Today in Food (2003/04/24)

Posted on April 24 2003 by Mickey

Tom Ray, Connoisseur
(From CNN NewsPass Video)
    The SFG site would like to salute Tom Ray who has dined at the same Muncie Indiana Burger King for the last 27 years. Every weekday at 11 AM, Mr Ray orders a cheeseburger, fries, coffee, and an apple pie. By his count, he’s had it his way 7,000 times. According to today’s CNN profile (from WRTV), it’s gotten to the point he no longer has to order and the staff prepare his meal in advance.
    Sadly, this Burger King, one of Muncie’s first, will be shutting down on Monday. So tomorrow will mark Mr Ray’s last meal there. The staff have already presented him with a farewell cake, but he still plans to show up on Monday. “Something could happen,” he said, as reported in this Star Press article.
Posted in Food, Links, News, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

67% Fragmented

Posted on April 24 2003 by Mickey
    Earlier in the week I got an e-mail alerting me that the latest Windows Upgrade patch, Security Update #811493, does more harm than good. According to Microsoft-Watch.com’s article, “The patch — which was designed to stave off a buffer overrun that could allow attackers to elevate privilege permissions on users’ machines — ended up slowing some users’ systems to a crawl.” Fortunately, the patch can be easily uninstalled through Add/Remove Programs (it’s near the bottom of the list); and Microsoft is at present working on a patch for their patch.
    My computer has been running awkwardly of late, and since I’m pretty ardent about downloading the latest updates I thought this 811493 patch might be the culprit. As it turned out, I had not downloaded it yet, so the cause of my problems lay elsewhere. In fact, it looked like it might be as simple as creating more room on my C:\ drive for Windows’ swap file. Which brings me to my next tech alert. After uninstalling several seldom used programs and defragging my drive, I began noticing problems with Internet Explorer. I inexplicably lost the ablity to Open Links in a New Window. The new browser window would pop up, but no new page would load and the browser would crash.
    I tried reinstalling (which is how I think I solved the problem at work, some time ago, when I first discovered this behavior), but since my browser was up-to-date here at home the IE installer refused to run. I found out though there is another solution to fix this strangely recurring problem. It worked for me, so perhaps it might be of use to you as well.
    And speaking of tech problems, my homepage counter dropped three thousand hits last night!
    P.S. After publishing the above, I also discovered my computer’s clock was an hour ahead.
Posted in Gadgets, Tech | Leave a comment

A Day of Empowered Closure

Posted on April 23 2003 by Mickey
    According to our calendar, today is Administrative Professionals Day. I’ve never heard of that before — which I would attribute to bad marketing — and I can’t help wondering if having Administrative Professionals Day today is Corporate America®’s way of having the last word after Earth Day.
    Actually, today is the celebration of Administrative Professionals Day 2002, since it’s only now they’ve finished having all the meetings and phone bridges to get the celebrations up to speed in a forward velocity, close the loop on key event issues to reassess that all celebrants were on the same page re: synergizing cross-celebration issues, open-dialogue with calendar platformers to ensure optimum market penetration to proactivate a wide-range rollout, and aggressively timeframe its exposure to proliferate the optimum customer scenario action at this point in time.
    That, and Administrative Professionals Week was downsized.
Posted in News | 1 Comment

Earth Day

Posted on April 22 2003 by Mickey

And beware genetically altered foods, too.
    It’s Earth Day. Time for our planet to make a wish and blow out all its refinery fires!
    Actually, that’s not a good metaphor since it’s not really the Earth’s birthday. It’s the day we set aside to pretend we care about the conditions of this great trailer park we live in. Believe it or not, it’s the thirty-third Earth Day, and after all that time you think you’d see some improvement around the place. As far as I can tell, it’s gotten worse. Around town there are fewer trees and more traffic; but at least it appears we’re going for the Guinness record in terms of new credit unions per capita.
    Is it really possible to think recycling your newspapers will help when there’s twice as much junk mail arriving at your doorstep? Will it make any difference when I finally get my hybrid car, knowing everyone else will be driving the biggest, heaviest, and fuel-inefficientest SUVs they can find? And is it really progress that we’ve gone from disposable lighters to disposable cell phones? A site called Earth Day Network has a list of environmental problems on which we can take action. The length of the list is disheartening; and I bet it’s pretty much been the same list for many years.
    But, anyway, here are some photos of our big beautiful blue-green planet on the unfashionable western spiral arm of the galaxy, while we still have it.

