They were handing out coupon books at Costco today. The coupons are only good November 27th, 28th and 29th. There are a quite a few deals that some folks might be interested in.

A pack of four $15 iTunes gift cards are normally $56, but with the coupon, they're $8 off for a total of $47.99 for $60 worth of cards. There's no limit.

The 8GB iPod nano, normally $139.99, is $10 off with coupon for a final price of $129.99. Limit 1.

A Philips 10.4" digital picture frame, normally $99.99 is $20 off with coupon. Final cost $79.99. No Limit.

KitchenAid Professional HD mixer is $50 off with coupon. Normally $279.99, $229.99 after coupon. Limit 3.

Hitachi 18 Volt Lithium 4 piece cordless tool kit with 1/2" drill, reciprocating saw, 6.5" circular saw, lantern, fast-charger, 2 batteries and carrying case. Normally $299.99, $199.99 after $100 coupon. Limit 1.

SanDisk Cruzer 16GB USB flash drive, $25 off. 2 pack of SanDisk Ultra II 8GB SDHC cards, $15 off. SanDisk Ultra II 8GB CF card, $15 off. 2 pack of SanDisk Ultra II 4GB SDHC cards, $10 off. 3 pack of SanDisk Cruzer Micro 4GB USB flash drives, $10 off. SanDisk 8GB MicroSDHC card, $10 off. No limit

Flip Ultra Camcorder, $30 off with coupon. No limit.

$300 off a Vizio 55" 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV, limit 2.

$100 off a Garmin Nuvi 5.0" GPS, Limit 2. $55 off a TomTom 4.3" GPS, Limit 2.

$35 off a Sony Blu-ray player, Limit 4.


There will also be some really great deals on Costco.com from 11/27 through 12/14.

A Galileo CT-1380 Catadioptric reflector telescope, normally $199.99, now $149.99 including shipping.

ETQ 3200W generator, normally $349.99, now $249.99 (+$30 if you need the CARB approved version). Shipping included.



Costco also usually gives away free copies of their Cooking The Costco Way cookbook on Black Friday.

Got my seasonal flu shot today. I didn't feel a thing when I got the H1N1 shot, but this one hurt. :-P In two weeks I'll be ready for anything Winter has to throw at me. Well, except snow.

Walgreens has the Crest Spinbrush Pro Whitening powered toothbrush on special, if you buy one (about $8) you get a coupon for $3 off your next Walgreens purchase. I bought one today, then turned around and used the $3 to buy candy. Heh.

This toothbrush feels really weird. I was using an Oral-B Pulsar, which is just a regular toothbrush strapped to a vibrator. The Spinbrush, on the other hand, has a part that spins around in a circle, kind of like that funky tooth polisher your dentist uses, and it has a part that scrubs up and down. The result is a toothbrush that feels like it's doing the brushing for you. My teeth feel almost dentist-visit clean now.

I used the $3 coupon to buy a couple tins of the latest Altoids flavor, Cool Honey. Alas, it doesn't taste much like honey, it's mostly a minty flavor. It's not really all that good. I am disappoint.

Reindeer Peeps!


Serving Size: 3 Reindeer

As always, click the thumbnails to see the full-size picture.






Totally adorable!

When I bought my Dell Mini 9 netbook, it came with Dell's version of Ubuntu, which was majorly broken. I replaced the dinkey 16 Gig SSD that was the largest drive they offered with a cheap (relatively) 64 Gig SSD and installed the full version of Ubuntu. It was slower than the custom Dell version, but it worked correctly. I kept upgraded it a couple times until it was at 9.04. 9.10 came out recently, but rather than doing a simple upgrade, I decided to start from scratch and do things right. I wiped the SSD and installed the Netbook Remix version of Ubuntu.

Only to find out there's a lot of stuff broken in it off the bat. The wireless didn't work at all and took a lot of Googling to fix. Getting it to see my Bluetooth mouse was much more difficult than it should have been. And then there's the interface. Ugh! By default, Netbook Remix uses a special Launcher application instead of the usual menu system. I'm not 5 years old, I don't need a screen full of icons the size of golf balls. Getting rid of the Launcher wasn't easy. Googling didn't help much, the "desktop-switcher" program I kept reading about wasn't anywhere to be found in Synaptic. I finally figured out that I could disable to Launcher in Startup Applications, then add the Main Menu to the menu bar. There's no easy method to switch back and forth between the normal Ubuntu interface and the toddler-friendly Netbook interface.

Now I just need to reinstall all my usual software, install and configure all my Firefox extensions, set up my e-mail and IM accounts, copy over all my files....

Mozilla recently announced the winner of their contest to design a new logo for the mobile version of Firefox.

