Archive for September, 2008


a time you may embrace

9/1/2008

The title of this bloggo is a lyric from this song. Hear/see it here. (Side note: This song has the best sounding Rickenbacker 12-string ever recorded - studio or live.)

September is here and it’s traditional for me to feel a little extra joy this time of year. Why? Because the kids are back in school, off the roads and off the internet (at least under the afternoons).

Speaking of the internet for a moment, you will notice that the overall attitude of bloggers is more positive. With the kids back in school the adults “get back” the internet to themselves until the next summer comes where they typically fuck everything up until they go back to school again.

2596350764_2d85dfd6a4_oIn Florida there are more perks compared to the north.

First, the cost of living goes down. A lot. This is directly due to the fact the weather gets cooler and you’re not blasting the air conditioning constantly. It is not unreasonable to see a $100-a-month bill turn into a $35 bill (or lower).

Second, the weather gets a lot more tolerable. From the end of September until June it is one fine time to be in the Sunshine State.

Third, the summer tourists are gone. Sure, there are still a few stragglers but for the most part it’s a lot easier to drive around Tampa Bay. Floridians have a saying here, that being there’s only two seasons. Tourist season and non-tourist season.

. . .

In New England this time of year was the beginning of those wonderful (and very short) 8 to 10 weeks when things felt right. My best memories concerning girlfriends were always during the fall season. In fact it was normal that I’d pick up a new girlfriend right around that time of year. Will that happen here in FL? Darned if I know. Whether I do or don’t it’s still a good time of the year for me.

It’s especially good in FL because those 8 weeks are actually 36. :-)

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as if high gas prices weren’t bad enough

9/1/2008

stpgastreatmentToday I went to start my 2005 GMC Canyon (which has the 4-cylinder by the way) and she wouldn’t fire. Battery was good, alternator good, everything else good. But turn, turn, turn and no fire.

I let her sit for a few minutes and attempted to start the engine again. This time it fired and ran smooth just like it always has. I romped the gas a few times. No sputtering, stuttering or stalling.

There’s 2 reasons why this happened.

First, I’ve never had a fuel injector cleaning service done on her and yeah, she needs it.

Secondly (and this is the most important part), it really pisses me off that fuel stations sell shit gas and that is why you need to have fuel injector cleaning services performed on your vehicle to begin with.

After she fired over I headed to the local Circle-K and bought a 12oz bottle of STP Gas Treatment. The tank is mostly full so it was okay to dump it in there. This will mix with the fuel in there and hopefully de-crapify it enough until I get the injection service done.

. . .

Stations started selling shit gas around the early 90s when they started putting additives in the fuel. And then after that to save a buck they started putting “up to” 10% ethanol in the fuel as well. (Side note: Have you noticed that the labels have been changed to “not more than” instead of “up to”? Hilarious.) The combination of those additives, the ethanol and the gasoline does not make for a good mix. Were it not for the computer control in engines today they’d never get past 50,000 miles. Part of the programming specifically addresses the fact that the fuel we put into our cars is shit.

It is nothing short of amazing how a 12oz bottle of treatment fixes an engine that won’t fire properly. However the sad part is that if the fuel stations actually maintained and cleaned their tanks correctly (which they don’t), we wouldn’t even need to do this at all.

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filling out

9/2/2008

About an hour ago while talking on the phone with Pop a tooth filling in the front (yes, the front) of my mouth fell out. There wasn’t any pain or anything like that, it just fell out.

This really pisses me off. I can mostly hide it as long as I don’t smile wide.

Thursday morning I’m getting it re-filled.

This was an expense I absolutely did not need but it has to be done.

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truck teeth

9/3/2008

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. This is what’s going on:

7:00am: Truck goes in for oil, lube, oil filter, tire rotation and fuel filter replacement.

9:30am: I go to the dentist for x-rays then tooth refilling.

Whenever that gets done: Go to boss’ house, say hello to Ms. Mini-Risley (Dave’s daughter), Mrs. Risley and Dave. My face will most likely be half asleep from the Novocain shot into it from the dentist and I’ll be drooling all over the place. Hopefully I won’t be laughed out of the house.

And yeah, that’s about it.

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fixed truck, choppers

9/4/2008

2005 GMC Canyon SLEThis morn’ I went to Goodyear Gemini and my truck is now all oiled and filtered up. I was glad to get this done because I was 1,500 miles overdue for an oil change (d’oh!)

After that I headed to the dentist and the filling that fell out is now re-filled. Very happy about that. The experience left me no worse for wear and the dentist dude did a good job.

After that I visited Dave. Dave is well (even though still coughing up a storm), Mrs. Dave is well and Ms. Mini-Risley is well.

Rock on. :-)

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classic ROCK

9/5/2008

Recently I said fuggit and decided to post a Craigslist listing that I was a guitar player looking for people to play with. I got a few responses. Next week if all goes well I’ll be playing with some guys just a little over 5 miles from me - and that’s just plain cool. The reason it’s cool is because they’re local to me.

