers to not being afraid to acknowledge that desirable tenets from other beliefs or traditions are okay to respect even if they're not included in your chosen belief system.)
Becca got a couple of new toys a few days ago, including Playskool® Stack & Nest Cubes and Fisher-Price® Snap-Lock Beads. She seems to really like them. We found some more CFLs that work even better in smaller lamps, Lights of America® Mini Twister® 5 Year® Bulb. They output approximately the same amount of light as regular 40-watt bulbs (570 lumens), but are shorter so they fit in our smaller lamps and only use 13 watts of power. =)
A few days before that, we also tried a different kind of CFL (the folded vertical ones, not the spirals) from G.E., mainly because Wal-Mart sold out of the other ones. This one, the G.E. Soft White 60 Long Life Energy Saving Bulb uses 15 watts, but outputs 800 lumens (about the same as a normal 60 watt bulb) - and lasts twice as long (about 3,000 hours).
Since I really like Dreyer's Whole FruitTM Fruit Bars, I've tried some more of their flavors during the past week, including Wild Berry, Lemonade, and Creamy Coconut. Honestly, the berry ones are the best (Strawberry and Wild Berry), while the other two aren't as great.
Yesterday, Misti attended a Tupperware party at Jennifer Gibson's house. Then we went downtown to check out the Reno Chili Cookoff, but everything was shutting down, so we grabbed some El Pollo Loco instead. Misti absolutely loves the Chicken Tostada Salad and pink lemonade combination. It's got to be at least 450% pure fat, but it sure tastes good. (Does that count as a "sensible meal"?)
There was a great interfaith discussion in between the Conference sessions on T.V. this morning. They had several different theologians discuss the virtues of 'Mormonism' and Temples. While the Jewish representative and some other professors had some really excellent comments, I was particularly impressed by the wisdom of the representative from the Lutheran Church, Bishop Krister Stendahl. He stated his "Three Rules" that must be adhered to in any comparitive religion discussion, viz.: 1) For information about a religion, ask representatives of the faith itself, not it's critics, 2) Don't compare your "bests" with their "worsts", and 3) Leave room for 'Holy Envy'. (The latter refers to not being afraid to acknowledge that desirable tenets from other beliefs or traditions are okay to respect even if they're not included in your chosen belief system.)
Thursday, September 26, 2002
Tried some Dippin' Dots a couple of days ago. They are obviously an LDS-member owned company, as their slogan is "Many are cold, but few are frozen." Pretty clever, actually. Gene gave me a spare Sterling Student Slide Rule the other day right after I had schooled him in a few rounds of "It Came To Pass". =) Here's Rick at his recent birthday party:
Misti didn't believe me that men in some indigenous cultures wear penis sheaths. Silly me, I thought this was common knowledge... I guess I just know weird trivial tidbits that others may not have picked up. Misti just e-mailed me another interesting bit of trivia. Today's investor's word of the day is "full ratchet": In venture capital, an investor protection provision which specifies that options and convertible securities may be exercised relative to the lowest price at which securities were issued since the issuance of the option or convertible security. The full ratchet guarantee prevents dilution. I have no idea what that means, but it's pretty cool, no? Here's Becca in Winnemucca:
We procured some awesome G.E. Soft White 100 Longlife Plus Spiral compact fluorescent (CFL) light bulbs from 'Small-mart' a few days ago, and I'm really excited about them. They are equivalent to 'regular' 100-watt incandescent bulbs (both produce approximately 1,690 lumens of light), but only use 26 watts of power. Thus, theoretically, we could leave them four (4) times as long and only still pay the same amount of money. In addition, these new bulbs last roughly 6,000 hours, as opposed to the paltry 750 hours of a 'regular' bulb. The new bulbs have screw-in bases that fit into your standard A-Line sockets, unless (as in some torchiere lamps) the shade prohibits a slightly wider base or the lamp needs to attach directly to the bulb's surface. For most lamps with an 8" or taller harp and light fixtures with globes, however, it's a viable and strongly recommended replacement. For those that know how traditional fluorescents work, CFLs still need a ballast, but it is incorporated into the ceramic screw-in base of the bulb.
Misti didn't believe me that men in some indigenous cultures wear penis sheaths. Silly me, I thought this was common knowledge... I guess I just know weird trivial tidbits that others may not have picked up. Misti just e-mailed me another interesting bit of trivia. Today's investor's word of the day is "full ratchet": In venture capital, an investor protection provision which specifies that options and convertible securities may be exercised relative to the lowest price at which securities were issued since the issuance of the option or convertible security. The full ratchet guarantee prevents dilution. I have no idea what that means, but it's pretty cool, no? Here's Becca in Winnemucca:
We procured some awesome G.E. Soft White 100 Longlife Plus Spiral compact fluorescent (CFL) light bulbs from 'Small-mart' a few days ago, and I'm really excited about them. They are equivalent to 'regular' 100-watt incandescent bulbs (both produce approximately 1,690 lumens of light), but only use 26 watts of power. Thus, theoretically, we could leave them four (4) times as long and only still pay the same amount of money. In addition, these new bulbs last roughly 6,000 hours, as opposed to the paltry 750 hours of a 'regular' bulb. The new bulbs have screw-in bases that fit into your standard A-Line sockets, unless (as in some torchiere lamps) the shade prohibits a slightly wider base or the lamp needs to attach directly to the bulb's surface. For most lamps with an 8" or taller harp and light fixtures with globes, however, it's a viable and strongly recommended replacement. For those that know how traditional fluorescents work, CFLs still need a ballast, but it is incorporated into the ceramic screw-in base of the bulb.
Saturday, September 21, 2002
You know, I think toasters need to be improved upon. In a standard two-slot toaster, if you want to toast more than two slices of bread, the second run of toast doesn't come out as dark as the first set because the toaster is still hot from the previous toasting. This is less than acceptable because of the archaic shut off mechanism: a mechanical bi-layer metal strip. As the toaster heats up, the metal on one side of the strip expands more than the metal on the other side, thus bending the strip. After it reaches a certain temperature, the strip will have bent far enough to activate a switch, thus turning off the power to the toaster and popping up your toast. It's a great idea, but the flaw is that the metal strip is already pre-heated for the second run of toast, so your next pieces of toast don't cook long enough - thus they get popped up prematurely.
In order to improve this, the toaster needs to sense the temperature of the toast itself, not the toaster ambient temperature. Or perhaps an optical BRS ("Brownness Recognition System") could 'see' when the toast is done. In any case, toaster manufacturers should not be resting on their laurels - there is a lot of work yet to be done. Ooh, better yet: if your house was pre-wired with in-wall USB outlets, you could just plug in the toaster to the wall, and not only would the connector supply power to the toaster but provide feedback to a home automation system with the BRS data. The automation system would then tell the toaster when to deactivate, based upon a user-programmable profile (different family members could have different settings, based on how well they like their toast done). Thus, you would never have inferior toast again. =)
In order to improve this, the toaster needs to sense the temperature of the toast itself, not the toaster ambient temperature. Or perhaps an optical BRS ("Brownness Recognition System") could 'see' when the toast is done. In any case, toaster manufacturers should not be resting on their laurels - there is a lot of work yet to be done. Ooh, better yet: if your house was pre-wired with in-wall USB outlets, you could just plug in the toaster to the wall, and not only would the connector supply power to the toaster but provide feedback to a home automation system with the BRS data. The automation system would then tell the toaster when to deactivate, based upon a user-programmable profile (different family members could have different settings, based on how well they like their toast done). Thus, you would never have inferior toast again. =)
Friday, September 20, 2002
Today we ate at the Subway in Winnemucca, and tried out their new Hot Buffalo Wings sandwich. I think it's pretty nasty, but Misti likes it. I found some fat-free frozen treats that are just awesome: Dreyer's Whole Fruit Fruit Ice Bars (Strawberry). Mmmmm. We wanted to get an authentic Basque lunch today, but all of the Basque restaurants in Winnemucca stop serving lunch promptly at 1:00 p.m., except for the Martin House, which serves until 2:00 p.m., but as luck would have it I got out of a meeting at 1:40 p.m., and we jumped in the car and went off in search of some grub but by the time we drove around to the other three first before getting to the Martin House, it was 2:08 p.m. (eight minutes after two) and we were out of luck. Thus the nasty Subway.
Brad is migrating all of us "Nuggers" away from the advertising-laden Yahoo Groups to a standalone website: http://www.thenug.net/. At this point, it's still in the construction phase, but feel free to check it out. By the way, "niggard" and "niggardly" are not bad words. The terms date back to the 14th century and 1571, respectfully, and simply mean "a stingy person" and "stingy". "Nigger", on the other hand, simply means "black" (the color) and only dates back to 1700, so it's obvious which ones came first. The good terms came from Middle English with a Scandanavian origin (related to similar Norse and Old English words), while the "N word" came from some of the so-called romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Latin) wherein, to this day, the words for "black" are obviously still in everyday usage: "noir", "negro", "nero", and "niger". Anyone confusing the two should spend 30 seconds in a dictionary before making such a stink about it.
I've been noticing some more problems with DVDs and DVD players recently. Having used 5 or 6 different brands and models of DVD players, I've now gotten a better sense of what's out there, and I'm still not impressed with DVDs as a video solution. Most recently, I've come across four (4) "new" phenomena ('new' meaning that I haven't already spoken about them here previously):
Brad is migrating all of us "Nuggers" away from the advertising-laden Yahoo Groups to a standalone website: http://www.thenug.net/. At this point, it's still in the construction phase, but feel free to check it out. By the way, "niggard" and "niggardly" are not bad words. The terms date back to the 14th century and 1571, respectfully, and simply mean "a stingy person" and "stingy". "Nigger", on the other hand, simply means "black" (the color) and only dates back to 1700, so it's obvious which ones came first. The good terms came from Middle English with a Scandanavian origin (related to similar Norse and Old English words), while the "N word" came from some of the so-called romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Latin) wherein, to this day, the words for "black" are obviously still in everyday usage: "noir", "negro", "nero", and "niger". Anyone confusing the two should spend 30 seconds in a dictionary before making such a stink about it.
