Coffee Klatch

There is now an extension (plugin) for Firefox that is a Homestar Runner Toolbar! Makes for quick HomeStar Runner browsing! You get a search box that can search Google, Firefox, HR Wiki, (yes, there’s really a Wiki all about Homestar Runner, and there’s over 1,100 articles on it!), Homestar Runner’s main site, and They Might Be Giants. And of course you can jump right to HomestarRunner.com! Not sure how all that goes yet, but try it out!

Today I StumbledUpon a website proclaiming the Eeyore Manifesto. Sure, many people may think that Eeyore was a pessimist, but there is a great deal of wisdom behind those sad eyes. Don’t take too much to heart if the list below seems to attack you. Just remember that there is a place for dignity as much as there is a place for cheeriness. Maybe more.

There are many people in the world who pretend to be much happier than they are. These people are intelligent people whose low self-esteem causes them to try to blend in with the less-intelligent crowd. Eeyore can see these pretenders for what they are; after all, it’s hardly possible for anybody to be as happy as all that without having brains consisting of fluff (yes, he has someone specific in mind). In an attempt to save these poor misguided souls (who are not fooling anyone), Eeyore has made up a List of Things for Intelligent People to do in Order to Free Themselves from Societal Dumbification.

1. Don’t Whistle. God smites whistlers - okay, maybe not, but he should. Humming and singing are much more tolerable, if you must do something.
2. Wear Dark Colors. You look much more dignified that way. Your red dress is okay, but your pastel floral shorts are embarassing. Black isn’t really the absence of color, as others would have you believe — that’s only true in terms of light. As far as your clothing is concerned, black is all colors.
3. Stop Drawing Attention to Yourself. Everybody who counts has probably noticed that you exist, and will continue to do so even if you don’t act like a walking parade float. Remember: the first time is cute, but the second time is annoying.
4. Your Dog Does Not Want to Wear the Pink Boots. So stop making him.
5. Is your name “Cookie”? “Candi”? Something similar? Did your parents really name you that? Most likely, they gave you a less-perky name from which the monstrous nickname sprung. “Candace” is a beautiful name. Use it.
6. Are you always telling other people to “cheer up”? Annoyingly happy people are always finding fault with those who do not share their false cheer. Instead of antagonizing the less-perky people around you, try antagonizing the annoyingly cheerful. It’s not just the right thing to do, it’s also fun.

Remember, dignity is a good thing. No matter what the cheerful people think, they are not dignified. Stand tall and be proud of yourself as a non-perky person. You’re making the world a more tolerable place.

So there you go. You’ve maybe heard of the Tao of Pooh? Well, this is the Wisdom of Eeyore.

Okay, I wasn’t going to do another one so soon, but there are some interesting birthdays and events that occurred on 28 October.

Birthdays: St. Francis Borgia (1510), Eliphalet Remington (1793), Howard Hanson (1896), Elsa Lanchester (1902), Evelyn Waugh (1903), Jonas Salk (developed vaccine for polio) (1914), Charlie Daniels (1937), Jane Alexander (1939), Dennis Franz (1944), Bruce Jenner (1949), Bill Gates (1955), Eros Ramazzotti (1963), Lauren Holly (1963), Julia Roberts (1967), Terrell Davis (1972), Joaquin Phoenix (1974).

Events:
1492 - Christopher Columbus lands in Cuba
1704 - John Locke dies
1868 - Thomas Edison applies for his first patent (the electric vote recorder)
1886 - President Grover Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty
1919 - Prohibition begins (Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto)
1922 - Mussolini marches on Rome and takes over Italian government
1950 - The Jack Benny Show premieres
1958 - Pope John XXIII elected
1962 - Cuban Missle Crisis ends
1965 - The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is completed
1970 - Land speed record set by Gary Gabelich
1996 - Morey Amsterdam dies

Today is also National Chocolate Day, Bring Your Jack-O-Lantern To Work Day, Wild Foods Day, and National Make A Difference Day. So if you didn’t get a chance to bring your Jack-O-Lantern to work with you today, be sure to eat some wild foods!