The Winner: http://creative.mozilla.org/designs/346

Got my H1N1 shot today.  Ended up standing in line for over 90 minutes, but only because they published the wrong start time.  At least the weather wasn't too cold, and I had my Kindle to catch up on some reading.  And it was free, that's always nice.

I still need to get the regular flu shot, maybe this weekend.

I use Windows Media Center to watch TV.  My computer has a TV Tuner and WMC automatically searches for and records my shows to an external 1 TB hard drive.  It's supposed to automatically delete old shows to make room for new ones.

The drive was almost completely full, nearly a full terabyte of TV shows had been recorded, so I went through the list of old shows to manually delete stuff.

I discovered that WMC had never deleted any of the Law & Order episodes that it had recorded.  I had over a years worth of episodes filling up the drive!  It had recorded not just the new episodes on NBC, but also the syndicated reruns on the local stations.

I started going through and deleting old episodes, which freed up almost half the drive.   Nearly half a terabyte of Law & Order.  Yikes!  And I'm not really that big of a fan of the show.

The goats were following me around when I took the dogs for a walk, so I tried hooking a leash to the collar of the braver of the two goats, Josephine.  I figured I didn't need to leash her sister Buttercup since the two are inseparable.  Josephine didn't like it at first, but after a few minutes (and a bunch of animal crackers) she got used to it and let me lead her around.  Once we got outside the fence, though, she didn't want to follow anymore; just like a dog, she wanted to stop and smell (and taste) every little thing that was new to her.  We only got a few yards outside the fence, then I brought them back inside.  I didn't want to overstress her the first time she was on a leash.  I unhooked her then fed her the rest of the animal crackers.

I need a longer leash, though.  Six feet isn't long enough for a goat.

I could probably take them outside without the leash, since they usually follow me around everywhere (especially if I have treats), but I don't want to take any chances.  They're so small, they could get lost so very easily.

I was out walking this afternoon when I saw something shining on the ground.  There in the gravel roadway was a gleaming brass rifle cartridge.  The design looked familiar, too.  I picked it up and checked the base.  Sure enough, .30-06 Springfield.  The cartridge was in excellent condition, clean, uncorroded and undamaged.  Then I saw another.  And another.  And still more.  I found 6 cartridges total, two appeared to have been run over but the others were in perfect shape.

This tells me several things:

1.  Someone near here was out hunting.  The markings on the cases indicate the brand of ammo was Federal.  In .30-06, this brand runs about $35 to $45 per box of 20.  Most people won't go firing off $10 worth of ammo unless they're aiming at something.

2.  Someone near here was hunting from the roadway, which is illegal just about everywhere.  In Nebraska, it's a Class III misdemeanor.

3.  Someone near here was hunting out of season.  Deer season here starts November 14th.  In Nebraska this is a Class III misdemeanor.

4.  Someone near here is a really lousy shot.  Assuming they were using a legal firearm, they discharged their entire magazine. (NE law prohibits deer hunting with a rifle with greater than 6 round capacity)

I've had enough of living,
I've had enough of dying.
I've had enough of smiling,
I've had enough of crying.
I've taken all the high roads,
I've squandered and I've saved.
I've had enough of childhood,
I've had enough of graves.

Interstella 5555:  The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem

This is a feature-length Japanese animation set to the music of Daft Punk.  There is no dialog whatsoever, the entire story is told by the images and the music.  The animation was supervised by Leiji Matsumoto, who also created Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999.

Why do all aliens end up either being humans (weird forehead optional) or hideous bug/reptile/monster creatures?  Why don't we get more alien bunnies like Quozl or Redeeming Factors?

The title of the TV show I was looking for was Newscast From the Past.  Here's a few of the episodes:

September 19, 1356:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUBW6s8NBmo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxvOE9ttMmk

May 30, 1431:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dDpOdW2Mjs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVgrA38y1NQ

April 18, 1521
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FZENuw5ASY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ClGEYcFB0k

October 16, 1642
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k611kz_vA5o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6Oq6rq33uo

It's been pretty chilly out the past week or so, but today it jumped into the 70s and the bugs suddenly came out with a vengeance.  So far I've killed at least 87 132 flies inside the house.  Eighty-Seven!!!  One Hundred Thirty Two!!!!! WTF?  There's also a few dozen ladybugs inside as well.

The bugs hang around outside the doors and as soon as someone opens one, they come pouring in like a dam burst.  The sticky fly strips on the porch are totally covered; I guess I need to put up some more.

Fortunately temps are supposed to drop to near freezing tonight, so hopefully that, plus my skillful use of the flyswatter, will take care of the problem.