I've been noticing some more problems with DVDs and DVD players recently. Having used 5 or 6 different brands and models of DVD players, I've now gotten a better sense of what's out there, and I'm still not impressed with DVDs as a video solution. Most recently, I've come across four (4) "new" phenomena ('new' meaning that I haven't already spoken about them here previously):
- The "Chinese movie" effect
- The "spontaneously switching aspect ratio" anomaly
- The "flickering white background while 3-D rendering" issue
- Random captions.
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
After having been bombarded for weeks at Wal-Mart with the anticipation of "Monsters, Inc.", we followed the flock and bought a copy of the DVD and watched it last night. It's a great flick, and Becca even likes it. =)
A goofy country song on the radio this morning got me thinking briefly on that whole "immovable object vs. irresistable force" question. I don't really think it's all that hard to solve. Simply put, there is no such thing as an immovable object. On a planetary scale, everything is moving, even the entire universe moves and expands. Thus, if everything is always moving, it's kind of hard to say that something "can't be moved". I think the whole concept of something that could not be moved is a rather small-minded idea based upon human observance of objects limited to our planet that seem really big to us, like a mountain or something. But obviously even mountains can be moved, if only by mere mortals. Thus, no matter how big of something you can think of, or no matter how well "rooted" is it, I think it can be moved. If you think of something that truly can not stopped from moving, like a comet or a black hole or the force of gravity or something, no little mountain or a mile high, mile wide, mile deep solid cube of concrete or steel or whatever you think might be fairly stationary can stop something that big and "irresistable" from moving along it's path. It's a nice theory, but the fact that there really is nothing truly "immovable" kind of solves the whole issue right off the bat, don't you think?
A goofy country song on the radio this morning got me thinking briefly on that whole "immovable object vs. irresistable force" question. I don't really think it's all that hard to solve. Simply put, there is no such thing as an immovable object. On a planetary scale, everything is moving, even the entire universe moves and expands. Thus, if everything is always moving, it's kind of hard to say that something "can't be moved". I think the whole concept of something that could not be moved is a rather small-minded idea based upon human observance of objects limited to our planet that seem really big to us, like a mountain or something. But obviously even mountains can be moved, if only by mere mortals. Thus, no matter how big of something you can think of, or no matter how well "rooted" is it, I think it can be moved. If you think of something that truly can not stopped from moving, like a comet or a black hole or the force of gravity or something, no little mountain or a mile high, mile wide, mile deep solid cube of concrete or steel or whatever you think might be fairly stationary can stop something that big and "irresistable" from moving along it's path. It's a nice theory, but the fact that there really is nothing truly "immovable" kind of solves the whole issue right off the bat, don't you think?
Sunday, September 15, 2002
Misti and I played some more "It Came To Pass" last night with Brenda, Mike, Emilie, and Brad. The scores stand thus for the first match: Misti - 195, Brenda - 114, Mike - 333, Richard - 100, Brad - 270, and Emilie - 237. We played to 300, so I guess I won that round (the player with the least amount of points wins). In the second match, the scores stand thus: Misti - 13, Brenda - 64, Mike - 67, Richard - -11 (yes, that's a negative eleven), Brad - 145, and Emilie - 47. We played until Mike and Brenda needed to leave, so it was a short game, but I guess I won again. And in both cases, it looks like a male Carpenter lost. Hmmm, I think the male gender in a particular family needs some more practice... =o
Click here to see the scores on paper.
Click here to see the scores on paper.
Friday, September 13, 2002
Well, it's been sort of hard to keep up with online things recently as both of our computers have been hosed for the past month or so. That's why two of our webcams (the TV cam and the Desktop cam) haven't been on, and why if you've been sending us any e-mail it may as of yet have gone unanswered. This should change this weekend, however, as both computers should be back up and running (knock on wood, cross my fingers).
Last Saturday, we watched "Wit" with Emma Thompson and Christopher Lloyd. This has got to be the worst film ever. It's all about a terminal cancer patient and her ordeals with chemotherapy. You actually see her ralphing on screen. It's a great motivational piece. NOT! We also watched "Life is Beautiful", an Italian comedy film about the Holocaust. Yet another motivational film. Okay, so Saturday was pretty depressing. The funny thing is that I got both of them (from the library bus) because I thought they were 'chick flicks' and therefore that Misti might like them. As it turned out, neither one of us liked either of them. "Life is Beautiful" actually started out pretty funny, but when the guy dies at the end, it's a real bummer. I was really hoping that the whole family would make it through the ordeal alive, that's all. A funny movie about an unfunny subject... hmmmm. =(
We had the most disgusting, horrible chicken wings ever at Red's Old 395 Grill in Carson City. The wings were served warm (some of the tips were still cold, but the insides were hot - sounds like they microwaved them), and the wings aren't just the one section that everyone is used to, it's all three sections of the chicken's wing, so it's way too big. Since the wings weren't really cooked well enough, they were squishy and stringy, not crisp. The sauce tasted nasty, too hot and yet served cold - a terrible combination, yuck! Two thumbs down, definitely. We visited Michelle, Kenzie, and Hayden briefly afterward at their home in Moundhouse. Before all that, we attended the Northern Nevada Computer Show, held at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center. It wasn't bad for the first one, especially in such a small city as Reno. I would expect next year's show to be bigger, however, or else it would have to be deemed a failure. I have since spoken to a couple of the vendors, and they both stated that they were told a couple of thousand people would show up, but the actual attendance was much less than this. We picked up a few good things, however, like some free teeshirts, some software for a buck, and some good information and contacts to take back to work with me.
We also babysat Bonny on Saturday night and watched yet another DVD, this time a good, funny one: "America's Sweethearts" with Catherine Zeta-Jones, Julia Roberts, John Cusack, Billy Crystal, and Seth Green (Scott from Austin Powers). It was so good that we have now seen it at least 5 or 6 times since. The DVD is good because one side is Pan and Scan (full screen), and the other side is widescreen, so no matter which you like best, you're covered with this one.
On Sunday, we celebrated Rick's birthday. Heather got him a Samsung DVD/VHS combo player, and Misti, Becca, and I got him a gift certificate to Bertha Miranda's and some Heinz 57 Sauce (which is his favorite steak sauce) - the latter as a joke, of course. By the way, does anyone have a list of the actual 57 different Heinz products? I visited their websites (there are several of them), and am now confused because they have way more products than that, 142 to be exact. The problem is that if you decide that they must mean only the sauces (a bottle of Heinz 57 Sauce states that there are 57 different varieties), then there aren't enough, as I was only about to count 10 sauces. When it boils down to it, Heinz is primarily in the baby food business. Check out my list of their products to see why.
We also played "It Came To Pass" again, and Rick was actually winning most of the game until we introduced some "draw 10" cards (house rules are the best) into the deck, and things went downhill from there for him. He ended up during one hand having to draw like 44 cards, and he ended up with something like 760 points just from one round. Poor guy (and at his own birthday party)!
I found some wonderful new yogurt at the store that I really like: Glen Oaks Drinkable Low-Fat Yogurt. It's really quite tasty.
Last Saturday, we watched "Wit" with Emma Thompson and Christopher Lloyd. This has got to be the worst film ever. It's all about a terminal cancer patient and her ordeals with chemotherapy. You actually see her ralphing on screen. It's a great motivational piece. NOT! We also watched "Life is Beautiful", an Italian comedy film about the Holocaust. Yet another motivational film. Okay, so Saturday was pretty depressing. The funny thing is that I got both of them (from the library bus) because I thought they were 'chick flicks' and therefore that Misti might like them. As it turned out, neither one of us liked either of them. "Life is Beautiful" actually started out pretty funny, but when the guy dies at the end, it's a real bummer. I was really hoping that the whole family would make it through the ordeal alive, that's all. A funny movie about an unfunny subject... hmmmm. =(
We had the most disgusting, horrible chicken wings ever at Red's Old 395 Grill in Carson City. The wings were served warm (some of the tips were still cold, but the insides were hot - sounds like they microwaved them), and the wings aren't just the one section that everyone is used to, it's all three sections of the chicken's wing, so it's way too big. Since the wings weren't really cooked well enough, they were squishy and stringy, not crisp. The sauce tasted nasty, too hot and yet served cold - a terrible combination, yuck! Two thumbs down, definitely. We visited Michelle, Kenzie, and Hayden briefly afterward at their home in Moundhouse. Before all that, we attended the Northern Nevada Computer Show, held at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center. It wasn't bad for the first one, especially in such a small city as Reno. I would expect next year's show to be bigger, however, or else it would have to be deemed a failure. I have since spoken to a couple of the vendors, and they both stated that they were told a couple of thousand people would show up, but the actual attendance was much less than this. We picked up a few good things, however, like some free teeshirts, some software for a buck, and some good information and contacts to take back to work with me.
We also babysat Bonny on Saturday night and watched yet another DVD, this time a good, funny one: "America's Sweethearts" with Catherine Zeta-Jones, Julia Roberts, John Cusack, Billy Crystal, and Seth Green (Scott from Austin Powers). It was so good that we have now seen it at least 5 or 6 times since. The DVD is good because one side is Pan and Scan (full screen), and the other side is widescreen, so no matter which you like best, you're covered with this one.
On Sunday, we celebrated Rick's birthday. Heather got him a Samsung DVD/VHS combo player, and Misti, Becca, and I got him a gift certificate to Bertha Miranda's and some Heinz 57 Sauce (which is his favorite steak sauce) - the latter as a joke, of course. By the way, does anyone have a list of the actual 57 different Heinz products? I visited their websites (there are several of them), and am now confused because they have way more products than that, 142 to be exact. The problem is that if you decide that they must mean only the sauces (a bottle of Heinz 57 Sauce states that there are 57 different varieties), then there aren't enough, as I was only about to count 10 sauces. When it boils down to it, Heinz is primarily in the baby food business. Check out my list of their products to see why.
We also played "It Came To Pass" again, and Rick was actually winning most of the game until we introduced some "draw 10" cards (house rules are the best) into the deck, and things went downhill from there for him. He ended up during one hand having to draw like 44 cards, and he ended up with something like 760 points just from one round. Poor guy (and at his own birthday party)!
I found some wonderful new yogurt at the store that I really like: Glen Oaks Drinkable Low-Fat Yogurt. It's really quite tasty.
