Things I can’t stand

Posted on May 30, 2006 by Kirk M

Title says it all…

Commercials/advertisements that state: “The more you buy, the more you save!”
Wrong! The more you buy, the less money you have!
Old aluminum storm windows. Any old aluminum storm windows.
People who ask: “Have you been saved?” Heck, I didn’t even know I’d been marooned.
The statement: “I need to find myself.” Ok, so does that mean if you actually do find you, you’ll then be beside yourself? How the heck can someone lose themselves?
I’m lost.

I’ve gone to find myself

If I get back before I return,.

Tell me to wait.
People who say they will and don’t.
Listening to the lame duck excuses of the people in number 5.
Well off schmucks who are always complaining how broke they are right before they tell you about their new $10,000 jacuzzi they’re having put in.
Those arrogant, resource hoggin’ ignorants who will lecture you and any other poor sucker who happens to be within earshot about global warming and the effects of greenhouse gases and our dependence on foreign oil, alternative fuels and how we should all be driving small cars etc etc, then drive off in their great big honkin’ Cadillac SUV’s.
The co-owner of Lamoille Valley Ford (I just hate his commercials!).
People who insist that this type of list has to contain 10 items.

All in fun.

Technorati : SUV, caddilac, global warming, jacuzzi, marooned

Memorial Day and it’s hot!

Posted on May 28, 2006 by Kirk M

Memorial day weekend in the Kingdom and the “Outta Statuh’s” are piling in by the droves. Actually they started pulling into the various summer camp sites and getting their boats in order for putting in the lake for the holiday weekend quite awhile back. Took advantage of the early warm, albeit rainy weather that we’ve had I’d imagine. The Eastside restaurant has put out it’s floating docks for the summer people to pull their boats into for an evening dinner on the lake as has the Newport Gateway Center for our usual summer flotilla that shows up every Memorial day weekend and stays through Labor Day when it vanishes until the beginning of the next season. Me personally, I’m glad to see ‘em. Kind of jollys up the place and kinda’ reminds me a bit of when I was in Europe so long ago with all the people roaming around the streets talking and laughing and generally having a good time. After a very long winter it’s a pleasant sight.

Now as far as I’m concerned I’ve been mowing the lawn and it may be only 79 degrees out there but after this past winter and the rainiest May (8 weeks of it total I believe with no sun) in the last 100 years give or take a few, running the mower around in the sun (finally) can get kinda’ warm indeed. And wet! Southern Vermont may have gotten it the worst but you could probably sink a good well with only one tile and still get plenty of water. Of course the plant life is loving it to be sure. The old grandfather lilac tree that I pulled all the creepers out of last year is so thick with blossoms the branches are sagging.

I’m hoping to take a road trip around the area tomorrow and put my camera to use but I’ll just have to see how things go. Ya’ never know around here but I’m not complaining a bit.

Now it’s off to clean the microwave. Ya’ have to keep the place up ya’ know.

Have a good holiday weekend!

Technorati : Memorial Day, Vermont life

Go figure…

Posted on May 25, 2006 by Kirk M

You could have never convinced me if you tried. I would never have thought that I’d migrate away from Internet Explorer and Outlook Express no matter how anemic they were getting to be. The fact was, they just worked. That’s about all they did but they did work. So what if Internet Explorer had to be patched every second Tuesday of every month? So what if Microsoft hasn’t supported Outlook Express since 2003? So what if they were full of security holes? The simple fact was that I was sitting behind a ZoneAlarm Firewall, the best in the business as far as I and most others are concerned and Panda Internet Security 2005/2006 (for the anti-virus mainly) neither of which has ever let me down. So who cares about holes? I run both at the same time!

Ok, if anyone doesn’t spend the money for the above security or any security at all then you’re going to end up getting nuked sooner or later anyway no matter which browser/email client you run and you can forget about the XP firewall…it’s next to useless. But with the above two programs shielding me from the big, bad ‘ol world I never had to worry much about anything but my own stupidity so when I began testing the first release of IE 7.0 Preview, I thought; “Great! MS is finally improving the old clunker” and they did it with a fair amount of style despite all the moans and groans about the UI change and various imitations of a certain other browser (sorry folks…IE 7.0 is IE 7.0 and nothing else) but for me it was about time. I kept testing right through the latest build – IE 7.0 beta 2.0 and the more I tested the more I liked it and it’s little globe icon with the little golden ring around it still resides on my desktop and it’s a good browser and I like it just fine and…

and…

…I went to Firefox. And after that I dumped Outlook Express and went to Mozilla’s Thunderbird email client. I slapped a “Noia Extreme” theme all over both (“Lite” version on Firefox) and that’s where I am today.

