Thursday was my birthday. I’m 24 years young, almost ready for the quarter life crisis (assuming I live to be 100). Thursday was a great day. Esther woke up early and made me pancakes and let me open my presents. Most of all, though, she kept my present a secret! It’s really hard for her to keep my presents secrets, she usually gives a hint or two and from that I can divine what the gift is. This year, no hints, so I was shocked when I opened the large generic box that we keep to hide presents in and found tissue paper holding a new 30 gig iPod. Amazing! Thursday at work was super busy. No, I didn’t take the day off from work, I couldn’t. After my incredibly busy work day, my social day kicked off. I had to run home and take care of the dog and then drive, with mother-in-law in tow, up to Williamsburg. We met Esther and our friends Kristi, Casey, Adele and Dave at a cafe there and ate, talked and had a generally excellent time! A jazz band was performing while we were there and unbeknownst to Esther, she had picked the prime table. Come to think of it, she might have known, that sneaky devil. Part way through the evening, Adele snuck up to band and requested that they sing me happy birthday and while I’m sure they cleared the performance rights, it was fun to be sang to, especially when it’s not the staff at Applebees. When the band wrapped up their performance we all dispersed and I came home happy and tired. What a great birthday.

About 4 or 5 months ago, I had some issues with my ipod shuffle. I was working in the garden, and it just wouldn’t play. The amber and green lights would flash back and forth. I had a good idea that it wasn’t going to be good. After trying to do the traditional apple “five Rs”. But it wasn’t working. Esther and I found the apple contact information to have them send me a replacement and a few days later I got a replacement shuffle in the mail. All in all it was a good experience. Today, however, Apple released the “iPod Shuffle Reset Utility“. Why, oh why could they not release this when they first released the shuffles. It would have made my experience that much better. Darn you apple!

I love getting 419 scams. Maybe if you help me Mr. alija zongo will give you a cut of the money too! Click after the jump to read the whole thing. Read more »

One of the best short films I have seen about graphic design in a while!

In being buddhist, I follow the Eight-fold path. One of the elements of the eight-fold path is right speech. Right speech has a variety of actions that fall under it including

Abstaining from lying, abstaining from divisive speech, abstaining from abusive speech, abstaining from idle chatter …
Wikipedia

Here is dilemma. I was asked by a coworker (who also is my superior), to give my opinion on a large project they he/she has been working a very long time on. In the time that he/she has been working on said large project, I have had to take up the other projects that we have been assigned.

If I give my honest and critical opinion, my increased level of work will continue, due to the fact that he/she will be busy making corrections based on my opinion. If I am not forthcoming (read: lie) about how I feel about the project, the work load will balance itself out in a few days.

Am I wrong for not expressing what I truely think? Do I tell my coworker what I really feel about the project?

I’ve been having some issues with Apple’s Mail recently. It hangs, it crashes and then when I restart I have to completely “restart” mail, putting in the servers and logins, etc. I’m not losing anything except time, but it is frightening and annoying to say the least. I think I’m going to submit my question to Hawkwings.net

I am getting ready to conduct a science experiment on myself. It’s nothing dangerous but it’s results could be ground breaking.

Observation	I have a bad headache.
Hypothesis	I am suffering from caffiene withdrawl.
Prediction	If I get a cup of coffee, my headache will subside.
The reason I believe it is caffiene related is due to the fact that I have consumed over 50 oz of water, so it is not due to dehydration. Another factor that is yet to be condsidered is the distance that I am sitting from my monitor. I recently changed by desk around but it would easier to test the caffiene theory than moving the desk again.

I’m currently looking for someone to go get coffee with me. I will update this experiment later.

*** Update ***

After getting that cup of coffee, I have found my theory to be correct. The sad/scary thing is now I realize that I have to cut my consumption of caffeine. Not something I really want to do, because I love coffee _so_ much, but if I’m getting headaches I have to cut back.

After a couple of head scratching moments, I think I’ve got all the changes done. I am now on a hosted wordpress blog instead of the “free” version. It could be a little rough over the next couple of days as I continue to smooth out the rough edges, but for the most part, I have gotten it all done. Let me know what you think.

Leo Laporte of This Week in Tech best defines podcast

Netcasting (also known as “podcasting”) is a great new way of distributing audio automatically. When a site (like this) offers a netcast feed you can subscribe to the feed using netcasting software and any new items will be automatically downloaded to your computer. If you have a portable audio player, the files can also be copied to the player. However, and this is a common area of confusion, no iPod or other MP3 player is required (that’s one of the reasons we prefer the term “netcast” to “podcast”). You can listen to the audio on your computer just as you would any MP3. In fact, with our feeds you don’t even need special software. Just click the feed link and download the show you want directly, or use the player built into every page. If you decide you want to listen to a show every time it comes out, you might consider using a netcasting or podcasting client. Think of it as Tivo for Internet audio. You subscribe to content you want by visiting the web site and getting the netcast URL. Your netcast software automatically downloads any new shows and copies them to your MP3 player. There’s always something new and interesting to listen to and you never have to check the web to see when a new show is available. By far the easiest way to subscribe to netcasts is to install the free iTunes program for Windows or Macintosh.