Jeff Malterre

VIM is probably one of the most powerful text editors I’ve ever come across. I can’t even begin to tell you what it’s capabilities are. This book is probably a little advanced for me, but I’ll still be able to learn from it.

Java is always something I wanted to learn. Also, I enjoy reading books published by Apress.

MooTools is a light, modular JavaScript framework that makes adding Ajax, animations, and interactive elements to your site a breeze. This would help a lot with web animation, and avoiding building applications in Flash.

I’m in complete awe, 27 years later this case is finally solved.

If you didn’t know, “America’s Most Wanted” TV host John Walsh’s son went missing on July 27, 1981.  Today this case was finally solved.

My deepest condolences to the Walsh family.

Read more here:
Fla. police close books on ’81 Walsh killing

I happened to stumble upon this at Spencers.  This is a picture book of penis cartoons from the movie Superbad.  Great gift for anyone who is a fan of the movie.

If you didn’t already know, our cigarettes are changing (most have already changed.)  Take a look at your pack of cigarettes, find the UPC bar code on it and check to see if it has “FSC” written over it.  If it does, you have just bought yourself a pack of Firesafe cigarettes.  Most of the cigarettes in the U.S. are already changed, and there’s pretty much nothing you can do about it.  They are to prevent fires (go figure) by the cigarette self-extinguishing if it is not being smoked.  Basically, if you don’t smoke it, it will go out.  I think the idea is good, however the method, in my honest opinion, sucks.  There are a few differences I’ve noticed over the past 6 months.

Fire starting cigarette

That’s right, this thing starts fires.  I’m sure all you dedicated cancer stick loving fiends know that when you go to tap on your cigarette, that if you tap too hard the lit end (cherry) will pop off.  Well, this happens a lot more often with these new cigarettes.  For some reason it burns funny when exposed to wind, causing either the paper to burn before the tobacco, or vice-versa.

Scenario:  Your driving along, smokin’ a stick with the windows cracked about an inch.  You go to tap out your cig in the ash-tray and guess what happens?  The lit end pops off.  Where does it go?  Maybe if you’re lucky it will land straight into the ash-tray, maybe not (several times now has the lit end of my cigarette popped off onto myself, and my car floor.)  Will the cherry go out?  No, sorry.  It’s just the paper on the cigarette that has those bands to extinguish the cigarette, not the actual tobacco.  So your screwed, you try to put the cherry out before your car turns into a flaming ball from hell, causing you to crash, and die.

Can this happen?  I think it’s likely to happen.  Like I said I’ve already had close encounters dealing with a cherry popping off, it’s only a matter of time.

Taste

Who the hell do you think you are screwing with my cigarettes?  Where do you get off?  If I’m smoking cigarettes, I’m probably more likely to die from cancer than passing out, dropping a lit cigarette (starting a fire), and then burning in that fire (or inhaling too much of the ‘bad’ smoke), and die.  You’ve changed the taste of my cigarette, and don’t even try to deny it.  New Jersey switched over before Pennsylvania (PA is now FSC), and I had my share of both.  Damn right they taste different.  So let’s be honest, there’s a little more than 3 little bands in my cigarette.  I taste the different from start to finish, don’t play us for fools.

Toxins

Are they more harmful?  Do I care?  In all honesty, if you’re already smoking cigarettes you probably don’t give a shit whether a firesafe cigarette is going to do more harm to your body than a pre-FSC would.  To answer my question, no, I don’t care if they are more harmful.

Solution

There’s only one possible solution I could think of, choice.  Give us the choice to buy a fire safe cigarette.

References

Want to read more about how are our cigarettes are now a pain to smoke?  Sure…

Coalation for Fire-Safe Cigarettes

The Petition

First, Comcast…

Ok let me give you a bit of background before we begin.  Moved into new apartment October 1st.  Previous tenant had been using FiOS and we switched it to Comcast.  To be honest, I don’t even know what the Comcast installer did.  It took him all about 5 minutes to hook us up, he didn’t even do anything in the apartment.

Now, onto Verizon…

November 18th, Verizon installer shows up at 12pm, he was a very nice guy.  Little did I know how much problem this guy would cause.  I let him know that the previous tenant had FiOS and all the hardware (including router) was still upstairs.  He was very happy and went on to tell me that the install won’t take long.

We head upstairs and he proceeds to check for a signal for the feed coming into the house.  He couldn’t find this signal he was looking for.  Fiber optic cable is coming into this main box, which was located in the master closet.  There is also an access panel to the attic from the master closet.  He tells me he’s going to need his ladder to get up into the attic, find the feed, cut out Comcast and hook the new feed up.  This all sounded pretty normal to me.

