Today our roof is being resurfaced (another Ike remnant.)  Ok, it's noisy, something we've combated by running a bunch of errands and not actually being here much.  But we didn't plan on the TV not working.  Our satellite dish is sitting on the ground in the back yard.  I'm guessing I'll have to call Dish Network before we actually have TV service back.  Trey's not terribly happy that he's going to miss Clone Wars tonight.  Luckily they reshow it on Sundays.

To all my US reader(s) have a Happy Turkey Day. 

Mary and I are approaching our 10th Wedding Anniversary in January.  She pointed out that this was the diamond anniversary.  I mentioned something about it at the office yesterday, and we had a discussion on the two different Anniversary gift themes: Traditional and Modern.  Diamond jewelry is the Modern gift for ten years, but Aluminum is the Traditional ten year gift.

It this a coincidence?  I know I already got a new MacBook this year, but it's not aluminum.  Or maybe I need a new nano.  Apple does do custom engraving on all iPods bought from apple.com.  How much more romantic can you get than a custom engraving on an aluminum iPod?

I'm a morning person, so I left the house at my usual 6am to head to the polling place.  I figured waiting before and getting in to the office relatively early made sense.  A fair number of people had the same idea I did, but the polling location wasn't really prepared for anyone to be there early (except for a few chairs.)  A few minutes before 7 we arranged ourselves into a line.  A guy who had gotten there after me knew I was there first, and had me move in front of him in the line that formed.
For the first time that I've experienced, check-in was on a computer.  And they didn't have any way to test the system prior to 7am.  8-(  The setup was a Dell laptop (I'm guessing the Latitude 530 - it looked like a standard aspect screen, but was the black and silver color scheme of the recent Dells) hooked to a Brother label printer.  Each laptop had an odd USB dongle hanging out the side which was labeled Precinct X Key Y.  I'm guessing it was some kind of smart card or other authentication device.  They had a ton of problems getting the labels to print (that's what we ended up signing.)  They finally had to swap the label printers between the two laptops, and they started working.  I'm not sure I understand how that worked, but it seemed to do the trick.  The rest of the voting was relatively similar to other recent votes I've done.  A small slip with a code on it.  A click wheel type electronic voting table where you enter the code, and then vote each of the ballots.  I don't have any idea how you do a write in with this thing.

Except for the glitch with the printing, which cost me at least 30 minutes, it was pretty painless.  And I got a free cup of coffee out of it.

on a map.

I'm sitting in the foyer of my local polling place.  Thank God for 3G!  All you Americans, don't forget to vote today.  It's your responsibility as an American.

 

Watch it tonight at 8/7 c on ABC.

We went to see Walking with Dinosaurs on Saturday.  This is a very cool event.  It includes live-sized animatronic dinosaurs and  a little history lesson.  We got the cheap seats, however wished we had spent a little more.  Mary and Trey are ready to go see it again (if it comes back to Houston.)

You can see some of the official videos on their YouTube page, as well as hundreds of user contributed videos.   

As a blog reader, I really hate April Fools day.

I received the following useful information in one of the email newsletters I receive.  If you're not a Texas resident or US citizen, there's nothing of interest.

This is a reminder that the last day to register to vote for the upcoming March 4^th Presidential primary election is February 4, 2008. If you are not already registered to vote, you may register in person at your local Voter Registration Office or Designated State Voter Registration Agency no later than the normal close of business of that agency on February 4, 2008. You may also download, complete, and mail the voter registration application at: www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/voter/

Completed applications must be postmarked no later than February 4, 2008. 

For additional information on the 2008 elections, please contact the Texas Secretary of State at 1(800) 252-VOTE (8683) or go to www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/index.shtml

 

This trip could easily be 2 hours with traffic.

What kind of mileage does it get at those speeds?

link

No this isn't some smack the monkey flash ad, but rather an art/web expirement by Bill Shackleford of The Ohio State University Art and Technology show "Digescape".  Basically, every unique incoming click adds one second to the air compressor, with the hope of popping a six foot diameter baloon in less than one day.

"Blogged"click here

One of the Nascar teams has Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer paint schemes on their cars this weekend, so Jessica Alba will be in attendance.  Yeah!

See you tomorrow.  Have a nice meeting.  Hopefully this will give your NewsGator something to do.

Today is the 171st anniversary of Texas's independence from Mexico.

