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Question: Is obesity a disease?

My Answer: Said Jim Carrey in a Playboy interview (March 2004):

Playboy: But you're a wealthy movie star - you're in a position to deny yourself comforts. Most people don't have that many comforts to begin with. They have overdue bills and abusive bosses.

Carrey: That's denial man. That's like obese people lobbying to call their situation a disease. I don't believe it. God bless obese people, but they've got work to do.

My opinion is very similar. While it remains true that some glandular diseases can cause obesity, 80% of this country does not have glandular diseases. I think that a sloppy body is the sign of a sloppy mind. Jim says it well: "they've got work to do."

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

For some time now my Go menu has looked like this:

I have no idea why the "iDisk" and "Network" menu items are disabled. My permissions are correct. My iDisk is permanently mounted and synchronized, but it'd be nice to be able to choose "Someone Else's Public Folder" (or whatever it's called). What gives? How can this be fixed? I'm not running any software that should affect this, and searches for "dimmed go menu items Mac OS X" turn up nothing helpful.

Any ideas?

Wowee! You can purchase 51 live not-available-in-stores songs (over 7 hours of music) from Widespread Panic's sold-out year-end concert for only $14.99! Awesome!

My (more-than-) friend Kate in Georgia is a huge WSP fan. I picked up every one of these songs for myself, and for her as well. That reminds me: I should call her. I miss her. The more I think about one I think about the other. Oy.

Back to Widespread Panic, though. I've listened to a few songs in Kate's bedroom once, and haven't heard much of them since. I'll give them a good listen in the next few days, though. What do you think of them? Anyone?

Question: How often do you cook dinner for yourself or others?

My Answer: Once a week, if that. I'm terrible. If by "fix" dinner you don't mean the fast, easy stuff, that is. I eat in about three times a week (still terrible).

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

Question: What's your favorite fish to eat, if any?

My Answer: Trout or, a new favorite, redfish. The prior breaded, the latter blackened.

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

Today I went to Mud Creek near the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant for a little fishin'. I found the place after about 90 minutes of driving, parked, and put in at Little Mud Creek. Mud? What mud? The bottom is hard, packed sand.

I paddled out and headed south, fishing the shoreline. It was low tide, just at the start of incoming. I looked for swirls or unusual water movement, but it was difficult in the rising chop. I had a few bites right at the boat - probably a small jack crevalle or trout.

I arrived at Big Mud Creek only to find that access was blocked. Apparently the power plant doesn't like boat traffic these days. Pity - that was going to be my main fishing point for the day. I rounded the corner and found a few trout with a black/silver/orange SS Minnow (like the one seen here):

I eventually grew tired, realized I'd forgotten my sunscreen, and headed home. While heading home I trolled the SS Minnow and nabbed a 2 lb jack crevalle. Yes, today I've got that "you wore sunglasses and a hat and got a funny looking sunburn" type of sunburn.

Question: Have you done your taxes yet?

My Answer: No, but I'll be doing them this week I think. I hate doing taxes, but this year I should come out ahead. Maybe.

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

So, I'd like to file my taxes online. I'll pay $25 or so to do it. The question is: where the hell can I do this? The IRS.gov site is horrendous. I want to claim some deductions (business expenses, as some of my income is 1099) and I also have a standard job that's paid money to social security, FICA, etc.

Where the hell can I do this? Right now I'm playing with a very ugly site named "1040now.net."

This blog's sidebar supports a nice new feature: my current Rock Star top score and ranking. I've done so with a simple little JavaScript (and an accompanying PHP script):

<script src="http://freshlysqueezedsoftware.com/
products/rockstar/hiscores/username.fss?
username=Erik%20J.%20Barzeski" type="text/javascript">
</script>

You too can embed this in your Web site or blog to let the world know how big a Rock Star you are! The HTML the script creates is minimal (two br tags and a link), so feel free to wrap it in <p> or <span> tags to suit.

John Gruber says:

Recommended reading, even if you wind up disagreeing with more than 1.5 of his criticisms.

And so I shall: Matthew Thomas' list of faults found while "enduring" Mac OS X. As if the title alone didn't get you, the list surely will. Some are right, some are wrong. Let's have a look.

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Question: What is your least favorite thing about Mac OS X?

My Answer: My overall opinion is clearly very high. I had to stretch a little for my least favorite answer, but here it goes: the inability to run the installer from the CD while using the computer to do other things (and install onto another disk). You could do this in Mac OS 9… Granted, this is an installer issue, but I'll cut myself some slack: it's my blog. 🙂

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

Question: Did you get one?

My Answer: I think I'm going to get a green one. I'll listen to it while I'm on my kayak. They're TEEEEEENY! It'll easily fit in my shirtpocket.

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

Please help. A friend of mine has 18 JPEGs and TIFFs (he can convert them to any format) that total 277 MB. He needs to burn a CD (on a Mac) that has the images in the highest quality possible. That's easy. Where I need help: he needs a picture viewer that works with Windows. It can't be an installer - it has to pretty much "just run" from the CD. In other words, we have to be able to deliver a CD and the recipient, on a PC, has to be able to view the pictures in high quality with little effort and no installs.

We can probably assume that they've got Windows 2000 or later, but not necessarily that they have QuickTime. Burning a DVD is not the best option - TV resolution is bad and these are very high quality pictures.

Your help is appreciated. I'll give a free copy of any of FSS's software to the person who first suggests the best option.

I'll explain this more in the extended entry…

 me: i have to be careful with you, you know...
 me: that shoulder shirk while leaving is only the start of it :)
her: LOL, why's that
 me: you're one of those sinkholes
 me: female sinkholes
 me: or, more like those sand traps those beetles build
her: LOL, where did you find that?
 me: an ant comes up and peers over the edge and then falls in
 me: the more he struggles to get out, the faster he falls in
 me: and then the beetle gets him and eats him
 me: you're one of those
 me: you're a beetle at the bottom of a sandhole
her: falls in what?
 me: the sand hole
her: we just decided in don't have an orfice
 me: i know that
 me: but this is different

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At least he's got a sense of humor.

Too good not to post. Plus I don't go to work until 5 today. 🙂