Tuesday, September 03, 2002
DontLink.com is an awesome site that highlights the most ridiculous corporate website "policy" that I've ever heard of: prohibiting hyperlinking to webpages. That's the whole point of the web! What's so wrong with just letting people link to them (which brings them visitors anyway - the whole point of having a website), and then just having a good 404 redirect setup to deal with outdated links. Why is that so hard? Some companies are so stupid.
Well, a few interesting things happened this past Labor Day weekend that I should mention. I watched William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" (the 1978 Thames stage production rereleased by HBO Home Video) that I checked out from the library, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was an all star cast! The role of Macbeth was played by Ian McKellen ("Magneto" in X-Men), and the play also starred Ian McDiarmid ("Senator Palpatine" from Star Wars, Episode I), and Bob Peck (the game warden from Jurassic Park). It was pretty cool to see a classic play with today's popular actors. Another movie that we watched was "Kate & Leopold" starring Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman (also an X-Men actor - he played "Wolverine"). This is a hilarious movie - I highly recommend it. We also finally watched "Kung Pow! Enter The Fist" (which was the goofy Chinese farce that we weren't able to view the first time we rented it), and "A.I. - Artificial intelligence". I'm sorry to anyone who actually enjoyed either one of these films, but I just couldn't. Also watched a couple more documentaries from the library, the History Channel's "The Aztec Empire", and "Where Jesus Walked - A Video Journey through Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jericho, Capernaum, and Jerusalem".
We spent a few minutes down at the Rib Cookoff (getting some excellent lemonade and, of course, wonderful ribs from Desparados and Carson City BBQ Company) on Saturday. Monday night we tried out the new Tamarack Junction restaurant - I had a Peach BBQ sandwich. Sounds gross, but very tasty. =)
Well, a few interesting things happened this past Labor Day weekend that I should mention. I watched William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" (the 1978 Thames stage production rereleased by HBO Home Video) that I checked out from the library, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was an all star cast! The role of Macbeth was played by Ian McKellen ("Magneto" in X-Men), and the play also starred Ian McDiarmid ("Senator Palpatine" from Star Wars, Episode I), and Bob Peck (the game warden from Jurassic Park). It was pretty cool to see a classic play with today's popular actors. Another movie that we watched was "Kate & Leopold" starring Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman (also an X-Men actor - he played "Wolverine"). This is a hilarious movie - I highly recommend it. We also finally watched "Kung Pow! Enter The Fist" (which was the goofy Chinese farce that we weren't able to view the first time we rented it), and "A.I. - Artificial intelligence". I'm sorry to anyone who actually enjoyed either one of these films, but I just couldn't. Also watched a couple more documentaries from the library, the History Channel's "The Aztec Empire", and "Where Jesus Walked - A Video Journey through Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jericho, Capernaum, and Jerusalem".
We spent a few minutes down at the Rib Cookoff (getting some excellent lemonade and, of course, wonderful ribs from Desparados and Carson City BBQ Company) on Saturday. Monday night we tried out the new Tamarack Junction restaurant - I had a Peach BBQ sandwich. Sounds gross, but very tasty. =)
Wednesday, August 28, 2002
Odds and ends: we finally were able to watch the rest of the DVDs that we checked out from Brad and Emilie's Video Rentals: "Gattaca", "Iron Monkey", and "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring". I'm sorry, but I didn't like the Lord of the Rings all that much, and neither did Misti. Maybe there was so much hype about it or something, maybe I waited too long to see it, who knows - but it wasn't as good as I thought it would be. =(
A few weeks ago we saw "Goldmember" (Austin Powers III) at the El Rancho Drive-In. The audio sucked, as usual - they always get the audio garbled during the movies - so we ended up with 2 or 3 minutes worth of silence during the film. Everyone was honking like crazy until they finally figured it out.
A few weeks ago we saw "Goldmember" (Austin Powers III) at the El Rancho Drive-In. The audio sucked, as usual - they always get the audio garbled during the movies - so we ended up with 2 or 3 minutes worth of silence during the film. Everyone was honking like crazy until they finally figured it out.
Sunday, August 25, 2002
Well, I am now, finally, happy to report that I finally figured out what the heck was going on with our DVD "situation". In case you don't know the background of our dilemma, please read my previous DVD post. After more research and a little experiment at Brad and Emilie's house, I finally stumbled across the culprit of our DVD viewing woes: Macrovision Copyright Protection (aka "macrosplat").
The geniuses that make DVD players decided that U.S. copyright law and the F.B.I. aren't effective enough to prevent people from making illegal copies of movies, so they, themselves, did an illegal thing by incorporating copy protection "features" in all DVD players - which is illegal because you, the consumer, are allowed by law to make a legal backup copy of any media you purchase (in this case most commonly a VHS copy of a DVD), but their copy protection prevents you from making *any* copies via a VCR whatsoever, thus illegally preventing you from not only making a copy, but in our case (and the case of millions of households across the nation) even viewing the movie at all!
We finally solved our problem with a most excellent and highly recommended product from Video Ware, Inc. in Wyoming, called the S-Video to VCR conversion package. Since our TV (a Sanyo DS19380) only has one input, an RF coaxial connector (see specs on Sanyo's website), our only option for hooking up the DVD player was through the VCR. Well, guess what? You're apparently not supposed to even think about doing that. When certain DVDs see a VCR as the output destination, they decide that you're trying to copy them, so the picture goes all funky and you can't even view it. I guess they never even conceived that half of all Americans would need to hook up their DVD players this way. Of course, even the TV manufacturers will tell you this (even ours does), but who thinks to go to their website when it's the DVD that won't play! For the record, one of the reasons it was so hard to troubleshoot this problem (and why no one I asked could) was because some DVDs played just fine, while others clearly didn't. For instance, "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (Set 4, Season 2) worked, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" worked, "Uncorked" worked, "Baraka" worked, and just about anything you burn onto DVD yourself should work (I tried 5 different DVDs from work that were custom made, and they all worked). None of the rest that we tried would work, however, including "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring", "Unbreakable", "Gattaca", "Shallow Hal", "Iron Monkey", and a goofy karate movie about a guy beating up a cow Matrix-style, but I can't remember the name of it, mainly because we rented it, but couldn't watch it.
At Brad's suggestion, I'm going to keep a little log of which media companies are the "good guys" and which are the "bad guys" (i.e., which ones include this illegal macrovision scheme on their DVD releases). That way, you'll know which companies' DVDs will work on your player if you're forced to hook up your DVD through your VCR like we were. Of course, if you're in the same boat that we were until today, I highly recommend the product we purchased - even though it is a bit pricey. So far, the list stands thus:
So, now that we can view all DVDs without incident, does this negate my previous post? Not even. I still notice banding and other DVD compression artifacts all the time, and I still think the compatibility issues (and the stupid macrosplat "feature") are ruining the marketplace, and they still don't hold enough data, and an optical medium is always going to be inherently flawed when it comes to playback obstruction due to dust, fingerprints, scratches, etc. There are still some real issues that need to be addressed until I'll be completely happy with DVDs. But until then, I guess I'll just have to suffer with the higher horizontal lines of resolution and extra features of DVDs like the rest of y'all. =)
Also in today's news, I saw my first double-yolked egg - Misti ate it for breakfast, yucka! Also, we went to the Nevada State Fair, which, sadly, gets more lame with each passing year. The petting zoo was the highlight, as I got to squeeze the zebu's hump. We also had two lemonades, one very lame, and one very tasty. The one outside in the food court was the yucky, overpriced one, whereas the one on the second floor inside the Livestock Events Center in the southeast corner was the very tasty and reasonably priced one. The Church also had a booth there, and it looked pretty good. Interestingly, Yucca Mountain nuclear waste proponents also had a booth there trying to soften people up. (See my previous Yucca Mountain post for my opinion on this issue.)
Got $2.00 off ($1.00 twice off mine and Misti's tickets) by using the coupon on the back of Model Dairy milk cartons. Took the shaft on parking, though, as it was $6.00 if you came in via the main entrances, but the parking lot wasn't even manned on the south entrance (the Washoe County Complex main entrance - on 9th St) so that would've been free, I guess, had we discovered it on the way in instead of whilst exiting. =(
Watched "Unbreakable", starring Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis - a great film based around the concept of comic books. Yes, it was a DVD - that I borrowed from Brad, and, for the record, that didn't work until after we installed our new little gadget.
Since it appears that the RIAA, MPAA, et al are now suing individual users of peer-to-peer file sharing programs (most noticeably for trading MP3s), I think it's rather convenient that my computer died awhile back and has been thus far uncooperative during several attempts at resurrection. Ironically, many fellow employees at work don't understand the favor I'm really doing them by having blocked file sharing at work via the proxy server. One guy said to me, "Well, they can't arrest everyone" - which is true, but like I told him, "They don't have to, all they need to do is arrest one or two people in each state and everyone will be crapping their pants". Thus, for the record, I don't use any peer-to-peer file sharing programs. My computer at home doesn't even function, and I lost any previously stored music while reformatting the hard drive, and it's all blocked at work. =)
The geniuses that make DVD players decided that U.S. copyright law and the F.B.I. aren't effective enough to prevent people from making illegal copies of movies, so they, themselves, did an illegal thing by incorporating copy protection "features" in all DVD players - which is illegal because you, the consumer, are allowed by law to make a legal backup copy of any media you purchase (in this case most commonly a VHS copy of a DVD), but their copy protection prevents you from making *any* copies via a VCR whatsoever, thus illegally preventing you from not only making a copy, but in our case (and the case of millions of households across the nation) even viewing the movie at all!
We finally solved our problem with a most excellent and highly recommended product from Video Ware, Inc. in Wyoming, called the S-Video to VCR conversion package. Since our TV (a Sanyo DS19380) only has one input, an RF coaxial connector (see specs on Sanyo's website), our only option for hooking up the DVD player was through the VCR. Well, guess what? You're apparently not supposed to even think about doing that. When certain DVDs see a VCR as the output destination, they decide that you're trying to copy them, so the picture goes all funky and you can't even view it. I guess they never even conceived that half of all Americans would need to hook up their DVD players this way. Of course, even the TV manufacturers will tell you this (even ours does), but who thinks to go to their website when it's the DVD that won't play! For the record, one of the reasons it was so hard to troubleshoot this problem (and why no one I asked could) was because some DVDs played just fine, while others clearly didn't. For instance, "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (Set 4, Season 2) worked, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" worked, "Uncorked" worked, "Baraka" worked, and just about anything you burn onto DVD yourself should work (I tried 5 different DVDs from work that were custom made, and they all worked). None of the rest that we tried would work, however, including "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring", "Unbreakable", "Gattaca", "Shallow Hal", "Iron Monkey", and a goofy karate movie about a guy beating up a cow Matrix-style, but I can't remember the name of it, mainly because we rented it, but couldn't watch it.