I don’t get it…

No one talked me into it. IE 7.0 definitely did not do anything to push me away. Nothing I ever read or researched convinced me that I’d ever switch. I did keep Firefox as a secondary browser for testing purposes against IE 7.0 as well as Opera 8.0/8.5 and Maxthon 1.5.2 build 21 (uses the IE engine). Then sometime during testing on IE 7.0 beta 2 (ran just fine) I simply stopped testing, dumped the Opera browser and started using Firefox more…and more…and then one day I set it as my default browser…and then I downloaded and installed Thunderbird email client 1.5 and made that default…

…and here I am.

To tell you the truth, I still don’t understand it. Why should a 47 year old man, an old, crusty computer tech who, when a new thing called a “Personal Computer” came on the scene way back when, started off with Microsoft…stayed with Microsoft…began surfing the WWW in it’s very first incarnation using IE 2.0 (just long enough to download IE 3.0 at a whoppin’ 9600 baud rate mind you) should finally, all these years later, suddenly drop his brand new IE browser and trusty old MS mail program for a third party equivalent?

No clue. But I don’t regret it apparently.

Heck, Firefox even works with most MSN and Windows Live stuff with the exception of Windows Live Mail which will only show the “Classic Hotmail view” but even that works well enough. It does not work with MS Newsgroups or Windows Updates of course but that’s why I have IE 7.0 hanging around and IE 7.0 or 6.0 for that matter doesn’t work with everything either. I just never noticed until I started using a Gecko based browser that I realized how much IE actually does miss. Version 2.0 coming out later this year is supposed to eliminate a lot of the clunkiness in the rendering end of things, a lot of “under the hood” improvements and an overhaul of the UI.

I’m looking forward too it…I think(??)

Actually, I am at that.

No rhyme or reason to this. I’m not going to get all fanatic about Firefox or Thunderbird all of a sudden just because I seem to have switched sides and I will definitely not start bad mouthing IE 7.0 or Microsoft simply because of my change of browsers and email programs basically because it’s not my style and there is nothing actually wrong with MS’s offerings. Hell, I haven’t even figured it out myself yet.

If I ever do…I’ll let you know.

And how was your day?

Technorati : Firefox, IE 7, Outlook Express, Thunderbird email client

Park(ing)?

Posted on May 23, 2006 by Kirk M

Now here’s something you don’t see everyday. A group of people called “rebar” decided to temporarily reclaim some of San Fransisco’s numerous public parking spaces (street side) by “leasing” this public property for a couple of hours by feeding the parking meter and actually laying down some turf (on a mat), a tree, a park bench and set up a little parking spaced size “park” for everyone’s enjoyment. Their “Park(ing)” page says (and shows) it all including photos and a Quick time video of the setup. People even used it! A very cool thing indeed.

A most great idea. Definitely check it out.

The great net debate

Posted on May 23, 2006 by Kirk M

One of the things I’ve been following very closely is the “great debate” going on about “Net Neutrality”. Now I’m not going to go into all the details since there is already plenty of material already available on the very thing that the debate is about…the internet.

There are two websites that directly represent the two opposing sides of the issue. The first being Save the Internet which starts off with the following excerpt below (plus the extra paragraph) with the full text available via a link on it’s main page.

If Net Neutrality is gone, the future of the Internet will be dominated by only those large companies that can pay the phone cartel’s broadband fees. This predatory scheme would muscle aside the Internet’s real revolutionaries – the small-guy innovators who historically have made the Internet a beacon for democracy, economic growth and new ideas.

In the words of Internet architect Vint Cerf, the Internet is “innovation without permission.” That is the genius of the network that has proven to be a wonderland for new entrepreneurs and ideas, with all the intelligence residing with the end users and not those who control the pipes.

By the way, Tim Berners-Lee and Vint Cerf appear to support this side of the debate.

