Personal
0 words.
98 entries. 18,443 words.
2003-07
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Happy Belated Anniversary To Me.
2003-07-09.
Yesterday was the first day of my second year at, ahh, Cerebral Locomotion. In the one entire year that I’ve been there, exactly ONE new software module has been released (out of four planned). This module was released at the end of January and consisted of seven sub-programs.
- Personal
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School’s In.
2003-07-11.
Apparently it’s not enough that I am made to suffer through monolithic config files all day at Cerebral Locomotion. Now I am made to be the Visual Basic tutor to the boss’s pre-teen daughter (I actually don’t know how old she is, but pre-teen is my guess).
- Personal
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A Typical Day.
2003-07-14.
Monday’s are always a major drag at Cerebral Locomotion, being as how nobody I know actually likes returning to that oppressive psychotic nightmare after a weekend of freedom. But today was a particularly major soul-sucking drag.
- Personal
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Not tutoring is a good thing.
2003-07-15.
Today I recall mentioning to Julio after he had asked me for the 50th time “where are we at with this config file” that it was rather difficult to code in the insanely complex instructions he had asked for (I’m paraphrasing what I said a little :). He seemed rather baffled about it, perhaps thinking that asking for 20 sets of six or seven 5-digit random letter-number combinations was a breeze, but he wandered aimlessly away as he was distracted by something else.
- Personal
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Duct Tape??.
2003-07-16.
Today’s Cerebral Locomotion anecdoate involves telephones and duct tape.
- Personal
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I am but a worm.
2003-07-17.
DO NOT EVER TELL JULIO ABOUT A PROBLEM, NO MATTER HOW MINOR.
- Personal
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Lies!.
2003-07-18.
So I get to work, and about 5 minutes after I arrive, Julio is on the phone. (Julio is not in the office on Fridays.) Julio proceeds to tell me that he needs me to work a little extra to make up for time I missed because of dentist appointments, so that we don’t fall behind schedule.
- Personal
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Crunchy Frogs.
2003-07-30.
Julio is insane! I worked on THREE completely different programs today, at times almost simultaneously. I’d start a task and then Julio would come back a half hour later and give me something else to do.
- Personal
2003-08
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Ugh.
2003-08-25.
I got a !@#$!@# raise today. How wonderful. Julio tells me I’m “invaluable,” “talented,” and that he “loves working with me.” I refrained from puking and said “thanks, I appreciate that.”
- Personal
2003-10
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Cerebral Locomotion Lately.
2003-10-08.
I haven’t complained about my job enough on here, so here goes.
- Personal
2003-12
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Christmas Party.
2003-12-22.
Well today was the celebrated Cerebral Locomotion Christmas Party.. at the Mexican restaraunt a block from the office. I got a toy racing car, two movie tickets, and a gift certificate to I think some other restaraunt. It was exciting and invigorating and the conversation was positively stimulating, especially because we had to confine our topics to non-boss-bashing.
- Personal
2004-01
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Yuck.
2004-01-27.
So yesterday it snows. Most of us struggle into work somewhere in the vicinity of the correct time. Julio and his charming wife Gina, decide to sleep in.
- Personal
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Yuck continued.
2004-01-28.
You may notice that the Sarcasm section is no longer “protected.” This is a blatant passive-aggressive move on my part. Fortunately I am a fictional character so there is no harm in this.
- Personal
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Not Quite As Yuck.
2004-01-29.
Today was not a bad day in the fictional world of Cerebral Locomotion, although I really don’t remember much of it since I was somewhat doped up on cold medicine. I do remember Julio going on a bit about, erm, dogs and cats for quite a long time though.
- Personal
2004-02
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Bizzare.
2004-02-03.
Today was quite bizzare at Gulag 727. Julio arrived at about 9AM ready to work on the automatic pet diagnosis project. I was quite stunned.
- Personal
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Back to Yuck.
2004-02-06.
Yesterday, the situation at Gulag 727 went back to generall yuckiness. As I’ve said before, my current ficitional task is to assist Julio in completing the automatic pet diagnosis report software. This software takes a series of statistical observations about your pet’s symptoms and then generates a long narrative report describing your pet’s condition and suggestions for treatments.
- Personal
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Saturday Workdays Are Alright For Sucking.
