I have noticed a trend in my email lately. No not the typical SPAM about a dead relative to leave me money, or even the ones about Obama changing laws to get car insurance for $3 a month or some ridiculous thing.
I have noticed that many of those emails come in, from the future. That’s right, the future. Hours or even days into the future. Now, I am not really sure why I have been chosen to be a prognosticator of deals and money forgotten by some millionaires in other countries, but I am. I am able to tell my SPAM fortune.
It seems that I can also predict (somewhat) how Google will look at this post. Thanks to Bob I know know I have to ramble on about this for another 150 words or so, inserting links and pictures as they come. Or should I? Hold on, I will check my email and see if the future holds anything that will help us in the search engine rankings.
Nope, nothing is there, but I can make untold riches with this new system that will generate $2460 per day. That would be helpful. Not likely, but helpful.
So, now I have a question. To all of you out there, do you get mail from the future or is it just me? If you are getting mail from the future then I am no longer special and will have to, well, do something. But I would still like to hear from some of you out there.
And another question, who sends these things and who writes the programs that allow people to see into the future and send me the email? Why can’t they use that power and send me the winner of the Superbowl and the world series so that I can bet on them? I guess their power does not go that far….cheeky bastards.
Well folks it is now Wednesday and most of the turkey should be flushed from your system and allowing you to get back to work. It has been a weekend. Now, the fun begins. Holiday shopping. Black Friday was last week. My wife said it was a good day, there were only 2 stabbings during the rush to get the deals.
Let’s look now at what the rest of the season holds. Twinkly lights, fat guys in red suits, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding as you try to enter every store. All of this and money. Your hard earned money draining from your wallet and into other people’s coffers. And yes, credit cards count in this, unless, you are planning on charging everything and then running off to another part of the country with a new name and letting Visa figure it out. If that is you, morepow er to you, I hope the electric chair is comfortable.
For the rest of us, it gets trickier. You see I don’t have any credit cards. I don’t want them, I don’t need them. I can’t handle them responsibly in my opinion so I don’t use them. Which gets sticky at this time of year when almost all of our income is used for things like rent, power, gas (oh yes we are running on fumes close to payday). How to buy Christmas presents for 4 little kids? Extra work.
For me, it should be any work at all. I could make more money tomorrow, if I got a piece of cardboard and a marker and hung out by WalMart. So please shop at amazon through our affiliate link over there in the sidebar. It will pay for the hosting to keep this site up and running and give me that much more from my wife’s paycheck to spend for Christmas. But I digress.
Is it the things we get for Christmas that make us happy? Sometimes. Is it truly the thought that counts? Maybe. Is there a giant wad of cash that is going to be dropped from my bank account in the next 3 weeks? Yes. Should we just give each other cash and forget about it? Should we just give up the gift thing altogether? Probably. A couple of years ago we decided that we were not going to buy presents for the family, at least kid to kid. They would have to make or otherwise modify something for a gift. That has been fun to actually make the gifts for each other.
This year we are trying to follow the same formula but it really seem slike most of the good ideas are gone and what is the point anymore? Icarved some stone charms and made necklaces for the kids last year as good luck charms. I have all of them in a cup on my desk now, picked up from the floors and various other places in the house. Nowhere near their necks as good luck charms. I am thinking that this year I will give them a stick and let them figure out what it is for. Then, after we get back from getting stitches and a concussion taken care of, I will be smiling on the inside.
So, this Christmas season is fast approaching. Gifts are expected. Gifts will be given and received. What are you planning on doing about all of this nonsense? Me, I would just like a nap.
This summer thing keeps coming up, year in and year out. I guess it can’t be avoided in climes this far above the equator, so I either have to move to Alaska, or deal with summer. Here in Utah, we live in a desert. Sure it has been irrigated and settled to have trees and reduce the appearance of a desert, it is still technically a desert. That means in the summer, temperatures are routinely in the upper 90’s or low 100’s.