At Brad's suggestion, I'm going to keep a little log of which media companies are the "good guys" and which are the "bad guys" (i.e., which ones include this illegal macrovision scheme on their DVD releases). That way, you'll know which companies' DVDs will work on your player if you're forced to hook up your DVD through your VCR like we were. Of course, if you're in the same boat that we were until today, I highly recommend the product we purchased - even though it is a bit pricey. So far, the list stands thus:
| Good Companies | Bad Companies |
|---|---|
| A&E Television Networks Warner Brothers Pictures Vidmark/Trimark MPI Media | New Line Home Entertainment Miramax Home Entertainment Columbia Pictures Touchstone Home Video |
So, now that we can view all DVDs without incident, does this negate my previous post? Not even. I still notice banding and other DVD compression artifacts all the time, and I still think the compatibility issues (and the stupid macrosplat "feature") are ruining the marketplace, and they still don't hold enough data, and an optical medium is always going to be inherently flawed when it comes to playback obstruction due to dust, fingerprints, scratches, etc. There are still some real issues that need to be addressed until I'll be completely happy with DVDs. But until then, I guess I'll just have to suffer with the higher horizontal lines of resolution and extra features of DVDs like the rest of y'all. =)
Also in today's news, I saw my first double-yolked egg - Misti ate it for breakfast, yucka! Also, we went to the Nevada State Fair, which, sadly, gets more lame with each passing year. The petting zoo was the highlight, as I got to squeeze the zebu's hump. We also had two lemonades, one very lame, and one very tasty. The one outside in the food court was the yucky, overpriced one, whereas the one on the second floor inside the Livestock Events Center in the southeast corner was the very tasty and reasonably priced one. The Church also had a booth there, and it looked pretty good. Interestingly, Yucca Mountain nuclear waste proponents also had a booth there trying to soften people up. (See my previous Yucca Mountain post for my opinion on this issue.)
Got $2.00 off ($1.00 twice off mine and Misti's tickets) by using the coupon on the back of Model Dairy milk cartons. Took the shaft on parking, though, as it was $6.00 if you came in via the main entrances, but the parking lot wasn't even manned on the south entrance (the Washoe County Complex main entrance - on 9th St) so that would've been free, I guess, had we discovered it on the way in instead of whilst exiting. =(
Watched "Unbreakable", starring Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis - a great film based around the concept of comic books. Yes, it was a DVD - that I borrowed from Brad, and, for the record, that didn't work until after we installed our new little gadget.
Since it appears that the RIAA, MPAA, et al are now suing individual users of peer-to-peer file sharing programs (most noticeably for trading MP3s), I think it's rather convenient that my computer died awhile back and has been thus far uncooperative during several attempts at resurrection. Ironically, many fellow employees at work don't understand the favor I'm really doing them by having blocked file sharing at work via the proxy server. One guy said to me, "Well, they can't arrest everyone" - which is true, but like I told him, "They don't have to, all they need to do is arrest one or two people in each state and everyone will be crapping their pants". Thus, for the record, I don't use any peer-to-peer file sharing programs. My computer at home doesn't even function, and I lost any previously stored music while reformatting the hard drive, and it's all blocked at work. =)
Thursday, August 22, 2002
Why are there two different "Away in a Manger"s? They both have the same words, but there are two different tunes. Well, we bought a new mattress the other day from Mattress Land, a Simmons Beautyrest "Merrion" queen set. I also tried some different fat-free, sugar-free fudge bars: Blue Bunny's Health Smart bars. They're pretty tasty. I finished listening to two comedy tapes that Gene lent me, Volumes I and V of Willie P. Richardson's Phone Pranks. They're pretty hilarious. I've been doing a little research on all the different types of offerings listed in the Old Testament (so far I've counted 13 kinds): heave offering, wave offering, peace offering, thank offering, burnt offering, sin offering, trespass offering, guilt offering, grain offering, drink offering, freewill offering, votive offering, and fellowship offering. Within the next week or so, I'll write a little summary of what I've found. In the mean time, check out Brad's dancing spiderman. =)
I just surpassed the 1,500 mark on Seti@home workunits. Also, Misti is now selling Herbalife products, so if anyone would like to order health and household products from her, please give her a call or drop her an e-mail. Also, two of Herbalife's foci are weight management and work-at-home opportunities. Thus, if you're interested in either of these, please visit Misti's websites for losing weight and/or for working from home.
I just surpassed the 1,500 mark on Seti@home workunits. Also, Misti is now selling Herbalife products, so if anyone would like to order health and household products from her, please give her a call or drop her an e-mail. Also, two of Herbalife's foci are weight management and work-at-home opportunities. Thus, if you're interested in either of these, please visit Misti's websites for losing weight and/or for working from home.
Wednesday, August 14, 2002
I've been quiet on the whole Yucca Mountain issue because I really haven't had too much of an opinion on it so far, but since it actually looks like we're going to get stuck with most of the nation's waste, I think it's about time for an opinion. On Tuesday, July 23, 2002, President George W. Bush quietly signed a $58 billion resolution clearing the way for the burial of toxic nuclear waste from across the nation in Nevada's Yucca Mountain for 10,000 years. Yucca Mountain is only 90 miles away from Las Vegas. Not surprisingly, 83% of Nevadans oppose the site, and this action will likely cost Bush the state in the next election. Now if the federal gov't was to pay us 10,000 years worth of rent for the storage, that might create a whole different issue... J/K.
Most people already know that this stuff is lethal. Right now it's being stored at 131 locations in 39 states. I'd actually be really mad right now if I lived in one of those 39 states, and of course then I'd be all for getting rid of the junk. I find it funny that Utah, only 120 miles from Yucca, voted in favor of it, simply to get it out of their state, even though any accident at the site would definitely affect them also.
To think that environmental exposure is not going to happen, whether by nature, terrorist attack, or simply good 'ol human error, for 10,000 years is rather na�ve. With such an attractive target for terrorists, it's going to cost a whole lot more than $58 billion to maintain the thing in the long run, as they're going to need to have 24-hour surveillance and military protection for 10,000 years. That's a ton of money! In February 2000, there was a radioactive accident in Thailand that demonstrates how easy it is for the human error part to happen.
Let's assume that in 200 years some of the stuff gets out into the environment. The main shaft of radioactive waste for humans is that it causes cancer and two types of Human mutation: teratogenic and genetic. I read an article a while back that made light of at least the cancer scenario, because honestly if medical science still hasn't found a cure for cancer 200 years from now, they're really not all that bright, are they? So, assuming that cancer is no longer a problem, there's still the whole mutation problem.
Genetic mutations are changes in a person's genetic makeup (DNA) that will affect future generations. Teratogenic mutations change a person's body but those changes will not carry over to the next generation. In other words, if you're exposed to this toxic nasty stuff, not only will you get screwed over, but so might your kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, etc. for who knows how long. Watch Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Total Recall" movie to get an idea...
What a lot of people don't know is that not everyone is opposed to the stuff, and some people even *want* the stuff. I was saddened to learn that some members of the Goshute tribe in Utah actually want to bury the stuff on their reservation (for several interesting reasons) until Yucca Mountain is completed. Obviously, not all of the Goshutes feel the same way, but I certainly wouldn't volunteer my land away to some deadly stuff. Some interesting articles I've been reading on these issues are the EPA's radiation FAQ, the General Conference of the IAEA's report, a Shoshone land claim issue, and a list of nuclear accidents in the United States.
While I'm glad that there are no nuclear plants in Nevada, I am miffed that there is one in Sacramento (California) which is right over the mountain to the west only 130 miles away, which I think would mean that they are currently also storing waste there on site (not certain about this, I'll have to check it out further). And, of course, I'm mad about the three nuclear testing sites in Nevada that most people already know about. I'm glad, however, that no DOE-proposed truck routes come through Reno, but I am a little worried about train transport as Reno is a rail hub. The good news is that we really aren't en route to Vegas from anywhere except from Washington, Oregon, Northern California, and Western Idaho - but their toxic refuse is apparently being trucked to Yucca either going through Salt Lake and down to Vegas through the middle of Utah or down the I-5 corridor in California).
In other news: we watched "First Daughter" with Mariel Hemingway, had a few people over Saturday for pizza, wings (yes, they were from Joe Bob's - the Chicken Joint, NOT the Chicken Palace), and "It Came to Pass". Ate dinner and played Bocce with my folks on Sunday at South Hills park. Finished the Clive Cussler book, "Atlantis Found" that Gene lent me. Pretty good book. Speaking of genetic mutations, I tried a pluot for the first time (it's a cross between a plum and an apricot). Quite tasty. Becky learned how to eat with a fork at the Olive Garden recently during Misti's birthday party. Of course, what made it really cute was that the fork was as big as she was. =)
Most people already know that this stuff is lethal. Right now it's being stored at 131 locations in 39 states. I'd actually be really mad right now if I lived in one of those 39 states, and of course then I'd be all for getting rid of the junk. I find it funny that Utah, only 120 miles from Yucca, voted in favor of it, simply to get it out of their state, even though any accident at the site would definitely affect them also.
To think that environmental exposure is not going to happen, whether by nature, terrorist attack, or simply good 'ol human error, for 10,000 years is rather na�ve. With such an attractive target for terrorists, it's going to cost a whole lot more than $58 billion to maintain the thing in the long run, as they're going to need to have 24-hour surveillance and military protection for 10,000 years. That's a ton of money! In February 2000, there was a radioactive accident in Thailand that demonstrates how easy it is for the human error part to happen.
