Shortly after getting my first CD player (Christmas morning, 1991), I began purchasing CDs. What good is a CD player without any CDs to play on it, right? Unfortunately, shopping on my fast food income back then forced me to choose price over quality, which is really the only defense I have in admitting that I own any of these stinkers. I'm sure many of you own a CD or a DVD that you purchased "just to have something to play" when you brought your first player home. Somehow I amassed several, mo
Earlier in the week Susan noticed signs posted around the entrance of our neighborhood announcing that this weekend would be garage sale day for not only our neighborhood, but all four neighborhoods that corner the Reno and Czech Hall intersection. We don't get a chance to garage sale as often as we would like, so these neighborhood garagle sales are a good way to get the best bang for your buck, so to speak -- you can hit 20 or more garage sales in one day and get the whole garage sale thing ou
Yesterday for lunch, Dad met Susan, the kids and I over at the new Chinese buffet in Yukon. Lunch was good, but uneventful. We chatted, we ate, we left. Susan and the kids left in one car while dad and I stood in the parking lot chatting for a few more minutes. Then, he and I (who also drove separately) left, each heading home.
As I came over the bridge at Czech Hall at I-40, I saw several cars pulled over to the right hand side of the road. I immediately recognized one of the cars as Susan’
What do Russian sluts and computer viruses have in common? You get both of them installed on your computer for free if you run stupid software off the Internet before scanning it for viruses first. Oops. Yes, even the FAA Antivirus guy gets caught off guard occasionally. Multiple sadness. It wouldn't be so bad if every time I opened Internet Explorer I wasn't immediately redirected to a Russian porn site. This stupid virus is making me hate computers and want to move to Russian at the same time.
After two days of reloading, restoring and reconfiguring, I'm glad to announce my return to the online world. If there were two lessons to be learned, they were "never experiment with encryption software without a good backup first," and "make sure you know what you're backing up."
I've got a pretty wide backup net cast at this point. Not too long ago I added an additional 300 gig hard drive to my server, where the data from our laptops and workstations (yes, this is at home) get backed up
Out of all the people in the United States, we, the O’Hara clan, have been recruited to join a highly prestigious and select group of individuals. (And no, it’s not to join the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada.)
We have been chosen to become a Neilsen TV Ratings Family.
Ok, so it’s not exactly an elite group – over one million people are selected each year to participate. In fact, given the odds, it’s fairly surprising we haven’t already done this befo
As I do the last of my 2007 digital house cleaning, here are a few pictures I took that never made it into blog posts.
Need for Speed Underground arcade game, bluescreened.
Shoddy Properties? I'll say!
Same building -- this way to see Dr. Crook.
Mason needs neither a spoon nor napkin at Braum's.
The cat is inside; the bird, outside.
This year our front porch hosts four carved jack-o-lanterns. Mason drew the face on his pumpkin and I cut it out for him. When I asked Morgan what she wanted on hers, she replied, "bat." So, she got a bat. Susan's is a traditional looking jack-o-lantern while mine is a creepy alien face, an idea that I got from a downloaded pack of jack-o-lantern templates.
Here are Mason's, Daddy's, and Morgan's jack-o-lanterns out on the front porch (Mommy's is on the other side).
If you're inter
While skimming Craig's List this morning, I ran across the following ad:
I am moving and need to sell in two days. Come get it all for $39 in cash. 3 VCRs, 10 Commodore computers, 8 monitors, various printers, some games, Acer scanner, keyboards, cables, some computer books and magazines, floppy disks and floppy organizers, and more. Call John at ... Please do not leave recorded messages.
Quicker than you can say "Commodork" I was on the phone with John, arranging to pick up the stuff at
The second most important part of writing any computer program or script is planning out your program's "path". You can do this in a number of ways; flowcharting is one common method. A program's flow can also be referred to as its "logic".
(Incidently, and completely unrelated to this post, the single most important part of writing any computer program is coming up with a good name before you start. My old pal Leperkhan taught me that, and it's true. Come up with a good name for your progr
Last night Susan and I went to the Civic Center to catch the final Oklahoma City performance of Spamalot, a musical version the classic 1975 film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Spamalot was written by Eric Idle, on of the original members of Monty Python, and debuted on Broadway in 2005.
I'm a pretty big Holy Grail fan and I wasn't sure how much I would like a musical based on the film. Turns out, it was pretty good. Spamalot is a pretty even mix of old comedy bits from the film mixed wi
Susan and I snuck away yesterday evening to catch the Hornets play the Portland Trailblazers down at the Ford Center. The Hornets have a standing offer -- if our team scores over 100 points and wins, you can redeem your ticket stub for $5 worth of free gas (within three days of the game) at any Loves gas station. Last night's the Hornets won 103-91. Our tickets cost $20, and we'll be getting $10 worth of free gas. Win/win! At the beginning of the season I bought eight pairs of tickets; this is t
After a few days of ups and downs, followed by several days of just downs, my web host is back online. For you, that means several blog entries I've been saving in my head. For me, that means I no longer have to sit in front of the computer hitting F5 trying over and over to refresh my e-mail program in hopes of getting some. Speaking of e-mail, it appears like anything sent to me from last Friday until yesterday ended up in virtual la-la land, so if you sent me something and I didn't respond, I
This week, I've been working double shifts. From 7:30AM to 4PM, I've been doing my normal work duties (and what a week it's been). From 4PM-midnight and beyond, I've been putting the finishing touches on my new book, Invading Spaces. This last writing push has made me not want to blog much this week, but I thought I owed it to everybody to know where I've been.
