Claire's blog

And 27 Confessions Of A Former Circuit City Worker… Read on for the rest. The Seam Carving working demo is interesting, but the Mexican Trucks now rolling past the border without a check are downright scary.  We bomb 2 countries for 5 years to prevent terror, then turn around and let trucks drive all over the country without any kind of inspection?! (more…)

Simpsons: Trippiest.  LiveJournal deleting people — users “responsible for content of links”. FBI.  Norfolk armed protest.  Bush. (more…)

IF YOUR’E DRIVING DRUNK, *DON’T STOP*, KEEP DRIVING DRUNK!!! SLEEPING IS ILLEGAL!! DON’T DO THE RIGHT THING!.  Anyone willing to go to prison for 1 year for $20,000?  A BOOK!  Jocks break software engineer’s neck for not moving out of their chair or some such stupid idiocy.  This much, and more, on Sick Sad World… (more…)

So, at the request of my doctor, I switched medications. I had to wait for my old medication to stop working (a few months), then when problems started, I made my appointment to get new medication. That was about 5 weeks ago. It was over a month wait for a damn specialist appointment. Then, yesterday, they called me to inform me that my “doctor wont be there that day” (they only have one specialist per area?) and that I could get an October appointment. TWO fucking months. NO fucking way. I told them that was unacceptable. They told me they would find an outside referral and call me back. They never did. I emailed my primary doctor and informed her that the system isn’t working; get me back on my old medication, this isn’t worth the hassle. DO NOT USE KAISER BENEFITS. IF YOU ARE AN H.R. REP, THIS IS THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COMPANY. (more…)

I now have 1,760 mail filters on my gmail account. And they seriously wanted to initially limit it to 20?!?! I’d share them, but people would whine about their names and emails being publically posted, and that’s somewhat understandable.

I got a record 838 views yesterday. But I don’t know why. The top post was only 86. I guess I am finally having enough posts out there that many, many, many google results are leading people here…

WTF: Market Crash Forecast Suggests New 9/11 … Very interesting stuff. Uh oh! Should I worry? Originally from Dow Jones Financial News. Pointed coverage at Marc Parent blog. Also: New York cops defraud 911 familes. UK gun crimes have since 1997 firearms ban. FOR CAROLYN: If You Wear Crocs, You’re an Idiot. (I don’t necessarily agree… In fact, peoples’ disdain makes me want Crocs that much more…)

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I will so be there. http://www.MCChris.com.

I’m not expecting a definitive answer from anyone, but does anyone have case suggestions?  I have decided against going to a recycle center to get a case, after being reminded of all the problems we had with Carolyn’s used ($4) case. Darn, it was a good idea (Sorry Compn!).  I need something that can house 6 harddrives and 2 optical drives.  A little bling wouldn’t hurt either.

WATCH OUT CABLE-MODEM USERS: Comcast Cuts Off Heavy Internet Users. SpeakEasy did something similar to me… They had a pre-sales discussion where they told me I could download as much as I wanted (screenshots of the chat below), 24/7, with no repercussions, then told me if I downloaded more than 100G in a month, I would be terminated. They even tried to use the $300 termination fee against me, as if I would pay that for them terminating the contract. Now, Comcast as at it as well, only this time — you aren’t even told how much you can[‘t] download…. Amazing bullshit. Everyone go to http://www.BroadBandReports.com and type in your phone number. You will be pleasantly surprised by the choices you have.
Other stuff too… Read on for the rest, including Bizarre dermatologic lesions. (more…)

Those files have been moving on and off since Thursday. Heh heh. Anyway… I might just go against what all my previous decisions have been based on and just build a computer from scratch myself. I’m starting to realize that the effort of compromise is far more painful than the effort of doing it yourself. This is true in areas other than the computer as well. Many areas. Maybe it would have been easier to just upgrade my old computer.. But.. I need a case that can physically contain all my stuff; the other wasn’t cutting it. I’m eyeing the Abit IP35 motherboard, which has optical digital audio out (7.1) on the damn motherboard, as well as two ethernet ports, 6 internal & 2 external SATA harddrive connectors. And probably an Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 CPU. Yawn.

RoboCop: Coming Soon to a City Near You. IRAQ whistleblowers facing incredible consequences. (more…)

Joggers drop flour to mark route; charged with felony; “decontamination” ensues; paranoid fucks.  Disable Windows Key via registry. (more…)

It’s the weekend and I’m getting nothing done!
Click for some links. (more…)

New problem arose last night… I noticed that on the TV-out of the “new” computer, the entire right side of the screen is cut off.  You can’t even see the tray.  When watching stuff with subtitles, it is very obvious that you are missing the right 8% of the screen or so.

So I activate the ATI Catalyst control panel.. and… IT NEVER COMES UP.  Of course, this is the first time (since I installed it 2 days ago) that it doesn’t come up.  And rebooting didn’t fix it. And that is the ONLY place you can change screen orientation — you can’t do it in control panel.  Not with these drivers.

I guess my only option is to completely uninstall my video card drivers, re-install, and hope it comes up that time.  Christ!

So, last night the 750G #2 and 500G drives dropped off of Carolyn’s computer.  Two different SATA drives on two different SATA controllers, both of which still have one drive per controller still working.  This basically eliminates all the TV shows we want to watch, forcing us to choose different things to watch.  I had just moved the music off of it, to the “new” computer, about an hour before the drive ceased to exist.  I hope Carolyn’s computer didn’t kill them, or she will have to be doing a LOT of dvd restoring for YEARS of our television watching.  I guess we are destined to NOT be able to have all our harddrives in a computer until we buy a NEW computer.  PuegetSystems is expensive.  I need to move on a new computer.. NOW.  I really don’t want to have to spend $3,000 on it though.

I just saw Carolyn going through a stack of papers.  I thought it was her “filing todo” pile.  As she pages through, she gets to a page that isn’t a page — it’s a frikkin’ PCI card.  Just organized logically as a… page.   Verrrrry interesting.

I WANT MY WINDOWS KEY TO WORK GODDAMNIT… wtf. No, Control-Escape isn’t good enough for me!! It was my meta key for winamp…. I don’t want to use the stupid buttons. I like normal keys, damnit.

Girder sucks, but it’s all I know. I can’t believe that Girder under XP can’t capture the Windows keyboard, but Girder under 2K can. Laziness has prevented me from downgrading XP to 2K, but more and more, I just find more things I hate about XP. Now that my XP machine has become my primary machine… I am half-tempted to re-install windows. But, in the interest of the short-term, I will try to live with this crap. I have for 2.5 years already; just not as my primary computer. (more…)

Okay, we made the decision to move all the music from Carolyn’s computer (called Magic), where it was recovered off its original 120G drive, onto her newest 750G drive. Since Hell is now in charge of playing music now that Storm has died, it makes sense for the music to be on that computer. Otherwise, everytime Carolyn reboots, the music will stop. (more…)