The Ultimate Downpour

When I showed up for ultimate frisbee tonight around 8 PM it was already raining steadily, but it was warm out so it felt pretty good. I joined the game, and after about 10 or 15 minutes it started raining pretty hard. I wasn't sure whether we would keep playing but we did. Then after another 10 minutes or so the real monsoon showed up and we got a torrential downpour. I literally couldn't see the other players.

We were playing at a park in Tempe, and the field acted somewhat like a retention basin. By the time the rain eased up we were playing in somewhere between 12 and 18 inches of water. But we kept on playing. It felt like I was playing with ankle weights on, but it was actually a lot of fun diving and sliding around in the muck.

 The photos were taken toward the end of the game, long after the rain died down and some of the water drained off. That's me in bright yellow.

Citizen Kane

"Rosebud..."

I finally saw Citizen Cane, the so-called "greatest movie ever made". I thought it was interesting. But I think by "greatest movie" what they mean is "movie with the camera work and effects most ahead of it's time", or "movie involved in the most intriguing hollywood subplot in the 1940s", or "movie that we most like to discuss in cinematography 101". They definitely don't mean "most enjoyable movie". I don't think it was as enjoyable as say, Ironman 2 (the last movie that I saw), or as enjoyable as just about any enjoyable movie. In fact I found it annoying that they mapped out the entire plot (except the rosebud thing) right at the beginning. But apparently it has deep focus photography and nifty fake ceilings made of cloth. Isn't that nice.

I did find the whole story about Orson Welles battling it out with William Randolph Heast pretty fascinating though. My previous knowledge of Hearst was based mostly on the brief mention of him by Joseph Pulitzer in Newsies.

"Rosebud..."

I'm Undecided On Proposition 100

On May 18 we in Arizona will vote on Proposition 100. If passed, it will add a one cent sales tax, supposedly for only three years, that will generate about a billion dollars a year to help shore up Arizona's massive budget deficit.

On the one hand, I'm usually against any raising of taxes. And "temporary" taxes have a tendency to become permanent. On the other hand, Arizona really needs the money, and if they don't get it, there will probably be serious cuts to education and public services, among other things. On the other hand, why do they need the money? The answer is simply because they let the budget get out of control when times were good.

The tax increase is essentially a bailout. The state government went on a wild spending spree, and now judgment day has come, and they want the taxpayers to make up for their folly. I'm generally opposed to bailouts on principle, unless they involve bailing me personally out of jail. But fortunately I've never been in jail. I believe in the free market, and letting things work themselves out. So I should probably be opposed to this bailout. However, I hate to see education get cut. That could cause some serious problems for our future workforce, and our ability to attract employers. And think of the children.

I feel a little bad for the governor, because she's trying to clean up somewhat else's mess (JANET?). But I'm not sure if raising taxes is the right way to clean it up.

I received a booklet from the Secretary of State with a bunch of "for" and "against" arguments. Let's see who's arguing...

FOR: Looks like we've got lots of education people, public service groups, blah blah blah. OK you don't want your funding cut, I get it. But also the Chambers of Commerce are for it. Interesting...

AGAINST: Various individuals and politicians... oh what's this, the Goldwater Institute is against it? I oppose any opinion of the Goldwater Institute, also on principle. Those nut jobs are always trying to destroy progress and keep the state from attracting new business. (Hello! You have to give incentives to businesses if you want them to come here and provide jobs! Please get a clue!)

OK, so based on the opinion pages, I'm tempted to vote for it just because the Chambers are for it and the Goldwater psychos are against it. But it's still a bailout, which I hate to see. I'm still undecided.

Sound it out!

My brother asked my 5 year old niece to make a list of fun things to do, and this is what she came up with, as spelled by her. I love it!

I was able to translate each one, can you? It's kind of like that Mad Gab game...

1. go swimeeg
   
2. go to a reschot
   
3. woch a movy
   
4. hav fun
   
5. play the spanish game
   
6. ol uv us get a penny
   
7. be nise
   
8. play with eech uther
   
9. go bulleeg
   
10. go to the pork
    
11. play gams
    
12. eet canndy
    
13. go to chuckee cheese's
    
14. bee happy
    
15. by donut's
    
16. eet food
    
17. mak lemenad
    
18. get lecerish
    
19. do a pordy
    
20. mac stuff
    
21. blow bloo's
    
22. mace a cayk
    
23. go to disnlee land
    
24. have a pnicnik
    
25. play with zeeko
    
26. if someone left, mak a spis
    
27. go to the museeume
    
28. go on a chresher hunt
    
29. jres up
    
30. go to sleep
    
31. jreec lemunad
    

Firefox versus Google Chrome

I love a lot of things about Firefox, including the extensions and the general slickness and innovativeness (is that a word?). But I have 2 problems with it:

1. It takes forever to load.
   
2. It's a huge memory hog.

I hadn't tried Google Chrome since it first came out a couple years ago, but after seeing Google actually running commercials to promote it, I thought I would give it another try.

