Seriously?

The wife an I went to the movies this afternoon. We went to see This Means War. It's a really fun movie. There's some good action and a LOT of laughter. It's a good balance between action flick and chick flick.

But that's not what I'm posting about. I'm posting about one of the previews.

The preview came up and appeared to be a period piece. There were shots of Abraham Lincoln and it seemed like it was going to be about him but something was off. They didn't seem to be playing it as a dramatically interpreted biopic. I couldn't put my finger on it but it just wasn't right.

The final scene of the trailer had someone on top of a moving train swinging a long-handled ax around like he was Darth Maul. Then I realized the someone was Abraham Lincoln. WTH? Fade to black and shimmer and flare in the signature of Abraham Lincoln.

The ENTIRE auditorium burst into laughter as the words "Vampire Hunter" appeared in red text under the signature. I'm not making this up. Check out the entry at IMDB. Watch the trailer while you're there.

GAAAAAAAHHH!!!

I used to enjoy surfing the "weird stuff" section of eBay. This is where you would find things like time machines, ghost mirrors and Virgin Mary cheese sandwiches.

I haven't been there in a while and boy was it a shock when I got there. Most of it is bondage and S&M toys. Why are these not in the adult section?

It Finally Happened

It always does. I don't know why but it always does. It happens at work. It happens among friends. It happens with people I just met. But it always happens eventually.

One of my coworkers just called me "Joe Joe"

Another Reason To Be Suspicious Of Microsoft (as if you needed it)

I'm trying to embed some wmv files into a PowerPoint presentation. They play fine on my PC but won't play on another PC. I figured out that what I am doing is simply linking to the files and not placing the actual movies into the presentation. So I pulled up help and typed in 'embed wmv.'

The first item that was listed looked promising. It read, 'Troubleshoot issues with sounds, movies, and links in your PowerPoint presentation.' Ah, just what I was looking for. But instead of being directed to a Microsoft KB article or even to a Microsoft forum, I was directed to a third-party site called pptfaq.com.

Well, presumably MS knew it was there because they had to integrate it into their help system, right? The only problem was that it had inaccurate information. One of the first things the article does is to point you to another site that has a free add-in for embeding movies. The only problem is that the developer of the add-in has decided that he now wants to get paid for his efforts.

Normally, at the end of every help article, Microsoft provides a feedback box. Was this article helpful? Care to comment? But since this was not a Microsoft site, there was no feedback form. Is MS now endorsing third-party help sites? did this just get picked up via an integrated web search?

Trustworthy Computing... right.

I Don't Get It

I went to work again on figuring out why my pages aren't rendering right in IE. I deleted one line of code and took a look. It looks fine. I put the code back in. It still looks fine. I'm just going to go with it.

Where's The Reset Switch?

You know how your body has natural rhythms? For instance, you know there are certain times of the day you will feel hungry (one of my hotspots is 10:00am). There are certain times you will feel sleepy. There are certain times when your brain seems to be operating a maximum efficiency. That sort of thing.

Mine are all out of whack. Things just aren't happening when they usually do. It's like systemic jet lag but each system has flown to a different time zone. Maybe I'm coming down with something?

Accidental Discoveries

If you put a bunch of Hershey's Kisses in the bottom of a jar full of individually-wrapped Pep-O-Mint or Wint-O-Green life savers for apx. 3 weeks, the chocolate takes on a minty flavor.

He's Dead, Jim

I killed someone over the weekend. It had to be done. He showed up out of nowhere and was simply causing too much trouble. He was around all week last week and he was as cranky as the day is long, snapping at anything and everything. I tried to cheer him up but he wasn't interested in doing ANYTHING so, in the end, I simply did my best to ignore him and mask his presence.

By the weekend, I had simply had enough and I killed him. He took a long time to die. The whole process started on Saturday morning and he didn't expire until sometime Monday morning. I don't regret it. Not one bit. Don't try to make me feel guilty about it, either. I bet you've wanted to kill your "evil twin" more than once but just didn't have the cajones to do it.

