...You heard it here first.

(or, maybe not.)

Devo, playing Philly on June 28th.

Stay tuned for more info.

Is it just me or is there a serious lack of NYE parties this year?

So, then what is everybody doing for NYE? (At least, you local yokels..)

...I just don't understand it...

I buy a lot of chicken.

Those of you who know me know I pay attention to the costs of items, being frugal.. etc..

Well, it seems a constant thing that always puzzles me...

here are today's prices... can someone explain this to me?

chicken drumsticks are 98 cents a pound

chicken thighs are 98 cents a pound

chicken leg quarters are 58 cents a pound.

Uh, duh... just who would buy drumsticks or thighs separately?? (no, I don't need you to answer "someoen who doesn't like thighs")

Seriously.. is the ability to use a knife really worth 40 cents??

Being properly understood is one of the things that is most important to me.

When you listen to someone, or read what they write.. have a discussion with them, etc.

Take the time to try to understand what they are saying rather than shoving your preconceived notions into their words and their mouths.

We each have perceptual filters, and different views, understandings, and beliefs of what different words and concepts mean.

Connotations, context, medium, noise, personal bias, mood, and timing all play a part in understanding and communication.

In written communication, it seems I'm also going to chalk up a bunch of discussions to a lack of (yes this phrase from early childhood education) reading comprehension skills. Some are just due to a lack of caring.

...but I play one in my head.

That's what I said.

I'm not a great graphic designer, but I play one in my head.

I just woke up from a dream where I was aquiring a chest freezer from a friend (actually rockwrok (don't ask, I have totally strange rather surreal dreams all the time 10x more odd than 'normal' odd dreams anymore.) Well, anyways, she was living in this college town, sort of near where she is now... but anyways, I went over her place to get this freezr (it had some strange innovations on it too.. so I guiess I'm an inventor while I sleep to boot..) and so we were draining and defrosting it.. and her... and I think her roommate (who I didn't know/see) were asking for directions to get back to where they were going, which I think was actually Philly... well, I should have known the directions, but I said, "I'm not sure, lets check the maps.." for some reason there were maps in this portfolio book that they were leaving behind. For some reason they had discussed whether they wanted any of their art or other dectorations.. and they said they were going to take the Cure poster, but nothing else.. so this portfolio was left. It had meticulously hand-done maps in it.. done with, well, lets just say physical materials rather than ink, etc. semi 3-d, very graphical, very contrasty, and I was just looking at them trying to figure out directions.. and well.. somewhere between doing that and waking up... first I was like "holy !*(*!(&! these are amazing..." and then as I got more towards the waking side of my awareness... I just kept thinking HOLY @(*)!@... *I* designed these.. and couldn't help but think about how amazing they were, and how I realize it was my brain that actually designed them, not the artist/graphic artist in my dreams. But I was still like.. holy *!#)#&! these are amazing... I could never do something like this (actually it would take quit a lot of time and some rather obsessive working.. although I guess they were a bit formulaic.. they looked good.)

Maybe I should journal my dreams more. They're totally frikkin nonsensical anymore.

I am now the proud owner of a nice large tower system running ubuntu linux.

now I gotta integrate and find all my data scattered across various HDs, get better organized, get my data recovered off of my dead laptop HD, and figure out what I'm going to do in regards to portability of data and computing environment.

BTW, if anybody wants to get me a gift, I would really really like an LCD monitor.

I'm also going to be shortly getting rid of many pieces of vintage computing equipment of the typical intel/amd/etc. pc form.

I'm having a July 4th gathering on the roof of my huge ass building.

Contact me if you wish to attend.

It's the best damn venue for seeing fireworks. You get to see the official ones for miles, as well as all the illegal ones.

Okay so, like, I';m a photographer or something...

well, I haven't shot much lately, and I haven't printed much of anything in ages.

But I'm sitting on a lot of prints of my old work.