At least it's not grasshoppers.  My roommate who's lived here for quite a few years tells me one year the grasshoppers were so bad, they started eating the metal window screens!  I think I'll take 87 flies over millions of metal-chomping locusts, thank you.

I recall seeing an educational TV series when I was a teenager, it was done like a TV news program airing on some historical date, the middle ages, the reformation, etc.  There were sports, business and opinion segments, and even "commercials", all appropriate to the time period for that episode.  The show would always end with the anchor saying something like "And that's the way it was, October 12, 1492."

Anyone else remember this show?  And what the name was?

I've gotten good enough at the guitar and bass that I can usually finish most of the songs in Beatles Rock Band on easy with a 100% score, even the more difficult ones like Birthday or Revolution. So I tried playing Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds on medium.  I actually managed to get a 97% on it.  (In Rock Band, the easy level only uses 3 chords, medium uses 4, while hard and expert use all 5 chord buttons, requiring you to move your hand up and down the fret.  There are also more notes to play as the difficulty increases.)  I found my fingers working on their own at times, managing to hit notes that my brain totally missed.

Playing Beatles Rock Band has really increased my appreciation of their music.  You begin to see patterns and eccentricities in the music, such as notes that are deliberately out of beat.  Playing the bass is especially insightful since you don't normally pay much attention to the bass player when you're just listening to the music.

I've got blisters on my fingers!

If the recipient is anonymous, then how could I choose who the recipient is?  And if the gift is a secret, then how can I choose what to give them?

I installed 7 last Thursday, the same day it came out.  I chose to replace the 1/2 TB drives on my system with two new 1.5 TB drives.  That way if worse came to worse, all I had to do was reinstall the old drives and everything would be back the way it was.  I bought the Upgrade version of 7 Ultimate, which is about $100 cheaper than the full version.

Previous versions of Windows would allow you to use the "upgrade" disk to do a clean install; it would ask you to insert on old OS disk to prove you qualified to use the upgrade disk.  7 doesn't do this.  If you try using the upgrade disk on a blank hard drive, it gives no warnings and doesn't ask for any proof that you own an older version, it just goes ahead with the install.  But when it asks for the key, it will reject the upgrade key without explanation.  I eventually discovered that it was looking for a full version (i.e. full price) key.

This means if you're trying to install Windows 7 to a blank hard drive (e.g. replacing a dead hard drive), you have to install your old OS or run the computer's recovery CD first.  Or you can do like I did, and install 7 a second time; as long as the installer sees an installation of XP, Vista or 7 (even if it's unlicensed) already on the drive, it will let you use the upgrade key.  Choose a custom install and the installer will rename the old OS folder to windows.old before creating a new clean isntall, you can delete the old OS folder once the install has finished.

Other than the little hiccup with the keys, 7 installed very easily.  But then I started having problems installing software.  The installers would freeze up, the computer would start acting oddly, then when I tried to shut down, the machine would freeze up.  I couldn't believe Microsoft could have released an OS this buggy, especially not after everyone had been raving about how great the beta was, so I figured I had a hardware problem somewhere.  I also noticed that the Windows Experience Index, which tests your hardware's performance, was giving me excellent numbers on my CPU and video card (7.0-7.1) but a horrible score for my hard drive (2.8).  On a hunch, I broke my RAID mirror and the hard drive performance jumped to 5.9.  Some of the gremlins also disappeared as well.  I don't like going without RAID, so I installed a PCI-e RAID controller card and disabled the motherboard RAID.  That did the trick; all the problems went away.  Unfortunately disabling the onboard RAID also disables the eSATA port, which I was using for an external hard drive, so I've hard to order more parts to fix that.

With the hardware issues cleared up, 7 seems to be working quite well.  UAC, one of the biggest complaints about Vista, is no longer annoying.  The box came with both 32 and 64 bit versions; the 32 bit version has better driver compatability but is limited to about 3.5 GB of usable RAM.  The 64 bit version can use up to 192 GB of RAM (!) but some programs and drivers won't work.  So far I've not encountered too many problems, other than the fact there's no version of Flash for 64 bit IE.  (Buh?  64 bit Windows have been around since XP, in 2001, why has it taken Adobe 9 years to come up with a compatible version?)

Startup does seem a bit faster, but that could just be because many of the services are set to delayed-start.  There are lots of little tweaks to the GUI, some good, some not so great.  The biggest improvement in my opinion is with Windows Media Center.  I have a TV tuner card and I use WMC to record and watch programs.  The Vista version of WMC couldn't deal with digital subchannels (12.2, 12.3 etc.) very well, you had to add the channels manually and you'd never get Guide info.  7 has full support for digital TV and provides complete Guide information for all the channels, so now I can record things on the local broadcast movie channel.

You never really appreciate just how much software you have until you have to reinstall all of it.