The only downside to this is that evil twins are like trick birthday candles. You never know when they'll get a spark and jump back to life. Let's hope it takes a very long time.

The 2008 Year In Review - Personal Edition

Instructions: Go to the FIRST BLOG of each month for the past year. Copy and paste the LAST SENTENCE of each blog. That is your Year in Review.

January 2008: Referring to the RIAA's pronouncement that the copies a consumer had ripped from his CDs to MP3s on his computer were 'unauthorized,' writer Alyce Lomax said 'a good sign of a dying industry that investors might want to avoid is when it would rather litigate than innovate, signaling a potential destroyer of value.'

February 2008: I am going to learn what I can about the job that I do, advance as I am allowed, and get certified as much as possible.

March 2008: We'll have to do another road trip sometime.

April 2008: So long. Farewell. Aufwiedersehn. Goodbye.

May 2008: WOOHOO!

June 2008: I hope I can last until something changes.

July 2008: Taking a certification test tomorrow - I'll let you know more about it and how it went

August 2008: And be sure to tell him it's from me.

September 2008: Here is to them lasting and more good things to come.

October 2008: Whatever.

November 2008: Update: Running through the installer again while having the comments enabled and showing seems to have gotten the Haloscan comments working.

December 2008: Our cat, Anabelle, discovered the shiny bits of the Christmas tree. I had my phone handy and captured this: [video]

If you actually go back and look at these, you'll see I fudged on a couple of them. One of them ended up being a meme so I went to a "real" post. And since this is my first post of the month and is also a meme of sorts, it will not be appearing in next years review, if I do one.

If you do your year in review, please leave me a comment so I can come see. Happy New Year!

Actually, I don't think I will make it exempt. Walrus pixel buzzer, Wankel rotary engine, dogs are barking, can't fly without umbrella - TAKE THAT!

Musical Hard Drive

Seriously, I have a musical hard drive. The drive itself is playing a little tune. It's the most bizarre thing I have ever seen... err... heard. Let me explain.

One of the computers at work started acting up, throwing a blue screen and finally showing that wonderful black screen saying that NTLDR was missing or corrupt (I think that was the file, anyway). To get her up and running in a flash, we put a brand new computer under her desk. The computer she was using was about 2.5 years old and wasn't really suited to her work anyway. The drive was still "functional" as far as I could tell so I told her we'd pull it later and try to recover any data she had on it. This was about 2-3 weeks ago. As it turns out, it's lucky that she didn't have anything on the drive she couldn't lose.

I finally had a chance to pull the drive this afternoon. I opened the box and discovered that the drive is SATA (Serial ATA) and not IDE. The external enclosure we use for drive recovery will take either type of drive. I mounted the drive in the enclosure, connected it to my laptop's USB, plugged it in, and turned on the power.

I immediately knew something was not right. Normally, a drive will give a quiet whine as it spins up. I couldn't hear any whining noises. A few seconds later, the drive... the DRIVE... spits out about a dozen notes in this cute, but oh so surprising, ditty that I can now only surmise is a musical death knell. My assistant was nearby and I exclaimed, "What the hell was that? Did you hear that?"

"What's making that noise?" he asked.

"I think it's the drive." And it did it again. "Yes, that's coming from the drive itself. I've never heard a hard drive do that. Have you?"

"No."

"Do you suppose that means it's dead?"

"I don't know. This is a first for me, too."

I tried unplugging everything but the power as well as trying the standard power plug instead of the SATA power plug... same old song and no dance. I'm not quite ready to call it dead but I think that's what it means. I'm going to have to call Maxtor/Seagate support tomorrow and see if they know what it means.

Fractured Fairy Tales

This just popped into my head today and I felt like sharing...

"He gave me that beer in the head lice look."

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

Errant Thought

Why did my new socks come packaged in a zipper-seal puuch? Is Hanes afraid they're going to spoil?