And I realized the other night.. that even if I just sold them at $100 (I think at least some of them are worth much more than that, but..) I'm sitting on a few thousand dollars worth of hand-printed film-shot archival photographic prints.

It would be nice to have a few thousand dollars based off work I did myself.. and it could lead me into a new era of shooting (and printing) again.

BTW, anybody want to buy some prints? :P

But, I am having this art show open tomorrow.. and so, I think I'll put more work in the show.

Now I'm wondering where all my 8x10s are... I've got plenty of 11x14s. I do have some half-decent (but mostly not matted) frames now.

Please forward as appropriate:

The Please Take Materials Exchange
& the Friends of the Heinz Refuge

Cordially Invite you to join us Saturday June 30th 6-9PM

for the Opening Reception of an Art Exhibit and a
Moonlight walk in celebration of the 35th Anniversary of the Refuge.

The John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge in the Cusano Environmental
Education Center is located at 86th St. & Lindbergh Blvd. Philadelphia,PA

*****

This is the Opening Reception of the 2nd bi-annual Trash to Treasure
Art Exhibit which will be followed by a moonlight walk.

The art show features the diverse work of over 16 artists whom utilize
recycled, reused, and found materials in their art. This is our
second exhibit at the refuge featuring new works. The previous
exhibit was seen by over 5,000 people.

*****

Please come and meet, mix, and mingle with the artists, as well as
staff of the Refuge and members and staff of the FOHR.

Refreshments will be served. Musicians and performers will be on hand
providing an ambient audio backdrop to the night's festivities.

Reception Hours: 6:00-9:00PM
Normal exhibition hours: 8:30-4pm weekdays 8:30-6pm weekends

The John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge is located just a few turns
right off of I-95 down by the airport in South Philadelphia, PA.

Via Septa:
The Bus Routes 108 and 37 both stop at 84th street and Lindbergh Blvd.
In addition Septa Regional Rail R1 line has a stop at Eastwick Station
which is a few blocks southeast of 86th and Lindbergh.

Via I-95: You will see signs for the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge
From the North (I-95 South):
Take the Bartram Avenue (14) exit.. travel to the 5th light and make a
right onto 84th Street. Then follow directions below.
From the South (I-95 North):
Take the exit to Route 291 (exit 10). At the first light turn left on
Bartram Avenue. AT the 5th light turn left onto 84th St. Then follow
directions below.

From 84th street after turning off of Bartram, then at the second
light make a left onto Lindbergh Blvd. There will be a stop sign
right before the entrance on your right. Pull into the Refuge and go
to the Cusano Environmental Education Center.

Other Directions and more information on the John Heinz National
Wildlife Refuge and the Cusano Environmental Education Center can be
found at
http://heinz.fws.gov/ 215-365-3118
Please Take Materials Exchange
http://www.pleasetake.org/

Needed:

local help with hard drive recovery/data recovery/system repair on windows xp laptop (HD) its majorly hosed and I've been banging my head against the wall way too much...

So people who might have been interested in seeing Elvis Costello in NYC tonight either have pulled out of going, were unable to go, or didn't respond... so if you want to rendevous with (or travel with) me to see Elvis Costello at 7pm tonight in NYC for free, let me know. I gotta leave Philly in a few hours to get there in time, so reply and/or AOLIM me.

Well,

I just got confirmed that I have two tickets to attend an exclusive webcast taping of an extremely limited engagement on May 14th in NYC @ the Ed Sullivan Theatre -- as of right now I don't have a second person to attend..

it's hard to consistently clean..

i keep running down here to hop on this thing, check my email, watch the tv.. bleh.

well, I'm making progress at least. I should probably put a tv in that room that I'm working in for the noise.

I am too f*ing stressed out.

Somebody save me.

Is anybody here interested in wearables?

i.e. wearable computers, wearcomps, etc.?

Or just making alphanumeric text input to PDAs, etc. more convienient and easier?