I got a few other responses but unfortunately they were all too far away. One guy called that was really awesome but the practice spot was almost 30 miles away. That makes for a 60-mile round trip each time I go and that would turn into 240 miles a month if practice was held once a week, so I had to say no.

The dude I spoke with within the 5-mile distance has a group that plays the standard fare of classic rock songs. Originally I told myself I would never get into a cover band, however the set list they do is all songs I know or have heard of and they’re fairly easy as well (none o’ that complicated guitar’ing crapola).

Every member of this group is older than I am. This used to bother me but I’m at the point now where I say “screw it” because it’s the music that matters, so why not.

In addition to all that, this is my way of getting social. The plain fact of the matter is that I’m not social enough, and what better way to throw yourself into a scene than to join a band and play gigs, right?

Guess we’ll see what happens next week.

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The generations of internet users

9/6/2008

I don’t think there’s ever been anything written on the generations of internet users so I figured I’d give this a shot.

The hard part was coming up with what separates one generation from the internet concerning the internet. After thinking about it, I concluded that each type of user’s generation is separated by 3 years - starting from 1992. A common thread throughout the internet is that generally speaking, things shift every 3 years so it seemed like a good separation point (and it makes the math really easy).

So here goes nothin’.

Generation 1 - 1992-1995

Most people who used internet from ‘92 to ‘95 either used it at college or they were fortunate enough to discover what this whole internet “thing” was if they were on the Left Coast (California).

At this point in internet history there was no spam and everybody used e-mail either from their college, ISP or from their own domain purchased from what was then known as InterNIC.

Speaking of ISPs, the vast majority of them were “Mom ‘n’ Pop” style, mostly run by BBS Sysops that upgraded their existing network to accept an internet pipe.

The few that used internet from home were using MS-DOS, Windows 3.1 and Trumpet Winsock. It sucked but it worked.

Generation 2 - 1996-1999

I am a gen-2 (1996). Local phone carriers quickly realized that internet access was something they could sell easily so they did just that. All of us were on dial-up. Some (like myself) did switch over to broadband but that didn’t happen until late ‘99.

The internet at this time was still primarily populated by adults or computer geeks who at least acted adult-like.

When Windows 95 was released most of us didn’t switch over to that until ‘96. But when we found out the built-in Dial-Up Networking kicked the ever-lovin’ crap out of Trumpet Winsock and it was free with ‘95, we switched and didn’t think twice about it.

The most popular activities for Gen-2’s were e-mail, IRC and ICQ.

Our primary search engine was Yahoo and not Google. Even though Google was introduced in 1996 it took time before people started using it over Yahoo.

We witnessed the introduction and popularization of Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail.

Most of us edited our web pages with Windows Notepad and nothing else.

In the late 90s it because much easier to register domain names because we were finally released from the shackles of Network Solutions - arguably the worst domain registrar ever to exist (and still does).

In late ‘99 internet had a huge presence on television. The dot-com bubble was in full effect.

Generation 3 - 2000-2003

Straight off the coat tails of ‘99, internet continued to boom and investors poured millions and millions of dollars into tech companies. It seemed like a gold mine - and it was.

From a user’s perspective however, things changed a bit.

First, SPAM really started to become a problem but unfortunately there was no solution other than using self-made filters if your e-mail program allowed it.

Second, the advent of broadband becoming more common meant we started seeing more children on the internet. This is good or bad depending on your point of view.

Third, lots of people lost a bundle on the internet due to web-based businesses that were very shady.

Fourth, people finally found out what eBay was. Even though they had been around since 1995 (and received 5 million bucks of VC in ‘97), nobody really knew they existed until Gen-3.

The burst…

It was predicted by market analysts back in 1999 that the dot-com bubble would burst in 2000 or 2001.

They were right. 2001 was the year the bubble burst - big time.

Thousands upon thousands of people lost millions and millions of dollars - and to be honest it’s surprising that the internet wasn’t shelved at that point. Instead it continued to go on. Mistakes were made and people learned from them.

From ‘02 to ‘03 you can consider this a “lull” in the online world because everything that was free was all of a sudden gone or not free anymore. Companies were radically changing the way they did things just to stay in business. Some survived but most didn’t.

Bloggers, however.. started to make a presence..

Generation 4 - 2004-2007

Several things happened in the Gen-4 era:

1. Blogging

Blogging exploded. Now people had something to do with their web sites (myself included).

However blogging was put by the wayside when we got..

2. Social networking

Social networking broke on the scene like gangbusters. “MySpace” because a household word and still is.

3. YouTube

The internet finally progressed to a point where people could post video content easily. YouTube, while a very weird name, was the site that caught the popularity and is still #1.

4. Dot-com biz makes a comeback

Enough time had passed after the burst in 2001 where investors were courageous enough to start giving money to tech companies again.

It can safely be said that the most innovative stuff happened on the internet in Gen 4 and hasn’t been topped yet.

Generation 5 - 2008-2011

This generation is at the time of this writing still in effect and has a few years left to go.