The second, Hands off the Internet has their main blurb on the main page without the teaser and a link to click as in the former but whatever. Here’s the excerpt from there:

The online debate over ‘net neutrality’ has to date been dominated by the proponents of far-reaching new laws. We think it’s about time the other side is heard. We look forward to discussing many issues surrounding the telcoms industry, and preserving the exciting future of broadband Internet against potential regulatory legislation which might threaten it. Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll explore the different sides of this debate and put it into the proper context.

So far, too many groups and individuals have painted this debate as a case of the telcoms industry vs. the little guy. But that’s not what this is about at all. This is about how we’re going to pay for the next generation Internet, and creating different ways to deliver web content to the home as fast as possible. This is also about whether we want the government to dictate how the next version of the Internet is run before we even get there.

I would suggest giving both websites a good looking over. Both offer justifiable arguments and a way to send a letter to your various Representatives, congressmen, senators etc but it’s the difference in the members of each group that becomes so interesting and the “what’s and who’s” not directly involved that support one or the other viewpoints such as retailers and the like. As my research went on I realized that a whole blog could be dedicated to this one issue so I suggest anyone interested check out the above sites and then head to your favorite search engine and start bringing up the resources and info related to this debacle.

This is serious stuff folks and will affect how the internet and the ISPs that you pay your hard earned $$ to in order to use it, will operate in the future. As for the two sides directly represented by the above sites and what each has to say, in my mind it boils down to one question…

…who do you trust?

Technorati : net neutrality

Opening Day!

Posted on May 15, 2006 by Kirk M

Alright!

It’s May 15th and opening day for Long Meadow Farms Quilts “brick and mortar” store in good ol’ Newport, Vermont (where it is currently not flooding luckily). Not many people but then we didn’t expect many since it isn’t even Memorial Day yet so no problem there. The sign for the roadside hasn’t shown up yet and should be here around the middle of the week which is ok since it’s been raining a lot and you can’t plant posts in the ground when it’s raining.

Now, Laurie’s most likely going to kill me for this but I snapped a picture of her standing behind her counter earlier today and I just can’t resist…

It’s a wonderful thing and I’m so happy for her. Check out the above link to her retail store page for pictures of the cleaned up shop taken last evening.

Oops, phone’s ringing. Be back

Bed Quilts to Bookmarks once again

Posted on May 11, 2006 by Kirk M

Got some quick pics of the work in progress. These are about a week old so we’ve gotten farther than what the pictures show but most of what’s going to be is there. Remember, the shop is still under construction and it looks that way.

This is the counter that we built in the shop’s front room or what you might call “the store proper”. Kinda’, sorta’ what a customer might see when they first walk in maybe.

This is the future home of the Vermont made maple products, sauces, marinades, salsas etc Laurie has ordered from the local producers around these parts. I’ve been told to keep my hands off the maple creams. Aaaarrgh! : – )

This is a shot of the back room which is the work area of the shop where Laurie creates all her products. That long narrow table with that big blue bundle of fluff laying on it is actually her 12 ft long quilting machine.

And these are 3 of her recent creations: A king size purple quilt, a queen size red quilt and a full size green quilt. Hard to believe each of these quilts started out as a 1″ x 1″ (approx) piece of fabric.

And the front of the shop with the newly mounted sign above the door (Laurie hand made the sign also). The big sign thats going up by the roadside is due on Friday from the sign maker.

Whew! Quite an undertaking so far and all of the work (building counter’s, fold out walls, boxes, things to display in and on etc) has all been done by us and Kenny and Jen when they are able and all of the sewing and quilting and making of other items such as quilted totes, patchwork potholders, quilted bookmarks and all the other wonderful things that will grace the tables, racks and shelves of the shop of course has been the sole work of my wonderful lady.

Oh yeah, I bagged up all the styrofoam peanuts that her food products were packed in after they arrived. Yahoo….gotta love those static-y little bas….things.

Alright, I hear a cup of tea calling. Talk at ya’ later.

Jen and Tulips

Posted on May 10, 2006 by Kirk M

Spring is definitely up to steam and running right along now. All the buds on the trees have turned into leaves, most of ‘em anyway, and the tulips are in bloom. Well, at least the ones that are left from the original batch that was planted by who knows and who knows how long ago. Since this is our first spring at our new residence we have no way of knowing but since I and my lady’s son, kenny cleaned up around the yard(s) and unburied some old flower gardens etc, some perennials have decided to make an appearance.

Here’s a couple of pics of the first tulip to bloom: