My experience with operating systems and computers is happily pretty varied. The first computer we had at home was a Texas Instruments keyboard terminal-type computer that you could hook a tape recorder up to when you wanted to save your work. My most recent computer (via work) is a MacBook Pro Core Duo that I thoroughly enjoy. In between, I was a Windows guy high school through college when I stared to learn Linux. In college I used Windows, Linux, and Solaris. When I graduated and went to work, I used Linux and Solaris, and Windows only as necessary for particular applications. When Apple switched their MacOS to a BSD core (it is linux like) I started watching them and when my trusty dell laptop died a few years ago, I ran out and got a Mac that I dual-boot Windows and MacOS. Anyway, the point of all this is that for quite some time, I’ve been non-windows focused. Recently I visited one of my favorite blogs Life Hacker after being away for a while. There were a number of top 10 lists that I looked at and I found some really cool utilities. I thought I’d post about them, just in case you happen to be interested.
- WinDirStat is a really cool little app that scans your disk and gives you a graphical breakdown of the contents, color-coded by categories. I’m always running out of space and this little app showed me exactly why. Plus, it is cute
- TaskSwitchXP is a replacement for the normal windows Alt-Tab functionality that lets you switch between apps. It shows you a picture of the app as you alt-tab through them. It is freaking sweet.
- Launchy is an application that scans all your program shortcuts and then gives you a little windows to enter their names. This lets you open new programs without using the mouse/trackpad at all. For someone who spent years using a CLI, I’m psyched to start using this more. I know other people use tools like this, maybe Slickrun, but for now, this does all that I need. If I need more functionality, I’ll open up Cygwin and rawk the bash shell!
- ALZip is a replacement for the included Windows Unzip capability. Windows unzip basically only understands straight zip format. ALZip gives you a graphical interface for many more formats. To me, the GUI is strongly reminiscent of WinZip (complete with the little tips at startup). Since WinZip technically charges you, I’ll try ALZip for a while to see how it turns out.
After watching this video about a mom who gave birth 36 hours after finding out she was pregnant, I saw this article on CNN Health about some research, albeit with a small sample set, on a relationship between defective Serotonin nerve cells in the brain stemp and SIDS. (How’s that for a run-on sentence?) Basically, the study showed that there is a likelihood that the defect in the brain stem, when coupled with contributing factors (sleeping on the stomach) caused the SIDS. Serotonin is involved in breathing, and waking. Here is the link:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/10/31/sids.research.ap/index.html
Anyway, back to this mom who gave birth and didn’t know she was pregnant. This woman was 36 weeks into her pregnancy and had no idea! The kid was born healthy, which is more than we can say for the mother.
I think it is generally accepted that in most parents life’s, there comes a time when their child’s physical strength and prowess exceeds their own. Normally, this happens when the child is approaching adulthood, and there is no associated shame. It is the natural order, after all. But what about when your child is a girl? For a father, perhaps, this transition of strength takes place later in life, maybe much later. So what am I to think when my daughter, M, has already reached this point, and in fact, seems to have begun whooping up on me.
No joke- right now I have a scar on my face from when she beat me up last night. And this morning I was holding her in the kitchen when I was inexplicably pulled backwards, only to realize that she’d grabbed the refrigerator handle and had managed to haul me around according to her own designs.
So here’s my dilemma: Should I be proud, or embarrassed and head for the gym? Currently, I’m thinking I’ll just be proud because I _hate_ working out. Next time you see me, though, if I have a black eye and I’m missing a tooth, check M’s knuckles for bruises.
The saying goes, ‘They don’t make ‘em like they used to’, and when it comes to refrigerator magnets, they’re right. We have all these cute little picture frame magnets on our fridge (why is there a d in ‘fridge’?) with pictures of family and friends. They work just great for holding the pictures and sticking to the fridge, but heaven forbid you should try to stick a piece of paper behind them because they’ll fall faster than a dancing granny on America’s Funniest Home Videos.
So what’s a person to do? Well, I went to Home Depot, asked for directions, and ended up picking up some magnets that will literally destroy each other if you let them bang together. Now stuff on my fridge stays on my fridge, and all is once again right with the world. (I actually show visitors the magnets)
My 12 month old daughter seems to have been born with l33t haxor skills, no joke. Every now and then, we’ll let her play with some gadget (a telephone, a computer, a cell phone), and she inevitably gets it to work. It is simply amazing. You might be asking, why wouldn’t she get it to work. Well, not only will she be able to place a call or type something into an application, she’ll manage to do it in a way that is completely foreign to myself or my wife. She’s not just using the tool, she’s hacking it!
