We took Sean swimming the and he really enjoyed it. He’s still in panic mode when you let him go in the water, but he’ll get used to the water with time. He sure didn’t wanna leave the pool. Thinking about swimming and a lot of other things in life, I was thinking about how much depends on suppressing your panic reflex. Panic in the water and you sputter and go down. Relax on your back and you’re fine. Want to snowboard? Tighten up and panic, and you’ll quickly fall. Relax, and your loose knees will absorb the blows. Want to get through a guitar videogame? Panic and you’ll fail as you hopelessly try to catch up. Relax, and let it skip a bit and get back on rhythm when you’re ready. I have a pretty big panic reaction if I allow it, but I’ve finally learned over time to just calm down (except when driving). Panicking never does any good. It removes any intelligence and destroys your reaction time. Besides, who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
Category: bible
Prying keys, unhandyman
I recently gave a little presentation at work about cleaning your computer keyboard. You can pry off the small keys and pop them back in, but you may want to avoid the larger keys, because they sometimes have small clips on them that can break or springs that are a pain to handle. Also, don’t pry off keys on a notebook computer or compact keyboard. If you want to try it, pry off the scroll lock or pause key, because they’re almost never used. The gunk under there is pretty amazing.
It was a somewhat busy weekend. I took Sean for a nice little hike in the forest in the Sandias. I tried to keep it interesting for him by letting him choose which way to go at forks in the trail. Also made sure he had lots of sticks and rocks to play with, because that’s what it’s all about for him. We replaced another leaky lever toilet float with an elevator float. Seems like there’s less to go wrong with the elevator ones, but time will tell. In the process, the toilet tank lid was broken and we must needs find a replacement. Went to a bible study at some friends’ house, which we hadn’t done in a while. They’re trying to do it about every two weeks and all are welcome. We mounted the TV on the wall. While trying to screw into a wall stud, our drill smoked a bit. That can’t be good. We’re hoping we don’t hear a big crash during the night as the TV falls off the wall. Reinstalled Windows for someone and am starting another reinstallation for someone else. It’s the number one hit for Windows machines that have become slow and crusty! On a name-brand PC, this is usually how it goes: 1. backup documents/pictures/mp3s 2. Boot the computer and use the Restore option (often F10) 3. Reinstall Windows. 4. Let Windows update itself all day on the internet, babysitting it to accept user agreements and reboot every hour or so.
A stingy man
As I was working on a lesson, I came upon this passage in Proverbs that I’d never noticed.
Proverbs 23
6 Do not eat the food of a stingy man,
do not crave his delicacies;
7 for he is the kind of man
who is always thinking about the cost.
“Eat and drink,” he says to you,
but his heart is not with you.
8 You will vomit up the little you have eaten
and will have wasted your compliments.
Absent-mindedness does not pay
It’s been an interesting few days. Friday, I forgot my bike lock key and left my bike on the rack without locking it. Bike stolen. This weekend the PS2 decided it doesn’t like blue discs. Yesterday I left my wallet on the bus and am about to call back to see if anyone turned it in to the bus driver. Since about 30% of bus riders here have prison tattoos, I don’t know how I’d rate my chances. I have this theory that there are not really any streaks of bad luck. One bad thing happening to you makes you more sensitive to the next incident and you mentally string them together. Bad things and good things happen to you every day. You may start worrying about the bad things and ignoring the good things if you’re not careful.
UPDATE: no wallet found. 🙁
02/10/2006
There’s this kinda dancehall reggae song by Matisyahu they’ve been playing on 6 Music. We were in Target last night and I heard the song playing from a TV. I looked up to see that he isn’t Jamaican, but a Hasidic Jew. You don’t usually seem someone with a fedora and long sideburns rapping. oyveyakasha.
Once in a while, I get pangs of Amiga nostalgia. Lemon Amiga is a nice little Amiga site. They even have their own nifty front-end for the difficult-to-use WinUAE.
Wonder if this lawsuit will be the end of teppan grill stunts. 🙁 We’ve almost been singed once or twice at teppan grills but it was great fun.
Vanessa and I went to Garduño’s for dinner last night as Sean’s gramma watched him. I gets the leftovers for lunch today. Huzzah! After that, we went to Best Buy. I tried that electric guitar PS2 game and tried to play a Ramones song. By the end of the song, I was having some fun. They say by the time you get really good in that game, you could have spent that time learning to play a real guitar.
I was trying to modify Mr. Cobol’s first C program. Meet Mr. Goto and Mr.badlynamedvariable. It must be King James C. Speaking of King James, look at this picture from an original King James bible print. It looks like the U and V are pretty much transposed from what they are today. What is their rule for when to use a normal S and when to use that S that looks like an F? The font, rather than sans-serif as you see on this page, seems to be super-serif. I guess if you’re going to the trouble of carving out a letter that will be printed a bazillion times, you may as well make it as decorative as possible.
01/12/2006
I watched the first season of Max Headroom. In general, the soundtrack was synths, but the season finale had a bunch of guitar solo at the end…and that’s how you know it was the 80s. Guitar solo was to the 80s as cowbell was to the 70s. Can’t let anything escape without a guitar solo now, can we? I took a screen capture of Max as my desktop.
