Danny’s Return

Danny’s moving back home.  How long before we start handing him crap?

So I’m cleaning up two Vista laptops right now.  Evidently August is the time to snap them up.  In trying to clean off unwanted and annoying pre-installed apps, I noticed that Norton doesn’t really play nice like you would expect a well-respected name in software to.

Uninstalling it on the first laptop didn’t even complete, and after going guerilla-style on it in the registry, it still had some hooks in the OS that prevented AVG from taking over as the system’s anti-virus of choice.

Then I found this helpful tool from Symantec’s website.  Hm.  Reminds me of Gator from back in the day.  Hey, Symantec, if you know your uninstaller doesn’t work, why not include the Norton Removal Tool with your installs?  That could have saved me 2 or 3 hours.

On a related note, I still don’t less-than-three Vista.  Sure it’s got patches and a service pack update, and as long as you’ve got 2GB of RAM, it doesn’t chug.  But power-down modes still suck at the battery, and when I’m booting up, I can’t tell if it’s hung up or just slow.  No statusbar or anything: just a black screen.

This is exactly why I turned off quiet mode in Grub.

I had to break down and get an iPod.  Do I like them now?  Quite the opposite.

Last night, in covering a story on a new US tourism ad campaign in the London Underground (whose ads proclaim “South Carolina is so gay”), Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, DFA took a shot at Civil War hero and my Great-great-great uncle, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard.

While I admire your meticulous pronunciation, Mr. Colbert, I must stand up and ask you, if his nickname, “The Little Creole” is the gayest thing about the Civil War, there’s not a lot of gay to be mined from the whole situation, is there?

This episode was filled with other homophobia-filled taunts directed toward Sir Elton John, which makes me wonder.  Why would you devote so much airtime to how gay everyone else is (or could potentially have been)?  Perhaps to deflect suspision of your own deviance?  Now I know why you want your Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream flavor so close to the Brawny guy.

This morning, I experienced a touch of Double Vision. I hope this doesn’t happen every day.

In other news, Gaffigan was hilarious. The only material he recycled from Beyond the Pale was the Hot Pocket thing, and he’s been doing that for about a decade. Afterwards, he did a big meet and greet. We got photos with him and he signed some stuff. Check out the photos.

Tomorrow, TV’s Jim Gaffigan is going to be in OKC.  We’re gonna catch his 10pm show and then meet him afterwards.  I haven’t been this excited since I tried my first diet donut-ham-hamburger (they needed the variety).

Earlier this month, I joined Brandon on a trip to Boston, where we performed touristy acts such as following the Freedom Trail, purchasing souveneirs at Fenway Park, and running out of gas in America’s Walking City.  We spent eight days in the northeast and crashed at Danny and Lauren’s place.  It’ll probably be the last time I go up there before they move back here in August.

We also took a day to jump on the infamous Fung Wah Chinatown bus to New York.  I’d never been to the Big Apple, and at $15, the price was right.

We checked out ground zero, boated around to lady liberty, caught lunch at Tom’s, and wandered around Times Square.  After that we toured 30 Rock and got lost on the subway.  Plenty of fun to be had in that town for under a C-note.

After that, we caught a Red Sox game, where they lost to the Orioles, and I officially banned Brandon from ever returning to that site.

Once we flew back to the midwest, we immediately grabbed Jaime and a rental car and drove up to Colorado Springs for Rich and Michelle’s wedding.  Karaoke was enjoyed, songs were butchered, 6-pt beer was ingested at 7,000 ft.

After the wedding we all drove up to Denver for some Casa Bonita and a Coors tour in Golden.  As a non beer-drinker, I still found the tour fascinating.

I’ve caught up on my laundry and my sleep since then, and now it’s blogged.

Photos:
Boston - Freedom Trail | Boston - Fenway | NYC I | NYC II | Colorado I | Colorado - Wedding Reception | Casa Bonita | Coors Brewery Tour

So a couple of weekends ago, I went down to Frisco to visit my sister and brother-in-law. He’s always taking things apart for fun, and we decided that the moisture that had collected inside my passenger-side headlight didn’t need to be in there any more.

Unfortunately, the ‘02 Accords are designed such that, in order to get to the headlight assembly (even to change out the headlamp!), you’ve got to rip the entire bumper off.

Lucky for me, as a Honda employee,  I’ve got access to all their service guides on their website.  So I looked up the instructions for removing the front bumper and headlight assembly and we went to work.

Once we got inside and pulled the headlight, we took a hair dryer (which I’d never use on my actual head) and evaporated all the moisture.  We got everything re-assembled and I was back on the road shortly after midnight.  Photo after the jump. (more…)

Huh.  All this time, I thought it was impossible to run Flash in a 64-bit browser running on a 64-bit platform.  At least in the Linux world.  Then I stumble upon this article, which knocks it all in with three commands.  From all the shouting the 64-bit elitists and their flash-hating counterparts were doing, it seems I gave up hope just a bit too soon.

On the upside, I now no longer feel like a jerk for archiving those old sites with their flash content intact.  Oh yeah, and I don’t need to reboot anymore to make sure everything is loading properly.

This week, I added the Dreamweaver Tutorial to the archives, and overhauled EYI in the effort to make it easier for me to update.  Added the White Castle trip to the photos section as well.  Now, the procrastination regarding the videos videos shall come to an end.