This picture is how I feel about computers most days, especially doing anything at work where we actively strive to crush innovation and good ideas at every turn. Nothing specifically has happened to cause me to write this tonight, only that I came across this really, really, really cute video and I giggled hard at the particular scene above.

I have to say that not only is this video cute, it's really well done. There are great nuances in the facial expressions throughout the whole thing: a shift of the jaw after "do you know why you're here," and a twitch of an eyebrow after, "it looks like you're witting a letter!" Brilliant, brilliant stuff.

And if you didn't catch it on Twitter, the video below is also wonderful. Aside from the voice actress getting a little too close to the mic/loud after at the end of the robot bit, it's perfect. I showed it to Dawn and told her I imagined her like this as a little girl. I didn't get much of a response on that, so who knows. But what a cute video!







The voices aren't the same, but somehow the voice actress in this short reminds me of Kirsten Dunst in Kiki's Delivery Service. (Which she did an amazing job in.)

Well, it was too good to be true. A couple quiet years for hurricanes and then "blam!" I knew we were in trouble about a month ago when Dawn and I took a trip to the beach and the water was like a sauna. Maybe I'm making things up, and maybe I just tend to stay indoors during the summer, but I really don't remember feeling water like that.

I was just talking to Dawn on the phone and telling her that I feel about global warming the way I felt about nuclear war growing up. It scares the hell out of me.

And there isn't a whole lot I can do about it except be a single-issue voter this year for the candidate I think will have the strongest energy policy as president. And right now I think that's McCain. Obama didn't even have anything on his election site about energy until McCain started running his big ad on the subject. The Obama camp followed quickly with a 30 minute clip on their website of a (pretty lame) speech Obama had made on the campaign trail. It took 'em just under a week to get their own ad together.

I really, really, really want to like Obama. And I think we might make some headway with same-sex marriage and "don't ask, don't tell." But I think the country is being spoon-fed everything they want to hear after 8 horrendous years with Bush in office.

Dawn and I were talking about the race a couple days ago. "Is McCain too hawkish on Iran?" And what about his personality? I saw a video clip of McCain meeting the Dalai Lama where it looked like he wanted to gnaw off his own arm to get away. And if you can't make nice with the Dalai Lama who can you get along with? On the other hand, will Obama have the balls to stand up to countries like an aggressive Russia, or to Iran if they turn out to be the problem McCain thinks they are? And we've already seen Obama flip-flop on offshore drilling. --Funny how the game changes once you have to start getting things done (i.e. playing politics) instead of telling everyone what they want to hear.

Still, it's going to all come down to energy policy for me this year. McCain apparently wants to develop alternative energy and then sell the technology overseas. That's smart: One, we need the tech ourselves. Two, a new export would help our economy. Three, we need to keep the developing countries from repeating our own mistakes. I'd like to read or find out more about that.

Ironically however, it may be the big oil-producing countries that save us. They've already seen the writing on the wall (unlike our own oil companies, damn them all), and are developing alternative energy sources for the day when we need or are ready to move away from oil. We're all certain that we want to end our dependence on foreign oil. What about a new dependence on foreign alternative energy technologies?

I find it oddly reassuring. God knows the world has thrown enough money their way. If anyone has the funding to develop something, they do.

In the meantime, I'll just keep driving the Prius around, using the good light bulbs, and let Dawn turn out all the lights at night to save power. But I wish I could figure out a more active role to play in the fight against global warming.

--Had fun shooting with Mom and Tom last night. (Dawn and I have been meaning to go, but kayaking and beach-going have been calling too strongly!) I was shooting bullets through the same hole quite a bit last night! Not all the time, of course, but enough to get a little "woo hoo!" high after we left.

Dawn has an older Ruger Mark II that we shoot with, and that I enjoy a lot. I would have rented that last night, but guess what the people in front of us requested? What's worse is that they beat us into the door by just a hair. If only I'd put my shoes on a little faster when we were leaving!

The person behind the counter seemed to know Tom quite well however and got his personal Browning Buckmark 5.5 Target gun out of the car for me. How nice is that!?

I almost want to say that I liked the Browning a little better too. The one I used had florescent sights, which was quite nice. But more importantly, the handle was wood, which I prefer over the metal of the Ruger.

The one thing that I didn't like, and this is probably a deal-killer, is that it jammed on me twice. (I think that's the right term.) I read online later that it seems to be much more particular about ammo than the Ruger.