2004-02-08.
In case you were wondering, the ficitional Saturday at Cerebral Locomotion was quite fictionally frustrating, as Julio worked tirelessly to keep productivity to a bare minimum.
- Personal
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Ye Gods.
2004-02-17.
The stupid automatic pet diagnosis report is STILL not finished. Since I still have to hold Julio’s hand as he writes the stupid text, I still have to make myself available at times when he CAN write the stupid text, which is almost always outside of the normal workday of 8:30 - 5:15.
- Personal
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Don’t Answer Yet!.
2004-02-20.
I may have said this before, but this time I really mean it: This week was the worst week at Cerebral Locomotion ever. But wait! There’s more!
- Personal
2004-04
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Premonition.
2004-04-20.
I hereby predict that the next two weeks at Cerebral Locomotion will be as bad or worse than the previous record-holding worst week at Cerebral Locomotion.
- Personal
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The madness keeps going, and going, and going….
2004-04-20.
The weeks leading up to a workshop are some of the most chaotic and panicked times in the life of Gulag 727, and this time is proving to be no exception. In this case, the workshop begins on May 6 in Texas, near The Alamo (how’s that for ironic). All the usual elements for extremely elevated blood pressure levels are in place, only they seem even more magnified than usual: Too many projects to finish at once, inability to decide on final project goals, lowered nicotine levels, excess shipping leftover from the recent major upgrade, disgruntled employees, disgruntled customers, clueless supervisors.
- Personal
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New Meat.
2004-04-21.
I didn’t mention this, but one of the salespeople was fired about a month ago. It was a very clandestine operation. He was there when I left on Thursday, he was there when everyone else left on Friday, he was gone on Monday–his desk was clean and his business cards were missing.
- Personal
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Thursday at the Gulag.
2004-04-22.
Normally Thursdays are a happy day for me, since I don’t have to work on Friday. But of course Julio asked me to work on Friday because we were in such a crunch for time and it all had to be done by um May 4. (Yes, today is April 22 and most of my work is done.) I told him that I currently wouldn’t have much of anything to do if I came in Friday.
- Personal
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Friday at the Gulag.
2004-04-24.
Friday started out fairly well, then everything starting going to hell in the afternoon. I forgot about a major feature I had to add, I ran into a major limitation in VB6 that was a pain to work around, I kept finding annoying bugs while I was trying to use my software, and Julio kept me on the phone for an hour adding more things for me to do and change at the last minute. It was a bit frustrating as I had to leave with a bunch of stuff left unfinished.
- Personal
2004-06
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In Case You Didn’t Know.
2004-06-08.
I may have neglected to say this before, but Visual Basic 6 sucks. Period.
- Personal
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Superiority Rules.
2004-06-09.
Arg. It’s quite frustrating to sit idly by while Julio mangles a multimedia project. Today he proudly declared to me, with the same bubbling pride that a toddler must feel after first discovering how to walk by himself, that he had cleverly deduced that his $3.99 audio card was the source of all the hissing he heard in his digital audio.
- Personal
2004-07
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A Happy Day.
2004-07-08.
Today in the what-the-fuck-ever department, we have this new item: Julio was being a GIANT FLAMING ASS PICKLE this afternoon. I’ve spent the last 3 days TRYING to get a release put together, per HIS request, and he’s done absolutely EVERYTHING to prevent me from doing it. What tricks does he pull from his pickled buttocks today?
- Personal
2004-10
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Friday, Part 1.
2004-10-09.
It may be useful to deconstruct the events of this past Friday, in the event that I should suddenly go on a murderous rampage at my place of employment sometime in the coming weeks.
- Personal
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Friday, Part 2.
2004-10-10.
I had planned to write long saga about Friday, but now it’s Sunday night and I don’t really want to think about it anymore. So this is an abbreviated rendition.
- Personal
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Thursday.
2004-10-21.
Yes, it’s crunch time again (still).
- Personal
2004-11
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Long Live The Workshop.
2004-11-09.
The workshop is over. Only one crashing bug attributable to me was found. It was, of course, a completely unpredictable bug caused by a corrupt file on Julio’s laptop.
- Personal
2006-09
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Krehbiel’s Korner.
2006-09-20.
