I don’t generally follow (or even care about) what’s going on with the celebrity crowd. People I actually know, such as AJ, Squish, John or even Z, are far more important to me. (That being said, would someone please give Jennifer Aniston my phone number?) Despite this lack of interest on my part, sometimes the celebrity news is hard to avoid.
Take for instance the recent case of Lindsay Lohan. She was arrested for DUI over Memorial Day weekend and checked into rehab. Two weeks after getting out of rehab, she was pulled over again. This time along with DUI, she was also charged with driving on a suspended license and possession of cocaine.
In California, a second offense so close to the first means automatic jail time, so despite a police video tape showing her jumping out of the driver’s door and attempting to flee the scene, her lawyers have taken the tack of claiming that it wasn’t her driving.
Silly policeman. It must have been Paris Hilton.
Category Archives: Assorted Ramblings
My Expanding Media Empire
A couple months ago I launched a separate journal for some of my Jaycee activities.
Dividing by Zero used to have a “Jaycees” category for more personal entries, such as Matt’s Falcon, but apparently I removed it at some point.
The new site is for more things related to my role as district director. I’m not sure how long it will be around after New Years.
Dividing by Zero will be around indefinitely. 🙂
My Muse Needs a Snooze Button
I should be sleeping right now, but my muse has even worse sleep habits than I do. (And that’s really saying something!) I’ve learned the hard way though, if a muse whispers an idea in your ear, it’s best to act immediately. Muses don’t like to repeat themselves and won’t give you the idea again at a more reasonable hour.
This time around, my muse gave me a new opening for the second dinosaur story. It’s a huge improvement.
Grrrrrrrr
I freely acknowledge that my reputation for not sleeping is more than a little deserved. Some of it’s choice. Some of it’s insomnia. But I really am trying to do better.
Contacting me at 1:00am to let me know there are changes that must be on the website the following morning before people go to work is not a good way to make me happy. Adding that the updates aren’t quite ready yet does nothing to improve the situation.
It all comes about because of the ages old problem of “stuff happens.”
But I’m getting tired of everything being an emergency.
Cynical? Me?
A former employer used to regularly accuse me of being overly cynical and negative. I’ve never agreed with that assessment. The world we live in does however require a healthy dose of skepticism.
Take for example this claim from the bottom of a carton of Diet Coke:
It’s true. Research shows that all beverages contribute to proper hydration. That means whether it’s your first can of the day or your afternoon pick-me-up, Diet Coke helps you stay hydrated all day long. So stick with the Diet Coke taste you love. Your body will thank you for it.
They even have a web site dedicated to this sales pitch.
I call shenanigans on this claim. Oh, I suppose the statement is true enough. There’s certainly nothing in it you can point to and say, “That’s a lie.” All beverages do contain water, and getting water into your body is what hydration is all about. But there’s some vital information missing.
Most Coca Cola products contain caffeine and caffeine is a diuretic. Putting it as politely as possible, what this means is that caffeine causes your body to lose water by causing you to visit the bathroom more frequently. I don’t know whether the net balance leaves you with more water or less than if you’d skipped the Coke; but if dehydration is a concern, a nice cold glass of water would be a far better choice.
So I don’t agree with the claim that I’m overly cynical. I’m just a little less likely to be taken in by a marketing pitch.
AFI Top 100 U.S. Films
I don’t often play along with the memes (If everyone’s posting the same stuff, how can it be interesting?) but just this once, why not? (This is clearly DDMD’s fault.)
I’m somewhat surprised at how many of these I’ve seen. Friends may be surprised at how many of the ones I’ve seen are not Science Fiction.
The idea is to bold the ones you’ve seen. I think I have some ideas for more movies to watch. 🙂
1. “Citizen Kane,” 1941.
2. “The Godfather,” 1972.
3. “Casablanca,” 1942.
4. “Raging Bull,” 1980.
5. “Singin’ in the Rain,” 1952.
6. “Gone With the Wind,” 1939.
7. “Lawrence of Arabia,” 1962.
8. “Schindler’s List,” 1993.
9. “Vertigo,” 1958.
10. “The Wizard of Oz,” 1939.
11. “City Lights,” 1931.
12. “The Searchers,” 1956.
13. “Star Wars,” 1977.
14. “Psycho,” 1960.
15. “2001: A Space Odyssey,” 1968.
16. “Sunset Blvd.”, 1950.
17. “The Graduate,” 1967.
18. “The General,” 1927.
19. “On the Waterfront,” 1954.
20. “It’s a Wonderful Life,” 1946.
21. “Chinatown,” 1974.
22. “Some Like It Hot,” 1959.
23. “The Grapes of Wrath,” 1940.
24. “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” 1982.
25. “To Kill a Mockingbird,” 1962.
26. “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” 1939.
27. “High Noon,” 1952.
28. “All About Eve,” 1950.
29. “Double Indemnity,” 1944.
30. “Apocalypse Now,” 1979.
31. “The Maltese Falcon,” 1941.
32. “The Godfather Part II,” 1974.
33. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” 1975.
34. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” 1937.
35. “Annie Hall,” 1977.
36. “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” 1957.
37. “The Best Years of Our Lives,” 1946.
38. “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” 1948.
39. “Dr. Strangelove,” 1964.
40. “The Sound of Music,” 1965.
41. “King Kong,” 1933.
42. “Bonnie and Clyde,” 1967.
43. “Midnight Cowboy,” 1969.
44. “The Philadelphia Story,” 1940.
45. “Shane,” 1953.
46. “It Happened One Night,” 1934.
47. “A Streetcar Named Desire,” 1951. (I turned it off halfway through – it was boring – but I’m counting it anyhow.)
48. “Rear Window,” 1954.
49. “Intolerance,” 1916.
50. “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” 2001.
51. “West Side Story,” 1961.
52. “Taxi Driver,” 1976.
53. “The Deer Hunter,” 1978.
54. “M-A-S-H,” 1970.
55. “North by Northwest,” 1959.
56. “Jaws,” 1975.
57. “Rocky,” 1976.
58. “The Gold Rush,” 1925.
59. “Nashville,” 1975.
60. “Duck Soup,” 1933.
61. “Sullivan’s Travels,” 1941.
62. “American Graffiti,” 1973.
63. “Cabaret,” 1972.
64. “Network,” 1976.
65. “The African Queen,” 1951.
66. “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” 1981.
67. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, 1966.
68. “Unforgiven,” 1992.
69. “Tootsie,” 1982.
70. “A Clockwork Orange,” 1971.
71. “Saving Private Ryan,” 1998.
72. “The Shawshank Redemption,” 1994.
73. “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” 1969.
74. “The Silence of the Lambs,” 1991.
75. “In the Heat of the Night,” 1967.
76. “Forrest Gump,” 1994.
77. “All the President’s Men,” 1976.
78. “Modern Times,” 1936.
79. “The Wild Bunch,” 1969.
80. “The Apartment, 1960.
81. “Spartacus,” 1960.
82. “Sunrise,” 1927.
83. “Titanic,” 1997.
84. “Easy Rider,” 1969.
85. “A Night at the Opera,” 1935.
86. “Platoon,” 1986.
87. “12 Angry Men,” 1957.
88. “Bringing Up Baby,” 1938.
89. “The Sixth Sense,” 1999.
90. “Swing Time,” 1936.
91. “Sophie’s Choice,” 1982.
92. “Goodfellas,” 1990.
93. “The French Connection,” 1971.
94. “Pulp Fiction,” 1994.
95. “The Last Picture Show,” 1971.
96. “Do the Right Thing,” 1989.
97. “Blade Runner,” 1982.
98. “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” 1942.
99. “Toy Story,” 1995.
100. “Ben-Hur,” 1959.
Someone Busier than Me!
Over the past few days, DDMD has been writing about his whirlwind of activities as he wraps up his dental residency. Yesterday’s entry starts at 01:15 AM and was written at 7:15 PM.
Presumably tomorrow’s entry will start off with an update along the lines of:
7:30 last night, discovered I was too tired to get out of my chair. Woke up three hours later with a monster of a sore neck and dragged myself to bed.
Heck, with the weird hours I keep, it’s kind of surprising I don’t have a few more entries like that myself!
Important Phone Tip
When calling a business, it’s a good idea to make sure you copy down the correct phone number. Fax machines don’t generally know how to speak to a human.
A Boot Disk for Crop Seeds
The extinction of animal species gets the most press coverage, but plant species are also in danger. This probably deserves a bit more attention since so much of life is dependent on plants. (And it’s not just as a food source; plants are also responsible for turning carbon dioxide into free oxygen. We might miss that when it’s gone.)
The government of Norway has established a Seed Vault. That way in the event of a global disaster, it may be possible to restart the world’s agricultural systems.
Nearly Back Online
After last weekend’s most inopportune system meltdown, I figured it would be close to two weeks before I could get a new drive, get everything reinstalled, and start using my notebook PC again. I had some good luck though and I’m well ahead of schedule.
About a year ago I had the opportunity to pick up a docking station that was otherwise destined for the scrap heap. The dock seems to be compatible with the notebook, and since my notebook PC doesn’t have a floppy drive I thought the removable one installed in the dock might come in handy at some point. Boy did it ever!
When I first realized I’d have to reinstall Windows, I started looking around for a floppy drive I could use with the XP boot floppies I made a while back. The floppy from another salvaged notebook didn’t have the right connectors (same manufacturer, but several years apart). Then I thought of trying out the drive from the docking station.
Once I popped the drive out of the dock, I realized it wasn’t a floppy after all. OK, that’s not a problem. It was the right form factor and connector, so at least I had a spare CD drive in the event that went South next. (My laptop also sees a fair amount of use playing DVDs, so I occasionally wonder what I’ll do if that drive fails.)
Then I realized the module I had popped out of the docking station wasn’t a CD drive either. It was a hard drive in a modular enclosure! Figuring it probably wasn’t the capacity I needed, I put it aside for a while with the idea that maybe one day I’d use it to back up essentials from the notebook.
In the meantime, I continued working to get the old drive back to a usable condition. Once I finally concluded it was physically no longer usable, I ordered a replacement and took another look at the removable one.
It turned out the removable drive was from a different manufacturer than the dead one (Fujitsu versus Seagate). But it was otherwise an exact match for the old one, including the same 40GB capacity. And from inspecting the drive (no sign anything was ever on it) and what I know of the history of those docking stations, I very sincerely doubt it was ever used. I’m not even convinced it was powered on more than one or two times to format it with NTFS.
So A few turns of the screwdriver and the salvaged drive is now installed as the laptop’s primary hard drive. I’ve already installed Windows and the essential pieces of the add-on software. (Adding applications such as Open Office is yet to come.)
The replacement drive is already on its way and there doesn’t appear to be a way to cancel the order. I have another salvage system I’ll try it out on. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll install it in the removable drive module and use it for backing up essential data. (The restocking fee is sufficient that unless it’s defective, I’m not inclined to return it.)
So thanks to a little luck, the notebook PC is back in working condition a few days sooner than expected. All that remains is reinstalling some software.
It’s still a nuisance, but I’m much further ahead than expected.