This is what we’ve seen so far:

A large concentration on getting the internet mobilized

iPhone 3G was introduced July 2008. The first-gen iPhone was an ‘07 release but people started to pay more attention to it when the 3G model was introduced. It’s buggy, it crashes, the battery life sucks - but people love it anyway because it mobilizes things only thought possible on a standalone computer or laptop.

This is an evolving tech which at the present time sucks - but will inevitably get better before Gen-5 is over - count on it.

A reintroduction of bloggers into the fray

Blogging was deemed dead when MySpace and YouTube took the internet by storm. But now it’s been realized that yes, blogging counts and people very much appreciate the personal nature of them compared to a sea of social networking bullshit.

Bloggers are here and not going anywhere - and they’re making money. Lots of it.

All-on-web style of computing

The internet has come to a point where it truly doesn’t matter what computer or OS you use anymore. All major operating systems and platforms support internet connectivity. In addition, almost everything you ever wanted to do on a computer can be performed via nothing but a web browser and internet connectivity.

Amazing? Yes. This was not possible even as recent as Gen-4.

The future?

Nobody knows, but there are a few cold hard facts.

Grandma will never be able to learn how to send an e-mail

No matter how much technology progresses, the vast majority of post-retirement age people don’t know how to use computers and never will. And the computer industry doesn’t give a shit about them either. I’m not saying that to be rude - it’s just the truth.

Kids are now “born into internet”

Since Gen-3, kids have been using computers from a very early age. They will grow up using it and never know life without it.

Gen-2 - which is my generation - were the last to know life without internet because we didn’t get it until our early twenties.

The day of the big-box computer is close to an end

I predicted a while back that future computers are going to be nothing but slabs, i.e. big touch-screen devices about the size of a 14 to 15-inch LCD monitor with the computer contained entirely within. No physical keyboard. No mouse. All wireless.

It’s coming soon.

And who knows what else? We’ll have to wait and see.

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bits for 9 sep ‘08

9/9/2008

gps splash screens

Regular readers have obviously spotted my new GPS splash screens being posted. There’s a little over 50 of them that are “scheduled” posts, 1 per day. The reason I’m doing it this way is so a) people aren’t inundated with a crapload of these posts all at once and b) each screen is dedicated to a specific auto manufacturer so I felt each should have their own page.

These posts may get slightly annoying for some people over time, but there really wasn’t any other good way to do it, so.. um.. deal with it. :-)

in from boston

My sister will be arriving @ TPA from BOS this Thursday and I’ll be picking her up in the evening. I expect the airport to be very quiet that day because it happens to land on a specific date. When sis originally booked the flight and she told me about the day of arrival, I said to her “Wow. Nice day you picked to fly.” She totally didn’t realize the significance of the arrival date. It’s one of those things where you can laugh about it with a nervous chuckle, so to speak.

the yellow mug

I have a yellow coffee mug with Homer Simpson on it that I use often. It’s size and shape happens to be just right for making my coffee taste right (don’t ask me why but it does).

The reason I wanted it originally was because when you think about it, how many coffee mugs do you know of that are completely yellow? This one is. Very distinctive, very different. I like it.

Good mug. :-)

I should post a photo of it. Maybe I will.

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some words from the charter member of the over 30, uncool and don’t care club

9/10/2008

The “Over 30, uncool and don’t care” club (which I invented) only allows members in that are ages of 30 to 39. When you hit 40 that’s the middle-aged club. When you hit 65 that’s the seniors club. There’s no more clubs after that.

If you’re over 30 and under 39, you’re in the club. This club has two chapters, the first being the married (this includes people that are divorced or separated) and second, the never-married.

I belong to the second chapter.

Something I’ve been noticing over the years is that there are more second chapter members than there used to be - and that number is growing. Lots of us out there never married and moreover don’t want to. We see the institution of marriage as something we really couldn’t be bothered with. And yes, we do consider it a bother. Upon examination of all the legal bullshit involved we’d rather just go the single route instead.

This legal bullshit I speak of is not just in reference to what’s on paper. We’ve seen what our friends have gone thru. They get into fights with each other that inevitably leads to divorce and then a huge pissing contest over who owns what. If there’s kids involved it’s even worse.

You witness things like that and is just makes those in the second chapter say “Fuggit, what’s the point?”

It’s not that second chapter members don’t have the capability to sustain a lasting relationship. All of us can, but luck wasn’t on our side in the relationship department. To the first chapter members that are married and have a good thing going, more power to them because it’s so rare to have a marriage work in this day and age. They got lucky; we didn’t.

My honest opinion is that second chapter members should get together and hang out if for nothing than just for something to do. None of us want to hear sob stories about bad husbands or wives because we couldn’t care less. Rather all we want to do is just go out from time to time and enjoy.

I’ll bet anything that if I got the word out to second chapter members that there would be a meet-up where we could do things like this - they’d flock together like geese. It would work.

Hey, it could happen. :-)

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off to TPA

9/11/2008

In a few hours I’ll be picking up sis from the airport. She called earlier and said security at BOS stopped her because there was a banana in her backpack and they had to look at it because.. they didn’t know what it was (evidently banana-shaped fruit in an x-ray scan is cause for alarm).

Crack staff, that Logan airport has..

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