The Official Homepage Of Thomas Krehbiel
- Personal
2007-05
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Upcoming Primary Debates.
2007-05-16.
Upcoming Primary Debates
- Personal
2007-06
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Tom’s Top Eight, May 16, 2007.
2007-06-06.
For historical reference.
- Personal
2007-07
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Cosmetic Changes.
2007-07-24.
I’ve created this feed to note changes in the aggregator. You’ve probably noticed the cosmetic changes (the reflective Web 2.0-ey logo, the angry red-faced dude I got from Microsoft clipart, the new fonts, etc.). Behind the scenes, I’ve made more attempts to handle ancient, broken HTML in feeds.
- Personal
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Harvester Running Again.
2007-07-27.
For the two people who might be affected by this, the harvester was down most of the day today.
- Personal
2007-08
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Harvester Timeouts.
2007-08-30.
The harvester has been “sticking” lately; ie. it would get stuck indefinitely on a particular feed, resulting in long periods without any aggregator updates, which has been annoying me because I can’t unstick it until I get home. Anyway I believe I’ve fixed this with some very aggressive timeout values.
- Personal
2007-09
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Harvester Fetching Revised.
2007-09-02.
Fyi, I got a complaint about the UvHarvester fetch frequency last week so I’ve revised it (UvHarvester is the program that collects feed data for the aggregator). Previously it visited each feed once an hour, but now it derives how often to check a feed from the frequency of posts on the feed. So, for example, a feed that gets updated on average once a day will now get 4 visits a day.
- Personal
2007-12
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Welcome to blogNark.
2007-12-20.
Welcome to a new blog striving for non-partisan fact-checking of the Virginia political blogosphere.
- Personal
2012-03
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Heat Arrives.
2012-03-15.
Once again, here in Richmond, winter has turned into summer with no intervening spring. Not that it was much of a winter. Now that I think about it, winter was spring.
- Personal
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From Fiber to Cable.
2012-03-16.
As part of an ongoing restructuring of our telecommunications connectivity here at the house, we’ve gone back to Comcast cable for Internet. We’ll be disconnecting the FIOS TV and land line soon. I’m not at all sad about losing TV or telephone, but going from a solid 25Mb (up and down) to a spotty 1Mb (down) is kind of a drag. So if I didn’t have enough incentive to move before, I definitely do now! (Just kidding. It’s still better than the connectivity at work.)
- Personal
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When 4G Beats WiFi.
2012-03-24.
So here at the house we switched from FIOS Triple Play back to plain old Comcast Internet, not because there was anything wrong with FIOS – in fact, in my opinion, it’s a thousand times better than Comcast in every possible way – but because of an overall strategy to lower household expenses.
So now we only have two choices for TV: Over-the-air HD television using vintage rabbit ears, or Netflix on a PS3. (Guess which one I usually pick.) And we don’t have a land line anymore. None of that is the slightest bit of concern to me, in fact I’ve wanted to “cut the cord” for a long time.
- Personal
- Technology
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Email Lemmings.
2012-03-26.
Here’s a quick way to disable a large mail network: Wait for an email titled “World wide distribution list test,” hit Reply All, and write something like “I got it.” Watch the lemmings destroy email capability.
- Personal
- Technology
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How Does He Sing That High?.
2012-03-27.
Simple joys in life: When 80s hit Come On Eileen starts up on the random shuffle during the drive home.
- Personal
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ReplayGain.
2012-03-31.
I would just like to say that ReplayGain is the greatest invention EVER. I am completely ashamed and embarrassed that I haven’t used this technology before. Anyone who has an MP3 collection of songs spanning more than a single decade desperately needs to download MP3Gain or something like it and apply it to your entire library. Unfortunately, now I need to re-upload all my stuff to Google Music, a rather daunting prospect with my current connectivity.
- Personal
2012-04
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First World Problems.
2012-04-06.
This is what’s wrong with America: People who go to a fast food drive-through window and order for twenty people.
- Personal
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Happy Easter!.
2012-04-08.
Happy Easter!
- Personal
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Facebook, Say It Again.
2012-04-19.
Facebook. Huh. What is it good for? Good God y’all. I have no idea any more. I’m thinking about mercilessly purging my friend list.
