Entries from February 2006 ↓

On Saturday I attended my first ever Halloween nerd expo, HauntX at the LAX Hilton. I have been a Halloween nerd for a very long time and have decorated for Halloween in some form just about every year for the past fifteen or so years. I have frequented Internet Halloween forums and such, but had ever attended an actual event like HauntX.

I ended up attending the expo on Saturday, but spent a solid eight hours perusing and chatting with vendors as well as attending three different seminars and a seance. All of the vendors on the floor had amazing products and were of course quiite willing to discuss their products and explain indepth why you NEED whatever they were selling. Everyone was very friendly though, especially the guys from ParallaxEFX, a microcontroller manufacturer. One of the ParalaxEFX guys also gave one of teh seminars, which I found extremely helpful and will definitely help me scare the crap out of the kids this year even better than in the past.

I also attended a seminar by Leonard Pickel, the editor of Haunted Atraction Magazine and a long-time professional haunt consultant. Leonard’s presentation was more geared toward the professional haunter trying to cut costs, but also addressed the new pro haunter trying to get into the business for a reasonable price. The information was quite helpful, and gave an aspiring pro haunter (myself) some hope that one day I may have my own pro haunt. We’ll see how that turns out…

The seance is a story for another blog, and it will show up sometime soon. My HauntX experience was definitely positive, and I’m already looking forward to next year’s expo. If you are even marginally interested in Halloween and haunting, I would highly recommend going next year.

Is anyone else sick of the assholes who sit in movies with their lame ass Sidekicks and text their stupid friends during the whole movie?

Before you condemn me for being petty, my reasons for being so irritated are the following:

1. The backlights on those things are fucking bright. It’s distracting.

2. Inevitably, one or more text messages that these assholes receive elicit some sort of chuckle or require the recipient to share the message with the asshole friend who is sitting next to them. Seriously, shut the fuck up.

3. Seriously, what the fuck do you have to talk about, and why is it so important that you can’t take 90 minutes out of your day and shut the fucking thing off?

4. Movie tickets are god damned expensive. I shoudn’t have to tolerate your stupid backlight fucking up my movie.

So suck it you asshole T-Mobile Sidekick addicts. Shut the thing off and watch the movie or sit outside the theatre and text your life away. But don’t do it in the theatre for fuck’s sake.

Thank you.

Last week a professor walked into my office with a Dell Latitude D610 laptop with a video problem. It would work fine when running on its own, but when plugged into an external video device it would zoom in as far as it could. It’s a difficult problem to describe, but if you see it yourself you’ll know what I mean. If you haven’t seen it, you’re probably not reading this article. :^)

Anyway, it turns out that she ahd recently bought an external keyboard and mouse for her laptop. The problem was that the Microsoft Intellipoint driver and software were comflicting with the Intel video driver for the onboard video card and causing this odd problem.

The solution was basic. I uninstalled the Microsoft Intellipoint driver and restarted the machine, and voila, no more zooming.

The reason I mention this is that it is apparently not a common problem. I Googled keywords to no end, and spent 45 minutes on the phone with Dell, only to finally figure it out myself. I thought it would be beneficial to share it with all of you fine folks, and hopefully populate Google with this rare troubleshooting tip.

Returning phone calls is essential to good business. I am representing some friends of mine in the sale of their condo. This is my first listing as a licensed real estate broker, which is very exciting in itself. But that’s a story for later.

Anyway, we have received a number of reasonable offers, and sent a few counter offers off yesterday. The offer that we really want to make work, and the one with the most excited selling buyers, has proven difficult.

I received the fax on Sunday and called the buyer’s agent to let them know that I received it. I talk to my clients, and had a few things to ask the buyer’s agent, so left her a second message asking her to call on Sunday night. Since I had not heard back on Monday morning, I called her again and told her I needed to talk to her about a few things before meeting with my clients to sign a counter offer. I called her again on Monday at noon just before going to meet with my clients, and still nothing.

So Monday afternoon we filled out and signed the counter offer and sent it back. I called her to let her know thatthe fax would be in her office. So here it is, almost 48 hours since I received the initial offer, and I still have not heard from this agent. If one of the other buyers signs their counter offer, her lack of phone etiquette will have lost her clients a condo that they supposedly are completely in love with. We would not even have sent out any other counter offers if I could have chatted with her and firmed up the deal.

If I were working with an agent who lost a deal for me due to her own lack of phone skills I would be irate, and she would no longer be my agent. I can’t imagine that her clients have any idea what’s going on, and that really frustrates me. It’s hard enough to buy a place in California right now without an incompetent real estate agent.

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This morning the talk on all the Apple fan message boards is the exciting news of the first MacBook Pros shipping today! It also turns out that they have been able to equip them with faster processoirs than originally anticipated, bumping the original 1.67GHz to 1.83GHz, and the top of the line 1.83GHz to 2.0GHz. They have also added an optional 2.16GHz processor for $300 on the top of the line model.

Looks like this Intel switch is working out great for Apple. Shipping new products on time (actually a day early) and with higher specs than originally reported was unheard of in the PowerPC days. Good work Apple and Intel!

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1529

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So my friends…how shall we remember the music of the mid-2000’s? When people in the distant future look back at the Billboard charts for 2005 and 2006, what will they see? Will they gain some brilliant insight into our culture? Will they see that we were mere millimeters from curing cancer but were too busy writing amazing music to see it?

No. They’ll see fucking Popozao and Trapped In the Closet. All because assholes like me are buying these albums just because we think it’s funny. What the fuck is this world coming to? I’ll tell you what it’s coming to. It’s coming to popozao, popozao. I WANNA SEE SOME POPOZAO!

http://gorillamask.net/kfpz.shtml

Good god, what crap.

This article just popped up on my Yahoo! RSS feed. It has a lot of interesting info for Mac users. As a Mac user myself, I am totally complacent about spyware, adware, and virus protection. Yes, that’s terrrible to admit. And for those of you interested, my IP address is….oh wait, that’s not a good idea is it?

My philosophy on Mac OS X security was and is that there are enough built-in and freeware security options for the Mac that you don’t have to spend any money at all to be safe. You just need to be smart about your settings and about the software that you install.

Anyway, read on.

I am constantly amazed at the things people find to file lawsuits over. This link points to an article about a lawsuit against Apple over the iPod because of potential hearing loss? Does this mean that this guy is going to go sue every band out there that plays live shows? Is he going to sue every car stereo manufacturer? Seriously, what an asshole:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060202/ap_on_re_us/apple_ipod_lawsuit

I didn’t watch the State of the Union address last night. I was busy eating at Roscoe’s Divine House of Chicken and Waffles instead. I think it was a wise choice based upon the delightful highlights I have heard so far. I just wanted to comment on a brilliant observation that King George gave us last night:

“America is addicted to oil.”

“Oh, an observation, huh? Well who the hell are you, man? Isaac fucking Newton?” Yes Clint from Dazed and Confused, George Bush is Isaac fucking Newton. A brilliant observer of our fucked situation. Well guess what El Presidente? Maybe we wouldn’t be so dependent upon fossil fuels if:

• You didn’t pass legislation giving huge tax breaks to people who buy Hummers and other gas hogging vehicles.

• Our economy wasn’t so fucked that most of us have to live many miles away from the places that we work.
• Your little Texas oil buddy assholes weren’t making money hand over fist.
• You would start spending some money here at home instead of in countries half way across the globe.
• Speaking of that, would you even give a flying fuck about the Middle East if it weren’t for the oil?

So those are my thoughts on the small part of the SOTU address that I caught.

I’ll be watching you, Newton!