Well, tonight begins Nerdity 2006 for me. I spend a couple of days doing nerdly things. Let’s see…what’s for dinner? Taco Bell would be appropriate, I think. In case you don’t live in the US and don’t know what Taco Bell is, it’s a fast-food place with horrid pseudo-Mexican food that I am drawn to for some inexplicable reason. I think it breaks every rule I have about what good food is. I think it’s like my cousin who’s recently been listening to all the Billboard 100 mp3s. He hates it, and yet he does it anyway. Reminds me a bit of this verse.
I remember laughing at this commercial for some game design college on TV about a year ago. I was wondering if it was filmed in the nineties or something. My cousin was wondering why the commercial says, “Not intended for residents of Texas or Massachusets.” We figured that these 1337 coders are doing some kinda fancy assembly code using PS1 joysticks. No ordinary programmer can do that. My cousin says that there is certainly no Texan or Massachusettsese person who can. If you’re interested in acting, be sure to watch the subtle performances in this video. They must have gone to the Hayden Christensen School of Acting.
Anakin in a moment of shock/sadness/happiness/anger or something.
07/20/2005
Sean has gotten quite good at trying to “cutesy” his way out of trouble. I was letting him play the synthesizer last night and he kept turning up the volume and blasting it. He was getting in trouble for it, but then he’d do his “beautiful eyes” (blinking) and instantly get me laughing so that I had to turn my head.
Ach, no, Scotty‘s dead Jim! Perhaps he’s trapped indefinitely in a transporter buffer? Nah.
I tried my hand at emulating a Genesis on the PSP. Sonic crashed. Tried SNES. Ghouls and Ghosts runs really slow. With any luck, the these emulators will improve in future versions. They are only in their infancy.
Yesterday I was waiting for the bus home with my bike at the curb. There are 3 bike slots on the front of the bus. Later, two teenagers rode up and were hanging out with bikes in the area. When the bus came, they cut in front of me and blocked the street so they could take the last 2 bike slots. Khaaan! It took some effort to stay in turn-the-other-cheek mode. I waited for the next bus a while later. When we got to San Mateo, our bus apparently hit another bus. I didn’t feel or notice this because I was playing videogames and it must have barely been a bump. It took me a while to realize our bus was going to sit there forever and I finally got off and biked to the next bus stop and waited a while. Then, I noticed the digital sign said the next bus wouldn’t be there for 23 minutes so I decided to just ride my bike home. The worst part of all of this was that, while playing videogames, I accidentally figured out what the PSP Master System emulator “exit game and go back to ROM list” button is, after almost getting up mouseman in Wonderboy 3. As any player of Wonderboy III will tell you, this is true tragedy.
7/30/2003
Ah, the weird problem with Comcast’s FTP servers is solved. They changed the name of the FTP server to mywpages.comcast.net instead of mywebpages.comcast.net. Thanks for letting us know, Comcast. Worst…Support…Ever. They have more changes to the server names coming, they said in an e-mail.
He he. DDR Russian propaganda photoshop.
It’s insane how many subscription cards they put in magazines. Before I read a magazine, I have to go through about 5 sections where they’ve put in silly fliers and subscription cards to rip them out and toss them.
Ah, it’s the NIV bible on 7 mp3 CDs. Non-dramatized version. $45.
I put a daily reminder just before lunchtime to tell myself, “Don’t drink soda.” But now I’m like, “You can’t tell me what to do. You’re not the boss of me!”
7/28/2003
I just got the weirdest spam ever. It uses just about the same trick Marty McFly used on his dad with the headphones in Back to the Future. I think it shows the level of gullibility in those who respond to spam.
A bible study with Patricia and Walen and us this evening. Walen has been giving her the Cliff’s Notes version of the old testament. If the old testament were a novel, it’d be the thickness of War and Peace, at least. Nevertheless, he’s been able to summarize it pretty quickly.
Grrr, the new version of AIM with file transfer behind firewalls breaks the old version of DeadAIM. The new version of DeadAIM is $5 rather than free. DeadAIM is a program that’s supposed to break the ads in AIM. But it’s all ok because the new version of AIM installed “AOL for Broadband” icons all over the place.
Those TV Land spots are pretty funny. Last night, they did a viewer mail that said,
Dear Macguyver. My bird is hungry. What do I do?
Macguyver clip: Unscrew the inside of an ordinary pen and whatdya got? Bird feeder.
It made no sense whatsoever.
I played my first multi-player game of Rise of Nations with brother-in-law, Kyle yesterday. He layeth the smack down. The night before, I was in voice conference with 2 cousins and the other brother-in-law playing an old-fashioned game of Starcraft. They layeth the smack down on my team.
I rode my bike to Tijeras around 2 PM, Saturday on Route 66. Bad timing…broiling hot. It’s probably about 15 miles round-trip…not that far on a road bike, but it sounds like I rode to another town. I’m not sure if Tijeras isn’t technically just a suburb of Albuquerque. It’s drudgery riding uphill on the way over there, but the trip back is quite fun with the high speeds.
3/26/2003
PNM is asking the regulatory committee if they can sell power from the upcoming wind farm. If they wish, customers could optionally pay more to buy green power which costs more to produce. Wonder how many environmentalists will do this if it goes through.
We went to the Manzano Mesa Multi-generational center (just rolls off the tongue) where they have some exercise equipment. As 1st Timothy 4:8 says, “bodily exercise profits little.” Well, that’s how the King James version says it. Sounds a bit more pessimistic than other versions, but always gives me a chuckle when I exercise.
I was playing some 80’s MIDI files through the adapter to the keyboard last night. We were singing that A-ha song and some others. I must learn to play them! In a western town in a dead-end world!