Here’s what I want to see when I look at Facebook:
A short note about something interesting or amusing that happened in someone’s day. A picture someone took of something interesting or amusing they saw in their day. Links to things people think I might be interested in. But here’s what I actually see when I look at Facebook:
- Personal
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Me and Bella.
2012-04-25.
Me and Bella
I don’t know why but I thought this picture was funny.
- Personal
2012-05
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May the fourth….
2012-05-04.
It’s Star Wars day again already?!
- Personal
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Mobile Internet Obtained.
2012-05-13.
I think I’ve mentioned before that I am on a 1 Mbps Comcast connection for the time being (until I find another place to live, where I can hook up FIOS again). You might think that this would be sufficient for most Internet tasks. At least, that’s what I thought.
It works for email. And some web surfing. But unfortunately, there are these things called “streaming video” and “games.” Guess what? 1 Mbps is not enough to watch high definition streaming video. It’s barely enough to watch low definition streaming video. And remember when I could see a game on Steam and do an impulse purchase and download 8Gb of files in 15 minutes? Yeah, I can’t do that anymore. I did an impulse purchase of TERA, and then sat and watched the estimated download time remaining crawl all the way up to one and a half days. During which time, I could do absolutely nothing else on the Internet because the bandwidth was saturated.
- Personal
- Technology
2012-07
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Fireworks Frenzy.
2012-07-04.
Why are people in my neighborhood so obsessed with fireworks?
- Personal
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Canine Allergies.
2012-07-08.
Poor Bella had an allergic reaction to … something … yesterday. She came in from the back yard with a bumpy head and a red belly. Very strange. After a trip to the emergency vet, she spent the rest of the day on Benadryl and steroids.
- Personal
2012-08
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Moving Weekend.
2012-08-15.
No time for blogging! Am moving into a new place this weekend, trying to figure out which things to take and which things to throw away. It’s amazing how the amount of stuff you have multiplies exponentially when you have to move it.
- Personal
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The Museum.
2012-08-17.
Couple of pics of the new place…
The living room, which I think of as “the museum,” because it retains the original architecture from when the house was first built in the 1930s. The two bedrooms also have museum qualities.
This is what I think of as “the game room.” This part of the house was clearly added as an addition somewhat recently, because it has a much more modern styling.
- Personal
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Liveblogging Deliveries.
2012-08-17.
Since I will be doing a fair amount of hurrying-up-and-waiting this afternoon, what better way to pass the time than to make a liveblog!
1:07 PM - I am in the new house with my laptop tethered to my phone. FIOS is scheduled to be installed tomorrow. For now, I’m waiting for a washer/dryer delivery.
1:14 PM - Oops. Moved laptop from kitchen to living room so I could sit on the sofa. The most convenient plug for me to use is, of course, not grounded. So I’ll have to move the power cord when the delivery dudes get here.
- Personal
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High-Efficiency Washing Machines.
2012-08-19.
I am using a high-efficiency washing machine for the first time.
- Personal
2012-09
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Two Related Observations.
2012-09-04.
Two quick and related observations.
- Personal
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SGU (not to be confused with SG-U).
2012-09-24.
I’ve started listening to a podcast called the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. So far it’s the only podcast I’ve found to challenge The 404 for the right to be the first podcast played on the morning commute.
Commuter podcasts have to have a certain conversational quality to them, and they also have to be funny. The 404 and SGU are perfect examples. Of the two, SGU is considerably more substantive. :)
- Personal
2012-10
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An Annoying Hurricane.
2012-10-29.
This hurricane is really annoying me with its extremely inconvenient schedule. So I’m staying home from work today, not so much because Governor McDonnell told us to stay off the roads, but because I didn’t want to leave the house and Bella alone, on the off chance that anything bad happened while I was gone during the day, or anything bad happened with any of the bridges over the river. But really, it’s not supposed to get “bad” here until late this afternoon or tonight, so I’m basically throwing an entire day of leave away for this. Odds are it will be worse Tuesday (in terms of strong winds, at least), so I might have to throw *another* day of leave away. (Which basically means I won’t be taking any time off around Christmas.) Grr.
- Personal
2012-11
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Falling Back Sucks.
2012-11-06.
Why doesn’t anyone else understand that “fall back” is worse than “spring forward?” Everybody’s all like, “Woohoo! An extra hour of sleep! This is awesome!”
