The (Other) End of the Internet

Welcome back!

Does that title confuse you a bit? It’s true, as strange as it sounds. Now, to be fair, not all modern conveniences get on my nerves. For example, I really do enjoy being able to toss a frozen dinner in the microwave oven and have it ready to eat in five minutes or so.

Some “conveniences”, however, were not invented with convenience in mind. For example, have you looked around in the average public restroom lately? I understand that those hand dryers that blow hot air are supposed to be better because there’s less paper trash, less mess to clean up, and less chance for germs to spread, but what happens if you wash your face and discover you’ve got one of those driers that won’t direct air upward? Or, better yet, what if you only went into the restroom to grab a paper towel and blow your nose? No amount of hot air is gonna help you there.

My biggest gripe about what they’re doing to a lot of public restrooms is the faucets that automatically turn themselves on and off depending on weather you are triggering a motion detector. What’s wrong with me turning on my own water, to a temperature and pressure setting that will do some good instead of something that’s rather like holding your hands under a badly functioning lawn sprinkler?

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Ever have one of those days when no matter how much you do, there’s always something else that needs doing? That’s the kind of day I’m having. I spent so much time this morning either chasing the baby or answering the phone or cleaning up a mess I found that I was an hour and a half late getting my own breakfast. After a three-hour delay, I finally managed to convince Miss Wonderful to take her nap and then I shamelessly took one at the same time. Just when I thought the rush was over, I discovered that the dogs have dragged stuff off the shelves in the garage and made a horrible mess on the garage floor that I’m going to have to sort through, then I need to run to the store.

They say there’s no rest for the weary. I agree.

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I find myself very anxious form the mail or arrive. Specifically, I’m very anxious for one particular item to arrive in the mail. As a short background, I have rheumatoid arthritis and it is very obvious just by looking at my hands. What’s not so obvious is thay my toes look just as screwed-up as my fingers. This means that I have pressure sores on my toes and they REALLY hurt. I spoke to my doctor about them and he suggested diabetic shoes.

When I called a medical supply house I was quoted a three hundred dollar price, but if I’d met my medicaid deductable it’d only be about a hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars.

At my wife’s suggestion I went to an online auction and sorted through listings for everything from sunglasses to equestrian apparel and found a pair of diabetic shoes in my size for less than sixty dollars. They even look decent.

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I really like Steven Wright because he comes up with some of the greatest one-liners, and his delivery is absolutely great.

Here are a few quotes of his, just for fun

A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me, I’m afraid of widths.

At one point he decided enough was enough.

Babies don’t need a vacation, but I still see them at the beach… it pisses me off! I’ll go over to a little baby and say ‘What are you doing here? You haven’t worked a day in your life!’

Cross country skiing is great if you live in a small country.

Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.

Do Lipton employees take coffee breaks?

Do you think that when they asked George Washington for ID that he just whipped out a quarter?

Don’t you hate when your hand falls asleep and you know it will be up all night.

Ever notice how irons have a setting for permanent press? I don’t get it.

Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.

For my birthday I got a humidifier and a basement dehumidifier… I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.

George is a radio announcer, and when he walks under a bridge… you can’t hear him talk.

Hermits have no peer pressure.

How young can you die of old age?

I bought some batteries, but they weren’t included.

I bought some instant water one time but I didn’t know what to add to it.

I busted a mirror and got seven years bad luck, but my lawyer thinks he can get me five.

I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.

I got a chain letter by fax. It’s very simple. You just fax a dollar bill to everybody on the list.

I got this powdered water - now I don’t know what to add.

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About a month ago someone picked up some Christmas candy that came in a plastic tube topped with a little airplane piloted by Santa Claus. On the side of this thing is a button that makes the battery-operated propeller spin as long as the button is pressed. Maybe this will help explain what I’m talking about:

click for full-size image

I was thinking about the problem I have with my laptop overheating all the time when my eyes fell upon this silly thing. It dawned on me that what I need is a way to force air through the air vent in the back of the laptop, because the cooling pad underneath just isn’t enough. I decided to duct-tape this guy in front of the vent and jam the button down with a toothpick. Here is my creation:

click for full-size image

I think I may be onto something here.According to a program I have which monitors CPU temperatures, my laptop shuts down at about 104 degrees Celsius. Generally, it has taken an average of about 15 minutes after bootup to hit that temperature. As I type this, the machine has been running for about 45 minutes and the CPU temperature is currently 84 degrees Celsius.