Chrome is a very slick piece of software, and it did solve problem number one -- it's very snappy to start up. The memory hog issue is not quite so clear cut -- Chrome does use less memory initially, but unlike Firefox it seems to use separate processes for separate tabs (or something), and after opening several tabs it starts to hog memory almost as badly as Firefox, if you add up the memory used by all the separate processes.

Chrome of course had a few items in which it didn't measure up to Firefox, although the principal downsides that I found in Chrome are really not in the program itself, but rather in the way it interacts with various complementary software that I use.

1. My first issue is with ad blocking. Firefox has an awesome Adblock extension that keeps ads from loading. Chrome has a similar extension, but it doesn't work as well. I can't tell if Chrome's ad blocker allows the ads to load first before blocking them, or what exactly the problem is, but it's not as efficient in blocking the ads as Firefox's ad blocker.
   
   
2. My second issue with Chrome (again it's not really with Chrome itself), is how it interacts with del.icio.us bookmarks. In Firefox, the keyword shortcuts for my bookmarks, which are created through del.icio.us, just work (for example, I can set it up so typing "fb" in the address bar will load Facebook.com). In Chrome, it's very odd, but the keyword shortcuts seem to work only some of the time. Sometimes they load the bookmark corresponding to the shortcut, and sometimes they don't do anything.
   
   
3. The third problem that I have with Chrome actually is Chrome's "fault". The problem is with the saving of passwords. A lot of sites, after you log in successfully, will redirect you to a new page. Chrome doesn't handle that situation. Chrome pops up the "do you want to save your password" dialog as expected, but then the dialog disappears immediately after you log in, as soon as the page redirects, so you don't have time to save your password. And there's no way to enter a username and password into the password manager manually. Firefox handles this issue easily, by keeping the dialog open across multiple pages, until you either respond or the dialog times out.
   
   
4. The fourth issue: Firefox's address bar is smarter than Chrome's. Firefox does a better job of predicting what I want after typing a few letters than Chrome does.
   

Conclusion: This is kind of a cop out conclusion, but I really like both Firefox and Chrome. I wish they would fix their little annoying issues, but overall they're both pretty impressive. I'm having trouble deciding which one I like better.

To Kill a Mockingbird

I had the book To Kill A Mockingbird on my shelf at home during all my growing up years, and I never read it. I finally picked it up yesterday, and didn't put it down until I finished it late last night. It is definitely a classic, deserving of all the accolades... but I felt like I knew the plot already. I think I've seen at least 3 or 4 movies with suspiciously similar plots, as well as different TV shows and maybe even other books that borrowed generously from it.

Some additional observations:

• I am surprised that I have never heard the name Atticus Finch before. He is such an iconic figure, in such a famous book, I would have expected to know the name. But maybe I had heard it before without noticing, like when you learn a new word in a foreign language and all of a sudden you start hearing the word all over and you realize that you've heard the word quite often but just never knew it before.
  
• If you were in a high school English class, and you had to answer the question "Who is the Mockingbird?" I think you could go with just about any of the main characters. Although Scout identifies Boo Radley explicitly, and Tom is the other obvious one, you could also make a case for Atticus, Jem, Scout, and even Gill.
  
• It's amazing that the author, Nelle Harper Lee, only published one book. Talk about batting 1000.
  
• I really hate racists. I think we should put them in their own schools and make them eat at their own lunch counters.
  
• I need to ban myself from reading books, it takes up too much time.
  

The Last Pan Pizza

When I was in high school one of my favorite foods was Pizza Hut Meat Lovers Pizza, on the "Pan" style crust. In recent years, however, I haven't had any Pizza Hut pizza, because I've become somewhat OCD about overly greasy foods. I don't eat Big Macs and various other greasy foods anymore either.

Today in my junk mail I got a pizza hut flyer, and they were offering that deal for any pizza, any size, any crust, any toppings for $10. I thought, "Hmmm... maybe I'll give it another try." So after my ultimate game I called up and ordered one. I purposely got the Pan style crust, just to challenge my OCD-ness and see if I could handle it.

The guy on the phone asked what toppings I wanted. I said "All except anchovies." Well it turns out they don't even have anchovies anymore. What's the world coming to, when a man can't get anchovies on his pizza? Not that I wanted them, they're really disgusting, but it just seems like I should be able to get them if I want them, right? Anyway, I asked for everything, but as he was going through the list I said no to Italian snausages, mushrooms, bacon, and tomatoes. So what I ended up with was pepperoni, ham, green peppers, onions, pineapple, beef, chicken, black olives, jalapenos, and extra cheese. (By the way, who had the bright idea to use red onions? I'm sure they're just trying to be more colorful, but to me red onions taste like white onions with a strip of purple scotch tape taped on them.)

When the pizza showed up, it was pretty heavy with toppings... and grease. Way more Supreme than a Supreme. I couldn't even eat it with my hands, I had to use a knife and fork. It was pretty good, but WAY too greasy. I ate a few pieces anyway, but I think that's the last time I'll ever have the Pan style crust. It's just too much.

Adios, Pan pizza, we had a good run.

