http://www.flickr.com/photos/sciuridae_jocularis/37505360/
This is the 87th sign of the Dinkpocalypse. We’re in for some serious trouble now.
Monthly Archive for May, 2007
There was lots of crazy excitement today surrounding my wife, her bike, and a big truck. I’ll leave that to her to detail in her own journal, and just say that she is doing OK.
But, after I picked her up and we had a really nice dinner in the south suburbs, we went back to the famous Best Buy mentioned previously.
To put this trip to Best Buy into perspective I need to point out that I went through a fiasco with the online dealer who sold me a pair of speakers. The long of the story would wind through Klipsch tech support calls, about 27 emails, a threat to take action against this company with paypal, and a lot of checking the UPS website. The short of the story is like this: I bought some speakers from a shady online dealer called AVdepot.net (no link to avoid upping their google rank), they were not the right thing, it was a hassle to deal with these people, I finally was able to send them back, today I was refunded the full amount I paid even for shipping.
So, back to best buy I went. This time with a print-out of the price from said shady online dealers price. I told best buy Best Buy to match the price or I would walk, and they even beat it by a little by selling me the floor model. So, for a pair of speakers that has an MSRP of $450, and sells typically for $400 at Best Buy, and that I could have had shipped to my house by the shady dealer for $347, I bought from Best Buy including tax for $341.
Moral of the story, everything is negotiable, and it is the salesman job to make the most money they can selling these things. Even at a big box retailer. Your job is to get the absolute best deal you can, because you know that the key isn’t how much profit the salesman makes per item, it is more about throughput, or getting the sale period.
Also, I’ve been trying to get both of my brothers, who coincidentally are job hunting at the same time, to realize that everything in determining salary, vacation, and benefits is negotiable. If you are looking for a job, know how much you are worth on the market, and ask for it, and don’t be afraid to negotiate more vacation if they won’t move on salary, and don’t be afraid to ask for signing bonuses if you have to move (or even if you don’t). Fortunately I think David gets it. Aaron is a little awe-struck because he is getting flown places to do interviews, so he feels a little weird trying to negotiate too much. I feel lucky that a lot of my friends got flown places to interview, cuz it sorta took away the ‘cool’ factor of going places to interview for me.
Anyway, that was my fun for the day. The speakers sound pretty good so far. I have yet to try them out with a good DVD, but I will later tonight.
This is a weird one.
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/24/birth-control-unruh/
I’ve heard some arguments against birth control, and other arguments against just certain forms of birth control (besides just the morning-after pill). But this one is particularly out there IMO.
Check it out if you have the chance. This site has the video and the transcript.
It is no surprise that if you buy bananas while they are still kinda green and then try to eat them while they are still somewhat green, they don’t taste as good as if you let them ripen longer. But, oddly when they taste the best the outside usually has enough bruises to make me question if the banana is actually starting to go bad.
It makes my banana selection process in the lunch room at work rather difficult.
Also, I found this funny picture on the internet and made my first new LJ icon ever with it.
The only way the picture would be better is if it were a squirrel instead of a kitten.
You may have wondered why I didn’t blog about this before the BBC and other major news outlets picked it up. Well, to be honest, it is half disbelief, a quarter from me peeing my pants in excitement every time I think about it, and a quarter that I just have been busy with other things in life not related to my computer.
Anyway, this is for real. Dell is going to pre-install ubuntu linux (the linux I run) on some of its models including a low-end desktop, a mid-ranged desktop, and a value laptop. You can check out the announcement on dells site, get some more info from the BBC, and then get the founder and CEO of canonical (who develops the ubuntu distribution) perspective with the links below.
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/ubuntu?c=us&cs=19&l=en&
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6610901.stm
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/114
So, to all those nay-sayers who thought I was blowing smoke for the last couple of years when I said it was almost time for linux to hit big…I say “HAH, suck on this one time.”
That makes the score: Ben and Rob 537,243 for all predictions made in the 1 to 5 year time-frame. Non-technical arm-chair futurists 23.
This is only good for the entire world. The developing world can’t afford Microsoft or Apple, and if dell pre-installs Linux it means more hardware will get more support from the manufacturers for Linux, which only makes Linux that much better on the whole. And that helps lower the bar of entry for Linux to get into more places like those developing countries.
I love it.
Current Mood: 
weird
weirdSometimes I feel really oddly like a powder keg just waiting to explode. Not in a bad or angry way, but in a ball of energy, or potential good sort of way. But it is mixed with this odd feeling of inadequacy, because (to continue the metaphor) it is like I don’t know how to light my own fuse. or get someone to light it for me.
This isn’t like a prideful thing, like I’m a ball of awesome just waiting to happen on the world or something, but more like a caged-up or walled-in wild animal kind of thing. Days like this make the entire city or the sky feel like it is somehow pinning me in. Or maybe my own fears coupled with the negative things people have told me that make me feel value-less are the walls, and the sky and the city feel like good places to stick those feelings on. And then there is the people who keep telling me that I have this potential to do great….it creates an odd tearing apart / pregnant to birth something feeling, but I’m afraid of both standing still and moving at the same time, or afraid to let loose whatever this is and hurting to keep it inside.
I’m so freaking weird sometimes. I hate days like this, it is like there are two sides in my head fighting with each other with no clear winner in sight.
Current Mood: 
scared
scaredhttp://www.mercurynews.com/ci_5854663?nclick_check=1
Someone should do something to stop the terrible uprising from the squirrels.
The horror….oh the horror.
As a midwestern male, and possibly as an American male, there are really only a few instances where it is socially acceptable to cry in public. The most obvious one is the death of a close friend or relative. Most the others can be summed up into some type of birth taking place (again mostly contained to close friends, relatives, and your own children’s), or some type of deep pride in your country / friends / relatives / children. About the only emotions that are OK to display in public are excitement, romantic interests, and anger.
Even in fairly extreme situations, emotionally, I and most people around me tend to shut down our emotions. Occasionally going to be alone to let loose a flurry of these publicly inexpressible emotions like hurt or sorrow.
Lately while studying the Bible I’ve noticed that this behavior seems to be in stark contrast to what people do when faced with tough situations, including David, Elijah, and Jesus. (Luke 19:41-44, Luke 22:41-45, John 11:33-36, and Matthew 26:37-38)
( Weeping for myself and others )
Someday, I believe God is going to open these flood gates in my life, and I think that will be a great step forward in helping people experience the real power in the Gospel. Because being open to emotion, and open to tear provoking compassion, is one part of being bold with love of Jesus.
When I first heard of Jesus Camp I was excited to see what would come of it. I was hoping for a fair and balanced view of what Christians are doing in terms of helping kids. As I read more about it, I started to get worried that it was actually an attack piece going after a fairly small segment of evangelical / charismatic Christians and their political views.
What I got was some of both.
Lauren and I’s general reaction to the movie was moments of “Wow! that is a really cool kid” or “That lady is really good at working with kids” intermixed with “Eh, I don’t know how I feel about that…it is a little weird, but in context I can see it being OK” and some moments of “Oh no! are they really going to….Damn, they did” and “I can’t believe that they said that!”
( very mild spoiler / plot synopsis )
So, on the whole, and interesting movie. Sometimes heart-warming and very cool, other times very disturbing, and a lot of in-between stuff that will probably make you think a little about what should and should-not be said to kids about religion and politics.
Dirk and Val arrived at about 9pm on Friday, and the fun just kept rolling from there on out.
( Saturday Brief recap )
( Sunday )
( Bargaining at Retail Places, and the blatant sexism of technology salesman )
And that about wraps up my B-Day weekend excitement.
I did a lot of bitching about Dave Ramsey and all the little things I didn’t like about his talks during the 13 weeks I was in his personal finance class called Financial Peace University, most of which was focused on his latent sexism or the over-emphasis he had on financial security (using only proverbs to back up many of his points).
But the last few videos were much better on the negative woman references, and the last video was mostly a sermon about why giving money away is really important, so I feel like he somewhat redeemed himself against my criticism.
All that being said, I really liked the outcome of the class in terms of the fairly easy ways he laid out for us to track and manage cash-flow.
This has really played out in the last few weeks. I thought we were going to pay taxes because of the way some gifts from my in-laws to help with our house payment have been accounted for, but instead we got a very size-able return both from the federal government and state. And then, today the profit-sharing check from my company kicked in. (I guess working almost every Saturday in the fist quarter pays off for the business)
Normally this money would have been blown on eating out, some toys, and some charity stuff. And then we would have been looking around a few weeks later wondering where the money went.
But this time, we have a great plan in place so when unexpected money comes in we have good places to put it, which include those things above, as well as paying off some debt faster, and there is no way to be left wondering where the money went in a month or so.
I really like that this class worked that out well, because this ‘knowing where our money goes’ thing really helps my wife’s sanity, and I figured out I get more toys, and give away more money faster because of it.
My birthday party is on Free Comic Day!!!! How sweet is that. I’m totally going to have to stop at a comic shop sometime before I go see spiderman 3 and pick up the Transformers movie prequal comic.
I was looking for something to fix my VBR mp3’s issues when playing them on my ipod when I stumbled upon some much more ‘high-powered’ editing tools available for linux (both programs), as well as OSX 10.4 (only ardour is available for OSX)
http://ardour.org/
http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/
Also, I found a list of a bunch of neat audio things like drum machines and what-not for linux. I’ve tried a couple of them and they are neat, but for those music-types out there you might find this stuff much more interesting than me.
http://opensourceheaven.net/?cat=6
Audacity kinda does some things that I think aren’t very easy to adjust for (like setting gains on the output files), and they don’t have enough decent options for their LAME configurations, so I might be checking more of these out in the next few weeks in hopes to fix the problem of my ipod cutting off the ends of my sermon files encoded in VBR with lame.
Edit: It looks like this blog post has a possible fix for the problem. I think I’ll try that out, and see how it works out.
