er mcgregor

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Today, possibly to brighten my chores, TNT decided to air my very favorite episode of ER (The Long Way Round, 2/13/97). That was very sweet of them 🙂

I have to say that there are many, many episodes of ER that I love. I’m not even sure why I like this one so much, but I just do.

Perhaps it is because it guest stars Ewan McGregor. More likely it is the amazing nursing skills of Carol Hathaway. Ewan and his ‘cousin’ hold up a convenience store with Nurse Hathaway and several others inside. Things turn bad and Ewan ends up killing the store owner. Carol does her best to help the wounded using MacGyver-like skills. She uses duct tape, and the straw from a juice box and the cardboard part of a tampon and KrazyGlue for various medical procedures. Very cool.

It is also interesting to see the progression of McGregor’s character… From a guy just needing a few bucks, to a murderer, to a victim. Although he is the “bad guy” you can’t help feeling sorry for him. He makes a couple bad decisions and they multiply and come back to haunt him.

Thank you TNT for providing a pleasant break in my day of house-cleaning!

Lighting up the night…

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The USB card reader that ***I recently purchased|http://prwdot.org/archives/002437.html*** is on the whole very handy. It’s small, light, portable, and has four slots which collectively handle six different types of cards. There is a LED light to indicate card access in each slot, and an additional light to indicate that it is receiving USB power. However, in my opinion, it has a design flaw.

This is what it looks like operating under normal circumstances:

ggg|grab_bag/P1010010|Normal circumstances|ggg

This is what it looks like when I’ve put the Mac to sleep:

ggg|grab_bag/P1010009|Sleeping|ggg

Yikes! I have to unplug that thing when I put the Mac to sleep before I go to bed. Otherwise, it lights up the whole apartment!

Christmas Present Revisited

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Dear Mom and Dad,

This letter is to inform you that this morning at 9:34 I was forced to open the last package of toliet paper that was given to us for Christmas. Please send more 🙂

Love,
Your Daughter

PS. The toothpaste, dishwasher detergent and canned ham are doing just fine!

PPS. I’m joking about you sending more. We’re on top of the situation!

Book in Hiding

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How often in life do we have the opportunity to retrace the footsteps of our ancestors? To walk where they walked, to eat where they ate… to hide where they hid? Daniel Asa Rose figured that it would come around only once in his lifetime, and so he set out with his two boys to follow the trail of his Jewish family as they escaped the Holocaust.

aaa|Hiding Places|0684854783|aaa is the account of that adventure with tales of the author’s childhood woven in. It is a story that one moment will have you laughing and the next crying. What I found especially touching was the way that Rose was able to paralell his own coming of age with that of his sons, and how this trip changed them all in the same, yet different ways.

This story is also the story of a Belgian Jewish family and their escapes from the Nazis. We learn how they used diamonds to buy themselves fake papers, how they hid in chimneys and attics, how their children were killed… and how they survived. It is a refreshingly different kind of Holocaust story, with all the gruesome details intact.

The themes of family and fatherhood run deep through this book and are its shining qualities.

Need a new mouse?

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Anyone who’s in the market for a new mouse, whether for a Mac or a PC, should check out this deal. CompUSA is ***offering the Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer for $14.95|http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=316297&pfp=SEARCH&tabtype=rb***, for this week only (April 3 – 9). This is only for the “Crimson Flame” colored model. The mouse’s retail price is normally $49.99 (at places like Staples, for example), and CompUSA is currently carrying it at a discounted $29.99, but this week only is slashing another 50% off of the price.

I actually purchased this mouse today, not because I was in the market for a new mouse, but because I am in the market for a mouse that is compatible with the ***TrendWare KVM|http://www.trendnet.com/products/TK-206i.htm*** which we ***recently acquired|http://prwdot.org/archives/002459.html***. This mouse has a USB -> PS/2 converter, which in theory would allow it to work with the KVM, which only has PS/2 ports. Well, it did sort of work – but unfortunately there is some issue that causes the KVM to drop every other mouse click. Very annoying. I know it’s not a problem with the mouse itself, because it worked flawlessly when I connected it directly via USB to both our Mac and our PC. So, I took it back to CompUSA, since I already have two working mice, and I don’t really need a third one – just one that works with the KVM. For now, we’ll continue having two separate mice hooked up to each computer… but obviously this defeats the “M” part of “KVM”. I’m going to contact TrendWare to ask about PS/2 adapter compatability. It may simply be that the KVM doesn’t work 100% with PS/2 adapters. Oh well. Update: I’ve confirmed by searching TrendWare’s support database that the TK-206i KVM does not work with USB->PS/2 adapters. So if we want it to work, we’ll have to use a genuine PS/2 mouse. Anybody have one they’d like to donate?

In any case, it is a very nice mouse if you’re hooking it directly up to a Mac or a PC. The wireless feature is not the Bluetooth kind, but rather the old-fashioned 27MHz radio frequency kind… but it still works very well. Highly recommended.

Spring forward? Oops.

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For the first time ever in my memory, I forgot to set the clocks forward an hour for Daylight Savings Time before we went to bed last night.

I woke up early, before the alarm this morning. I went into the computer room, and in the course of my morning blog-readings, I read ***Mike’s blog entry about DST|http://refugeisland.net/archives/2005/04/02/daylight-savings-time/***. Yikes! I hadn’t even noticed that the clock on my computer was an hour ahead of the alarm clock in our bedroom, since I was still in a foggy sleepy state. Well, I immediately went to wake up Becky so that she could get to work on time, and I went to change all of our clocks around. Thankfully, I woke up early enough so that we won’t miss anything.

Yikes!

My Code Archive

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Over the years, I’ve written a bunch of Perl and PHP code for my own personal use. Some of it might be useful to others, some of it might be useless. Some of it doesn’t even work. It might be educational for folks who want to learn Perl or PHP, or need examples of how to code something.

Anyway, I wanted to put it all in one place so that people could find it and use it, if it is of any use. I’ve had fun writing up this archive, because I’ve come across some code that I wrote a long time ago, when I was ignorant of better ways to do things… but interesting code nonetheless. If you do end up using any of this code, take a minute and leave a comment on this entry. I’d love to know what folks are using this stuff for.

I’ll try to keep this entry up-to-date if I add or remove any code from the archive.

Enjoy!
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