Kolob Finger Canyons, Zion National Park. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Usually that is not bad, it is as they say a dry heat. Humidity is usually around 20%. This late spring, early summer the temperatures have been all over the place. One day it hit 95, the next barely made 74. It was upper 80’s for 6 days and today as I write this at noon, it is just over 70.
I am confused really. Usually it gets hot here and stays that way instead of jumping all over the thermometer. I don’t know what to make of this. Maybe it is global warming….well probably not. What do you guys think about summer. is it a good thing or a bad thing? Hot or not? What is your choice? Personally I like it cooler. And I am not going back to Florida anytime soon.
Santa got my daughter an MP3 player for Christmas. No not an Ipod, those are overpriced pieces of nothing that I need, but that is another rant. The one she got was an RCA. Probably not the best but there are loads of worse ones out there.
She has been using it for a while now and having no problems. We have been using Windows Explorer to drag and drop songs on the thing and it has worked just fine. The other day she came to me looking for a song that they had heard at school to put on her machine.
For someone working on a bachelor degree in technology online this kind of task might have been fun.
After some balking about how she wasn’t getting her room cleaned and I wasn’t getting the house cleaned I relented and googled the song. It was a remix of a popular song that was now a pro-reading thing. I like reading. I like the fact that she likes to read. A song about reading seemed like a good thing.
Come to find out, this song only exists on You Tube. Here it is.
Not too bad, so I save the video to my computer. Should be able to put it right on her player because it has video. Oh no….It couldn’t possibly be that easy. Turns out there is a proprietary video type for RCA and its parent company Audiosucks Audiovox. So I look up how to convert this video. There is a program that comes hard wired into the player called RCA Easy Rip that gives you the capability. If you have a version that will work.
I didn’t. More google. Download new program that will work with Vista. Install. Crash system. reboot. Install. Seems to work but won’t convert video with sound. video only. What a Piece of Crap! We gave up for the moment on the video. Now there was some other songs she wanted on her player.
I had the program up so I decided to use it. The &$#^ing piece of worthless crap ate 99% system clock resources! I couldn’t do anything while it was loading like 8 songs on her player. I couldn’t even stop it becasue it says it will damage the player. Tell you what, I uninstalled that little mother as soon as it released the hostage system resources.
And then I rebooted because my system was slow. When it started up again, there was another program that was piggybacked onto the EasyRip! This one automatically locks up your computer on startup looking for updates to the software or the firmware of the player. It was a catch 22 for a while because this thing was taking all of the system resources again and not letting things like the internet connection get through so it couldn’t update to save it because it was taking up the resources needed to access.
I finally got that uninstalled and everything nearly back to normal now. All I have to say is, Come on RCA you are a big name that has been around for a long time. You of all people should realize that a flashy app is worthless if it takes you back to the days of linear computing where everything is loaded one bit at a time and it takes freaking forever. Multi-tasking has been around for a while.
Maybe you could find a nice 3rd party application that would solve everyones problems once and for all. Or, heaven forbid, make the thing open source so the hackers can have a go at it and make it useful. The idea isn’t bad nor is the interface on the surface. Get even one level deeper and you may as well be at the bottom of a dark outhouse with a penlight. And not one of those bright LED lights either, something that may run 3 candlepower with a full battery and lots of prayer.
Bottom line, Get a SanDisk product. I have had 4 of their players and had no problems. One day I will afford an Ipod, or get my Dad’s hand me down. Whatever.
If ye be bold enough, click the picture above and this page will become: Pirate!
International Talk Like a Pirate Day (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Well me Hearties it finally be time for Talk Like A Pirate Day! Today we have those scabarous bung weevils Captain Jack Sparrowand Captain Hector Barbossa aboard the Blackheart’s Shadow for the podcast. We be Ready for some fun, so hit play fer the podcast and beware….
If ye be bold enough, click the picture above and this page will become: Pirate!
The Audio: