I recently bought another digital camera. I've been quite happy with my 2.1 megapixel HP camera that I bought at Microcenter on a close out deal - a bundle that included an hpdeskjet 825c and an hp 315 and together they only cost me around $100. This was at the time when 3 megapixels cameras were out, so this was clearly looked at as yesterday's news.

 

Anyway, over the last few months I've been thinking it's time to upgrade. The key feature I wanted that my 315 didn't have was an optical zoom. Two megapixel pictures were fine for 99.9% of what I shoot - in fact most of my pictures need only be 640x480 - but optical zoom is a feature that doesn't even show up til you get newer than my 315. Chris bought a SEVEN megapixel camera before travelling to Italy, with a ton of cool features. I knew I didn't need anything that cool (or expensive).

 

Having worked for hp all these years I was inclined to buy hp. Inclined, but not certain. But I'm a bargain hunter, and hp works with a company to sell our older products to employees at a good discount. Sure enough I found a 4 megapixel camera with 3x optical zoom for $84. When the shipment arrived, I opened the shipping box to find two product boxes: the hp m407 camera in one box and an sandisk 9in1 card reader. An unexpected surprise! I re-browsed the web page and found that I just hadn't read closely enough - the reader was part of the bundle I ordered.

 

Today, two weeks after receiving the camera I cleaning up my home office and decided to toss the m407 product box. I pulled out the driver cd, the extra usb cables I knew were in there, etc. I was about to toss the stuff in the trash when I noticed there was a 64mb smart digital card! I defintely don't remember reading about that! Guess I need to start paying more attention to the website AND look all through the box from now on.

W T White has an open house scheduled for Saturday Sept 24.

From the comment log:

 

Submitted on July 23, 2005 11:30 PM CDT
Name: Jill
Comments: I love journalscape...try it, you'll like it, and so does Firefox

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 submitted on July 22, 2005 12:35 AM CDT
Name: Jill McKibben
Comments: I'm hoping you are spared the layoff/or not...depending on what you're hoping for.

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 submitted on July 19, 2005 1:09 AM CDT
Name: Jill
Comments: I think it's great that you're walking... And I heard Opie and Anthony making fun of the Penguin movie today and all those who loved it, but I still want to see it.I really think you'd enjoy it. I think Opie and Anthony would enjoy it, although I'd hate to take material away from them :) And I heard (from USA Today) that it was going to be 25,000 laid off at HP... but in my opinion, you'll survive it, my sweet bro' That's how I'm betting, too!

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 submitted on July 17, 2005 2:29 PM CDT
Name: MaryAnn
Comments: Good for you! I'm a big fan of the treadmill and Daily Show. Outdoors feeds body and spirit though. DS on the treadmill just tickles the funny bone. I may have to try a treadmill if it gets much hotter (90 F at 9pm last night - ugh! )

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 submitted on July 16, 2005 5:11 PM CDT
Comments: We saw a similar show in Atlanta--it was modern dance with the Indigo Girls playing live. It was very neat. I would like to see Movin' Out sometime. I feel old - I can't name a single song of the Indigo Girls

I'm a few weeks into using Verizon's web tool Site Builder ("Powered by Trellix" says the logo in the upper right portion of my browser!), and it has one REALLY annoying habit - it decides to open up additional browser windows at an alarming rate.

 

Oh, wait, it has a second annoying habit - it doesn't work with FireFox!

 

I'm a pretty simple guy, when I see my windows taskbar I can only handle seeing about 5 things. Any more than that and I started to get uneasy - and I ask myself what am I really doing now and then close any windows that aren't involved in that activity. Most of the time I have Thunderbird, Firefox, Yahoo Music Engine, and a Putty window(a terminal emulator I use to get to my Unix/Linux machines) and that's it.  

 

Now my lovely wife likes to open a lot of windows - on those occasions when she asks me to do something on her computer, I find myself minimizing a lot of windows to get to her desktop. So the guys who designed Site Builder (Powered by Trellix!) are more like her than they are like me.

So far I can find no config option that tells Site Builder (Powered by Trellix!) to stay in the same window, not open another. Every time I finish a webpage update, I push a "Done and Publish" link and I get a window that asks me to rate my experience. I think when I push that button today I'll give them my update.

 

Ted Fulmer

(pestered by Trellix!)

As my sister Jill points out the newest nominee to SCOTUS is my age.

 

I'm eligible for Enhanced Early Retirement from HP

 

Hearing that they've announced the next shuttle launch date without having already solved the problem with the fuel sensor/diagnostics, all I can think of is "You all go on without me, I'll catch the next one".

 

Having been a liberal, yellow-dog democrat since before Mark Felt started meeting Woodward in a parking garage, it's depressing to see how poorly the leaders of the Democratic Party are handling their minority position. Lack of practice being the loyal opposition, I guess.

The whistler in this case is me. Lily is the granddaughter.

 

When my kids were small, I decided that I wanted to have a way to call them that would be unique, recognizable to them, but otherwise somewhat anonymous.

 

I decided I would have a specific whistle that would mean "come here".  I was very consistent that when I wanted them, I would whistle that same whistle. It was useful - for example, if we were separated in a store, I could whistle "the whistle" and they would know I was looking for them and usually they'd either come to where the whistle was coming from or they'd call out "I'm looking at Barbie's" or "I'm in the lego aisle".

 

Over the years I've even used it when the kids weren't around to find my wife in the grocery store when we had gotten separated.

 

When Lily was born, I had some thought to retirng the whistle. But after all these years, I think I'm not capable of not using it. So, she now knows 'the whistle' and responds to it. I hope I never forget the time last winter when my Aunt Margaret and my cousin Barbara Ann came to visit, and we hosted a family gathering at my house. After some amount of visiting, Lily went to the guest room to watch videos. Conversation got around to some matter regarding how much time we get to spend with Lily. We probably see her at least once a week - some weeks it's twice, occasionally (rarely) it's 3 times. Anyway, to demonstrate to my cousin how involved we are, I simply did 'the whistle'...and within moments, Lily replied "Yes?". The look on my cousin's face was priceless. It was all the more enjoyable because, truth be told, I wasn't 100% confident that Lily would respond.

Pardon the pun above, but I'll point you to #1 son's blog:

 

 

Pretty interesting stuff for a history major.

Geez, it seems like every summer we get to the point where we read something like this: HP to slash approximately 15,000 jobs

 

Read more about it here. We were talking about this a the office today and by our count there've been 4 or 5 of these stories in the last 4 or 5 years, so we're getting used to it.

A coworker ended the water-cooler conversation when he said he's decided to treat this situation exactly like terrorist attacks - he's pretty sure one is coming, if it hits him he'll be dead, otherwise he'll survive and deal with it.

 Original story here

Congressman Threatens Islamic Holy Sites

Colo. Rep. Tom Tancredo Says U.S. Could 'Take Out' Islamic Holy Sites in Event of Terror Attack

DENVER Jul 18, 2005 — A Colorado congressman told a radio show host that the U.S. could "take out" Islamic holy sites if Muslim fundamentalist terrorists attacked the country with nuclear weapons. Rep. Tom Tancredo made his remarks Friday on WFLA-AM in Orlando, Fla. His spokesman stressed he was only speaking hypothetically. Talk show host Pat Campbell asked the Littleton Republican how the country should respond if terrorists struck several U.S. cities with nuclear weapons.

"Well, what if you said something like if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites," Tancredo answered.

"You're talking about bombing Mecca," Campbell said.

"Yeah," Tancredo responded.

My family knows I don't like to go to the movies...

[old fart mode on] people are just too inconsiderate TALKING (not whispering) through the movie as if they are in their living room[old fart mode off].

But I made an exception to go see March of the Penguins

WOW! I loved it. Two big thumbs up!

Do you know the song "I'm Walking" ? I think of the Fats Domino version, although I'm learning all the time that songs that I thought I knew the original artist were actually covers (example: Jesus Is Just Alright - for me, that's a Doobie Brothers song. Turns out it was done first by The Byrds).

 

Anyway, I've had a lifestyle change. On the day Chris left for Italy I decided to adopt some of her low-fat diet and as much of her exercise regimen as I could. It started with riding my recumbent bike 3 or 4 times a week. On the second week she was gone, I decided to walk one day. I walked the same route I had ridden my bike - through Andy Brown Park.

 

I was surprised how much I enjoyed the walk. Sure, it took longer, but I took time to stop and look at interesting things. Did you know we have at least 3 beavers living in Coppell?

 

By the start of the third week I was walking 4 or 5 times a week, and the bike was gathering dust.

 

Yesterday  - I believe it's 5 or 6 weeks since I started walking - I sold my recumbent bike.

 

I'm walkin'
yes indeed
and I'm talkin'
'bout you and me
I'm hopin'
that you come back to me

 

I'm lonely
as I can be
I'm wanting  your company
I'm hopin that you return to me

Then "Movin' Out" is a rock ballet. Last night Chris and I went to see "Movin' Out" at the Dallas Summer Musicals. Interesting show - dancers 'acting out' the songs, while behind them a rock group played and sang. No dialogue, no songs other than by the backup band, which included a 'piano man' - the local Fox affiliate news anchor interviewed him and referred to him as the actor who plays Billy Joel.

