Cavortis

Some timeless advice from the SNL team.

Wife: Ok, so what if I want something but I dont' have any money

CP: You don't buy it.

Husband: Well let's say I don't have enough money to buy something. Should I buy it anyways?

CP: No-o-o-o.

Husband: Now I'm really confused!

CP: It's a little confusing at first.

Wife: Well what if you have the money, can you buy something?

CP: Yes.

Wife: Now take the money away. Same story?

CP: Nope. You shouldn't buy stuff when you don't have the money.

Husband: I think I got it. I buy something I want, and then hope that I can pay for it right?

CP: No. You make sure you have money, then you buy it.

Husband: Oh, THEN you buy it. But shouldn't you buy it before you have the money?

CP: No-o-o-o.

Wife: Why not?

Tonight, Jay Leno made fun of Bush for calling Vladimir Putin's wife "Mrs. Putina." However, the joke's on Jay: "Mrs. Putina" is correct. Stupid 'mer'cans.

Since Hilary got an iPod, I've been using iTunes under Windows to manage my music collection. One of the things that has annoyed me, however, is the lack of support for Ogg Vorbis (or Ogg Anything) in iTunes. Because, you see, I've imported much of my music collection under linux (using Grip and Banshee), which uses Ogg Vorbis as the default encoding due to legal issues with MP3.

So when I found Xiph.org's QuickTime Components, which includes an Ogg decoder for Quicktime/iTunes, I was thrilled. Finally, I was able to import all those Ogg files I had ripped under linux.

But if it's not one annoyance, it's another. After installing the Xiph.org components, the import went nicely; however, none of the metadata was imported with the songs. *sigh*

So, I searched around some more and found a few different tools to fix Ogg metadata. Of course, the first several I tried didn't work – most just timed out or threw weird javascript errors. I finally came across this iTunes Ogg metadata importer, which works nicely if you follow the directions. You just have to create a playlist called "OGG" (don't know if capitalization is important or not) and send all your Ogg tracks to it.

BTW, Xiph.org has downloads for Mac (universal) as well.

On Dave's post about portable apps he starts out by linking to a tip for using Portable Sunbird with iCal. However, you need to sign up for a free WebDav service, upload your calendar, and then access it. Seems like too much work.

As an alternative, I think I might start using Google Calendar. It supports XML and iCal syndication, and you don't need a separate WebDav service. I found a HOWTO: Subscribe to a Google Calendar using iCal over at Digg. Looks easy enough. A quick browse through the settings shows that you can import (upload) iCal calendars files as well.

The obvious advantage of this over the tip Dave found is integration with other Google services, such as gmail.

This weekend we went to Dave and Char's for their son's 2nd birthday (and to visit them too ;)). It was a fun weekend overall, except that it rained, meaning we were pretty well confined to their apartment.

Anyway, we left yesterday (Sunday) about 4:00 or so in the afternoon. It was still raining, and we wanted to make sure we'd get home at a decent hour given the conditions.

So we drove along, through Hartford and up I-91. The rain kept coming, and the roads were pretty nasty.

Suddenly, just before Exit 40 in Windsor, CT, about 15 yards ahead of us a car in the far left lane fishtailed left and then swerved right. At that point there are four lanes plus an "Exit Only" lane for Exit 40; the car crossed all four lanes, doing a full clockwise spin. It hit the right post of the exit sign and slid through the slick, triangular patch of grass between the highway and the exit ramp, leaving long, muddy tire tracks in the wet ground.

Having slowed nearly to a stop already, I asked Hil, "Should we see if he's alright?"

"Yeah."

She pulled over to the median (we had been in third lane, numbering from the right) shortly beyond where the card had gone of the road. I jumped out and ran back, not knowing whether the driver and any passengers was hurt. As I did, the driver's door opened, and I saw a hand poke out and wave. By the time I got to the door, the driver had swung his legs out and was just sitting there looking dazed.

I asked if he was alright, and he said he thought so. He trembled somewhat as he spoke. I asked if he needed to call anyone. He replied that he wasn't sure what he should do – should he call the police? some friends?