Chuck versus Psych

I watched several episodes of these 2 shows, Chuck and Psych, while I was at home over Christmas. And I recently caught up with a few more recent episodes on hulu. Here's my take.


First Chuck: I really really hated the first episode of the new season. At the end of the previous season, they had a lot of interesting plot lines going, with Chuck and Sarah hooking up, and Morgan pursuing his lifelong dream of being a chef in Hawaii, Chuck turning into Neo, and even Jeffster hitting the big time. For the first episode of the new season the writers got together and asked, "How can we undo all the interesting things that were going on and put it back to where we can have the same plot in every episode again?" So they undid everything in a completely contrived manner, that was really lame. The most incredibly lame part was that Sarah invited Chuck to run away with her and he said "No thanks". Because, based on the Chuck character that was created in the series up to that point, there is NO CHANCE that he would have ever turned down that opportunity. In fact, that was his whole goal, to get with Sarah and try to lead a normal as possible non-spy life. But the writers couldn't let that happen, because they had to keep the same old plot line going: Chuck working at the Buy More, Chuck going on a mission, Chuck looking like a cross-eyed idiot and flashing on stuff. The show feels like it's on a treadmill -- no one can ever progress in relationships, jobs, or anything because they can't leave the set of the show. I understand that they can't depart too far from the basics of the show, but they shouldn't make it feel so contrived.

Psych on the other hand is still pretty good, even though they're slumming on the USA Network. It suffers a little from treadmill syndrome as well, and the plots are often silly, but the humorous playful banter makes up for it. The plot doesn't matter too much, as long as they keep the banter and the funny one liners going. Here's a good one from Lassiter, while consoling Juliet: "All romance ends in despair... or death, but mostly despair... Gut... Wrenching... Despair."

Winner: Psych!

More Sandwich Talk

This is a photo response to Benj's post about sandwiches.

The Best Off-Site Backup Solution

I did some research on backup solutions recently, so I thought I would share some of what I learned.

I already had some processes in place for backing up my files locally. Of those, I think Norton Ghost is the best, and PC Backup is lousy. Of the free solutions, GBridge is interesting.

But with all my backup data in the same house as my primary data, I was worried about losing everything in case of a fire, power surge, or some other catastrophe. So I checked out some options for off-site backup. I found a number of options that look like decent solutions. But I ended up signing up for one called IDrive.

I have 100 Gigs or so of data that I wanted to back up. It's all on a local network drive that I share among various local computers. IDrive will let you back up and store up to 150 gigs of data for only $5 a month! It's supposed to be $5 for one computer, but they support network drives, so you can put all the important data from all of your local computers on a network drive or drives, and then you can run the backup from one computer that has access to the network drives, and that way you'll back up everything important from all the local computers.

$5 a month was a lot cheaper than most of the other ones I looked at, and it seemed like a no brainer, although I've since read that Mozy will provide unlimited backup for $5 a month, which seems crazy. I don't know if they allow for backing up of network drives or not. I've also noticed a few other comparable options in that same price range, so I guess IDrive wasn't quite as far ahead of the pack as I initially thought.

But for now I'm definitely sticking with it since I've already got my data uploaded. It took me over a week to upload 100 gigs of data. It was not entirely painless. I was running the uploading application on an old computer with 384 Megs of RAM, and the application kept freezing. I upgraded to 1 gig of RAM, and now it works much better. After getting all the data uploaded initially, I now have it set to update new or modified files once a day. You can also set it to back up continuously, but I haven't tried that out yet.

Accessing the backed up data on idrive.com is straightforward, although it takes a couple of minutes to load (at least for my account with 100 gigs in it). But once it's loaded everything is pretty snappy. The files are displayed in an intuitive hierarchical manner like Windows Explorer, and you can save or open them by clicking on the file name.

The one thing I haven't tried is doing a full Restore. Hopefully I'll never have to.

UPDATE: Since posting this, I heard from a reliable source that "Live Drive is the best". Looking at the livedrive website, it does look like they have a pretty unbelievable deal: $7 a month for unlimited data, AND I think they're indicating unlimited computers! (I'm not for sure on that.) I haven't tried it out but it looks pretty sweet.

Why Won't Firefox Remember My Username?

I was about to get a little bit miffed, but I finally figured out why firefox wouldn't remember (auto-complete) my username on a couple of sites that I use constantly. Turns out that if you have more than one username saved for a given site, then firefox doesn't know which one to fill in, so it doesn't fill in anything. That doesn't explain why it wouldn't do the normal auto-complete (after I typed a few letters of the username I wanted and then hit the down arrow), but it's good enough that I can stop gnashing my teeth for the moment. To get rid of the unwanted usernames, go to Tools -> Options -> Security -> Saved Passwords, and then find the username you don't want and delete it.

PS... Boise State is the national champ! Not only do I not recognize the BCS "champion", but I disqualify them from consideration for taking part in that tainted monopolistic nonsense! On another note, I can't believe Colt McCoy got knocked out and cost me my College Bowl Mania championship!