But you also get an extra hour of work. And you LOSE an hour of evening time. Come on people, get with the program.
- Personal
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Oh, Forgot About That.
2012-11-06.
I just noticed that I probably should have followed up on my October 29th post. Sorry. In short: An epic amount of nothing happened in Richmond.
- Personal
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Happy Thanksgiving!.
2012-11-22.
(This picture was stolen outright from travelblat.com, a site I know nothing about.)
- Personal
2012-12
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My First Smoothie.
2012-12-02.
Cut up one apple and break up one banana and put the pieces into a blender. Add a handful of ice. Blend.
I immediately discovered that my new blender kind of sucks for this task, since the blades didn’t hit anything at first. Next time I guess I will cut the pieces a little smaller. Or possibly do a little research on what kind of blender to buy instead of randomly picking one from Target.
- Personal
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Playing the Age Card on Facebook.
2012-12-08.
I decided to leave a comment with a Snopes link on a dubious Facebook post. But why this one?
- Personal
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New Smoothie.
2012-12-19.
Here’s the newest recipe from the evolution of my daily-fruit-intake smoothie.
A banana, cut up into pieces.
A handful of frozen fruit from a generic bag of mixed frozen fruit, slightly melted.
A bit of orange juice. Not so much for the orange but because I discovered that the orange juice makes the blending process work about a thousand times better.
Blend.
This makes a cupful of fruity beverage-ish that is about the consistency of a milkshake.
- Personal
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Merry Christmas!.
2012-12-25.
And the Christmas season begins! That’s right, I said BEGINS, you secular pseudo-Christian retail slaves.
- Personal
2013-01
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An Epic Belly Flop Of An Ending.
2013-01-07.
Redskins … I just … I don’t even … I can’t even describe …
- Personal
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Snow and Comments.
2013-01-18.
It snowed last night. A thick, wet, yucky snow that subsequently froze, accumulating to perhaps a couple of inches. I used to like snow. But now I find it just about the most annoying weather there is, with the possible exception of cold rain, which we have had for the previous week, so I suppose the snow is an improvement. On another note, I get a lot of Chinese comments. I’ll probably get one on this post. I always mark them as spam, so on the off chance that there is actually a real Chinese person out there trying to comment on my posts, sorry.
- Administration
- Personal
2013-02
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Superbowl Something-or-Another.
2013-02-03.
Live blogging the Superbowl, because people on Facebook would probably be annoyed if I did this on there.
6:17 – Sandy Hook Kids: Oh, Superbowl, you’re always bringing up the depressing stuff and trying to make us cry.
6:22 – Dammit can’t find a good place for the rabbit ears.
6:23 – That was the longest Star-Spangled Banner ever. (Also a good one.)
6:27 – They should mount a camera on the coin to make this more interesting.
- Personal
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Tunguska’s Revenge and Moons.
2013-02-21.
It was a big day for Near Earth Objects last Friday. And why does Pluto have more moons than us?
- Personal
- Technology
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Furloughs Might Actually Harm Me.
2013-02-23.
The potential for government furloughs is one of the rare political stories that actually might have a direct impact on my life.
- Personal
- Politics
2013-04
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Google+ No Good As A News Reader.
2013-04-06.
Google+ sucks as a news aggregator.
- Personal
- Technology
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On Feedly.
2013-04-06.
I want to like Feedly. I really do.
- Personal
- Technology
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Android Calendar Date Entry Sucks.
2013-04-06.
In what world is it easy to enter a month and day using these stupid radial spin dials?
- Commentary
- Personal
- Technology
2013-05
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Stealth Poison Ivy.
2013-05-23.
I’m getting over a bad case (for me) of poison ivy.
- Personal
2013-06
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Metrics On Eating Better.
2013-06-10.
There should be some kind of measurable effect when eating better.
- Personal
2013-08
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Weird Knocking.
2013-08-19.
So someone knocked on my front door last night at about 10 PM.
- Personal
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A Unique Observation On Moving.
2013-08-26.
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but moving sucks. I’ll soon be moving from one rental house to a bigger, better rental house, and despite having thrown out tons of stuff in the past year, I’m still surrounded by oppressively large stacks of boxes that need to be moved.