After a few minutes of making sure he was okay, I walked back to our minivan to get a paper and pen. While there, Hil told me that she had dialed 911, and the operator told her that the incident had already been reported by several people. Cops were on the way. I wrote down our names and cell phone number, and walked back to give it to the guy, telling him that if he needed anyone as a witness for insurance or a police report or anything, to give us a call.

At that point (probably only about five minutes after the original incident), there was still some smoke coming from the wheel-wells of his car. He wondered if the cause was something else. He tried starting his car, and it turned over with no hassle. We looked under the hood and couldn't find any visible signs of smoke there. I touched the driver's side tire and it was fairly warm, but not burning hot. After a few more minutes, the smoke was gone.

It took the first cop car quite awhile to arrive. It was a City of Windsor unit and he almost drove past us on the exit ramp. When we saw him, we walked over and talked for a few minutes. The guy told the cop what had happened and the cop replied that we would need to wait for the state police, since it was an interstate highway, and that the guy would probably have to pay for the sign.

I went back to our minivan to update Hil. It was still raining out (though, not extremely hard), and cars continue to drive past us at a pretty good clip. I thought briefly that it would really suck if the same thing happened to someone else while we were still there.

While waiting for the state police to arrive, I realized at one point that I had never introduced myself or asked the driver's name. So, I remedied that. He gave his name as Andy and said he was the director of a camp in Western Mass. called Shire Village. He was driving there after having been at a cousin's wedding in NYC earlier that day.

(When describing Shire Village, I thought Andy had deemed it a "hippie village" – to which I nodded and smiled knowingly with, "Ahhh, Shire Village"; he just grinned back and said, "Exactly" – but the website doesn't really give that impression. It seems quite similar to other childrens' camps I've seen. Maybe I misheard him.)

Anyway, the state police showed up a few minutes later. After spending about a half hour in drizzling rain, Andy and I both were getting a little anxious to leave (as was Hil in the van – fortunately both of our girls were asleep), but I didn't want to ditch him either. You never know how cops are going to react. You'd like to think that they'd take one look at the roads – it had been raining all weekend, remember – but there's always that one jerk who will give a person a hard time. I wanted to make sure that Andy had at least one person to back up his story.

Fortunately, when the state cop arrived, the accident report took about five seconds to complete. Here's how the conversation went between Andy and the cop:

The Cop

Are you hurt?

Andy

No.

The Cop

Is the car driveable?

Andy

Yes.

The Cop

Ok, you can go. Drive slower.

Andy

That's it?

And that was that. The cop nodded to me, and I gave a "ok, cool" shrug of the shoulders. I shook Andy's hand and said I was glad he was alright.

Hil drove slower after that too.

An interesting, contemporary look at the tactics Nazis used leading up to WWI.

Secret Armies. The New Technique of Nazi Warfare.

Our town still has a drive-in theater, and we go there every now and then because:

• it's cheaper than most movie places – $6 for adults, $3 for kids, and you get two movies
• the kids can play around before the movies start
• you can bring your own snacks and not be threatened with ejection

The drive-in has two screens that play different movies each week, so there's quite frequently some combina...

Anyone up for the challenge? (Speedo? Jerry?) I tried creating one back in the day, but it just didn't come out right.

P.S. Consider it pro bono work ;)

...

So, I signed up for a myspace account. Don't expect anything fancy – but don't expect anything childish either. However, you can expect the easy sound of Glen Phillip's voice when you make the jump.

Speaking of which, does anybody know how to get the bigger audio player to show up on myspace? If you go to Glen Phillips' space you'll see he's got a big freakin' player, where you c...

I made a new page to hold my reading list for this year. It includes books I've read (or listened to, i.e., audiobooks), am reading and plan to read during 2006. Some of these I listed in my Books to Read in 2006.

As far as progress goes, I'm not really where I'd like to be.

• I've listened to (as opposed to reading) Atlas Shrugged, but I'm not sure t...