December 31, 2005 – 11:19 pm
Martha’s comment on this post on Dan’s blog recently reminded me of a thought I had recently on the concept of wearing earphones while you drive.
I have one of those FM radio transmitters that will play the audio from my player through the car stereo, but sometimes I don’t want to go through the trouble of unplugging my headphones then plugging in the thing, etc. so I will just leave one earbud in and listen that way (mostly podcasts, so stereo doesn’t matter). I’ve heard (although I don’t know whether it’s a law or a suggestion) that people say you shouldn’t do something like this, but I’m not sure why.
The funny thing that strikes me about it is how people who whine about people talking on their cell phones are always recommending that people use their phones hands free, which for most phones involves the use of an earbud type accessory (unless it’s speakerphone, which sounds horrible). So which is it? These two recommendations seem contradictory to me.
I will admit though that on several occasions, I have spotted a cop looking at me while driving with one earbud in, and (not knowing whether it’s actually illegal and *really* not wanting to find out that way), I’ve pretended to talk, as if I were having a phone conversation, so that they think I’m driving around with something in my ear the “safe” way rather than the more “dangerous” use of listening to something other than a phone conversation.
December 31, 2005 – 11:09 am
I just watched the deleted scenes from the Star Wars III DVD last night, and there was a whole bunch of really good scenes that got cut, that expanded a lot on a couple subplots, etc. which in my opinion would have made the movie much better. Now I think I want to go back and rewatch the deleted scenes from episodes one and two, just to see what those ones could have been as well. In the ep 3 commentary, almost all of the ones that were cut were just cut for time, which I think is lame. I wish Lucas would have taken a clue from Peter Jackson (LOTR, King Kong, etc.) and make the movies as long as they need to be to tell the story.
December 30, 2005 – 12:39 pm
Another chapter in the ongoing struggle of using my Gateway laptop…
Yesterday I was working on something and all of a sudden I switched over to battery power, which was odd, since the plug hadn’t been removed. I checked the power supply LED indicator and it was off, then I felt the box and it was burning up; then I smelled that classic burning electronic parts aroma. Turns out the circuit that controls the fan in the power supply had somehow gone bad, so the fan was not cooling it down anymore and eventually it overheated, melting a few necessary components.
Luckily, I still have my previous power supply (which went bad in different ways), so this morning I broke out the soldering iron and screwdrivers and disassembled both, then pieced together one good one from the parts of the two broken ones (luckily it was different parts that went bad on each).
Have I mentioned before that I don’t recommend Gateway products?
December 29, 2005 – 12:37 pm
The words of the legendary Phil Ochs song ring through my head after listening to more news on the wiretapping scandal today; the irony of “fighting for democracy” by tearing apart it’s foundations piece by piece is overwhelming me.
Oh, I guess I should have started this with a warning: it has been suggested that I not write any “controversial” posts on here anymore, because they may make some people uncomfortable or uneasy. Personally, I think that most of the people (which I know personally) that read this blog are probably wise and mature enough people to not let my opinions on a given subject interfere with their opinion of me as a person, or of our relationships, but if you’re not one of those kind of people, then you may not want to read the rest of this one.
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December 29, 2005 – 11:52 am
In response to Kristi’s question here, let me outline my personal take on why everyone should use a browser other than IE…
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December 28, 2005 – 8:56 pm
Dell bundles Firefox with new systems
Dell UK has started bundling the open source Firefox browser with its desktop PC systems, a sales rep for the computer maker confirmed to vnunet.com.
Dell will also support the application…
It’s only in the UK for now, but I imagine it’s only a matter of time before this becomes common practice, and it’s probably this kind of thing that’s needed to finally get over the IE domination of the market (for the average user).
I wonder if they will set it to be the default browser, or leave IE as the default…
December 28, 2005 – 11:47 am
… that Digg.com is full of completely useless posts like this one?
December 26, 2005 – 7:07 pm
We had a great Christmas, despite me being sick since Thursday. Martha totally outdid me in terms of gifts by creating a painting for me based around a hymn we’ve been doing at church lately.
Now I’m heading into a week off, during which I’ll hopefully get better. Of course, there is more home improvement stuff to be done as well; I just went to Costco today to buy the ~300 more square feet of flooring for our room upstairs that I will be doing tomorrow. Now I just have to figure out how to do the cutting in our upstairs bathroom, as I really don’t want to be running up and down the stairs all day. Last time the thing that took the longest by far was going in and outside to do the cutting, and that was downstairs.
December 24, 2005 – 10:24 am
Yesterday Riley had a “play date” at the park with a friend from school. Since Martha had to do some last minute shopping, I took Christian and Emma along too.
It’s nice that Riley and Christian and Emma play so well together, but this time it was kind of weird because Riley kept wanting to play with Christian and Emma instead of the kid from his class, so it was kind of awkward having to keep telling Riley to play with his other friend.
December 23, 2005 – 1:34 am
The Christmas lights are officially up as of tonight!
I think today I realized why more and more people start decorating for Christmas earlier and earlier (like Thanksgiving) - it’s because if you wait until later you never have time to do it.