I've been thinking about buying my own little .22 for range shooting, so I have my eye open for this stuff right now. But then again, when Dawn and I are shooting we usually trade back and forth between her Clark Custom Ruger 10/22 rifle, and the pistol. (That rifle is fun on the 100m range!) So maybe it isn't a big deal, but it would be more fun I think if we were on the same range when we were shooting.

But if I had my own gun, I might not have an excuse to rent my .45 USP when we go to the range. It's really not as fun as a very accurate .22 target pistol, and the ammo cost will kill you, but sometimes it's just fun to say, "Yeah, I can shoot a 45!"

I'm so mad at the Chinese gymnastics team. Maybe I should be mad at China in general. As has been widely speculated and written, I don't think for a moment that the girls from China are 16. And the AP just found an old story that referred to one of the girls as being much younger than she should have been, if she is to be 16 presently. As I understand it though, the matter will not be further investigated officially.

And the scoring! Mom, Tom, and I watched a girl from the US and a girl from China perform back to back where they both received nearly identical scores, and the Chinese girl had 5 or 6 balance checks compared to only a single from the US girl. And the Chinese girl even stumbled at the very beginning getting onto the bar.

I thought for a while that the scoring was off -- but not knowing the sport and such it's hard to be too certain. And in the men's competition, the Chinese were performing harder routines. But tonight with the women, and with the two performances I'm referencing, there wasn't any doubt. And to drive it home, one of the announcers started her commentary on the Chinese score asking, "Should I be confused?" And the announcers went on to discuss the strange score.

This is a terrible disservice to all the girls that competed fairly. But you know, this is also a disservice to every Chinese athlete that won their gold medal fair and square. And it's an embarrassment to China. Whenever I think of China and the 2008 Olympics, I'm going to think about how they had to cheat in gymnastics; they blew their moment.

Of course, this isn't the worst thing the Chinese government has ever done. And to that point, I have to wonder when a nation of a billion people finally decide that they want a government of the people, when they finally decide that they've had enough and want a democracy, when they grow tired of the censorship designed to keep them suppressed, how hard will it be -- how hard will it be for one billion people -- to kick their government in the ass and replace it with something better?

This girl is still missing a tooth.

This is a quick blog entry so that I can vent and not have to throw my coffee cup through Mom's window. I hate, hate, HATE buying software and then being told that I can't use the software on more than one computer.

I bought a copy of "GoodSync" to help with my backups, and apparently they have their activation service locked down to a single copy/installation.

This is like buying a hammer in Home Depot and being told that you can only use it in one room, or in one house.

And I won't even go into the problems I had after paying Adobe $1000 for Photoshop and Lightroom.

Something has to change. We're in the dark ages of intellectual property law. Piracy is bad and people should be paid for their work. But right now you have pirates on the one side, software companies and people like the RIAA on the other side, arguing like Bill O'Reilly might argue with Amy Goodman -- with reasonable usage rights and common sense solutions nowhere to be found.

How hard would it be to include, say, five activiations for a software package being used at home by a single family? Would they be losing money? I can tell you that I'm sure as hell not going to buy a second copy of GoodSync. And in fact, they've lost my business; I'll never upgrade with them.

And really, how many people are running around pirating copies of GoodSync? What do they think they're selling? Photoshop? And even Photoshop grants you a licence for two computers.

Cables, cables everywhere, and none the right one, I think. (That's a poor play off "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." I'll try harder next time!)

Despite having an entire bin full of cables and adapters, I can't find the power adapter for my battery charger.

One of the main reasons I bought my label machine was to keep track of adapters and what piece of electronics they go with. (I used to use a permanent marker for this, but it was always hard to read.) But I haven't taken the time to label all my existing cables and adapters, and now I seem to have lost another one.

This is pet peeve of mine. How hard would it be to have a product reference on any given adapter? Of if companies insist on being so damn cheap, couldn't they list the adapter's product number on their specification page for any given piece of electronics? But that is asking for a lot when many manufacture's don't even put the power requirements on their devices. At least with this batter charger I'm know that I'm looking for an adapter that outputs 800mA.

Rather than buy an adapter with variable output settings, I decided to "brick" this charger and replace it with the Mercedes of battery charges: the Powerex MH-9000. (The BC-900 is cheaper, and was a close second, but I can't risk the thing catching on fire with as many hours as I'll be using it; and apparently several people have had a problem with this.)

Together with my rechargeable 2900 mAh batteries, I'm going to try to save some money on AA battery purchases. I was too afraid to use rechargeables during a wedding, but what I'm hearing on various forums is that the NiMH rechargeables actually perform better -- so I'm going to give it a whirl. And these particular batteries seem to be among the best.

