NSLog();

I arrived in Providence, RI a bit late, but was quickly on my way in the rental car. It's got New York plates, and unlike when I went to North Carolina, they handed me the keys and said "cya tomorrow." And off I went. No 413-point inspection, just the keys.

Traffic wasn't so spiffy, but I made it the 40 miles from Providence, RI to Fairhaven, MA in about an hour. The traffic going the other way was significantly worse. I'll remember that tomorrow.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 291); »

Question: Of the people you know at least moderately well, who's the happiest?

My Answer: I know who. She's also the grumpiest at times, and the most irritable, and the most energetic, and the… everything! It must be nice to be a two-year old. 😉

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

I disabled MT-TrackbackAntiSpam as it seems broken. People trying to send me a TrackBack from perfectly valid hosts instead got 403s. So, bye bye MT-TBAS.

SpamLookup has been doing well at The Sand Trap, so I may move that over and combine it with MT-Blacklist.

Yes, it's true, and you too can download the Gun Self Defense Calculator. I've taken the "back side text" from this widget, and here it is.

Calculations used in this widget are based on the now famous study by renowned criminologists Gary Kleck & Marc Gertz that was reported in the The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, (Fall 1995) titled, "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self- Defense With a Gun." This is the most exhaustive and detailed study of how guns are used in self defense, to date. The study shows that guns are used in self defense about 2.5 million times a year or once every 13 seconds, on average. In other words, guns are used about 60 times more often to protect innocent life than to take a life. Over 1.9 million of those self defense cases involve handguns.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 318); »

Question: Do you have toilet seat covers on your toilet seats?

My Answer: Yes, though apparently my soon-to-be significant other thinks they're "white trashy." I disagree. I say they keep the toilet seat from being too cold.

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

Sean Voisen has passed on to me the so-called "musical baton." Apparently, like Sean, I must oblige.

Total size of music files on my computer: 57.14 GB (not too shabby, I guess).

The last CD I bought was: Bleed Like Me by Garbage.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 296); »

Okay, so this hasn't happened yet, but we're getting warmer:

Thanks, Gizmodo.

On Wednesday afternoon I'm flying to Providence, RI and then driving a few miles to Fairhaven, Massachusetts. I'll stay the night, meet with some people in the morning, and fly back later that evening.

Friday morning I have another meeting back here in Erie. I'm limiting the details to just this, and any guesses as to the reasons will be ignored (and/or deleted, which I guess is just the opposite of ignoring them, but anyway…).

In other words, if I'm not around from about noon on Wednesday through about noon on Friday, you know why.

IE 7 may be getting tabs, but in the words of one person:

Stop gloating about how you've caught up with five years ago and begin addressing the bigger issues, i.e.: CSS and XHTML.

Heh heh heh. Does anyone care about IE anymore? Seriously?

Excel's been giving me crap every time I quit it, with the compile error listed in the subject of this post. The fix? Remove the "PDFMaker.xxx" files (where xxx is a varying TLE) from the Microsoft Office 2004: Office: Startup: <AppName> folder. I'm glad to be rid of those stupid toolbars and the error that accompanies them.

Sources: Microsoft and McGimpsey.

Question: What did you get for your mom's last birthday?

My Answer: I'm not sure I remember, but I know what I've gotten her for this one. 🙂

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

Question: Do you still watch Survivor?

My Answer: Yeah, though I've gotta say I'm not sure if I'll watch in the Fall. I probably will, but after 10 seasons, there's simply nothing new. I'm not rooting for or against anyone, I've seen all the lies and deception, and the challenges are the same things over and over again. I like shows like The Apprentice more because at least there's some skill involved, and people are voted out/fired based at least somewhat on their performance, not merely their personality, "plan," or dumb luck.

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

Question: Can anyone tell me why I shouldn't get an XBox 360?

My Answer: I'm jumping ahead on the QotDs to post this one two days ahead of time, I know, but with the Nintendo console not slated to come out until 2006… why should I wait? I realize MS is the evil empire and all that, but it's just a gaming console… and they typically sell below cost, so technically I'm hurting MS, right?

Maybe "I don't even play the consoles I have now" is as good a reason as there is…

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

Last night, my parents lost power for a little while. When the power came back on, their Dual 800 "QuickSilver" G4 refused to.

Today, they purchased (via me) a 17" iMac. I think they'll be happy with it.

Right now, I'm trying to find an external FW drive enclosure. I don't know if I'm going to have much luck: it's looking like it's USB 2.0 or nothing at all (locally). We've got a Best Buy and a Circuit City as well as Office Max, Office Depot, and Staples in town. Very little of anything else.

There's quite a bit of blog energy surrounding one local blog lately - "Expose Erie Politicians .com" is run by an anonymous person or group of people. Erie residents like Greg Valiga write about it, saying that the Erie Times gets it right when they say:

Some liar -- we don't shrink from this accurate word -- has created a Web site smearing several candidates for Erie political office. The site has no credibility, none whatsoever: Its creator has faked an identity and deceived Web users about his or her place of residence. This is fraud, pure and simple -- malicious fraud. Don't fall prey to its cowardly misinformation.

Me, well, whatever. I think that if you're going to say something, you should do so with a name, a face, and a voice that people can identify. It's one of the reasons I delete comments left anonymously on this site.

As for the politics, well, I really couldn't care less about Erie politics.