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60 entries. 11,338 words.

January, 2012

  • Idle Thoughts On Reincarnation. 2012-01-31 11:26 PM.
    • Commentary
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    I overheard some people talking about reincarnation today, so I thought I’d write down what I thought about it. Mainly because I’m trying to write 1,500 new words every day as part of my grandiose plan to take over the world, and I figure blog posts should count as part of that, right? 734 words.

March, 2012

  • Finally Coming To My Senses. 2012-03-12 4:24 PM.
    • Administration
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    This very moment, I decided that I’m going to abandon my home-grown blog platform. I haven’t updated it in quite a while, and the thought of doing so fills me with dread. I just don’t have the time or energy for it right now (my free time is dedicated to writing). So I guess I’ll be switching to WordPress pretty soon. The only problem is that I will likely lose every one of my old posts. Not that they were anything special, mind you, but still, it’s part of my online history, such as it is. I suppose I’ll have to put them on an “old site” link somehow. But how to keep all of the post links in the Google index working? Hrm. 124 words.
  • It Is Done. 2012-03-12 6:02 PM.
    • Administration
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    This is now a WordPress blog. Let the hackers and spammers now commence exploiting WordPress bugs. The old site is still available, kind of, at http://thomaskrehbiel.com/oldindex.php. Through judicious manipulation of the .htaccess file, old links to posts should still work, so hopefully I won’t drop off of Google completely. No, I am not at all happy with the theme yet. 60 words.
  • ICS Virtual Keyboard. 2012-03-13 3:30 PM.
    • Technology
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    How the crap do you close the virtual keyboard in Ice Cream Sandwich, if the app doesn’t provide a way? I love my Galaxy Nexus but sometimes I miss the HTC Incredible’s Sense UI. Particularly the HTC clock, calendar, and weather apps. 42 words.
  • Heat Arrives. 2012-03-15 7:52 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    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. 31 words.
  • From Fiber to Cable. 2012-03-16 1:34 AM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    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.) 85 words.
  • Comment Rules. 2012-03-16 11:11 PM.
    • Administration
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Here are my rules for comments: If your anomymous comment contains a web site link but does not in any way mention something specifically from my post, it’s going to be considered spam. Just letting you know. I apologize in advance if I accidentally moderate something legitimate. 47 words.
  • No-Go Importing Paged Atom Feeds. 2012-03-18 2:02 PM.
    • Administration
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Today I was pondering importing all of my old posts into WordPress. This is not quite as simple as you might think when trying to import from a custom blog platform. WordPress has this handy RSS Import plugin, but it requires the XML to be a file on your hard drive. No problem, right? You just open up the source of the feed on the old site (which, in my case, is actually an Atom feed) and save it to a file. Wait, not so fast. That old feed has like 5000 posts in it. And the feed only shows the last 15. There’s a whole chain of rel=next links to follow to get the entire feed, 15 at a time. 163 words.
  • Why Must Data Binding Happen After Control Events?. 2012-03-21 10:16 PM.
    • Technology
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Okay, I know why. But just pretend like it could be different for the sake of this rant. Let’s say you have a GridView using a SqlDataSource on an ASP.NET page. Each row displays some data from a table. No problem. Now let’s say you want to put a RadioButtonList in the first column of the grid. You want to update the underlying row when the user clicks one or the other radio buttons. You do NOT want to use the standard ASP.NET patterns for updating data because they suck and this is a slightly special case. You want to put a “Y” in a column if they click one of the radio buttons, and an “N” in the column if they click the other radio button. And you probably want to put it inside an UpdatePanel so it looks all AJAX-y. 418 words.
  • When 4G Beats WiFi. 2012-03-24 10:57 AM.
    • Personal
    • Technology
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    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. 193 words.
  • Email Lemmings. 2012-03-26 6:51 PM.
    • Personal
    • Technology
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    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. 36 words.
  • How Does He Sing That High?. 2012-03-27 8:59 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Simple joys in life: When 80s hit Come On Eileen starts up on the random shuffle during the drive home. 20 words.
  • ReplayGain. 2012-03-31 2:12 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    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. 76 words.
  • Welcome Back. 2012-03-31 8:31 PM.
    • Administration
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    If you had previously been following /blog.feed or /stream.feed or /comments.feed, you may or may not have noticed that you weren’t getting any new posts. You probably thought it was because I only post every six months, but in fact, this time, it was because I forgot to redirect them to WordPress’s feeds, which are /feed and /comments/feed. So, if you were subscribed to the old feeds, welcome back! 69 words.