My original goal was to finish the book by the 1st of July; that date came and went. My drop dead date was this past Monday; that's
What began as loose dinner plans blossomed into a reunion of sorts. Last night at Sophabella's Susan and I had dinner with Andy and his wife Lea, Jeff and his wife Heather, and Scott and his girlfriend Dana. To give you an idea of the history sitting around that table, I met Andy when I was 4 years old, Scott when I was 6, and Jeff when I was 12. That means I've known all of them at least 20 years, and Andy for 30.
The last time the four of us were in the same room was at Andy's bachelor par
When you grow up in a state that has no major league football team, no major league baseball team, and no major basketball team, you have to adopt teams from other states as "your" team. And, if your dad grew up in Chicago and his entire family still lives there, that decision is made for you at a very early age. I have grade school pictures of myself wearing a puffy Bears-colored blue and orange winter vest, and grew up wearing lots of Bears shirts and Bulls baseball caps. Being a Chicago fan h
Took the boy to go see Iron Man yesterday after school at the local theater. $10 for two tickets, which (I guess) isn't bad these days. Personally I'd rather watch it at home, but the boy's getting wise to me. "How come everybody else gets to see new movies at the theater and we have to watch them at home? And why do all our movies have words at the bottom in other languages and why are people always walking in front of the camera?" I think the real reason he likes to go to the theater is that t
Halloween has come and gone and things are back to normal for the most part. All the skull-shaped candles, plastic skeletons and other assorted scary decorations have been packed away for another year. Last year's Halloween candy has been dumped from the kitchen's candy bowl, which has now been filled with this year's trick-or-treat bounty. Yes, the kids get so much candy that it typically lasts an entire year. And even though we've combined all the acquired candy into one central bowl, apparent
Ol' Santa brought one of Morgan's gifts early ... a case of pink eye. The doctor at the weekend clinic yesterday said it spread from an upper respiratory infection she contracted. So along with some other medicine, we also have to administer eye drops to the 18-month-old. Fun. Last night that involved waking Morg up at midnigt and using a warm cloth to wipe the gunk from her eye so that we could open it and squeeze eye drops into her eyeball. And let me tell you, what child doesn't love being wo
On the way to work this morning I swung through our new neighborhood McDonald's drive-thru to pick up some breakfast. There were three people working at the first window; a supervisor of some sort, the order taker, and the button pusher. As the three employees spoke amonst themselves, I realized that I had no idea what race they were. Their skin was brown, but not too brown. They weren't Indian (Native or Eastern), I don't think they weren't Mexican ... and in fact I'm not sure what they are. An
Last night for dinner, Dave, Johnny and I went to Acapulco's, a local Mexican restaurant here in Framingham. As one would expect we entered the restaurant and were promptly seated.
Moments later we noticed a mariachi band in the corner of the dining room. AND THEY BEGAN PLAYING LOUDLY. THEY PLAYED VERY LOUDLY. AND THEY MOVED FROM TABLE TO TABLE, PLAYING ONE ENTIRE SONG FOR EACH TABLE. AND IT KEPT GOING AND GOING AND WE COULD NOT HEAR OURSELVES THINK.
While we were waiting for our food it
...and fuzz to fuzz. After a short-lived life span, the mohawk is no more. I honestly didn't realize what a big deal it apparently was. Although most of the comments I received were positive, Susan absolutely hated it (and said as much, multiple times). Among other adjectives, "trashy", "white trash", "horrible" and "awful" came up more than once.
So long, 'mo. We barely knew ye. In case you're wondering what happened to it ... well, there's only one way to get rid of a mohawk ...
Class is over; all that's left is the drive home tomorrow morning.
For a class that cost $3,000, it's amazing to me how much of it some of the other students missed. The class ran eight hours a day for four days, although with breaks and lunch our actual time in class was closer to six hours each day. One of the twelve students scheduled Friday as his travel day; he didn't even show up the last day, missing a fourth of the course. There were a couple others who were consistantly late -- not
Early Saturday morning I hopped in my truck and drove 250 miles to Bentonville, Arkansas, for another round of hunting for and playing videogames with several of my friends from Digital Press. Icbrkr and his wife once again hosted the festivities. Icbrkr's buddy Grimbal showed up, along with 98Pacecar (from Dallas) and Gapporin (from Joplin). Yes, I know constantly referring to people by their online aliases is geeky.
Due to a mix-up in directions I ended up following Icbrkr's instructions i
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