For example, I was letting her type into my gmail account intending to put some text in about how she’d typed the garble, but before I knew it, she managed not only to type, but to send a message using nothing but keys. To this day, I can’t replicate the feat. As far as I know, she used some tiny person tech-fu magic to get it done. Similarly, she seems to be able to call up phone numbers on our phones that don’t appear to reside in any simple menu option. Just the other day, she was playing with the phone and I heard a voice come from it (at that point she was sitting on it!). Apparently she’d found my cousin’s number and dialed it while sitting on it. She also manages to turn on advanced, un-used features on our home cordless phones. She’ll be cutely pressing buttons, eating the antenna, and next thing I know, the thing is telling her the date and time and that there are no messages. The answering machine function isn’t even on!
These are just some examples, but look for more amazing feats in the future as she expands her capabilities and stretches her apparently in-born technical prowess. Also, if you someday get a call from me and all you hear is muffled talking or what sounds like a little butt sitting on a phone, just start saying hello to M, cause it is her.
So a few days ago I was listening to NPR (as I tend to do) and I heard a segment on a musical group called the Addicts Rehabilitation Center Choir (or ARC Choir). The reason the ARC Choir was on the air was because their song ‘Walk with Me’ was sampled by Kanye West for his song Jesus Walks from the The College Dropout album. Jesus walks is featured in the motion picture Jarhead and therefore has attracted a lot of attention. ANYHOO… The ARC Choir sounded like a very interesting group. They’re an a capella group that puts out albums which support the Harlem Addicts Rehabilitation Center’s mission.
So I did what any good geek would do. I used my BlackBerry to email myself the name of the group so I could look it up when I got home. When I did get home, I found out that BestBuy.com had the ARC Choir CD I wanted, so I bought it.
It arrived today and I have to say that the first few songs that I listened to really moved me. The next couple were ok also, but the first two were fantastic. I was tapping my feet, slapping my leg, doing my very best white boy overbite, the whole deal. It is a very soulful album with messages of redemption and strength in the face of adversity. It is gospel, but even if that isn’t your thing, it is worth a listen. Check out the NPR Story for links to the group and samples of their music. I highly recommend the CD and I’ll be playing it for M soon.
As if I needed confirmation, I took a quiz on the ‘Beauty and the Geek 2′ website to see ‘How Geeky Are You’. My result: ‘Very Geeky’. I’m satisfied with that score, but honestly, don’t more people know that the Inert Gasses are also called ‘Noble’ and that James T. Kirk’s middle name is Tiberius? Isn’t this common knowledge people?
So I’m heading back from Walgreens this afternoon where I purchased some butt rash creme (for M, not for me) & photos (of M, not of me), and I heard this commercial on the radio. The ad started: ‘From the mind of Ashton Kutcher’, and for some reason, I didn’t completely tune it out at that point. Apparently our trucker-hat wearing friend produced a ’smash hit’ last summer called ‘Beauty and the Geek’ which aired, not surprisingly on ‘the WB’. Now as a certified geek (I’m wearing a hat that reference unix scripts, and I own several geeky shirts, even one that just read’s ‘Geek’), I thought I would find the rest of the ad ridiculous. Instead, I found it totally ridiculous, and therefore possibly funny. The line that got me: ‘I think some of the girls are afraid to touch their geek’. That line pretty much sums up most of my high school and college womanizing careers!
So now I’m left with the dilemma of adding another ‘guilty pleasure’ to my Tivo, or not adding it. I’ve already got my geeky cooking show, Alton Brown, my 3 hours of low quality Destinos (a spanish soap opera made to help gringos learn spanish), and my 3 episodes of standard quality Stargate (from the one and only SciFi channel). So when Beauty and the Geek airs (next week I think, I was too caught up laughing at the ‘touch their geek’ line to hear clearly) should give it some space on the Tivo, or should I reserve all additional space for the 25th season of Survivor? What’s a geek to do…
Maybe I should build a home-brew PVR out of my old PC, constuct some RG6 to splice into my cable amplifier and hook them all into my flux capacitor**. Then my video recording space would only be limited by the capacity of my HDD and my hunger for bad television.
*We don’t have Tivo, we have ReplayTV. It is basically the same thing, but people know Tivo better, so I used it here.
** I don’t have a flux capacitor, it is the thing that Doc brown came up with when he slipped off his toliet while setting a clock. It’s essential for time travel. DUH.
Ok, another note about the movie ‘A Christmas Story’. There is a scene near the end where Ralphie has opened his Aunt Clara’s gift to him. When his mother asks him to show everyone what she got him, he tries to refuse. Turns out it is a large pink one-piece pajama outfit with bunny ears on the hood and bunny faces on the feet.
So why is this noteworthy? It isn’t really, except that M has a sleeper with bunny faces on the feet and it always reminds me of Aunt Clara’s gift to Ralphie. Man I love this movie…