 

If this is a hint of what ballet has been about all these years, I can finally see the attraction. A combination of athleticism and artistry that is hard to believe. If I understood the PLAYBILL magazine correctly they have a couple of different crews of dancers handle the show on different nights, and I can believe they'd need some recovery time based on how hard they worked. A thumbs up, but don't go expecting to see a traditional musical.

..this pose was the work of the little girl's GRAMMY.

I was working at my desk today and watching NASA-TV via the web. As the crew was just finished getting strapped in the launch was scrubbed for today. Disappointing, but not devastating like an 'incident' would be. Keep to the checklists, fellas and let's get this one right from lift-off to touchdown.

I guess $1 in my pocket is better than a bag of trash in the landfill.

 

For the last few months, I've been trying to rid myself of analog media. Slowly I've been digitizing VHS tapes, LPs and audio cassettes. It takes a while, but it's worth it.

 

Today at lunch time I took 2 World Book Encyclopedia Yearbooks (that I had bought from the Coppell Library - bought in error..did you know that the year listed on the outside is the publication year, NOT the year covered inside? Me neither), as well as 20 to 25 audio cassettes. Store bought cassettes I call them, you know, prerecorded cassette versions of albums.

 

Anyway I left the contents with the purchase agent and wandered the store. After 10 minutes I heard "Ted, we have an offer for you". I returned to the buy-desk and the h-p books person said "I can offer you $1".

 

I busted out laughing.

 

She said "Well, you don't have to accept it!". I laughed again. "No, that's ok, I'll take it". I didn't say that all I really wanted was to keep them out of the landfill. I *think* the $1 covered my gas costs to get there, but I'm not certain.

What a country!

As I type this I am sitting in my home office listening to mp3 files being streamed to my pc from Yahoo Music Unlimited.

 

So far this spring I had tried downloading music from walmart.com (not bad, but I hate to support "the beast"), and napster-to-go. Both experiments ended in dissatisfaction, although not acrimoniously so.

 

Anyway, I was reading an online columnist who was discussing the topic of 'renting music'. He cited yahoo music unlimited as an example. I investigated and found that they were in beta and were offering 1 year for $60 - 1/3 the cost of napster-to-go. Since at the time I cancelled my n-t-g I had thought to myself "If it were cheaper - say $5 a month - I'd probably keep it, I decided to try it out. I used it for a week and did NOT cancel (which I could have done according to their terms-of-service). And I have to say that I have enjoyed the service so far. True I don't own the music (other than the mp3s I already had on my hard drive) - but so far I haven't seen that as a negative. Songs from the mother ship load relatively quickly - not as fast as local but not irritatingly slower. And the advantage I've found is that like so many online purchase services (amazon!) the program takes your preferences (1 to 4 stars each for artist, album, song) and then suggests songs for you. So far that has yielded new-to-me artists like Willy Porter.

 

In addition to 1 to 4 stars you can select "never play this again" (just doing that now to "Whip It" by Devo).

 

I've also liked putting an Artist/Title to songs that I had heard and liked on the radio back in the day but never bothered to track down at the time.

 

Oh and with the newest firmware loaded on my zen micro I can now download these rented mp3 files and play them on-the-go. That's allowed me to learn some things about some greatest hits and boxed sets that I have considered but not bought in the past few years. For example, did you know that Linda Ronstadt covered Queen's "We Will Rock You" ?  Me neither. Of course this begs the question "Why?" but it's late and I don't want to go into THAT right now :)

reverendmother submitted on July 11, 2005 9:49 AM CDT
We have not yet gotten, nor needed, the ipod. But on a recent trip to visit friends in LA, which involved hours in the airport, I did wish I had one. And we even already have our entire music collection on mp3.

If that's the case, you're most of the way there. When Chris bought her ipod, she spent quite a bit of time digitizing and categorizing her music. With the way the ipod allows you to access the 'data' by a variety of means (album, artist, genre, etc) it paid her dividends while she was in Italy for a month and wanted (needed!) music to help her creative activity.

No to get too nested here, but I'll comment on a couple of comments made to this blog...

 

reverendmother submitted on July 9, 2005 10:04 PM CDT

	Great picture! Thanks Monkeyburger! This photo - taken by my lovely wife - comes the closest of any in recent memory to looking like *I* think I look.
jillsusan submitted on July 8, 2005 11:47 PM CDT
	Just spring for the Ipod. You'll be glad that you did.... Chris loves hers - in fact, does anyone who owns one NOT love it? I'm not actually convinced I need 4 gb of music in something that fits in my jeans coin pocket. But I inherited this one from Chris as she evolved her way to her 60GB Ipod/Photo.