Current music: Halloween, by Mannheim Steamroller

This morning I read that Christina Goodenow, who won $1 million in the Oregon Lottery, bought the winning ticket with a “stolen credit card.” Apparently the credit card belonged to a deceased relative, her mother-in-law, who died over a year ago. Now she faces charges of theft, forgery, and possession of methamphetamine, which was found in her home when police searched it for the stolen money. If she’s convicted on any of the charges (well, maybe not the drug possession), she won’t be able to keep any of the money. Including the first $33,500 installment she already picked up, but which police have failed to locate.

Current music: Fresh Aire 8, by Mannheim Steamroller

For those of you who haven’t tried Google’s “Gmail” yet, here’s a brief overview, summarized in quaint little bullet points for your convenience.

• First, it’s “Invite Only.” You can’t just go and sign up. You have to get an invitation from someone who already has a Gmail account. If you want one, contact me and I’ll email you an invite.
• Second, there is a TON of space, so you never have to delete anything unless you really want to. As of right now, it’s 2658MB (that’s 2.6 GIGABYTES of space for your emails and attachments!), and it’s growing all the time. Literally.
• You can also SEND attachments of up to 10 MB! That’s really nice for emailing mp3s or other files that exceed the usual 2MB limit.
• You can use the Google search engine to search your mail or the Web from the one box.
• Instead of organizing your emails into folders, you can apply labels to them. A message can have more than one label and you can create filters to automatically apply labels to emails from particular sources or containing certain words. This means you don’t have to deal with folders and subfolders. You just click the name of a label to display all the emails that have that label.
• The emails in your InBox are organized in Threads or Discussions, so if several people reply to you or each other, everything’s kept together and is viewable with one click.
• Gmail also allows you to archive emails, so they’re out of the way. And you only have to click “All Mail” to see them.
• Gmail has VERY GOOD spam detection. If it thinks the message is spam, it automatically sticks it in the Spam folder, where you can check it out or just ignore it. They’re deleted after 30 days automatically, so you don’t have to worry about them if you don’t want. PLUS, Gmail can detect phishing pretty well. Example: I got one of those fake PayPal emails, wanting me to log in and update my security options of all things. It went right into my spam folder and when I viewed it, the following message was at the top in Bright Red: “Warning: This message may not be from whom it claims to be. Beware of following any links in it or of providing the sender with any personal information. Learn more.” Isn’t that awesome?
• You can now format your emails as rich text, so instead of just plain text options, you can change colors, fonts, sizes, alignments, indentations, bullets, blockquotes, etc.
• Gmail Notifier can be downloaded so you’ll be notified when you get new email even if you don’t have your Gmail webpage open. It automatically checks every two minutes and pops up snippets from the subjects for a couple of seconds.
• And of course you can also change the Reply-To address (which is awfully convenient), forward your gmail somewhere else, use signatures at the ends of your emails, keep a list of contacts (addresses and info), and save drafts to be completed later. In fact, Gmail now automatically saves drafts of the email you’re working on every couple of minutes, so you won’t lose all your work if your Internet connection is lost.

Current music: The Future Sound of Gaeldom, by various celtic artists (thanks, Topher, for referring me to this CD!)

So we find out today that Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination from consideration for Supreme Court Justice. And then we get all kinds of people commenting and whether she should or shouldn’t have done that, and whose fault it is. (U.S. Politics is one of the world’s busiest arenas for playing the “Blame Game.”)

What got me was the comment I heard on the radio this afternoon by Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.):

Appoint someone in the mainstream. Appoint someone whose knowledge and ability is beyond question. And appoint someone about whom there will not be a major squabble.

I’m sorry, Sen. Feinstein, but there is no candidate on this EARTH “about whom there will not be a major squabble.” After this Miers fiasco, the process of choosing a Supreme Court justice is more political than ever. No matter who is chosen, there will be people protesting that she doesn’t represent their views on particular issues.

AND THAT IS THE WHOLE PROBLEM IN A NUTSHELL!

The Supreme Court justices have NOTHING to do with particular views. Views on issues DO NOT ENTER INTO IT! It is the Supreme Court’s job to interpret the laws and interpret the Constitution. It is NOT their job to make laws or to enforce laws. Those are the jobs of the other two branches of government.

What we need is a justice who knows and understands the U.S. Constitution and who will accurately interpret the law and the Constitution without partiality and without letting their personal views on specific issues affect how they vote. We don’t need a conservative or a liberal. We need an expert on the Constitution. Period.

