Category: tech

This Week In Pics

In my never-ending tinkering of the blog, I’m adding a new section. “This week in pics” is my endeavor to keep up w/taking pics for the blog. I get lazy at times and maybe this will help.

Speaking of tinkering, I also added a translation page (see left). It only supports about five languages for now however, I expect it to grow. Looking at my blog stats taught me quite a few folks from overseas read my blog. Hopefully, the little translation will help. Anyone overseas reading is welcome to give me feedback.

On with the pics. . .

The pic used to verify my replacement backpack from bumbakpaks.com (Very good packs btw)

A very odd happen stance. I was eating at the Cove one day this past week and saw this guy getting filmed in front of the Castro Theatre. I still don’t know what they were doing…

My latest flavor of protein drink. Not bad tasting however, it tends to clump up a lot.

A cross statue in the Wharf. How very holy of me, right?

Bobby in his attempt to fall up the escalator. LOL

Recovering

As if it wasn’t obvious, work this week has been miserable. It has left me in an overall funk that is slowly clearing. I just get sick of the drama. I have a long weekend coming up and I’m looking forward to it.

This is my first week w/o the trainer. I can report I’ve been very good at hitting the gym consistently. However, it is nice to go to the gym and sleep in. hehehe I’m incorporating some of the things I learned from him into my workout. Some of his tips have helped me get out of the gym faster yet still feeling worked out.

The new laptop hard drive arrived yesterday. I spent a good chunk of last evening re-tweaking it. Thankfully, I didn’t loose too much stuff. That said, I’m leery of my upcoming battle w/Microsoft. I can’t find my printed version of the license key and I’ll be damned if I’m paying for Office 2007 again. Naturally, the key is stuck on the hard drive that failed. If they jerk me around, I’ll resort to the peer to peer networks for a hacked version. I try not to deny folks compensation for their hard earned programming skills however, I refuse to pay twice for the same thing.

I’m off to work. Hopefully, my last two days will be better than the first three.

Techno Drama

So I get home last night and my cable card isn’t decoding the signal for the TV. The cable box was working fine. Thank the stars as poor Tivo might have had a fit otherwise. The card still isn’t fixed today. Comcrack is supposed to be out later to repair it (read here: snoop to see if I’m hacking the signal). I found out quite a few folks here lost their signal due to an “uprade” in software. Now, you know I’d rather walk on lips than talk about someone but, I heard a dirty rumor they are actually using it to see how many folks are trying to pirate cable thru hacked cards. Of course, there is never any truth to big business spying on consumers so I don’t believe a word of it. Tsk, tsk.

The real drama was yet to come. I get up this morning I groggily make my way to the sofa to fire up the laptop1 only to be shocked completely awake by a clicking noise and a dark laptop screen. Here is a sample of what went thru my mind…
Continue reading Techno Drama

Techno Babble

I added a new section on the left called “Where Am I?”. It is a reincarnation of a previous tag but this one is much much easier to update. The old way, I had to manually post code and pics to the blog profile every time I wanted it changed. Not so with the new method.

The plugin is from twitter.com . What makes it so easy is that you can post updates via the web, text message, or IM. It even comes with an RSS feed! I’m a gadget freak and am almost always within a simple click of the internet in one capacity or another. The only short coming right now is it only does text. It would be nice if I could do images as well. I sent the twitter team an email asking for this feature. Who knows if they’ll listen to me or if I’ll even keep up with it. For now, it has perked my interest.

Do you like?

Tech & Talk

I’ve resigned myself to the wait to see how things go w/M. I think fate is testing me. I run into him practically every other day now. The upside is I’m not stressing about it. If it happens, great. If not, I have my own life to live and can’t pussy-foot around waiting.

On the tech front, I cannot find a fix for leaving comments on the hidden posts. However, I may have found a work around. One option, I can setup mini chat boxes on these posts that are outside the WordPress loop. Another option is to try a different user management plugin. On the latter, I found a new one and emailed the owner to see if it would resolve my issues. Don’t worry, you won’t really notice much on the front end. All your log-in info will stay the same.
Continue reading Tech & Talk

Mini Moby

*super duper uber geek alert*

I’m tinkering yet again. I’ve been very unhappy with the way my blog renders on Pocket PC’s and cellphones w/web access. Well leave it to WordPress to have a nifty fix for that. If you have a pocket pc or web enabled phone, check it out! Simple but easy to read and navigate design. Way better than trying to load a full version.