Let's assume that in 200 years some of the stuff gets out into the environment. The main shaft of radioactive waste for humans is that it causes cancer and two types of Human mutation: teratogenic and genetic. I read an article a while back that made light of at least the cancer scenario, because honestly if medical science still hasn't found a cure for cancer 200 years from now, they're really not all that bright, are they? So, assuming that cancer is no longer a problem, there's still the whole mutation problem.
Genetic mutations are changes in a person's genetic makeup (DNA) that will affect future generations. Teratogenic mutations change a person's body but those changes will not carry over to the next generation. In other words, if you're exposed to this toxic nasty stuff, not only will you get screwed over, but so might your kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, etc. for who knows how long. Watch Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Total Recall" movie to get an idea...
What a lot of people don't know is that not everyone is opposed to the stuff, and some people even *want* the stuff. I was saddened to learn that some members of the Goshute tribe in Utah actually want to bury the stuff on their reservation (for several interesting reasons) until Yucca Mountain is completed. Obviously, not all of the Goshutes feel the same way, but I certainly wouldn't volunteer my land away to some deadly stuff. Some interesting articles I've been reading on these issues are the EPA's radiation FAQ, the General Conference of the IAEA's report, a Shoshone land claim issue, and a list of nuclear accidents in the United States.
While I'm glad that there are no nuclear plants in Nevada, I am miffed that there is one in Sacramento (California) which is right over the mountain to the west only 130 miles away, which I think would mean that they are currently also storing waste there on site (not certain about this, I'll have to check it out further). And, of course, I'm mad about the three nuclear testing sites in Nevada that most people already know about. I'm glad, however, that no DOE-proposed truck routes come through Reno, but I am a little worried about train transport as Reno is a rail hub. The good news is that we really aren't en route to Vegas from anywhere except from Washington, Oregon, Northern California, and Western Idaho - but their toxic refuse is apparently being trucked to Yucca either going through Salt Lake and down to Vegas through the middle of Utah or down the I-5 corridor in California).
In other news: we watched "First Daughter" with Mariel Hemingway, had a few people over Saturday for pizza, wings (yes, they were from Joe Bob's - the Chicken Joint, NOT the Chicken Palace), and "It Came to Pass". Ate dinner and played Bocce with my folks on Sunday at South Hills park. Finished the Clive Cussler book, "Atlantis Found" that Gene lent me. Pretty good book. Speaking of genetic mutations, I tried a pluot for the first time (it's a cross between a plum and an apricot). Quite tasty. Becky learned how to eat with a fork at the Olive Garden recently during Misti's birthday party. Of course, what made it really cute was that the fork was as big as she was. =)
Tuesday, August 06, 2002
Okay, it's really about time that motherboard manufacturers get with it and finally start providing some decent documentation. I just got a new AOpen AX4B-533 motherboard with an Intel Pentium 4 2.40(B) GHz CPU, but the stupid board won't boot. It's supposed to be an awesome motherboard to overclock, and it's got USB 2.0 support, 533 MHz FSB support, PC-2100 DDR SDRAM support, 4X AGP support, and uses the i845E chipset. The manual is incomplete, however (and as usual is written in poorly translated English from Chinese), and doesn't provide an LED map or a jumper legend or anything. There's a status LED that stays on that I know holds the key to what's wrong with the system, but there is nothing to explain what the LED is for. Their website, of course, sheds no additional light on the problem, so basically I'm screwed - so I had to take it back to our local supplier. What is so hard about providing a few more pages of actually useful information to the manual? I think it's high time that consumers start to expect more from these companies, and only buy products with better support and documentation.
UPDATE: resolved the issue, but we did it the easy way - got a different board (the other one was bad). The new board is an MSI 845E Max mainboard (all the same specs as above). It works wonderfully. MSI even has auto-update webpages (Live Driver, Live BIOS) for their motherboards (which can automatically scan for new BIOS, drivers, and utilities for your particular board just like WindowsUpdate does) - it's pretty slick.
I am bummed about moving to Windows XP, however, as it doesn't support many DOS batch commands (like Choice and Start - which breaks 5 to 10 batch files I've written over the past few years and use on a daily basis), and there seem to be some issues with Microsoft's Virtual Java Machine (like it's not included, and you can't download it from Microsoft). So, aside from some minor annoyances, I'm computing at a much faster pace at work now. =)
UPDATE: XP does support some additional DOS commands, but they're not included, so you have to copy them over from Win98, then you can use them - just put them in the same directory as your batch scripts and they'll run... mostly (some switches might not work). Also, I guess Microsoft doesn't want to play the Java game any more so they're not supporting Java in XP. You can, however, get the latest Java plug-in from Sun, but frankly it doesn't work as well as the Virtual Java Machine in Win98. -- Sigh --
UPDATE: On 02/05/2003, there was an article on ZDNET on how (and why - court order) Microsoft doesn't bundle the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) with Windows XP. Very interesting.
UPDATE: resolved the issue, but we did it the easy way - got a different board (the other one was bad). The new board is an MSI 845E Max mainboard (all the same specs as above). It works wonderfully. MSI even has auto-update webpages (Live Driver, Live BIOS) for their motherboards (which can automatically scan for new BIOS, drivers, and utilities for your particular board just like WindowsUpdate does) - it's pretty slick.
I am bummed about moving to Windows XP, however, as it doesn't support many DOS batch commands (like Choice and Start - which breaks 5 to 10 batch files I've written over the past few years and use on a daily basis), and there seem to be some issues with Microsoft's Virtual Java Machine (like it's not included, and you can't download it from Microsoft). So, aside from some minor annoyances, I'm computing at a much faster pace at work now. =)
UPDATE: XP does support some additional DOS commands, but they're not included, so you have to copy them over from Win98, then you can use them - just put them in the same directory as your batch scripts and they'll run... mostly (some switches might not work). Also, I guess Microsoft doesn't want to play the Java game any more so they're not supporting Java in XP. You can, however, get the latest Java plug-in from Sun, but frankly it doesn't work as well as the Virtual Java Machine in Win98. -- Sigh --
UPDATE: On 02/05/2003, there was an article on ZDNET on how (and why - court order) Microsoft doesn't bundle the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) with Windows XP. Very interesting.
Monday, August 05, 2002
Okay, important update on Joe Bob's Chicken Palace: THEY SUCK! They have the worst customer service! We liked the wings so much the other day that we decided to get 18 wings to go tonight for dinner (well, as part of dinner), so we called ahead. We then drove over and I went inside to pick them up. The girl asked if I had a pickup order and I said "yes", and she asked if it was for "Misti - 18 BBQ wings", and I said "yes" (Misti was the one who called them in). I paid, and we came home. Upon opening the box, there were only 12 wings inside. So I got on the horn and called them back and told them that there were only 12 wings inside, even though we paid for 18, and they said we could come back and get the other 6 if we wanted for no extra charge (duh). I said we would. So I went back and got what I thought would be the remaining 6, but I got home and THERE WERE ONLY 4 WINGS INSIDE (and they weren't even BBQ)! I couldn't believe it, they are so STUPID! How hard is it to count? Anyway, good wings or not, that's the last time they'll receive our business. What a senseless waste.
Yesterday, Becky took her first bike ride. Her mom got her a little helmet at Wal*Mart the other day with cute little ladybugs on it. Her dad put her in her own little bicycle seat on the back of his bike, and the family took a little ride to her grandma and grandpa's house to visit. She was cute, but her little toddler helmet kept slipping down over her eyes so she couldn't see. Poor thing, but she was sure cute! =)
Yesterday, Becky took her first bike ride. Her mom got her a little helmet at Wal*Mart the other day with cute little ladybugs on it. Her dad put her in her own little bicycle seat on the back of his bike, and the family took a little ride to her grandma and grandpa's house to visit. She was cute, but her little toddler helmet kept slipping down over her eyes so she couldn't see. Poor thing, but she was sure cute! =)
Saturday, August 03, 2002
The whole DVD issue leads into another similar beef I have with the so-called wonderful digitally-based technology that is digital video surveillence. Anyone that has used digital video cameras and recorders to do security knows how bad they suck. It's a little unclear to me as to why they're so slow (it could be that compressing and writing the images to a hard drive takes a second or two, or that the transmission over a network takes an extra second, or what), but trying to capture a couple of seconds worth of good activity on a digital system is just about impossible. The fastest speed I can seem to get on a digital network video camera is about 3 frames per second. That is, the camera can only take a photo every third of a second, and then write it to a compressed JPEG file, and then e-mail it to me. Keep in mind that for smooth-looking video, you have to have at least 24 fps (frames per second). So what I get when the motion detector senses movement is a series of photos of someone walking across the room, about a third of a second apart. You would be surprised, I'm sure, when you realized how much a person travels even at walking speed in a third of a second. If you've got a small room, you can cover the whole thing in a second or two. So what happens is that you really only get two or three good shots of the person, as opposed to the 24 or 48 that you would get with good 'ol fashioned analog videotape. This is crucial if the person is carrying something or doing something (like picking up something from a desk, for example) because in one shot they may not yet have grabbed it, but in the next shot they may already have it, so you don't actually get them "on tape" as actually grabbing it. On regular ol' videotape, you would actually catch them redhanded lifting the item. The bottom line is that you miss about 95% of the action, all for the sake of "going digital". In this case, digital just plain sucks.
Oh, while I'm thinking about it, I should mention that I finally got around to watching the other Hitchcock movie that I borrowed from the library, "The 39 Steps". After considering both films, I think I like the ending on this film better, but I like the other one more overall.
Oh, the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has decided that the term "Hispanic" is no longer a recognized ethnicity as relating to collection of demographic data for their programs. Is that totally messed up or what? Stay tuned for my unofficial opinion after I brush up a bit on cultural anthropology... UPDATE: As it turns out, HUD is only implementing an OMB-mandated change (that all gov't agencies are required to make), and that is explained a little bit better by the Census Bureau. I still don't think the rationale is complete, however, as they've left off races for the Middle Eastern peoples, and ethnicities for persons of Jewish culture (for example).
Today we went to Joe Bob's Chicken Palace and had the best BBQ wings in the world. It was at Joe Bob's today that Becky learned how to drink through a straw for the very first time. She had made attempts in the past, but never quite figured it out (she would just end up biting the straw). This time, on or about her third attempt, she finally got a drop of root beer and made the connection that it was for drinking. Now she's a pro. =)
Poor Brad and his lens cap. First Lisa steals it after Brenda's party, then I hid it at Brad's BBQ (only temporarily - the only one that really had to look for it much was Lisa), and then apparently now Brenda has it for some reason (maybe she stole it after Brad's party, too?), which just makes his camera lens all dusty by now for sure.
Oh, while I'm thinking about it, I should mention that I finally got around to watching the other Hitchcock movie that I borrowed from the library, "The 39 Steps". After considering both films, I think I like the ending on this film better, but I like the other one more overall.
Oh, the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has decided that the term "Hispanic" is no longer a recognized ethnicity as relating to collection of demographic data for their programs. Is that totally messed up or what? Stay tuned for my unofficial opinion after I brush up a bit on cultural anthropology... UPDATE: As it turns out, HUD is only implementing an OMB-mandated change (that all gov't agencies are required to make), and that is explained a little bit better by the Census Bureau. I still don't think the rationale is complete, however, as they've left off races for the Middle Eastern peoples, and ethnicities for persons of Jewish culture (for example).
Today we went to Joe Bob's Chicken Palace and had the best BBQ wings in the world. It was at Joe Bob's today that Becky learned how to drink through a straw for the very first time. She had made attempts in the past, but never quite figured it out (she would just end up biting the straw). This time, on or about her third attempt, she finally got a drop of root beer and made the connection that it was for drinking. Now she's a pro. =)
Poor Brad and his lens cap. First Lisa steals it after Brenda's party, then I hid it at Brad's BBQ (only temporarily - the only one that really had to look for it much was Lisa), and then apparently now Brenda has it for some reason (maybe she stole it after Brad's party, too?), which just makes his camera lens all dusty by now for sure.
Wednesday, July 31, 2002
Here are a couple more observances that I'm really surprised someone hasn't thought of yet: anti-virus software programs should really get over themselves and simply just have a right-click option from the tray icon to "update". Why is that so hard? Most users don't want to fool with opening the main program, then going to the update section, then choosing to check for new virus definition files only, for engine updates, or for both. Why all the fuss? KISS (keep it simple, stupid)!
Car air compressors. Everyone knows someone that has a car air compressor to inflate their tires. Typically these are aftermarket accessories that plug into the cigarette lighter and will pump up your tires in about a minute or so. Great idea, but why don't all cars come standard with them? And why don't cars have cigarette lighters (okay, call them acccessory outlets or something more accurate) in the trunk where the tires are...??? DUH! Who wants to drag the spare tire around to the passenger-side door to pump it up, especially while it's raining and could potentially get shocked, just so they can reach the cigarette lighter? Put an outlet in the trunk! How hard could that be? Oooh, one extra wire... oh, the horror!
Pens. Am I the only one that is mad about the fact that the color indicator on pens is always on the cap? HELLO! The cap is on the "top" of the pen, which when you place the pen in a pen holder so that you can see the color indicator (cap), then all the ink drains to the bottom and the pen doesn't write. This happens to felt tips as well as ballpoints. At work I've got a small collection of pens, both ballpoints and Sharpies. They are all placed in my pen holder with the caps down (duh!) so that they work. The problem inherent with this solution is that I can't tell what color the pens are without picking them all up and looking at the bottoms. I've got a green Sharpie, a black Sharpie, and a blue Sharpie. When will they learn that the color indicator needs to be on the part that is actualy visible?? The only people that get this right are the highlighter people and some of the ball point manufacturers: for highlighters the whole pen is usually the color of the ink, and some ballpoints now have a colored plug in the end. Not bad ideas. Why haven't these ideas caught on in Sharpieland? Oh, the humanity.
Found a song from 1983 on WinMX a few days ago that the hair stylist that last cut my hair at SuperCuts recommended: "Worlds Away" by Strange Advance. Pretty retro. =)
Car air compressors. Everyone knows someone that has a car air compressor to inflate their tires. Typically these are aftermarket accessories that plug into the cigarette lighter and will pump up your tires in about a minute or so. Great idea, but why don't all cars come standard with them? And why don't cars have cigarette lighters (okay, call them acccessory outlets or something more accurate) in the trunk where the tires are...??? DUH! Who wants to drag the spare tire around to the passenger-side door to pump it up, especially while it's raining and could potentially get shocked, just so they can reach the cigarette lighter? Put an outlet in the trunk! How hard could that be? Oooh, one extra wire... oh, the horror!
Pens. Am I the only one that is mad about the fact that the color indicator on pens is always on the cap? HELLO! The cap is on the "top" of the pen, which when you place the pen in a pen holder so that you can see the color indicator (cap), then all the ink drains to the bottom and the pen doesn't write. This happens to felt tips as well as ballpoints. At work I've got a small collection of pens, both ballpoints and Sharpies. They are all placed in my pen holder with the caps down (duh!) so that they work. The problem inherent with this solution is that I can't tell what color the pens are without picking them all up and looking at the bottoms. I've got a green Sharpie, a black Sharpie, and a blue Sharpie. When will they learn that the color indicator needs to be on the part that is actualy visible?? The only people that get this right are the highlighter people and some of the ball point manufacturers: for highlighters the whole pen is usually the color of the ink, and some ballpoints now have a colored plug in the end. Not bad ideas. Why haven't these ideas caught on in Sharpieland? Oh, the humanity.
Found a song from 1983 on WinMX a few days ago that the hair stylist that last cut my hair at SuperCuts recommended: "Worlds Away" by Strange Advance. Pretty retro. =)
Thursday, July 25, 2002
So I finally got around to watching one of the Alfred Hitchcock films that we previously checked out, called "The Lady Vanishes". The plot is pretty intense, but the ending was pretty lame. I also just finished an audiobook that Gene lent me, called "Without Fail" by Lee Child. It's a pretty good book, if you like FBI and Secret Service-type of books.
You know, DVDs really suck. DVD technology is unrefined and simply not ready for the marketplace. For those not aware, DVDs are really, really sensitive. Unlike the more robust VHS movies to which we're all accustomed, any given DVD movie will only play in certain players. The majority of DVDs we've checked out from the library and rented from Hollywood Video haven't played on our player. Some do, some don't - usually new ones straight from the store work just fine, but scratched rentals don't. The video store staff have confirmed this as being a overwhelming problem: most people that rent DVDs can't get the stupid things to play on their machines and end up bringing them back and getting the VHS format instead, as we did just had to do a couple of days ago with the movie "Shallow Hal" (hilarious film, by the way). Most DVD players also have problems playing CD-Rs. This is caused because of the change in wavelength on the playback laser of DVD players. This is a known problem, but of course you won't hear this fact in any sales pitch. Speaking of sales pitches, most players proudly display the DTS-compatible logo (DTS stands for Digital Theatre Sound), which is odd because many consider DTS to be inferior to Dolby Digital. (Of course, there are conflicting opinions on this point.) Another problem with DVDs is that since they're fundamentally just like CDs, they get scratched really easily, and once they're scratched they're unusable. Fingerprints, dust, etc. are all enemies of the DVD. In fact, DVDs are even worse than CDs because the "pits" on DVDs are smaller than on CDs, so the same fingerprint that might not bother a CD player might still adversely affect a DVD video. In addition, there is an issue with the ink and the reflectivity of some manufacturers' DVD-R and DVD+RW media. This causes their discs not to play in certain players.
When most people hear about the problems we've experienced, they say "...well, it's because you bought a cheap player." Well, yourself. The first player we got *was* a cheap player, an Apex for around $60 US, which simply wouldn't play anything. It couldn't decode the signal fast enough to maintain smooth motion - it would jump and skip, even on a brand new copy of Harry Potter. That one was returned promptly. The second one we got is an Emerson for about $110 US. It plays Harry Potter quite nicely, but still can't play the rentals we get. [UPDATE: we finally solved this problem - see 08/25/2002 for how we got around this.] A friend of mine at work is a member of Netflix, and he plays dozens of DVDs on his computer DVD drive (which, by the way, most computer DVD drives only cost around $60... so much for the cheap argument) and claims he's never had a problem. When I probed further, however, he admitted that there was this once where the picture wasn't getting drawn to the screen fast enough, but he attributed this to his computer being slow. That's probably right, seeing as how many DVD drives for computers use software-based decompression instead of the more costly hardware-based solution. By the way, I've heard that the really cheap drives like Apex are so cheap because they only use an on-board software decoder instead of real hardware decompression. If that's true, that would then account for me experiencing the same phenomonon on our first standalone player that he did on his computer. The whole point is, however (as my friend Brad so wisely pointed out): if you buy a cassette player no matter how inexpensive, it should play tapes. If you buy a CD player no matter how inexpensive, it should play CDs. Of course, you may miss out on a few cool features because of the low price point, but it should still play the goofy things on a basic level. Why should DVDs be any different?
The following companies list DVD players that are not 100%-compliant with the DVD standards. Using any of these DVD players may cause you problems with both off-the-shelf movies (DVD Videos), DVD+RWs, DVD-Rs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, etc. Check these out:
Another fundamental problem with DVDs is that they simply can't store enough information. DVDs are limited to 15.9 GB of information (DVD-18, dual-layered, double-sided) at their best, but really only 4.38 GB on a normal DVD (DVD-5, single-layer, single side - who really wants to have to flip their movie over right in the middle of it?), which really isn't a lot of information, especially when you're talking about high quality video and audio. In fact, in order to fit a 2 hour movie onto a DVD, the movie has to be compressed by a factor of 40:1 (forty to one)! I don't care what anyone tries to tell you, but when you compress (take out redundant information) something that much, you're just asking for a loss of quality. If you were to try and put *uncompressed* video onto a regular CD it would only hold 23.5 *seconds*, and a DVD is only slightly better at 3 minutes (uncompressed video, 640x480, 24 bits/pixel, 30 fps)! That's how big video really is, and how little a DVD can really hold. A super huge DVD that could actually hold 2 hours of raw uncompressed high quality video would have to hold 144 GB just for the video alone (not counting audio). As it turns out (duh!), some really long movies simply can't fit on DVD-5 at all, despite compression. These have to be placed on more costly DVD-9 discs, which are annoying because even though they're just the one side, because of the second layer there is an obnoxious pause in playback when the player switches to the next layer. In case you're wondering, there are several different manufacturing processes for making DVDs, and hence different capacity DVDs: DVD-5 (4.38 GB), DVD-9 (7.92 GB), DVD-10 (8.76 GB), DVD-14 (12.29 GB), DVD-17 (an old term, now called DVD-18), and DVD-18 (15.9 GB). Both DVD-14s and DVD-18s are extremely hard to manufacture and are for all practical purposes not available commercially. Since both sides of these discs contain data, printing can only be done on the hub ring, not on the general surface of the disc. Today's DVD-Rs are the skimpy 4.38 GB version, with one side and only one layer. (Please also note that the recordable format underwent a change in 1999, and previous DVD-Rs had less storage capacity than the current ones.)
Speaking of quality, another problem with DVDs is that playback quality is defined by what the actual content of the movie is. If it's a slow scene with little action, then the quality will be very good, but if it's a fast scene with tons of changing movement, then the quality declines. This is because of the "bit rate". DVDs can only handle bit rates up to a maximum of 9.8 Mbps (mega bits per second). If a movie were recorded onto DVD at the highest quality (i.e., highest bit rate) possible, there would only be room for 45 minutes of it. Because of this, DVDs use what is called "variable bit rate encoding". This is where they reduce the bit rate (i.e, the quality) in parts of the action where you "won't notice it". Thus, they can extend the playing time on these puny discs to hold longer movies.
In terms of audio, most people don't know that there are several types of "DVDs": regular DVD (DVD Video), DVD Audio, DVD AudioV, DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD+RW, and so on. The recently approved DVD Audio standard is such that these discs are incompatible (i.e., will not play) with regular DVD (DVD video) players. Hybrid machines will appear in the next few months, but will be more expensive than your average $200 player (or your goofy $60 computer DVD drive). Some of these recent players, such as Panasonic's new line, do claim to support both DVD Video and DVD Audio (as well as DVD-R, DVD-RAM, CD-R, CD-RW, etc.), but with the clearly stated caveat that some discs won't play "due to the condition of the recording" and "depending on contents and discs", and "for Panasonic DVD-R discs recorded with a Panasonic DVD video recorder" only. So much for copying a DVD and viewing it at a friend's house.
At work I deal with Jim Parker from Reno-Sparks Video Productions (he films and then records our conference videos onto DVD for us), and he has confirmed that there is a noticable degradation in picture quality when trying to put more than 60 minutes of video onto a DVD. DVDs will, of course, hold more than that (usually about 2 hours), but the more information (data) you try to squeeze onto a DVD is just that much more compression that needs to happen. DVDs use the MPEG-2 compression format. While pretty good, it's not perfect. Digital artifacts such as compression rings, halo effects, etc. plague today's DVD releases. If you're familiar with JPEG compression for still images, you know that with JPEG compression you can specify the amount (percentage) of compression you'd like to use. The less you compress it, the better the quality. If you compress it too much, the quality goes down the drain fairly quickly. A photo of a beautiful sunset with all it's well-blended shades of blues, yellows, and ambers when compressed using JPEG turned into a rainbow-looking set of bands, with distinct separations between the colors. The same thing happens on DVDs that use too much compression.
Another problem with compression levels is that some low to mid-range players can only play DVDs that use lower compression, but not higher compression. The compression modes on a DVD burner are just like a VCR: SP, LP, and EP (SLP) (in VCR terms). If you're familiar with recording with a VCR, you already now that any given tape can hold 3 different lengths of video, based upon which recording mode you select. "SP" is standard play, and typically gives you only 2 hours of recording time (on a T-120 tape, or 2.66 hours on a T-160), because the tape rolls by the head at a faster speed which means that more tape is used per second which affords you better recorded quality. "LP" is long play, which usually gives you 4 hours (on a T-120, 5.33 hours on a T-160). The quality isn't quite as good, but you double your recording time. "EP" or "SLP" is extended (or super long) play, and once again, the quality diminishes a bit, but the recording time jumps up to 6 hours per tape (T-120, 8 hours for a T-160, 9 hours for a T-180). (Try fitting 9 hours of video onto a DVD, you weirdo DVD supporters!) The same thing goes for DVD burners. There are different compression levels, which give you various quality levels and recording capacities. In theory, there's no problem if you're okay with the loss of quality, but in reality, not all players (for whatever reason - let's blame the manufacturers for ineptitude) can play DVDs recorded at high compression. Therein lies my primary beef.
My secondary beef lies in the fact that DVD players can't do a decent rewind or fast-forward. "What?" you're saying... Well, let me explain. Most DVD players (but not all) offer several different speeds of rewind/fast-forward: 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, 32x, 48x, 60x, 200x, etc. Everyone is tempted to hit the 60x button, but in doing so the player doesn't actually run through all the movie frames at sixty times normal speed, what it actually does is only display every 60th frame. In other words, it drops information and presents you, the unwitting consumer, with a series of choppy disjointed images in quick secession. The DVD players simply aren't fast enough to decode the video at 60 times the normal speed, so they have opted to go the easy route and just make it seem like it's faster. What typically happens is that you speed right by the part you're looking for, so you end up toggling back and forth between rewind and fast-forward to get to the scene in question. Because of the disjointed (unconnected) nature of the scenes whilst rewinding/fast-forwarding, it looks like a scene from Max Headroom (gotta love the '80s) - truly digitized, not smooth analog motion. It's truly disturbing. Harumph.
Another issue is that standalone DVD players aren't computers, so (as in the case with our copy of Harry Potter) when there are games and other computer-related executable code, the DVD player cannot play/run it. In Harry Potter when we try to go to the "Extra Credit" portion of the disc, it tells us to place the disc in a computer's DVD-ROM drive. I have still yet to see it, but I'm assuming that it's a game or something. Speaking of computers and DVD-ROM drives, and the reason I'll never get a DVD-ROM drive for either of our computers at home, is because they are just plain too slow. At work we've got a 2001 Power Mac G4 (it's slow - only 733 MHz) with a built-in DVD player/burner (SuperDrive). It, like was previously discussed (above), cannot play a regular ol' DVD movie without stuttering. The video will be going along just fine every 10 or 15 seconds and then it will hang and just "pause" for a second, then resume and repeat. It's a joke.
Does anyone still remember Sony's MiniDisc format about a decade ago? It never caught on because of two reasons (in my opinion): data compression (MiniDisc's ATRAC compression was only a 5-to-1 compression and people could tell the difference, whereas DVD's MPEG-2 compression is 40-to-1, which is completely absurd), and too rapid of a change in media formats (which DVDs are doing within the next year). Remember Circuit City's stupid DivX fiasco a few years back? Yet another blunder that can be attributed to the too rapid change in media formats and conflicting formats. No one likes conflicting (incompatible) formats, as the consumers at large are confused by them. These two reasons, I believe, are what will doom the DVD in the next year or so. When both the upcoming "SuperDVD" (Blu-Ray) (which can hold 27 GB of information, but yet again is a fragmented standard [not all manufacturers are playing the compatibility game]) and DVD Audio formats debut in the next year (both of which are not compatible with current DVD players), these will only create confusion in the marketplace, and cause consumers at large to resist switching formats yet again. If the media and standards industries don't account for backward-compatibility in future players, this will spell the demise of the DVD as we know it. (Of course, even backward-compatibility wasn't a strong enough selling point for Phillip's Digital Compact Cassette [DCC] to catch on, and realistically the companies have their hands way too full with *current* compatibility to even start worrying about *backward* compatibility.)
Please note that I haven't even mentioned regional coding in this article (until now), as although many people see it as yet another flaw of DVDs, I really don't care about it. I will, in all likelihood, never be affected by it, so it's not an issue to me. All in all, DVDs suck, and it's just nice to have a different viewpoint out there to balance out all the "oh, they're so wonderful" crap that everyone spouts. There are some real issues with this technology, and someone somewhere needs to address them.
You know, DVDs really suck. DVD technology is unrefined and simply not ready for the marketplace. For those not aware, DVDs are really, really sensitive. Unlike the more robust VHS movies to which we're all accustomed, any given DVD movie will only play in certain players. The majority of DVDs we've checked out from the library and rented from Hollywood Video haven't played on our player. Some do, some don't - usually new ones straight from the store work just fine, but scratched rentals don't. The video store staff have confirmed this as being a overwhelming problem: most people that rent DVDs can't get the stupid things to play on their machines and end up bringing them back and getting the VHS format instead, as we did just had to do a couple of days ago with the movie "Shallow Hal" (hilarious film, by the way). Most DVD players also have problems playing CD-Rs. This is caused because of the change in wavelength on the playback laser of DVD players. This is a known problem, but of course you won't hear this fact in any sales pitch. Speaking of sales pitches, most players proudly display the DTS-compatible logo (DTS stands for Digital Theatre Sound), which is odd because many consider DTS to be inferior to Dolby Digital. (Of course, there are conflicting opinions on this point.) Another problem with DVDs is that since they're fundamentally just like CDs, they get scratched really easily, and once they're scratched they're unusable. Fingerprints, dust, etc. are all enemies of the DVD. In fact, DVDs are even worse than CDs because the "pits" on DVDs are smaller than on CDs, so the same fingerprint that might not bother a CD player might still adversely affect a DVD video. In addition, there is an issue with the ink and the reflectivity of some manufacturers' DVD-R and DVD+RW media. This causes their discs not to play in certain players.
When most people hear about the problems we've experienced, they say "...well, it's because you bought a cheap player." Well, yourself. The first player we got *was* a cheap player, an Apex for around $60 US, which simply wouldn't play anything. It couldn't decode the signal fast enough to maintain smooth motion - it would jump and skip, even on a brand new copy of Harry Potter. That one was returned promptly. The second one we got is an Emerson for about $110 US. It plays Harry Potter quite nicely, but still can't play the rentals we get. [UPDATE: we finally solved this problem - see 08/25/2002 for how we got around this.] A friend of mine at work is a member of Netflix, and he plays dozens of DVDs on his computer DVD drive (which, by the way, most computer DVD drives only cost around $60... so much for the cheap argument) and claims he's never had a problem. When I probed further, however, he admitted that there was this once where the picture wasn't getting drawn to the screen fast enough, but he attributed this to his computer being slow. That's probably right, seeing as how many DVD drives for computers use software-based decompression instead of the more costly hardware-based solution. By the way, I've heard that the really cheap drives like Apex are so cheap because they only use an on-board software decoder instead of real hardware decompression. If that's true, that would then account for me experiencing the same phenomonon on our first standalone player that he did on his computer. The whole point is, however (as my friend Brad so wisely pointed out): if you buy a cassette player no matter how inexpensive, it should play tapes. If you buy a CD player no matter how inexpensive, it should play CDs. Of course, you may miss out on a few cool features because of the low price point, but it should still play the goofy things on a basic level. Why should DVDs be any different?
The following companies list DVD players that are not 100%-compliant with the DVD standards. Using any of these DVD players may cause you problems with both off-the-shelf movies (DVD Videos), DVD+RWs, DVD-Rs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, etc. Check these out:
- Apple
- Home Movie
- ZDNet
- Tele-Print
- Go Asia Major
- Hewlett-Packard
- Impress 4U
- Video Perfect
- DVD Video Solutions
- Omni Video
- Sanyo
Another fundamental problem with DVDs is that they simply can't store enough information. DVDs are limited to 15.9 GB of information (DVD-18, dual-layered, double-sided) at their best, but really only 4.38 GB on a normal DVD (DVD-5, single-layer, single side - who really wants to have to flip their movie over right in the middle of it?), which really isn't a lot of information, especially when you're talking about high quality video and audio. In fact, in order to fit a 2 hour movie onto a DVD, the movie has to be compressed by a factor of 40:1 (forty to one)! I don't care what anyone tries to tell you, but when you compress (take out redundant information) something that much, you're just asking for a loss of quality. If you were to try and put *uncompressed* video onto a regular CD it would only hold 23.5 *seconds*, and a DVD is only slightly better at 3 minutes (uncompressed video, 640x480, 24 bits/pixel, 30 fps)! That's how big video really is, and how little a DVD can really hold. A super huge DVD that could actually hold 2 hours of raw uncompressed high quality video would have to hold 144 GB just for the video alone (not counting audio). As it turns out (duh!), some really long movies simply can't fit on DVD-5 at all, despite compression. These have to be placed on more costly DVD-9 discs, which are annoying because even though they're just the one side, because of the second layer there is an obnoxious pause in playback when the player switches to the next layer. In case you're wondering, there are several different manufacturing processes for making DVDs, and hence different capacity DVDs: DVD-5 (4.38 GB), DVD-9 (7.92 GB), DVD-10 (8.76 GB), DVD-14 (12.29 GB), DVD-17 (an old term, now called DVD-18), and DVD-18 (15.9 GB). Both DVD-14s and DVD-18s are extremely hard to manufacture and are for all practical purposes not available commercially. Since both sides of these discs contain data, printing can only be done on the hub ring, not on the general surface of the disc. Today's DVD-Rs are the skimpy 4.38 GB version, with one side and only one layer. (Please also note that the recordable format underwent a change in 1999, and previous DVD-Rs had less storage capacity than the current ones.)
Speaking of quality, another problem with DVDs is that playback quality is defined by what the actual content of the movie is. If it's a slow scene with little action, then the quality will be very good, but if it's a fast scene with tons of changing movement, then the quality declines. This is because of the "bit rate". DVDs can only handle bit rates up to a maximum of 9.8 Mbps (mega bits per second). If a movie were recorded onto DVD at the highest quality (i.e., highest bit rate) possible, there would only be room for 45 minutes of it. Because of this, DVDs use what is called "variable bit rate encoding". This is where they reduce the bit rate (i.e, the quality) in parts of the action where you "won't notice it". Thus, they can extend the playing time on these puny discs to hold longer movies.
In terms of audio, most people don't know that there are several types of "DVDs": regular DVD (DVD Video), DVD Audio, DVD AudioV, DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD+RW, and so on. The recently approved DVD Audio standard is such that these discs are incompatible (i.e., will not play) with regular DVD (DVD video) players. Hybrid machines will appear in the next few months, but will be more expensive than your average $200 player (or your goofy $60 computer DVD drive). Some of these recent players, such as Panasonic's new line, do claim to support both DVD Video and DVD Audio (as well as DVD-R, DVD-RAM, CD-R, CD-RW, etc.), but with the clearly stated caveat that some discs won't play "due to the condition of the recording" and "depending on contents and discs", and "for Panasonic DVD-R discs recorded with a Panasonic DVD video recorder" only. So much for copying a DVD and viewing it at a friend's house.
At work I deal with Jim Parker from Reno-Sparks Video Productions (he films and then records our conference videos onto DVD for us), and he has confirmed that there is a noticable degradation in picture quality when trying to put more than 60 minutes of video onto a DVD. DVDs will, of course, hold more than that (usually about 2 hours), but the more information (data) you try to squeeze onto a DVD is just that much more compression that needs to happen. DVDs use the MPEG-2 compression format. While pretty good, it's not perfect. Digital artifacts such as compression rings, halo effects, etc. plague today's DVD releases. If you're familiar with JPEG compression for still images, you know that with JPEG compression you can specify the amount (percentage) of compression you'd like to use. The less you compress it, the better the quality. If you compress it too much, the quality goes down the drain fairly quickly. A photo of a beautiful sunset with all it's well-blended shades of blues, yellows, and ambers when compressed using JPEG turned into a rainbow-looking set of bands, with distinct separations between the colors. The same thing happens on DVDs that use too much compression.
Another problem with compression levels is that some low to mid-range players can only play DVDs that use lower compression, but not higher compression. The compression modes on a DVD burner are just like a VCR: SP, LP, and EP (SLP) (in VCR terms). If you're familiar with recording with a VCR, you already now that any given tape can hold 3 different lengths of video, based upon which recording mode you select. "SP" is standard play, and typically gives you only 2 hours of recording time (on a T-120 tape, or 2.66 hours on a T-160), because the tape rolls by the head at a faster speed which means that more tape is used per second which affords you better recorded quality. "LP" is long play, which usually gives you 4 hours (on a T-120, 5.33 hours on a T-160). The quality isn't quite as good, but you double your recording time. "EP" or "SLP" is extended (or super long) play, and once again, the quality diminishes a bit, but the recording time jumps up to 6 hours per tape (T-120, 8 hours for a T-160, 9 hours for a T-180). (Try fitting 9 hours of video onto a DVD, you weirdo DVD supporters!) The same thing goes for DVD burners. There are different compression levels, which give you various quality levels and recording capacities. In theory, there's no problem if you're okay with the loss of quality, but in reality, not all players (for whatever reason - let's blame the manufacturers for ineptitude) can play DVDs recorded at high compression. Therein lies my primary beef.
My secondary beef lies in the fact that DVD players can't do a decent rewind or fast-forward. "What?" you're saying... Well, let me explain. Most DVD players (but not all) offer several different speeds of rewind/fast-forward: 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, 32x, 48x, 60x, 200x, etc. Everyone is tempted to hit the 60x button, but in doing so the player doesn't actually run through all the movie frames at sixty times normal speed, what it actually does is only display every 60th frame. In other words, it drops information and presents you, the unwitting consumer, with a series of choppy disjointed images in quick secession. The DVD players simply aren't fast enough to decode the video at 60 times the normal speed, so they have opted to go the easy route and just make it seem like it's faster. What typically happens is that you speed right by the part you're looking for, so you end up toggling back and forth between rewind and fast-forward to get to the scene in question. Because of the disjointed (unconnected) nature of the scenes whilst rewinding/fast-forwarding, it looks like a scene from Max Headroom (gotta love the '80s) - truly digitized, not smooth analog motion. It's truly disturbing. Harumph.
Another issue is that standalone DVD players aren't computers, so (as in the case with our copy of Harry Potter) when there are games and other computer-related executable code, the DVD player cannot play/run it. In Harry Potter when we try to go to the "Extra Credit" portion of the disc, it tells us to place the disc in a computer's DVD-ROM drive. I have still yet to see it, but I'm assuming that it's a game or something. Speaking of computers and DVD-ROM drives, and the reason I'll never get a DVD-ROM drive for either of our computers at home, is because they are just plain too slow. At work we've got a 2001 Power Mac G4 (it's slow - only 733 MHz) with a built-in DVD player/burner (SuperDrive). It, like was previously discussed (above), cannot play a regular ol' DVD movie without stuttering. The video will be going along just fine every 10 or 15 seconds and then it will hang and just "pause" for a second, then resume and repeat. It's a joke.
Does anyone still remember Sony's MiniDisc format about a decade ago? It never caught on because of two reasons (in my opinion): data compression (MiniDisc's ATRAC compression was only a 5-to-1 compression and people could tell the difference, whereas DVD's MPEG-2 compression is 40-to-1, which is completely absurd), and too rapid of a change in media formats (which DVDs are doing within the next year). Remember Circuit City's stupid DivX fiasco a few years back? Yet another blunder that can be attributed to the too rapid change in media formats and conflicting formats. No one likes conflicting (incompatible) formats, as the consumers at large are confused by them. These two reasons, I believe, are what will doom the DVD in the next year or so. When both the upcoming "SuperDVD" (Blu-Ray) (which can hold 27 GB of information, but yet again is a fragmented standard [not all manufacturers are playing the compatibility game]) and DVD Audio formats debut in the next year (both of which are not compatible with current DVD players), these will only create confusion in the marketplace, and cause consumers at large to resist switching formats yet again. If the media and standards industries don't account for backward-compatibility in future players, this will spell the demise of the DVD as we know it. (Of course, even backward-compatibility wasn't a strong enough selling point for Phillip's Digital Compact Cassette [DCC] to catch on, and realistically the companies have their hands way too full with *current* compatibility to even start worrying about *backward* compatibility.)
Please note that I haven't even mentioned regional coding in this article (until now), as although many people see it as yet another flaw of DVDs, I really don't care about it. I will, in all likelihood, never be affected by it, so it's not an issue to me. All in all, DVDs suck, and it's just nice to have a different viewpoint out there to balance out all the "oh, they're so wonderful" crap that everyone spouts. There are some real issues with this technology, and someone somewhere needs to address them.
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