I'm really enjoying a new DVD - "The Eagles Farewell I Tour". Kirk alerted me to this - evidently parts (all?) of it were shown on NBC some time in May or June. I missed it, but he caught it on his DVR and showed me some of it one day at his house. I already own the DVD of the Hell Freezes Over Tour and thought when I sat down to watch that I could live without it. After watching about 1/3 of it with Kirk, I knew I would buy this concert on DVD. I actually prefer this concert's versions of some of the songs...specfically "Hotel California" - I loved the trumpet intro.

I've been playing with my Zen Micro mp3 player this week - in combination with Yahoo Music Engine and Yahoo Music Unlimited I've been loading the 4gb zen up with music that I have not yet rated (i.e. that I don't already own).

 

The yahoo music unlimited has already brought me one new artist I was unaware of - Willy Porter.  Email me and let me know if you'd like to hear a couple of samples.

 

Anyway, today I tried to use the zen micro as a portable disk to carry a couple of files from home to the office. Small files copied just fine - but to 800mb files refused to copy from the zen to my laptop at work with the cryptic windows error message "Not enough storage available". What's crazy is that I'd recently cleaned up my laptop drive and had 70% available - over 26gb free! WTF?

 

I haven't solved the problem yet (as of 3:30pm). I've tried defrag'ing and a couple of other things, and now I'm pursuing whether the paging file size might be too small (hmm...set at 767mb...can't copy an 800mb file....I may be on to something!).

 

I hate it when error messages don't give enough details to explain themselves.

submitted July 7, 2005 - 10:14pm CDT

That is really zen/karma/whatever

 

Ted's response: I have to say I'm a little unnerved by it. Of course the logical side of my brain understands it's all a nice coincidence. But the emotional side of my brain says "I don't care, it's still spooky!"  :)

Remember the scene in A New Hope when Ben Kenobi falters at the same time that Alderaan is destroyed? ("I felt a great disturbance in the Force...as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.")

 

I may have had a similar moment overnight.

 

I have slept soundly through the night for several weeks. Today (Thursday July 7, 2005) at  2:50am CDT, I awoke, looked at the clock and noted the time. I was wide awake. I then got out of bed and walked around the house to make sure doors and windows were secure, etc. I was perfectly awake - still tired, but could find no reason that I would have awakened. After wandering the house for a few minutes, I got a small glass from the kitchen cupboard and drank some water. I went back to bed. I lay awake for several minutes, then got up and got my mp3 player to listen to until I drifted back to sleep. I know I was awake at least 30 minutes.

 

According to news reports today, the attacks in London took place at 8:51am London time - which is 2:51am CDT. Spooky, huh?

Have you ever googled a phrase just to see the varieties of ways it gets used. I was looking for something else when I came upon this phrase in my google results:

 

 "Until you've seen The Rock do a scene from Bring It On, you haven't seen Shakespeare the way it was meant to be played. "

 

Isn't that a fantastic thing to see in your results list? Of course I was immediately distracted into searching for other examples...among the most choice:

 

 

 

 

 [K.K. Martin's Naked Blues] This CD is just a man and his guitar, playing bare bones blues the way it was meant to be played.

 

Man, I love it...

 

 

Not everyone is happy about DEEP IMPACT. Marina Bai has sued the U.S. space agency, claiming the Deep Impact probe that punched a crater into the comet Tempel 1 late Sunday "ruins the natural balance of forces in the universe," the newspaper Izvestia reported Tuesday. A Moscow court has postponed hearings on the case until late July, the paper said. See more details at here

You DID know about the DEEP IMPACT mission, right? No surprise to my family that I keep up on things aeronautical. Today NASA's project to hit Tempel 1 had a successful impact.

If today's the first day you're hearing about it, then you missed out on the "Send your name to a comet!" program To prove what a geek I am, in January 2004, I submitted Lily Elisabeth Wilson's name, so unless I'm mistaken, Lily's is the first name in our family to leave earth orbit.

Now this is a commencement address

Why, when I channel flip into a really good movie...a movie that I own on DVD...do I stay up til 1:30am watching that movie?

 

I do it every time I flip into:

...Casablanca

...The Big Sleep

...A Few Good Men

...The American President

...Annie Hall

...Stalag 17

...The Great Escape

...Silverado

...El Dorado

...The Sons Of Katie Elder

and probably a few others I can't think of right now...

Got to meet Gunner today. He's the 19 month old boy that my brother and his wife are now foster-parenting. Cute kid, but the really heartwarming thing was to see Kirk and Kathy interacting with him.

 

A father's day present from #1 son: Naked Pictures of Famous People by Jon Stewart

Senator John Danforth ROCKS!

President George W. Bush speech

I have an unidentified mp3 file - can you help me by idenitifying the title?

What a granddaughter - now she can wink!