Tom, I'm glad that you're bringing back TC! I definitely would like to help on it. And I saw the "Mirrors" preview when Dawn and I saw X-files. I definitely got a giggle out of it. Too bad we're not still playing Warcraft. I have to say I miss my character quite a bit!

Speaking of X-files, it was terrible. Neither Dawn or I had high expectations. And Dawn was even hoping for a cheesy, silly movie. But it failed on every level. It wasn't even an "X File" so to speak. Not aliens. Not a creature feature. More like a horror movie. Except, we never really find out why they were doing what they were doing. The side story was random and seemed like it was stuck on with Elmer's glue. I could write a whole review about how bad the movie was, but suffice it to say it's a disappointment.

The fence is looking GREAT. For the first time since I bought the house, I like looking out my back window. This is really going to open the door for Dawn and I to do a bit of landscaping in the backyard -- and even spend some time back there grilling or what not.

The photography biz is SLOW right now. I'm pretty discouraged at the moment. I need to do a better job pounding the pavement and digging up some work.

This is a mini-update I suppose. --Not really a long blog entry, but too much for a twitter.

I've been tired and sluggish all day. And I would have been more productive if I'd sat around and done nothing all day.

The day wasn't without big events though. I purchased the materials for my fence today with Dawn. I'm guessing there will be another few hundred to put in the gates, but I spent about $5000 to completely fence the back yard.

By this time next week, or sooner hopefully, I'll have a finished fence.

It's a ton of money that I really didn't want to spend. But I can now more or less quit worry about my neighbor now, and more importantly, can really start to enjoy the backyard. And to have something off my mind that has been weighing down on me since I first about the house five years ago, is quite nice.

As for yesterday, we had tons of fun kayaking. It wasn't as hot as our previous trip and there are plenty of good pictures. We can across an alligator that I named "Fear of God." Usually I err on the side of "too close" when I'm taking pictures of gators. Not this guy. I was hugging the bank of on the other side of the river and holding my breath the whole time. Dawn guesses that he was easily 12 foot. And he may well have been more. He was definitely bigger than our kayaks.

The pictures don't really do him justice, except if you zoom into his jawline -- which is huge and fat for lack of a better description. Usually gators are what I would describe as "lean and mean," even when they're big. This guy looked like he just sat around on the shore and ate whole trees.

Speaking of pictures, I'll post a few once I'm done going through them. Eventually, I'm going to have to resurrect my personal Flickr gallery or start using a wider Blogger template for the pictures though. They don't look very good "all smooshed up."

Well, Mom and Tom are on their way to PA for a mini vacation. Mom is showing Tom where she grew up. Hard to believe that we really have never been there as adults. (Not that I fully qualify as an adult most days of the week.)

I'm out of my zone today and celebrated by picking up Soul Calibur 4.

Here's a mini-review of my two latest video games. Haze really does kind of suck. I didn't want to say it. And I it's not just because I keep getting eating alive in multi-player games. I think it finally hit me when I got to the big "plot twist" in the story line. All I could say was, "Seriously?" Banal doesn't really cover it.

And then of course multiplayer is kind of bland, etc., etc. I went online to see what other people were saying and all of the reviews -- all of the reviews -- were terrible. No more impulse video game shopping for me! Check the reviews first!

In a similar vein I took a chance with Soul Calibur. Like Haze, everyone expected this to be a great game. Unlike Haze, it seems to be live up to the expectation so far. There are no "combo moves" in the game; I'm still getting a little used to that. And the manual is like a myster novel with no climax or resolution. But it's fun so far. I'll try multiplayer once I finally get a handle on how the moves actually work together.

Got assigned a change for work at 5pm this Friday afternoon. I don't know what bugs me more: the fact that so many things get scheduled at the very last minute, or that I really am just an SA now. If I ever had to switch jobs I don't know how I would explain the transition from what I did before this job to what I'm doing now. "Well, I was an effective leader in charge of budgets, a data center that I built, a national network of doctors' offices that I built, and had my own team of technicians. Then I moved up to applying service patches on Windows servers and dealing with filespace issues..."

Last but not least, I'm taking the plunge with my fence finally. Not having a fence in the back yard has bugged me the entire time I've owned my house. And the situation got worse when my neightbor put up a fence that was well over my property line. (I didn't realize how much until recently.) Long story short: he took it down, I'm putting something up, and it's going to cost a fortune to do the entire thing.

I'll feel very, very good having it finally done though.