Now he’s up in the attic.  He spent about a half hour up their looking for this feed.  He didn’t find it.  So he goes out to his truck for about 15-20 minutes (I think he was calling for help.)  When he came back in, he told me he’s going to need me to watch the TV and let him know when it turns off.  No problem, I can do that.  Back into the attic he goes, back to the TV I go.  I hear some scuffing in the walls (wires moving around) and some foul language coming from the attic (hehe.)  2 minutes pass by and he finally yells downstairs, “Is the TV still on?”  “Yes the TV is still on,” I replied.  I guess he didn’t believe me, because he came back down out of the attic and had to look at the TV for himself.  “Uh I think I just cut someone else’s wires.” he says.  “That’s not good,” I replied.  He seemed really confused, started scatching his head and walking around trying to figure out why he can’t find the feed.  He never went back up in the attic to fix whatever wires he cut.

So I told him that when Comcast came, they didn’t come into the attic, and he actually never came into the apartment.  This seemed to baffle him.  He starts to look around outside and points to a main box outside.  “I think we’re going to have to feed a new wire from here, up to the roof and into the attic,” he says.  I knew something was wrong with this picture, so I didn’t even reply to him.  Back to his truck he goes for another 20 minutes.

He comes back in and starts to look around.  I point him in the direction of a jack in the living room (near the front door), so he gives it a shot.  He removes the plate and behind was a splitter, I knew right then he found what he was looking for.  “Uh this might be it, let me see if this is the signal I was looking for,” he says.  Of course this is what he was looking for, it was the last place he looked.

So now we’re moving along here, hooking up the router, wiring the TV box etc. etc.  “The blinking light on the router should be green, not orange,” he says.  Yea stupid, you need to activate the service first.  What the hell is wrong with this guy?  “Maybe you need to activate it first?” I replied.  Back out to his truck he goes for another 20 minutes.  Meanwhile, I noticed the light turned green and proceed to surf the web while I wait for him to get back.  He comes back in and is glad to see that it’s not activated.

I asked myself what could possibly go wrong from this point on, obviously I was not aware of the extreme intelligence I was dealing with.  Next, he wants to get on the computer to use some software that will configure the router.  Why did I let him touch the computer?  I don’t know, I really can’t answer that.

“It’s not working, something is wrong,” he says.  Of course something is wrong, you’re still here.  I didn’t realize till later that the guy had restored IE’s default settings in his own attempt to get things running. So it took me about 10 minutes to realize he needed to run this configuration as an administrator.  I guess I didn’t realize this because I’m used to Vista showing pop-ups saying “You need to be an administrator to run this task.”  So I login as admin, and watched everything rung.  Done, thank god.  I now get an IE script error every time a user logs on to Vista.

As he’s showing me the cool features for the TV, he goes on to say, “For some reason, there is no page up/down button for the guide.”  What he didn’t know is that I was already playing with the remote when he was upstairs in the attic.  “The page up/down buttton for the guide is the channel up/down button,” I told him.  “Wow!  I never knew that!  Here I’ve been telling all these people that there is no page up/down button,” he says.  At this point I’m ready to kick him out of the apartment.

“Thank god we figured out what the problem is, I have to pick my brother’s kids up because he got a DUI, I’m kind of in a hurry,” he says.  I really didn’t pay him any attention.

Next he shoots for the phones.  Plugged in the phone, everything worked.  No problem.  It worked up until about 5pm.  Why did it stop working?  Maybe a neighbor came home from work and noticed their service was cut, and somehow now my phone line was cut to hook their line up again?  I have no idea.

Today, I called verizon.  I explained my story to them.  “Yea he should not have went up in the attic at all, I have to note that” – Verizon tech.  “Oh he said he was in a rush because his drunk brother lost his license and can’t pick up his kids,” I replied.  Needless to say I got a nice apology and they are coming tomorrow to fix the lines in the house.

Conclusion:

As my father said, “Nice and stupid are two completely different things.”  And I couldn’t agree with him more.  I’d rather have some jerk come over and get it right the first time.  Instead I got a really nice guy, who didn’t really know what he was doing.  Nevertheless, I’m happy with the service.

The race was crazy, it was a 2hr drive from Clay’s house (in Durham) to Charlotte. We left the house at 9am and parked the car in the Lowes Speedway parking lot at 1pm. The race was 400 laps (600 miles). It started at 5pm and we left the parking lot at midnight. It was pretty hot to begin with, but as night came the temperature dropped a little bit. I got some crazy pictures from the race too.

The guy standing still compared to the car flying by at 200mph looks really cool.

I got back from North Carolina on Monday night. The trip was a lot of fun. I posted a ton of pictures from the Nascar race in Charlotte in my Flickr photo album. Stephanie had a good time too but she really didn’t like how I drove on the way down. I guess I was excited about going down or something, she thinks I was driving too fast and too close to the car in front of me. The way back was totaly different, maybe I was mellowed out for the whole “going home, going back to work” thing.

It’s not easy driving one style your whole life and then drive another style for an 8hr road trip, I never purposely tried to “test the waters” to see how fast I could drive.