I have a fairly simple idea for a software program that should make small portable alphanumeric input devices a heck of a lot more affordable (and widely available) than the typical $100-200 cost of currently available alternative input devices.. and the fact that it seems that new ones either remain vaporware or take far too long to get from the prototype phase to the production phase. However, I gave up programming a long time ago, and so I'm not really the one to try to do the program development of this.

My thought is that it would best be developed for the Windows Mobile and/or Palm OS platforms. Of course it could also be developed for Linux/*BSD, but since there are very few *nix based PDAs, I'd aim for the primary PDA market.

The anatomy of winning an ebay auction by the seat of your pants..

so I found an auction the other day that I wanted to bid on/win.. that nobody else had bid on.

And so I was waiting to bid on it at the last minute, because it seemed nobody else was interested.. and people seem more likely to bid on something if there is already a bid on it. Call it sport.

So, uhm, in the last half hour or so minutes my computer turned off and it took me too long to get it booted up, the browser up, and the page loaded.. by the time it had, the auction was over. :(

well the guy relisted it.. (I asked, and then he did..) I had been concerned that someone else might go for it, making it more than I wished to pay.

Well, the auction was over today, I knew it was sometime after 6:00pm that it was ending.. except that I hadn't yet bid on it as of this morning.. and I went out to the delaware environmental conference at the heinz.. and then... after that.. to my building to get it surveyed.. well... we were puttering around towards the end, and it wasn't till well after 6 that I was able to leave the site (normally it takes at least 20 minutes, more like 30 to get home, if not longer..)

Well, I got home, parked, got in, downstairs.. and on the system (already running) with 4 minutes and 16 seconds left in the auction!! (And nobody else had bid on it!)

I am now the tentative owner of a high-battery life ASUS MyPal A632 PDA. And not only do I get the PDA and it's components.. but also a Wireless SD Card.. and a 2GB SD card.. for the low low price of $250+$10(shipping) = $260. . for a PDA that's still selling for over $400.. well over $400 (The A636 comes with the wireless integrated, whereas the A632 has an extra MiniSD slot, and no wireless integrated.) They guy actually had a "buy it now" price of $450 on his auction, but a starting price of $250. (Someone is selling this model new for $329-buy-it-now.. but it's still a deal.)

Now I need to figure out what else I might need.. a folding keyboard for PDAs, extra batteries, uhm, perhaps an aluminum case.. maybe extra SDIO peripherals, an external GPS remote antenna..
this will hopefully solve my "laptop is too damned heavy" problem. . and be very interesting with wireless philadelphia coming up.

I'm setting up a 'new' Windows XP computer for my mom. What are some must-have freeware, public domain, shareware, and free software/open source programs that I should consider installing and why? In addition are there any particular must-do Windows XP tweaks?

On my list already are:

FreeRAM XP Pro Thanks aillecat for the suggestion!
Firefox browser.
Open Office office suite.
RoboForm
Avast Antivirus or FreeAVG
Irfan View
Mozilla Sunbird
Picasa
Legacy Family Tree
Possibly LavaSoft Ad Aware, Spybody Search & Destroy, and WinAmp

Zipgenius if I can't find something better.

In need of a good firewall, and possibly intrusion detection (I used to like blackice pcprotection -- which was/is a commercial package and had intrusion detection features unlike others I've seen.)

I have little to no tolerance for simple obvious errors, mistakes, and simple clear oversights and poor planning.

I really need a better way to destress. Why oh why do I have no (chemical) vices?

since Jan 7th (when I moved my old inbox) I've gotten approximately 4300 emails.. that's 4300 messages in 10 days. thats, what? 430 messages a day? That just doesn't seem right.. AND it doesn't include mail that got caught by my extensive spam filters (but does include a few spams that did get through my spam filters.)

If you ever wonder why I don't write you back, that is why. (Not to mention, that's just ONE of my accounts..)