Do you remember the first CD(s) you ever purchased? If you are now college aged, you probably don’t since CDs have been the primary medium of music since the late 1980’s and that’s probably all you’ve heard. At least until iPods and other portable digital media players.

Anyway, I first got a CD when I first got a CD player, which was at the end of college, in 1990. I think it was a graduation present. Anyway, I remember the two first CDs I got because I was already familiar with the music. But I had never heard them with such incredible clarity. Here were my first two CDs (and, yes, you can still get both of them at Amazon):

Wagner: Highlights from “The Ring” with Zubin Mehta conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. I remember especially “The Ride of the Valkyries,” where you could hear the timpani so clearly you thought the Valkyries were going to ride right out of the stereo and out the door!

Behind the Gardens-Behind the Wall-Under the Tree, by Andreas Vollenweider I had listened to a copy of the cassette tape of this album, and had enjoyed the “electroacoustic harp” that he played. Hearing this on CD made everything sound so crisp, it was like he was right there in the room with you! I’ve since gotten almost all of his CDs, but I still remember my mother’s reaction when she saw the CD cover: “There’s a man winking at me!”
Making the switch from cassette tapes to CDs was one of those defining moments in my musical life. For those of you who are too young to remember the impact made on listening to music when switching from tapes to CDs, there may never be another epiphanic moment like that in your lifetime. Switching to digital audio on iPods is only a matter of convenience, not nearly as much a matter of clarity. You’ve already got digital music, you’re just switching its broadcast medium.

If there DOES come a new musical medium that makes such a quality jump over CDs, I can’t wait to hear it!

You may have heard the song “What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor” and, if you have, you probably know just that one verse. Just like me. I decided to find out what the rest of the words to that song are, and here is what I found. (I had NO IDEA there were so many things we could do with him!)
The song first asks, “What shall we do… early in the morning?” then goes to refrain, followed by #1 (3 times, then “early in the morning”), refrain, #2 (3 times, then “early in the morning”), etc.

So, what SHALL we do with a drunken sailor (early in the morning)?

What’ll we do with a drunken sailor,
What’ll we do with a drunken sailor,
What’ll we do with a drunken sailor,
Early in the morning?

Chorus:
Way hay and up she rises
Patent blocks o’ diff’rent sizes,
Way hay and up she rises
Early in the morning

1. Sling him in the long boat till he’s sober
2. Keep him there and make ‘im bail ‘er.
3. Pull out the plug and wet him all over.
4. Take ‘im and shake ‘im, try an’ wake ‘im.
5. Trice him up in a runnin’ bowline.
6. Give ‘im a taste of the bosun’s rope-end.
7. Give ‘im a dose of salt and water.
8. Stick on ‘is back a mustard plaster.
9. Shave his belly with a rusty razor.
10. Send him up the crow’s nest till he falls down.
11. Tie him to the taffrail when she’s yardarm under.
12. Put him in the scuppers with a hose-pipe on him.
13. Soak ‘im in oil till he sprouts flippers.
14. Put him in the guard room till he’s sober.
15. Put him in bed with the captain’s daughter*.
16. Take the Baby and call it Bo’sun.
17. Turn him over and drive him windward.
18. Put him in the scuffs until the horse bites on him.
19. Heave him by the leg and with a rung console him.
20. That’s what we’ll do with the drunken sailor.

* A relative of the cat-o-nine-tails

Another version that I found online only had ten verses:

What’ll we do with a drunken sailor,
What’ll we do with a drunken sailor,
What’ll we do with a drunken sailor,
Early in the morning?

Chorus:
Way hay and up she rises
Patent blocks o’ diff’rent sizes,
Way hay and up she rises
Early in the morning

1. Put him in the long boat till he’s sober
2. Pull out the bung and wet him all over.
3. Put him in the scuppers with the deck pump on him.
4. Heave him by the leg in a runnin’ bowline.
5. Tie him to the taffrail when she’s yard-arm under.
6. Put him in the bilge and make him drink it
7. Shave his belly with a rusty razor.
8. Soak ‘im in oil till he sprouts flippers.
9. Put him in bed with the captain’s daughter.

I’ve also seen “Let ‘im kiss the gunner’s daughter,” which meant being tied to a cannon while it was fired 4 or 5 times. Ouch!!

And apparently there’s a German version that keeps the same verse but changes the refrain. Go figure!

Current music: Boil the Breakfast Early, by The Chieftains

Well, it’s finally out! ALL the Calvin & Hobbes comics ever published, all 3,160 published comic strips, from beginning to end. In one, well, THREE volumes (one box set). The ten years’ worth of Calvin & Hobbes cartoons can all be yours in this beautiful, 24-pound, three-volume box set.

It lists for $150.00, but it can be yours via Amazon.com for only $94.50!

You can read or listen to the “radio article” about this on NPR’s website.

Current music: Under a Violet Moon, by Blackmore’s Night

While this re-release has been out for almost a year now (22 November 2004), I finally got around to buying it. And that after a friend of mine got the game and raved about it. But it looks like I’m beating him to the blogging punch.

Last week I purchased the game Sid Meier’s Pirates from Amazon. There are lots of places you can get this game online, but they’re $40-$50. Amazon had it for $29.99 and with free shipping.

The original version of this game came out in 1987 and became very popular because of its nice blend of strategy, action, and role playing. I’m pleased to say that the re-release is even better. GameSpot rated it a 9.2, with its lowest score being Value (longevity, or playability over time after you’ve “gone through it”), which was an 8 out of 10.

What I like about the game is the setting as much as the technical stuff. It’s set in the 1600’s in the Caribbean. You’ve got lots of variety in nationalities, locations, and time periods. Plus there’s TONS of ships to choose from, purchase, raid, and steal. There are also quite a few different elements to the game (see below), like 3-D style personal interaction, first-person or third-person sea navigation, fighting on ships or in taverns, dancing, sneaking into town, and more, all of which contribute to a lot of variety in the game. When they subtitled the game “Live the Life,” they were really trying for that!

Sid Meier’s Pirates is also an excellent game because it’s educational without trying to be. Just playing the game and having fun, you can’t help learning about history, geography, navigating, sailing (for real!!), commerce, politics, and everything that went into the life of a pirate back then.

Here is a list of the activities you get to perform while playing the game: sailing a ship (and learning about over 20 different kinds of ships, how they use the wind to sail (did you know some ships go faster sideways from the wind than sailing directly with the wind?), what sizes of crews and cargoes they carry, and how easy they are to handle or to fight with), attacking other ships with cannons (remember, they shoot sideways, so you can’t just shoot at ship you’re sailing toward), boarding other ships and sword-fighting with their captains, building and improving a fleet of ships, navigating the waters and islands of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, hunting pirates, finding maps (or pieces of maps) of various other pirates’ buried treasures, finding those treasures (which is harder than you think, because the landmarks aren’t visible from the sea; you have to get close and then land and try to find the treasure using the landmarks on the map, which can also be tough, since you normally can’t see very far when you’re on land because of all the trees), rescuing your family from the evil Baron Raymondo (which means tracking them down individually), dancing with the governors’ daughters, possibly winning the heart(s) of said daughter(s), sneaking into town without getting caught by the town guards, sitting in jail (or escaping) if you DO get caught, ransacking towns, fighting town militia on land, buying and selling goods (especially selling goods from ships you’ve captured:-D), going on quests for lost cities, and amassing a fortune.

Time IS a factor in this game, affecting food rations and travel in the short term, and affecting fame and health in the long term. Yes, you DO age in this game. You start at age 18 and in excellent health, but by the time you get into your 30’s, you really start slowing down in the sword fighting, etc. Knowing when’s the best time to retire from piracy is a part of the game also.

Note: I had problems running this game on my home pc. I checked the Internet and found people belly-aching about how it wouldn’t work on their computer and that the company wasn’t giving refunds. Instead of complaining, I decided to see what I could DO about it. I found postings (12th one down) on discussion boards from people that have the same Intel graphics chip (mine is an Intel 82845G) that all they had to do was visit Intel’s website and download and install the three files the site told me to get. Those were the Graphics Driver, the Software Installation Utility, and the Application Accelerator (visit http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-009236.htm to see what I mean). I downloaded all three, installed all three, and rebooted, and it works great! In fact, I spent most of my weekend on the game. And when I wasn’t on it, Alaric was.
Overall summary: IT ROCKS!! This has got to be my all-time favorite computer game. Sure it would be even cooler if there were a mulitplayer element to it, but even as a solo, it’s my favorite! This is one game you’ve GOT to get!

Click any of the pictures to enlarge them.

Current music: Light of the Spirit, by Kitaro