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Rembrandt |
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8/23/2006 4:12 PM |
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Mindless rantings of a dizzy geek. |
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When the boy is gone ... |
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By Rembrandt on
9/25/2006 2:00 PM
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The house is just too quiet. Don't get me wrong, there are worse places for him to be during the day. Day care is way friggen expensive, and we are holding our own as it is. So the last thing I will do is complain that the boy spends time at his grandparents every week.
He could be in a day care, with people that basically sit him in a corner and ignore him, all the while costing us more than my wife makes in a week. Instead, he is with people who love him, and would easily protect him as fiercly as we would. People who stimulate his mind, and play with him, teach him things, and make him laugh.
It still doesn't help that the house is so quiet, and that between 6:00 and 6:30 if I play video games at all, its by myself, with no one to laugh or tell me to make someone walk off a cliff into a hole.
No matter how good it is for him to be with family during the week, he isn't here, and I miss him.
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Shot down by google |
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By Rembrandt on
9/21/2006 12:09 PM
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Apparantly not just ANYONE can get google adsence anymore:
Hello XXX,
Thank you for your interest in Google AdSense. After reviewing your application, our specialists have found that it does not meet our program criteria. Therefore, we are unable to accept you into our program.
We have certain policies in place that we believe will help ensure the effectiveness of Google ads for our publishers as well as for our advertisers. We review all publishers, and we reserve the right to decline any application. As we grow, we may find that we are able to expand our program to more web publishers with a wider variety of web content.
Please note that we may not be able to respond to inquiries regarding the specific reasons for our decision. Thank you for your understanding.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
The funny thing is, they never say exactly WHAT the criteria is .. oh well .. not like I expected to make a fortune off of it anyways. Funny that certain pr0n sites can get google ads, random blogs can get google ads, and 'clickthrough' sites can get google ads. Just not me.
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Not sure of my point of view. |
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By Rembrandt on
9/15/2006 3:14 PM
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We have this old TV. Well .. make that HAD this old TV. It was a hand-me-down from christa's folks in 2000 when they moved out of their old house to VA. The TV was a number of years old by that point .. today .. I would say it would have easily been 10 or 11 years old.
At least that was before I woke up.
I walked downstairs this morning, went into the basement to start up a Backup Job for work, then went back upstairs to get some toast and tea. I turned on our TV to watch some Mythbusters or something else we recorded on the ReplayTV. Our TV takes a while to 'warm up' .. normally it just kind of 'clicks' on after a min or so ..
After two mins I found myself impatient, After five, I thought 'oh crap'. I had sound, I had no picture. I wacked the TV, hoping for some results .. nothing. I turned it off then on .. nothing. Even now I find that I am still caught half way between elated and depressed.
Christa said the other day that I was 'excited' about out TV being on its last legs. [Its been on its last legs for like a year .. but in the past few weeks the HUM that you hear over the speakers has gotten louder, and the wavy lines you see go up and down the screen have become more and more pronounced.
I explained to her, that its obvious that ALL men love technology. Hand in Hand with that is the fact that ALL men hate to spend more than $100 on a TV.
So I am equal parts dismayed and elated. I would LOVE to buy a flat panel TV, that we could put a wooden frame around, and a painted canvas over .. so it woudln't LOOK like we have a TV in the living room. But I don't really want to pay $1800.00 for a good TV.
Sometime before Sunday, I will have to go over to Best-Buy and see if they have any open boxed sets on sale, because Chris comes home on sunday morning, and we still have 2 discs of the second season of LOST to watch.
She'll kill me if we cant.
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Is it a victory when someone looks scared shitless all the time ? |
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By Rembrandt on
9/13/2006 11:11 AM
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Score: US: 1 vs Builder: 0.
As I am sure many of you are just pining away to hear the latest crappy saga in my life, I would hate to dissapoint.
We have been fighting with the developer who built the little strip of 10 houses on our street for over a year. The lots all around us were never graded properly, and as a result of being at the bottom of a hill, about 300 yards from the river, we get a LOT of water in our yard.
In the summer, its a swamp - complete with mosqueto infestation, and large reptiles.
In the winter, we have our own ice skating rink.
Either way, with the (final) addition of a house on the lot directly [and by directly, I mean EXACTLY six-teen feet] next to us, its gotten a lot worse. By that, I mean our basement never flooded before this year. Our power was never all wonkey, its just gotten bad.
Of course, I have been trying to get the developer to fix it. Every time they tried, it got worse. Gas lines were ruptured, landscaping was destroyed. My father-in-law called the county, I called the county, my wife called the county. [I think we got an inspector canned] and Today .. Today ... the current inspector - incidently, a nice guy .. biker always tries to do what he says he will - came out .. with the developer and 3 contractors. He told them, with not an ounce of subtle hinting, that until this is fixed, nothing else is going to be approved. He also suggested that if its not fixed well, and promptly, that situation might not ever change. When dealing with them .. he was *NOT* a nice man.
After the developer left, he told me that like a lot of developers, this guy was playing the system. As long as they do a 'little' work and show effort, its hard to pin them down and extract funds, stop work orders - but that didn't mean he couldn't turn the thumbscrews in other ways :) I got the impression that didn't sit too well with him. :)
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His indian name should be 'Whispers in the Night' |
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By Rembrandt on
9/12/2006 1:13 AM
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You would think, that after a day with very little sleep, a BUNCH of being overworked, and a tonne of drama involving a builder from hell .. I would be tired or frustrated when my son wakes up at 1:30 .. just as I am about ready to go to bed.
You would be right, if he were a normal kid.
