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I feel weird posting anything else today after my last post… but what's the point of having your organs if you aren't really using 'em?

I'm considering getting into paintball. It seems like something I can do not only during the summer but during the winter, too. I'm pretty new to it all, so I'm going to ask: does anyone know any good paintball sites? Right now I'm not looking to join a forum (too much time), buy things (a friend of mine knows "a guy"), etc. I'm just looking to get up to speed on the technology, the gear, etc.

I turn 28 today (technically at 9:34pm or something, I think), and true to adult form it really doesn't mean a whole lot to me. It's also my father-in-law's birthday (Carey took the "marry someone like your dad" thing a bit too far), so happy birthday to him.

That aside, I wish to celebrate life today. As my friends know, another friend of mine has recently received a much-needed new heart and is doing well. For several years, José was basically a few hours from death, but thanks to the forethought of some unknown person, José's wife and two children will likely get to see my favorite Puerto Rican grow old and grey.

I've been an organ donor for years - since I got my first driver's license, I suppose - and though I naturally hope that my organs won't be donated any time soon, I am comforted in knowing that the joy I've felt with José's recent transplant may some day be given to someone else should I kick the can.

Today, on the anniversary of the day I began my life, I'm encouraging you to look into organ donation so that someone else may extend theirs and be given a sort of second birth. If you're not an organ donor already, sign up. If you are, encourage someone else to. Organ donation may not be tax-deductible, but like taxes, death is one of life's certainties. Plan for the future… someone else's after you are gone.

Every once in awhile, I wish I had ready access to one of these restaurants:

• IHOP (guilty pleasure food [greasy, good], and lots of late-night conversations with pals in FL)
• Denny's (for slightly different reasons than IHOP, more about me being a fan of breakfast food)
• Lindburger's (near-gourmet burgers, great fries, all for $6.99 or so)
• Boston Market (I used to work at one here - it's been a KFC for years)
• Legal Seafood (or some other place with a good salmon)

I've left spots empty in case I think of some other restaurants I'd like to add.

Pardon me for thinking so, but $19.95 for A Better Finder Rename (or even $9.95 for the upgrade and $24.95 for the "forever" license) is a bit more than I'm willing to pay for a tool I need to use, at most, about once a month.

But isn't there some sort of CLI tool that can do this? Obviously I can pipe some commands through some awkward sed chain or something, but isn't there some "renamer" tool that can do things like find and replace " " with "_" in filenames and lower-case any upper-case letters? Simple things like that?

And if there isn't one already, would someone be interested in working on one with me?

A blog pal of mine, Etan Kerner, is announcing today the launch of "randumfilms.com," an "interactive, wiki-based Internet theatre." For the time being, Etan and his partners are "hoping to build community so we can support ourselves via google ads."

This looks, at least, to be a good alternative to some of the other hosts out there like studentfilms and so forth with a good bit of potential for growth and opportunity. Etan says that the whole idea is to get a community of people to write scripts, produce podcasts, and get involved with wikis, all of which are taking off.

Perhaps I'll have to add "have my novel turned into a book" to my To Do list. Best of luck, Etan.

I expected one of the characters in the last frame of this comic to say "Now what?"

Question: Have you done your 2005 taxes yet?

My Answer: Carey and I visited our tax lady earlier today. We also have a plan in place for this year (which largely involves Carey setting aside a large chunk of her paycheck each week) to cover our (read: my) 2006 taxes.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

When we had the whole "Freedom Fries" bullshit, I remained neutral. I'd been to France, after all, and I speak French. I wouldn't say I like French people, but I really had nothing against them. Plus, Sophie Marceau is French…

But the whole iTunes thing is summed up nicely by John Gruber in his linked list (commenting on this article):

The bullshit aspect of this is that the iPod does play music from other stores — namely, any store that sells CDs. They just don't license Windows Media DRM from Microsoft, so they can't and won't play music from Windows Media-based online stores.

Word.

It's true! Hell in a handbasket, folks. Hell in a handbasket.

Does anyone want a 4-year-old, well-behaved, house-trained, quiet, obedient male Weimaraner in great health? He's free and comes with a whole bunch of accessories - beds, leashes, and even a 7.5' x 7.5' outdoor fence.

Update: He's found a happy home. Thanks.

I'm attending the launch of a new product in early April. The launch will be held on a golf course, and some golf pros and some PR types will be around for interviews. I'd like to incorporate some of the audio from the event into The Sand Trap's podcast, and as such, I'm looking for a good quality voice recorder. Ideally, the recorder would (in order of importance):

1. Fairly small (easily met requirement)
2. Last awhile on its battery/batteries
3. Record digitally in fairly good quality
4. Allow me to get the audio file(s) onto my Mac
5. Record quite a bit of audio (or have removable media so I can record a lot)
6. Cost less than $100

Any ideas or suggestions? Please don't suggest an iPod microphone - I'm probably looking at a dedicated recorder.

Yeah, Harborcreek:

The buzz coming out of Harrisburg continues to be about House Bill 2454, the State Police Services Bill. As written, it would impose a fee of $100 per resident in municipalities of over 9,000 people without their own police force for pay for state police services. Harborcreek and Fairview Townships would be affected. Currently not only are Harborcreek and Fairview saving a bundle by not not having their own police, they are getting a check from the state for relying on the state police for coverage. The fines collected by state police each year are divided between the municipality and the state. The split is based on the mileage and population of a municipality. Both Harborcreek and Fairview are likely receiving over $10,000 each year from the state. Nice system.

Ya bums…

Today I visited the Montessori school (pre-school/kindergarten) that the kiddo will likely attend next year. I was very impressed.

The room was abuzz with largely self-directed activity. The room had 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds in it and some of them were counting to 99 by threes, others were learning to pour into funnels and test tubes, some were snacking, and so forth. One kid was doing math, and another girl was sounding out and spelling "hapy sant patrics day" (kids learn sounds rather than "letters" per se, then learn actual spelling after that).

The kids were well-behaved and when they were not, a quick, quiet conversation ensued and the kids behaved immediately afterwards. The teacher and her assistant were very capable of walking around and taking it all in, and any time a child had a question he'd put his hand on the teacher's shoulder and wait until he (or she) was acknowledged before they'd start talking. Kids even washed and dried their own plates after snack time.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 327); »

Since when does 2993 - 233 = 3000? Since 10.4.5's calculator introduces a small bug when you change the precision to 1. Or change it to 2 and try 2006-1 (you get 2000). Found at Macworld.com.

BTW, bonus tip regarding calculations: alias uni scale=4; !:1'`units !:2 !:3` | awk '{print $1, $2, $3}' | bc -l. That'll get you handy CLI conversions like:

% uni 14 mi km
22.530816

Oooooooooooooooh.

Question: What are your spring cleaning projects?

My Answer: The basement and the garage need some definite attention!

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.