As an added benefit, Daughter Number Three took one look at my arrangement and proclaimed, “That’s SO Nerdy!”

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One of the things I really enjoy doing is coming up with funny sayings to post as my status message on Facebook. Because I was out of ideas this morning, I searched “funny one-liners” on Google and I hit the jackpot. There are more one-liners than you can shake a funny bone at to be found at OneLinerz.net. They even have a list of the Top 100 funniest one-liners. As an example of the sort of thing I’m talking about, here are the first 20 in the list. You’ll have to click the link to view the other 80 on the list. Enjoy.

1. I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.
2. Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
3. I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather.. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.
4. Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. “Yes” is the answer.
5. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it’s still on the list.
6. We live in a society where pizza gets to your house before the police.
7. Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake a whole relationship.
8. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
9. If I agreed with you we’d both be wrong.
10. Men have two emotions: Hungry and Horny. If you see him without an erection, make him a sandwich.
11. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.
12. Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
13. War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
14. Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.
15. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
16. Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly, and for the same reason.
17. Children: You spend the first 2 years of their life teaching them to walk and talk. Then you spend the next 16 years telling them to sit down and shut-up.
18. My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.
19. The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
20. Evening news is where they begin with ‘Good evening’, and then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.

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The desktop machine I’m using right now has been nicknamed Frankenstein because I built it out of pieces and parts, most of which I bought on ebay, some of which, however, were salvaged from computers that had quit working. It originally had an S3 Verge video card but, when I discovered that video card wouldn’t run things like Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004, I went back to ebay and found an ATI Rage Xpert 2000 for sale and snatched it up.

It has done everything I need, but it keeps occurring to me that this video card is now ten years old. That’s ancient in computer terms. On the one hand I keep thinking that something like a GeForce GT 220 Graphics Card would be able to handle all the demands of today’s software, bu on the other hand, something else in my head keeps saying, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

My current video card has something like 32 megabytes of memory. I can’t help but wonder how much of an improvement in system performance I’d see if I had a full gigabyte of video memory. Of course I also can’t help but wonder if the rest of the system is even up-to-date enough to handle such a video card.

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Here in the middle of nowhere we’ve only been able to pick up two television stations: ABC and PBS. Ever since about two month after “The Big Switch”, however, for some reason other, we have not been able to pick up ABC at all. There was a debate recently about whether we should spend what could be a small fortune one time to have someone take a look at the roof antenna or just break down and spend a small amount of money every month for the foreseeable future and get a satellite dish.

The debate hasn’t been settled for sure just yet. On the one hand, we don’t watch enough television (and wouldn’t with dish network available) to justify about fifty bucks a month, but on the other hand, nobody here has got the three to five hundred bucks that it might cost to repair whatever has happened to the roof antenna. All I know is that I’m not going up on the roof for anything.

I was thinking just now that it might be interesting to try this USB TV Tuner and see if it’s possible to get the “local” (90 miles away) television station with it. The USB TV Tuner pictured here is on sale for about what one month of Dish Network would cost. It’s actually a very tempting idea.

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Remember Johnny Cash’s song, “Folsom Prison Blues”? It just came on the radio and I got my daughter wondering about my sanity because of something I did.

There is a part of the song that says

They're prob'ly drinking coffee
and smoking big cigars"

but, because of a mistake my younger sister made one time when she was 10 and singing this song, I, without thinking about it, always sing

They're prob'ly smoking coffee
and drinking big cigars”


I got the strangest look from my daughter and didn’t even realize why at first.

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As I type this we are in the middle of our first blizzard of the year. Earlier today I heard a couple of police officers over the scanner talking about how they wished the governor would authorize the use of “near deadly force” on people who try to drive in this weather when it isn’t a life-threatening emergency.

Can you imagine trying to get a life insurance quote and then explaining to the agent that the police were authorized to shoot you in the leg because you were being so stupid?

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