A Nice Evening Out

Wow, where did I go after dinner tonight? First, I went down to the gallery (Duke's Diggs) and visited my receptionist to find out who'd been in the gallery today. Then, I stopped into a latex clothing contest at a bar in a seedy part of town and played some roulette (I'm attracted to the roulette table). Then, I visited Clown Town and rode the Teacups and sat for a cup of coffee on the pier with some strangers. One of the strangers mentioned an art walk along the private island, Muse Island, so I headed there to visit it. It turned out that they had open spots for artists, so I found the proprietor and arranged two of my pieces in their gallery on the island, setting them for sale.
Afterwards, I visited Cecilia's, a bar on the island, and listened to a folk artist, Russell Eponym, for the first time. He's an artist originally from the UK, and has a very calming style. You should catch his work.
I did this all in Second Life (www.secondlife.com). Didn't have to leave the house once and didn't need a babysitter at all. And the night's still young. The teacups didn't make me hurl (but did make me dizzy) and I could control the bar's speaker volume quite nicely from my front row table. As the music streamed in from across the world, I was amazed at the possibilities available. I have played SL for only a few weeks now, but some folks are doing amazing things with it.

Business Bankruptcy Attorneys Pietzman, Weg & Kempinsky LLP

My brother is a partner at a law firm in California, Pietzman, Weg & Kempinsky LLP. From their web site "The firm provides clients representation in chapter 11 bankruptcies, out-of-court restructurings, and business litigation matters." He works hard, much harder than I do, and for it, he is well paid, just as any lawyer can expect to be paid well. They just re-did their web site and put it up on the web, and he called and mentioned the site. I told him that I'd take a look at CSS-ifying it, making it look nice in multiple resolutions and stuff like that. I wish I had more time to work on stuff like that, but I'm currently working on stuff for work that's just as interesting, and more beneficial to my career...

It's a shame that there isn't enough time to do all the favors you want to do for everyone. It just feels different when you're doing something as a 'favor' or a 'hobby' instead of for 'work'. Perhaps when I have enough money, I can retire and work on projects for fun, without the stress of my performance actually affecting my life. That's right, work needs to be more like a video game, where if you screw up a project, you can just push the RESET button and start over.

Ack! Help! Another Time Sink!

Found another time sink - ugh. I stayed up until 1 AM last night at a casino. No, not a real casino, but an online simulation of a casino. I was playing as my avatar, Duke Scarborough, in Second Life. The folks at Second Life have given 3D virtual worlds some oomph with their client/server. Of course, the world isn't without its problems, of course. Lag is a problem with large population concentrated in any one area (like a casino running hundreds of simulated slot and video poker machines). But the experience when the lag lets up is amazing. With streaming music and sounds, lighting features, and well-programmed machines and a good casino design, it felt a lot like Vegas. In fact, in some respects it felt even better than Vegas, since there's some things you just can't do reasonably in real life, like particle effects that pop out of the machines when you get a Flush or better in Video Poker.

I spoke with several people in the casino, all of whom had the best things to say about the operator. But after speaking with the operator, he expressed that he didn't want to be featured in my blog. If you log into Second Life, though, I am sure that you'll find this great casino in due time.

It was a much better experience than losing myself in front of the television for a few hours. Log onto Second Life and look me up (Duke Scarborough). I think you'll enjoy the simulation.

$2 Yo-Yo and your childhood

Who didn't have a Yo-yo when they were growing up in the 70's? Yo-yo's were quite the rage in the schoolyard back then. So, when I was browsing in Walmart with my son, and we say the Hasbro Fast 201 Yo-Yo's (released in Feb 2005!?) for only $1.98 each, we picked up two, one for each of us. Back in the 70's, the Duncan Butterfly was the yo-yo to have, but this thing takes the butterfly and gives it strong wings. The yo-yo has a set of 'fangs' inside it that increase side friction to the string, but it's settable by the user twisting the yo-yo to an open or closed position. I was never that good as a kid, but with this sucker, I was quickly doing sleepers and walk-the-dog. If you want to get in touch with the inner child, sometimes you just can't beat a $2 toy.

Cute Joke

A friend of mine, Matthew Martin, just told me a funny joke, and I had to share it.

Descartes walks into a bar, buys a beer and drinks it. The bartender hands him the tab for the beer, a whopping $50. Descartes, in a huff, exclaims loudly, "$50 for a beer? I think not!". *Poof* No more Descarte.

Well, I enjoyed it.....

Chinese $150 Linux mini-PC races OLPC to market

I don't know about you, but I'm sitting here on my computer with only two open applications: An Internet browser and my IM client. 90% of the time when I am at home, this is all that I'm using. Sure, my laptop does a lot more. I use it for web development, and a variety of other tasks. But it cost me $1500. There's a lot of work afoot in industry to put out a cheap computer for the masses that can't afford a nice PC, and I just got hooked up by The Raw Feed to this article: Chinese $150 Linux mini-PC races OLPC to market. There's video available (linked in the article) and it's a very intriguing little box. It does more that just IM and Internet, much more. It has Office-like applications, USB 2.0 ports, Linux, video player software, and a cute little OS front-end. It also has a hard drive and SVIDEO-out, things you wouldn't expect in a $150 computer. I could have sworn on the video the man said it had wireless too (although it doesn't have a built-in screen, so you won't be using it at Starbucks).
Intel and Microsoft don't have a lot to worry about, as the device is certainly lacking in a few departments that would make it silly to depend on such a device for 'gotta-work' applications like the office, but this kind of device is going to be able to reach a strata of people that can't afford a PC right now. (Although shipping a non-SVIDEO output mechanism would help hook up to cheaper TV's on the market).
As long as companies that put out machines like this include functionality on the web such as Flash Player and Shockwave player in the base install, I think that they could sell quite a few of these. I think I might even buy one purely as a curiosity, so their market isn't limited to those who can't afford a full-blown computer with all the fixin's.

Easter Weekend

Happy non-denominational Easter! I'm not religious at all, but in case you are, Happy Holiday. Honestly, even though I'm not religious, I still enjoy all the holidays you folks have given us. Christmas is one of my faves, but Easter is good too, what with all the chocolate and candy. Coconut-creme eggs are a favorite sin of mine.
Of course, now that Easter is over and summer is around the corner, I need to drop into diet-mode again. I've fallen back on some of my bad old ways, and these 36-inch pants are getting mighty tight again. I was on Atkin's Diet for a few months back a while ago, and had dropped from 230 to 190 or so...and I've picked up 30 of those 40 again...seriously time to watch my food intake. It's been horrendous of late.
Easter weekend was good for me, though. I finished my taxes the night before they were due (amazing for me!!), and we went to play mini-golf on Sunday when we went out to dinner (see, I had salad, cheese-fries AND a rack of ribs - this is my problem....I like food too much). I shot a 62 on a par 60 course, so I'm feeling good about my putting game this year....

What the fuck is wrong with people?

I'm sorry - I just can't think of anything more witty to say. The title says exactly what I thought when I read this news report about teachers disciplining a five-year old child for hugging another five-year old child after helping her up off the ground. I'm speechless. Words fail me. I am just too shocked to formulate an intelligent response to such an idiotic, evil-minded, twisted, dumb-ass, intolerant stupid, hare-brained, dumb-ass (did I say that?) action. Are we so short of teachers that we can not fire this one? Please? Pretty please?

Recovery CDs are EVIL

A friend of my mothers is having a problem with her computer. The SYSTEM hive keeps becoming corrupt. This has happened before, but it 'magically' recovered itself. This time, it didn't. She called me, the techie, and asked for my help. Ok, I said, let's start with the Recovery Console. Get your Windows XP CD out.



What do you mean you don't have one? Ugh - a recovery CD?! boot it, lets see what we got...reinstall OS or reinstall OS and backup current hard drive to a subdirectory...wonderful...


And you're 2 states away so I can't just drive over with the install CD...


Color me pissed off - to save $1.25 on a CD, the computer manufacturer takes away the ability of a user to fix their problems....evil, I tell you - absolutely evil.

Who's a sheep?

Me - I'm a sheep - Now, besides my LiveJournal (which I never update), my Yahoo 360 (which I use only for photos), my Blog (which you're reading), my Newsvine (fad of the day), I also have a MySpace Page.