I fraking love it!

Google Hates Me

*geek alert – You may want to skip down to the more filling parts of this blog*

I’m always amazed how much traffic my site actually gets even though only a fraction of visitors actually comment. On average, I get about 1300 unique hits a day now. Take a peek.

Of course, a big chunk of that is web-bots indexing my site. And while I’m not even close to exceeding my bandwidth, it is frustrating trying to separate the real clicks from the bot clicks. In the past, I’ve been hesitant to set up a robot.txt file1 as I don’t want to discourage new readers from finding me. However, I think it is time to implement some controls to keep it in check.

The funny thing is I always assumed Google was the biggest indexing bot for my site. Boy was I wrong. Yahoo was way ahead by almost 2/3’s. Google was second with MSN bringing up the rear. I also discovered a sp@m bot indexing me as well. I guess this explains why my sp@m hits have jumped up a lot lately. I googled its IP address and added it to the filter so we’ll see how it goes.

1 Said file resides on your server and searchbots will query it and only index your site based on instructions included. You could set it for once a day, once a month, or never.

Super Who?

Time to hear me get ‘bitchy’.

I couldn’t be bothered to care who is playing in the superbowl or that it even occurred. If everyone at work wasn’t in such a dither I would have missed it all together. Every damn TV in the place had to be on “the game”. I absolutely detest football1. There! I said it. I’m a football-hating mother fucker. I know many of my fellow bloggers like, even love, the accursed game. Well, good for you.

It isn’t the game itself I detest but the backward mentality associated with it in this country. I’m sure if I’d grown up straight it wouldn’t have been a problem but I didn’t. And growing up in rural East Texas I got a double dose of torment. In my hometown, football was considered not only a right of passage to manhood but a weekly judgement of your emergent masculinity. Not being into football immediately earned me the various titles “fag, sissy, geek, pussy, or all of the above” on a routine basis. It didn’t matter that I excelled in track.2 Nor did my father do anything to help the situation by being an avid football lover. Well, that and he couldn’t help but remark on a regular basis about certain less popular players being queer and a detriment to the game.

So no, I don’t like football. You can keep your stick-up-your-ass game and all the juvenile behavior that come with it. I’ll stick to hockey.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program…

1 You’d think with all the hugging and those tight tights I’d be in heaven. You’d be wrong.
2 I could run a mile in just over 5 minutes. Not the best but pretty damn good.

Teeth Like a Bulldog

I only got one day off this week due to my change of schedule. I spent it playing Lost Planet. So far, I really like this game. This visuals are good and the levels are pretty diverse. It hasn’t caught on a lot so haven’t had much of a chance to play online yet. I’ve gotten bored w/Gears of War. I’ve beaten it twice in solo mode already. I mostly play it online now. Way more fun.

On a side rant, I’m a little annoyed. I met a gamer online recently and we hit it off as buddies pretty well. Anyway, he discovered I’m not into doing the nasty on cam so now he pretty much ignores me. Don’t get me wrong, I know that men often think with the little head vs the big head1. I so have egg on my face. Apparently, his brother-in-law is in the hospital and he has been helping with that. I feel about 2 inches tall now.

It doesn’t help that I have a fight on my hands at work right now either. I discovered this week a function built into the software we use has been disabled via a recent software update. A function so vital it could create more liability for our department as well as get people hurt. None of the supervisory staff seemed to care at all. Well, they are in for a fight because I ain’t about to drop it. I’m a tenatious bastard to say the least.2 If I have to take it to the media, I will.

There is some good news though. I found out the City is planning on hiring EMTs again soon. Like end of February soon. They are working off of an old list however, this means I can get my name on the new list! Oh, wouldn’t that give me a shit-eatin-grin!

1 I live in SFfor christ’s sake. I’ve gotten laid going to the post office!
2 Once I get my teeth into something, there is no distracting me.