The Pacific


Antarctica and Africa


Michigan, My Home

Most images from FreeStockPhotos.com
Posted in News, Personal, Photos, Space | 1 Comment

Today in Food (2003/04/21)

Posted on April 21 2003 by Mickey
    According to this article, “Fast food giants Pizza Hut and Burger King have set up their first franchises inside war-torn Iraq, inside giant trailers on a British military base near Basra.” These establishments have gone up faster and sooner than some aid stations, and are expected to begin selling food tomorrow.
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Fish IV

Posted on April 21 2003 by Mickey

Fish IV
    I used to upload photos of my fish quite often; but I haven’t done that in quite a while, simply because I moved Fish out of the computer room and away from my webcam. I got a nice photo of him this morning however, while in the process of changing his water. So here he is.
    (Long-time readers might remember the terrible incident where my fish leapt to his death during a different cleaning, July 2002. That was Fish II. Fish III, his replacement, died a slow but natural death back in late October 2002. [And while I’m talking about it, I might as well mention Fish I, who didn’t last long at all, passing away from ick a couple days after I brought him home, Christmas of 2000.] Shown here is Fish IV, a very attractive pink and blue betta, who at last makes his first appearance here on the blog. As before, those wishing to contact him can write him at fish@troubledloner.com.)
Posted in Fish | 1 Comment

Happy Easter

Posted on April 20 2003 by Mickey
    It’s probably too late to try the holiday recipes, but this page from the BBC has some nice information about the traditions surrounding Easter.
    And here’s a joke from Father Moloney, at St Joseph’s in Wyandotte:
    The priest was heartened to see so many more people show up for holiday Mass. As the congregation filed out afterward, he encouraged all newcomers to come back every week to be part of God’s Army.
    “I already am,” said one man.
    “Ah, how can that be so,” asked the priest, “when I only see you at Christmas and Easter?”
    “Well,” the man replied, “I’m in the Secret Service.”

Posted in Food, Links, Personal | Leave a comment

Playing with My Food

Posted on April 19 2003 by Mickey
    Today’s the day for our company dinner. I still have half an hour before I leave, so why not join me for a couple beef-based Flash games:
Fling the Cow
The Omaha Steaks Grill-Off
Posted in Food, Links | Leave a comment

A Fried Peanut Butter and Lembas Sammitch

Posted on April 18 2003 by Mickey
    Last year, I thought the protest over how the title The Two Towers was supposedly an insensitive reference to terrorism (despite the fact Tolkien’s book was published twelve years before the WTC was completed). But, with this year’s movie I feel different. These guys really make a great case for the need to change the title of the final Lord of the Rings movie.
    This is actually old news, since I’ve seen references to the protest dating back to early February. But I’m posting it simply since I’m getting restless for any new word on Return of the King. Last year we had that four-minute Two Towers preview tacked onto the end of Fellowship — but this year: nothing. We’re not even getting the planned trailer before The Matrix Reloaded.
    I need new images!
    I guess I’ll have to continue contenting myself with these high-res scans from The Return of the King calendar.
Posted in Links, LOTR, Movies | Leave a comment

Regarding Graphics

Posted on April 17 2003 by Mickey
    Let me state up front I do not have a problem with people using the images on my website. For instance, I’ve noticed recently that some websites are using my Antigua photos. This is perfectly fine. I’m not selling these photos, so I wouldn’t’ve put them up if I didn’t expect some people might like them enough to make them their own.
    What I do have a problem with is people linking directly to my graphics. This is called bandwidth leeching, where I am paying my server to provide you with your graphic. This is not fine. It’s even worse when some people have been using my photos for their webpage backgrounds! When I saw this, I knew a line had been crossed. And since then I’ve been adding various URLs and domains to my server’s Bandwidth Protector lists. This means your website or domain is unable to leech off my images, and your link becomes broken.
    Perhaps this sounds unfair. But there’s a simple way around it. If you want to continue using my pictures and photos, simply right-click on them, save them, and host them yourself.

Posted in Blog, Buffett | Leave a comment