Random thoughts, organized and categorized for your consumption.
Archive for July, 2004
Not So Creative?
Jul 28th
Anyone that knows me also knows I have done some dumb things in my life. Most of them are blissfully concealed by my sheltered personal life. Some of them are amazingly dumb and public, especially when it comes to work.
So you can imagine my surprise when I see my former employer doing really dumb things without me causing them.
To be fair, press releases and public posts are rarely what they appear to be. However, when you see commentary like this from your press release partner, you have got to step back and know that the public will smell something fishy.
This is one More >
Fixed 4Runner?
Jul 22nd
I had an interesting “outside the box” experience today with the 4Runner. For reasons unknown, I listened to a buddy of mine and took it in to another service center to have it looked at. The prognosis on first glance looked grim: this truck looked like, acted like, and smelled (yes, it actually smelled) dead.
Then something miraculous happened: they called me today and said that it was mostly fixed*. How could this be? Surely it was a mistake. So I zip over to the garage, listen to the whole story skeptically, pay my roughly $530 and take it for a More >
Test Drive: GMC Envoy
Jul 20th
I spent a few minutes driving around in a 2004 GMC Envoy today and found it to be not to bad as far as SUVs go. It was a pretty smooth and quiet ride compared to the 4Runner. The inline 6 cylinder engine was smooth and felt peppy. The space inside seemed pretty good, with plenty of usable space in the back. The only downers were the price at around $34K for a decent set of options and features and it felt a bit cheap on the interior quality to me. I also felt a little claustrophobic by the oversized More >
Losing at the Luggage Odds Game
Jul 18th
It is inevitable that this will happen, thanks to my heavy travel schedule. The airline (Alaska) has “temporarily misplaced” one of my pieces of luggage. What makes this sting all the more is that its a roll aboard bag that I never check. I was just lazy today so I checked it.
This must be some sort of psychic message to me to fly less. Or at least travel lighter.
See the World, Pick-up the Miles
Jul 13th
I’m off on yet another business trip this week. This time around it’s a visit to Microsoft, then on to Canada for another LAN gaming show. With any luck I might spend a huge 10 hours in the house this week. On the other hand, I’ll have another 2000 miles on American Airlines.
I wonder what will kill me first: the job or the airport food?
Bad 4Runner, Bad
Jul 10th
I just found out that I have about $7500 worth of repair work needed on my $9000 valued 97 4Runner. Unbelievably, the dealership found nothing wrong when they looked at it before. Now they are telling me the engine has to be torn down and the transmission needs to be replaced.
Guess its time to go car shopping. What a pain. Aren’t Toyota’s supposed to last forever?
Browser-Jacked
Jul 5th
Well it had to happen sooner or later: my browser got hijacked. I’m not sure if it happened at the LAN party I was at for work this weekend, or on some web page I hit today, but I can’t seem to get rid of it. “It” is the following:
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- Some sort of redirect that takes over the browser window whenever I hit a dead link
- An aggressive search engine that pops in whenever a web page has an error of any kind
- A constantly accessing the network item in the background
Worse, I can’t kill it. IE More >
Crappy, Broken Web Pages
Jul 1st
I have just had one of those days where none of my web page construction seems to work. First I had some dead scripts. Then a voting poll was busted. Now I can’t get a panel to work to allow a login to get email. Some might say I’m in hades. All I want is a little cooperation from my friendly server.
I’m betting that cooperation is not to be. Stay tuned.