May 2007

Just a Quick Plug

rmiles7721May 27, 2007Entertainment

My brother came to visit this weekend and left me a copy of his new book to review. I have just started it and will post a full review later once I have finished it, but I have made it into the second chapter (which I had previously read an excerpt from) but I will tell you that right in the first it grabs you and wants you to keep on reading. I had to force myself to put it down as I have to go in to work in a few minutes to surprise some folks with a mid-shift drawer change.

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If you are adventurous enough to go ahead and get it or have already heard the podcasts, head on over and purchase Republic: A Novel of America’s Future at Amazon.

The Site…

rmiles7721May 27, 2007Blogging, Entertainment

I meant to link Elisson’s site above as well, but somehow overlooked it. Here is the link.

Shorts in a Wad…

rmiles7721May 27, 2007Entertainment

…not really but that is the title for the inestimable Elisson’s new book! woohoo. It is a collection of 100 of his 100 word stories. If you have had a chance to read them over at hos site you know exactly what I am talking about.

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Shorts in a Wad: One Hundred 100-Word Stories is the title and it’s also the link to where you can purchase it on Amazon…go check it out.

Skype Worm Spreading…

rmiles7721May 26, 2007Technology

There is apparently a new variant of a Skype worm that is targeting just about anyone on an infected user’s contact list in AIM,ICQ,Messenger,Miranda,MSN,Trillian (which uses all of the above) and Yahoo.

Be very careful when clicking on links that anyone has sent you via IM. I use Trillian as well as Skype, but not very often.

Star Wars Turns 30…

rmiles7721May 26, 2007Entertainment

Holy crap. I feel old now. Star Wars is celebrating it’s 30th anniversary…Links found via CNET.

New Police Album!

rmiles7721May 26, 200714Entertainment

Apparently The Police are touring to support their new CD which comes out June 5th (NEXT WEEK!). The new Police CD is entitled simply “The Police” and marks the 30th anniversary of their recording debut in 1977. Makes me feel old…

The album itself has 28 of their biggest hits from all five of their studio recordings. Here are the tracks that are going to be on the album:

Disc: 1
1. Fallout
2. Can’t Stand Losing You
3. Next to You
4. Roxanne
5. Truth Hits Everybody
6. Hole in My Life
7. So Lonely
8. Message in a Bottle
9. Reggatta de Blanc
10. Bring on the Night
11. Walking on the Moon
12. Don’t Stand So Close to Me
13. Driven to Tears
14. Canary in a Coalmine

Disc: 2
1. Do Do Do de da da Da
2. Voices Inside My Head
3. Invisible Sun
4. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
5. Spirits in the Material World
6. Demolition Man
7. Every Breath You Take
8. Synchronicity I
9. Wrapped Around Your Finger
10. Walking in Your Footsteps
11. Synchronicity II
12. King of Pain
13. Murder by Numbers
14. Tea in the Sahara

I was actually introduced to the Police in 1982 or so and they are one of the groups that really mark a specific time in my life along with a few other bands. This Police CD looks to be pretty good, and while it is previously released material everything on it is darn good and will make a nice addition to my music collection.

I can remember listening to Roxanne and Every Little Thing She Does is Magic constantly when I was 16 or so. Even though I was always into Heavy Metal there are a few bands that were not that just stick in my head and make me want to sing the words.

Roxanne…You don’t need to turn on the red light…

Well, you darn sure don’t need to hear my singing, that’s when the dogs start howling, but you get the idea.

Right now it looks like the closest they will be coming to Atlanta are two dates down in Tampa in July and the Bonnaroo festival in Manchester Tennessee next month, although that may change. I don’t get to go to too many concerts anymore, but it would be really cool to go see them this summer. It would certainly give me an excuse to go to Tennessee this summer. There are something like 100+ artists performing at the festival. That would be cool.

Also included in the new Police CD is a foldout poster from 1979.

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Now I feel really old. I was thirteen in 1979. I may post more about it later. I haven’t checked to see if it’s going to be available on iTunes yet, but with the Poster this may be one hard copy that I want to add to my collection unopened and then buy the music itself online…

Graduation field

rmiles7721May 25, 2007Site News



Graduation field

Originally uploaded by rmiles


Color Picker

rmiles7721May 25, 2007Technology

I have used a few color picker programs over the years, and downloaded Ades Design Color Picker 2.0 the other day to try it out. There are a few different reasons that I have used color pickers before. One is for web pages. When I designed my template for this site, I purchased a banner and a basic template for a web page, but then I had to convert it to a movabletype template and create a few pages that of course never existed in the original template. I used my banner header to set the basic color screen and had to use a color picker to get just the right shades so that it would all piece together well.