I recently went round and round with some home video that I recorded onto DVD.  The DVDs worked fine on all the PCs I tried (playing in WinDVD, Media Player, etc.)  It played just fine on the Zenith POS (piece of ...) that I have in my office.  However it wouldn't play on any of the Sonys we have.  The cheaper ones just said error, while our DVD carosel said something about it being location restricted.  I reburned it region free.  I reburned it region 1.  I ripped it using DVD Shrink.  I ripped it using DVD Fab Decryptor.  Nothing seemed to work.  I finally decided to completely reburn it in Roxio, and guess what I found.  It had defaulted to PAL.  I don't ever remember it doing that before.  Reburning it as NTSC solved all the problems.

The really interesting thing is that it played on the player in my office.

For the first time ever, I tried to use the feature in dasBlog where you can specify what date is on a post,  Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work the way I expected.  I set it to a date in the future, which seems to have set that date on the post, but the post actually showed up (even for a not logged in user.)  I know there's the options to not publish or syndicate, but I thought this might automatically do that.

Oh well.

Roy Osherove is running a geek desktop contest.  The grand prize is a Premium MSDN subscription (that's a seriously cool prize.)  Here's my entry:

Click to view a larger size.

A long, long time ago (I can still remember), Toys R Us had their own website, complete with a B2C engine for online purchases, wish lists, etc.  Several years ago, they moved their entire operation to Amazon.  Today I received an email announcing their new online store, which appears to be totally separate again.  I wonderd what happened, so off to google I went.  MSNBC.com reports that Toys R Us sued Amazon, for diluting their online presense, by allowing other toy companies onto Amazon.com.  The judge agreed with Toys R Us, but didn't award any monetary damages.

I have to say that Amazon.com has really been pissing me off these days.  There are so many different companies selling stuff through Amazon, I rarely find things that are actually sold by Amazon (except books.)  An of course Amazon doesn't control anything except the clicks when purchasing from one of these stores.  Now, don't get me wrong, there's still value in the commentary that other people provide on products there, but its no longer my first online stop for purchases.

A couple of months ago, we ordered a new set of sheets, comforter, window coverings, etc. from Amazon.  The valence was on back-order, no big deal.  Around the same time we discovered some odd charges on our statement.  In the process of investigating the charges, the bank closed our card, and generated new ones (with new numbers.)  Well, that unshipped valance was still sitting out there waiting to be paid for.  This morning we get an email from Amazon saying they've been trying for six days to charge us (on the old account which no longer exists), and since it won't go through, they've canceled the order.  Why the heck didn't they give us the change to change our billing details?

Ok, so we just need to order it again, but its a cheap item that qualifies for Super Saver shipping if I spend at least $25 (which its not.)  Shipping alone will cost almost the difference between it and $25, so now its time to find something in the $10 range that I need to order.  There's lots of stuff I want to buy, but very little of it is in the $10 range.

Over Christmas, I watched Serenity, and really enjoyed it.  I never watched Firefly when it was on TV, but decided that I should get the DVDs.  I asked Mary's mom for them for my birthday, but she was unable to find them.  Yesterday Mary brought home cash in lieu of, so we could order them.  I thought I had seen it at either Best Buy or Circuit City, and decided to look.  I can't believe the crap that these stores actually stock, but neither of them had Firefly.  I ended up ordering from Amazon, heck that's probably cheaper than either of them would be either way.

I love this clip.  I'm tempted to add the quote from the middle pane to the signature on my work email.  Do you think my clients may get a little upset at that?

Its supposed to be 79°F today, and mostly sunny.  I'm sure winter is over for us.  Time to fertilize the grass.

I'm sitting in Continental's Presendent's Club waiting for another overseas flight. Free WiFi! Woot! I'm off to The Hague for a week. I'm sure my posting will be light.

Last Tuesday, I saw the eye doctor, and ordered new glasses. We have an insurance plan where the glasses have to be made by the insurnace company's lab, and they usually take a week or so. When we were in, the technician noticed that my frames had a crack in them around one of the lenses. It wasn't cracked all the way through, so I was just hoping they would make it. Well, they didn't. Last night while cleaning them, the frames broke. This morning I called the eye doctor, and the lab screwed up my new glasses, so its going to be another few days before they are done. I found a jeweler who will fix my frames, but I'm without glasses today. Well, actually I can wear my sunglasses, but I can't see the computer that good with them. Of course I can't see without any glasses either. I don't think I'll be very productive today.

Anybody going to the store at Midnight Halloween? Wal-Mart is going to have a special double disk edition. I wonder what the second disk will really have on it?

Your Musical Tastes Match: Dale Earnhardt Jr.

See his whole playlist here (iTunes required)

I received some really cool weather photos via email.  They claim to be from Hurricane Katrina coming in.  Check them out.