Instead of screaming like he would have two or three months ago, he now opens the door to his room seeing as he graduated to a 'Big Boy' bed a month or so ago, being freakishly tall. He creeps out to the top of the stairs, with someone in tow. Could it be 'Brown Bear' his (thusfar) lifelong sleeping companion ? Or maybe the stuffed black cat that was mine as a child, which my wife let him know .. once .. about a week ago .. had been mine as a child. Incidently, now named 'Dad's cat', or 'black cat' if he is feeling descriptive.
He approaches the top of our stairs that lead to the living room, where I am reading a book, trying to unwind my brain enough to get to sleep. Standing infront of the childgate which keeps him from his normal reckless headlong pitch down the stairs, he whispers 'Dad'.
'Dad' 'Dad ?' 'Da' 'Dad' 'Dad ?'
He is whispering, and when I pick him up, he says [still whispering] 'mom's sleeping, get bot[tle]' and points down the stairs.
It was hard not to laugh.
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Straight to the point |
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By Rembrandt on
9/11/2006 6:30 AM
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I am not the easiest person to rouse from sleep.
I can be cranky, sullen, moody, beligerent or on a good day, I might just ignore you.
I blame it on very rarely getting more than 4 or 5 hours of sleep in a good night.
Sometimes its hard to shut off your brain, seems to be my family's curse.
This morning around roughly seven, I awoke to hear my wife whispering to my son 'What did you want to say to daddy ?'
No response.
'Vincent, what do you want to tell daddy ?'
Nothing.
Really leading him on she says 'What do you want daddy to do ?'
The correct answer, of course, is 'Wake Up' as she has to leave for work, and the boy needs watching.
Vincent looks right at me, notices I opened my eyes, looks at his mother, smiles, then turns back to me and gleefully says 'CUPCAKE!'
Hey .. any good salesman knows - you never get a 'yes' until you have asked.
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Pipes vs Cigars vs Cigarettes |
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By Rembrandt on
8/31/2006 8:57 AM
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I honestly don't consider myself a 'smoker'. I have a small humidor
with cigars in it, a handful of pipes, and a bunch of pipe tobacco, but
I still don't think I am a smoker.
I have a lighter specifically for lighting pipes, and one for lighting cigars, but I don't consider myself a smoker.
I will go weeks, MONTHS even, without smoking tobacco, and honestly really only consume it for the taste, and ritual involved - not the niccotine.
I think, personally, to be a smoker - you have got to be hooked on the
cigarettes. Cat-piss-smelling, formaldyhyde-containing, 60-seconds of
crap ACTUALLY in your lungs, cigarettes.
So, by that defination, I don't consider myself a smoker. That being said, I went out to eat the other evening, and the restraunt (Silver Springs Mining Company) had a sign at the bar. [Where they allow smoking.]
'Cigar and Pipe Smoking not Allowed.'
You have GOT to be kidding me. Cigars may not smell like roses, but they smell a damn sight better than cigarettes, and PIPES, man .. I have tobacco that smells like resberries .. or Vanillia .. or Christmas cookies .. how can *THAT* be offensive when compared to cat-piss cigarette smoke ?
I just find it odd, that its 'OK' to smoke cigarettes at a public bar, but a Pipe .. something once associated with a gentleman .. thats like a public no-no.
This country is wierd. I'm trying to imagine someone getting thrown out of the 'The Half Moon'
or 'Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem' for smoking a PIPE.
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Photo gallery hell |
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By Rembrandt on
8/25/2006 9:36 PM
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There are about 100 photogallerys for Dot Net Nuke. Only two or three of them are worth looking at, and of those one uses flash, one stores the images in a DB [so you cant use them in other places on the site] and the last one is friggen slow as crap, doesnt support RSS feeds, but seems to be the easiest to reconfigure, and is also the most expensive.
I chose number two, for $25.00, and hope I made the right decision.
One major downfall is that in its autosort routines, the author used width as the deciding factor to determine image size .. so my 4X6 photos which are 720X1080 - all have to be horozontal, even if i took them verticle. otherwise they are not the appropriate size for printing a 4X6 .. great huh ? Time to recommend an update :P
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Sleepless nights and Broken Computers a cranky geek make ... |
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By Rembrandt on
8/24/2006 8:57 AM
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So, last night our son decided that he didn't want to go to sleep at 8:00, which is his normal sleeping time, but stayed up until 9:45. Whomever suggested that if toddlers stay up late, they sleep later - was on friggen crack. So they boy gets up at least 4 times, wanting milk, wanting to see the cat, wanting to go to sleep (figure that one out) and lastly wanting mom. [that one was at 3:30]
On top of that, I've been trying to make a tape backup for DAYS, and its been a frustrating experience. It runs slow, it skips files, fix that and move it to a new computer so I can be more 'productive' and that computer freezes up once an hour.
Its enough to make a grown geek cry.
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Xbox Live Gold hands over the cards for free. |
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By Rembrandt on
8/23/2006 8:36 PM
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Apparantly tonight, and for the next few days, Texas Holdem is free for subscribers to XBox live. Being free, and that I like holdem poker, I downloaded it.
The Good:
Easy to understand interface,
Big cards,
Tournament play and game matching
The Bad
People play REALLY dumb,
People drop out between hands because,
Hands are *REALLY* friggen slow
The Ugly
Locking the XBox up while entering a tournament,
Why is their an achievement for going all in ??!
All in all, for free, its pretty cool. People playing like major fish means that getting into the millionaire's club won't be as bad as holding my own on pokerstars. But man, did they REALLY have to make it so EVERYONE has to click a button for the next hand to be dealt ?
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