If moving boxes was the only part of it, that wouldn’t be so bad. But there’s also a thousand little errands to deal with, like hooking up utilities and FIOS, updating your driver’s license and credit cards, and forwarding your mail. (Woe be unto those who make a mistake in forwarding your mail, as I - and my neighbor - learned from painful experience. Though I’m still not convinced that *I* made the mistake of transposing a 6 and a 9.)
- Personal
2013-09
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Followups On Moving and Furloughs.
2013-09-14.
I thought I would follow up on a couple of previous posts on the off chance that anyone is actually following this blog.
As I hinted at before, I have moved into a new house. Boxes are everywhere, and I have only unpacked the bare minimum of things needed for day-to-day life. Essentially that means a couple of computers and some dishes.
Secondly, a long time ago I mentioned that government furloughs might impact my life. Furloughs did actually go into effect during July and August, but the length was reduced roughly in half (and it had already been cut in half from the original estimates), so DoD employees were only off for about six Fridays. Nothing bad happened on those six days, so in my little corner of the world, the furlough had exactly zero effect. Most people were sad that the 4-day work weeks ended.
- Personal
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Trying New Feed Readers.
2013-09-24.
I was quite excited to find three new web-based RSS readers: InoReader, Feedspot, and G2Reader. Unfortunately they are not any faster than Feedly.
- Personal
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MacBook Air Obtained.
2013-09-27.
I was finally ready to get a “thin-and-light” laptop for writing and web surfing, so I decided I couldn’t get much thinner and lighter than a MacBook Air.
- Personal
2013-10
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Weird Things That Freak Me Out.
2013-10-21.
Weird things that freak me out: The sound that one of those county trash cans makes when rolling it to the end of the driveway for pickup.
- Personal
2013-11
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Discovering Comments On Old Posts.
2013-11-04.
I happened to look at one of my more popular posts recently and discovered there’s a boatload of comments on it! I had no idea.
- Personal
2013-12
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In Which I Hate Shopping For Clothes.
2013-12-16.
At the end of 2013, online shopping for clothes is still nowhere near where it should be.
- Personal
2014-05
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Spring Update.
2014-05-02.
A brief discussion of ants, Spring, and plant reincarnation.
- Personal
2014-07
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July, The Month of Economic Turmoil.
2014-07-08.
I might be unemployed after July 29th, but don’t panic yet.
- Personal
2014-08
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August Didn’t Arrive Too Soon.
2014-08-03.
It’s finally August, and boy am I happy about that.
- Personal
2014-10
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Back At The Old Grindstone.
2014-10-05.
I accepted a part-time position working as a sub-contractor on my old project.
- Personal
2014-12
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It’s A Wonderful Life They Say.
2014-12-24.
I don’t see why people think it’s weird that I’ve never seen It’s A Wonderful Life. It seems like something to be proud of. :)
- Personal
2015-01
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Happy New Year!.
2015-01-01.
Happy New Year to everyone!
- Personal
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More Facebook in 2015?.
2015-01-06.
I feel like I should engage more with Facebook in 2015.
- Personal
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Krehbiel Merchandise.
2015-01-18.
Even people with weird last names can get T-shirts.
- Personal
2015-02
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Netflix Makes Passwords Hard.
2015-02-06.
I have forgotten my Netflix password.
- Personal
- Technology
2015-03
-
Pi Day.
2015-03-14.
I just realized that I hate Pi Day.
- Personal
2015-06
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The Newsroom.
2015-06-24.
I like HBO’s The Newsroom.
- Personal
2015-07
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Comic-Con Trailers.
2015-07-11.
Three cool videos from Comic-Con.
- Personal
2020-02
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Starting the 2020s.
2020-02-13.
Hi there! You probably forgot that I exist, since I haven’t updated this web site in quite a while. Thought I’d say something quickly.
It’s the 2020s now, and I’ve also reached my 50s. Seems like a good time to reboot.
2018 and especially 2019 weren’t very good years for me, so I’m trying to make an effort to make 2020 a much better year. One aspect of that is going to be consolidating a bunch of web sites together. I’m also going to try to consolidate my social media presence, and I’m thinking about starting a vlog. I’ll say more about that later, if I decide to go public with it.
- Personal