I have also used color pickers when making new skins for Windowblinds and DesktopX. I always want to make sure that the various elements fit together properly just like I do when working on my web site.

Color Picker 2.0 is pretty cool. It is small and lightweight. It runs in the system tray, and while just sitting there it was only using 2560k of memory. Pretty minuscule with the amounts of memory in today’s computers. There are several options that you can set in color picker as shown in the shot below.

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While in Demo mode only RGB is available, but the program is available for purchase for $9.90 and get the rest of the features unlocked, such as getting HTML color codes.

Here is a shot of the actual program at work.

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To activate the program you can right-click the icon, or use the ctrl-shift-a hotkey at which point the little viewfinder with color codes pops up. To get it to go away you just have to right-click the desktop.

Overall the program does exactly what it is supposed to and does it well. Although there are plenty of free color-pickers out there this one offers a few more options than most and is well worth the $9.90 that it costs. You can find out more information about Color Picker as well as some other cool programs at AdesBlog.com

Done In…

rmiles7721May 24, 2007Parenting/Family

One thing I have noticed since I made the change that sped up commenting is that it is also re-indexing MUCH MUCH faster. It used to take about three or four minutes just to post an entry and that was on a good day. Now it’s more like 40 seconds. SWEET. I am very happy with that. Still having some problems with the Fast CGI implementation like I can’t log into the movabletype control panel now, but I sent tech support a ticket, hopefully they can get that fixed before I get home tomorrow morning.

I am so tired that I am beyond tired. This will probably be my last post tonight, which is not necessarily a bad thing since I have been posting like a monkey on crack the last hour.

RePete has a fever of about a hundred two tonight. She is sleeping, but also congested. What sucks is that tomorrow is a blackout day for me, meaning it is an absolute NO-NO to take the day off. She is going to have to go with me in the morning, since with tomorrow being graduation it’s not like the wife can take it off (she teaches). I will go in for about an hour in the morning and then head home. Hopefully I can get RePete a pretty early doctor’s appointment and get her looked at.

I almost got killed tonight. That wasn’t much fun. It’s a good thing I got new tires on the wife’s car a couple of weeks ago. I managed to get home about six this evening, and within a ten minute time period two people called in from the two stores where I have no managers today. That shit blows. I made this one girls cry. She called in right before her shift started, and I told her that if she was sick that was fine, I didn’t want her coming to work, but that if she was that sick she needed to go to the doctor, therefore she needed to bring me a doctor’s note stating that she couldn’t work. NOT a note saying she had been seen, but it needed to say that she couldn’t work tonight. She’s already missed one day this week and I am getting tired of this crap from the employees when their manager’s are off. My people didn’t pull that shit and stay employed long. Most of them rarely missed any work, and I knew that if they were out it was because they really were sick.

That’s about enough of the crack monkey posting tonight. More tomorrow…

Oh yeah, that train of thought got seriously derailed. Anyway, I had to drive to the town about fifteen mile south of where I live to pick someone up that was willing to work tonight, and on the way back I was doing about sixty, right behind another car. This dumb-fuck pulls out to cross the road right in between the first car and myself. I had to swerve way to the left to avoid slamming into the stupid fucker and if I had not had new tires I would have gone back off the road. Some people just don’t need to be driving. Had I been going a bit slower and not had a passenger I might have run into him just to get a new car, but I was late and needed to get this guy to work…

Now I really am done…later all and have a wonderful night.

Key West

rmiles7721May 24, 2007Travel

Earlier I was rambling on about Key West again. THAT is more my speed than flying. I hate flying anywhere. While I really want to see Europe it will be around the time that they get that underwater train working 🙂

I do want to take another Florida vacation soon though and Key West is the place. I was reading a couple of blog entries recently where one of the companies that I do business with took their executive retreat in Key West and it looked like they had a blast.

Perhaps in the next year or two we can get some kind of blog meet going on down there.