Aw, what the heck…

    Let’s go live with this thing…
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This Could Be the Start of Something Big

    It all started on Friday, when I was unable to edit my weblog for most of the day. I simply wanted to change my 4th of July logo back to normal, but Blogger was inaccessible for several hours.
    So I took a second look at pMachine, a PHP-based weblog service which can run off my own server. (And which I’d first discovered at Hostile Redhead‘s site.) I spent the weekend rejiggering their CSS to look like mine, and also retyped all the previous messages so that they’d all be in my pMachine database. Further, this required having to retype everyone’s comments. I was able to mimic the dates and times when the entries were orginally made; but I was unable to do so for the comments, which explains why they now all occur on July 6 2002.
    Hopefully I’ve managed to set everything up properly, before I go “live” with my latest weblog. And I hope these changes make your visit a more pleasant one.
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IMDb Knows Movies

    You would think the Internet Movie Database would know a thing or two about movies (especially since way too many people [and DVD producers] view it as the ultimate source). But read what they had to say regarding yesterday’s news: “John Entwistle, The Who’s bass guitarist, died in Las Vegas Thursday of an apparent heart attack at age 57. He had played Uncle Ernie in the film version of The Who’s rock opera, Tommy.”
    Nice try boys. But Uncle Ernie was played by Keith Moon.
    At least they got the band right.
Posted in Movies, Music, News | Leave a comment

Farewell to the Ox

    “Why can’t we have eternal life? And never die, never die.”
    According to Reuters, John Entwistle, the bass player for The Who, died in Las Vegas tonight at age 57, just one day before the group was set to perform there and begin a North American summer tour. It happened at Vegas’s Hard Rock Hotel, and the death is still under investigation. Entwistle is one of the great bass players in rock, and his life should be celebrated just for his performance in The Who’s “The Real Me” alone!
Posted in Music, News | 1 Comment

Downstream This

    Why does the government hate the Internet? Once again the Library of Congress is cocking up royalty rates for Internet radio stations. I read this today at the Washington Post site: “Internet radio stations must pay two sets of copyright fees. One royalty, set at 3.5 percent of total revenues, goes to the songwriters and publishers of a piece of music. The other fee — the one decided yesterday by Billington — is shared equally by the performers and the record company.
    “Radio stations pay only the music publishing fee, not the royalties for musicians and record labels.”
    You’d think a democracy would kind of provide a nice level playing field, wouldn’t it? I’d think if anything Internet radio should be given a break just because it sounds so bad. So why is the government ostracizing Internet radio, as if it were the invalid relative hidden in the attic? Simple: once again they’re showing their belief that anyone using the Internet is up to no good and must be punished.
    I wonder if they know our own president has a homepage at whitehouse.gov. Maybe we should e-mail Washington DC and provide this URL. The paradox would short circuit their brains, and we could finally get some peace and quiet around here.
    By the way, please join the Electronic Frontier Foundation.   [1:10 PM]
    Update: Here’s an even greater irony. The Library of Congress has its own webcasts. [6:18 PM]
    Update: One Internet radio station, recently forced to shutdown, has a good explanation of what’s going on. [6:51 PM]
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For Sale

    We’ll be right back after this commercial announcement.
    Most of the embroidered clothing items are out of stock in the SFG store, but we’ve added several new items in the SFG Cafe Press store, and some of them are not as lame as the usual Cafe Press stuff. Hope you enjoy them.
    And now back to the same old “Oh, look at me, I’m fat and I’m lazy” crap.
Posted in Blog, Personal | 1 Comment

Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

    It seems like a lot of frozen foods companies have recently discovered the great untapped resource of breakfast. Swanson and Banquet have for a long while been offering breakfast meals; Pillsbury recently turned their Toaster Strudel into tasty egg and cheese Toaster Scrambles. And now two new frozen breakfast offerings have hit the market.
    I had a chance to sample Uncle Ben’s Breakfast Bowl one Sunday morning. This particular version was “Egg, Cheese & Salsa”, complete with tortilla chips. Strange how I don’t mind having spicy breakfast burritos, but that I had misgivings over this spicy Breakfast Bowl. It tasted quite nice — the salsa heated up well and the chips had a definite fresh taste; the chunks of egg were large and recognizable too — but it just didn’t taste like breakfast. It tasted more like some “light” (as in not-“lite”) Mexican snack.
    I had similar misgivings about the new Meijer’s Morning Bites, similar to pizza or Chinese egg rolls, but filled (in this instance) with sausage, egg, and cheese. These however did not even have the benefit of tasting good. The filling was a grayish paste with an indecipherable leaning-toward-something-which-in-a-roundabout-way-was-vaguely-akin-to-being-much-like-imitation-sausage taste. The only thing which kept them from being pizza rolls was the absence of a fake tomato flavor. The SFG labs give a low-key thumbs-up to Uncle Ben’s Breakfast Bowl (tastes great, but not necessarily breakfasty); but a thumbs-down to Meijer’s Morning Bites. We still prefer Pillsbury’s Toaster Scrambles (the rich crust goes better with egg and cheese than with strudel); and, when we need something heartier, still recommend Swanson’s Great Starts breakfasts.
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Homestyle Security

    I finally saw President Bush’s address from last night, wherein he asks Congress to create a new cabinet position for a Director of Homestyle Security (that’s the security that’s chicken-fried and comes with sausage gravy. Mmmm).
    This would unite domestic law enforcement I guess. It struck me as sounding vaguely like the National Police Force that the former President Bush espoused — however that was in the movie The Naked Gun. Who knew the Zucker/Abraham/Zucker boys were so prescient?

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“Na na na na…”

    So what happened last night? After six close-scoring games, some of which needed to be decided in overtime, what happened to Colorado that the Red Wings were able to trounce them so handily? It’s like Colorado had a completely different team on the ice. Did the Wings take them out drinking the night before? Did the Avs suddenly realize they were homesick and wanted to get back to Colorado as soon as possible? I know the Wings are a great team, but their 7-0 victory doesn’t seem to fit in with the other low- and close-scoring games.
    Not that I’m complaining though.
    As Mitch Albom said today, “that’s an avalanche.”
Posted in News, TV | 1 Comment

More Changes

    Right on the heels of starting a snazzy new message board, I put up another fancy new doodad. I’ve had one or two chat rooms set up on the site for a while, but I don’t really use them since they don’t work around the firewall at my job. I stumbled upon some cool Flash chat rooms that would work, but they need an ASP server. However, I was able to come across a PHP version of one them, Shoutbox from Webfroot.
    I set it up here, on the front page (and therefore echoed on the archive page and guestbook). It’s not exactly private, but it’s in realtime so it’s more immediate than an e-mail.
    Also, to make room for it, my “Current Interests” box has been moved to the bottom of the page. (My more long-lasting interests are, as always, listed on the Links page.)

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