April, 2012

  • Spam Attacks. 2012-04-01 11:44 AM.
    • Administration
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Okay, I’m thinking about going back to my custom blog platform. I never got comment spam on it. (At least I never noticed it. :) But now I’m looking at WordPress telling me to moderate 13 spam comments, including this gem: “Attractive component of content. I just stumbled upon your blog and in accession capital to claim that I acquire in fact enjoyed account your weblog posts. Any way I will be subscribing in your augment and even I fulfillment you get entry to consistently rapidly.” 139 words.
  • LTE Outage?. 2012-04-02 7:45 PM.
    • Technology
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Verizon 4G LTE has been pretty bad today south of Richmond. :/ 12 words.
  • First World Problems. 2012-04-06 11:26 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    This is what’s wrong with America: People who go to a fast food drive-through window and order for twenty people. 20 words.
  • The Spam Fight Goes On. 2012-04-07 3:34 PM.
    • Administration
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Continuing the fight against spam. 62 words.
  • Cultural Fit and Ageism. 2012-04-08 12:16 AM.
    • Technology
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    I was reading a Coding Horror article by Jeff Atwood about how to hire a programmer. I agree with most of it, although he is clearly hiring his programmer to work in some fancy schmancy Internet startup in Silicon Valley, not out here in the real world of enterprises and business intelligence. Here’s the part that irritates me when industry people talk about jobs and hiring: “Cultural Fit.” To me, that basically means you’re not going to get hired if you don’t have the right kind of personality and attitude. Your skillset doesn’t matter; you’re being evaluated as a roommate more than a skilled worker. 257 words.
  • Happy Easter!. 2012-04-08 3:27 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Happy Easter! 20 words.
  • Next Victim Please. 2012-04-14 11:28 AM.
    • Commentary
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    E. Wayne Powell is the next Democrat to charge incumbent Eric Cantor’s machinegun nest in the Virginia 7th District House of Representatives election. 68 words.
  • Facebook, Say It Again. 2012-04-19 10:55 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    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: 310 words.
  • Me and Bella. 2012-04-25 2:51 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Me and Bella I don’t know why but I thought this picture was funny. 14 words.

May, 2012

  • May the fourth…. 2012-05-04 2:43 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    It’s Star Wars day again already?! 23 words.
  • Introvert Discrimination On Display. 2012-05-05 3:35 PM.
    • Commentary
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Introvertedness is not an illness. You don’t “become” an introvert. You can’t “catch” it, like the flu. You are born an introvert. 271 words.
  • Mobile Internet Obtained. 2012-05-13 1:52 PM.
    • Personal
    • Technology
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    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. 296 words.

June, 2012

  • The New MacBook Pro. 2012-06-15 11:21 PM.
    • Technology
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Apple announced their new MacBook Pro model. It’s a beast of a laptop, and it looks beautiful. But is it worth it? 261 words.
  • Surprise, Vizio Makes Laptops. 2012-06-18 10:50 PM.
    • Technology
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Just when everyone’s done talking about the new Apple MacBook Pros, along comes a slick new PC laptop from Vizio. 91 words.
  • Verizon Galaxy Nexus continuously rebooting after Google Maps update. 2012-06-29 1:11 PM.
    • Technology
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    My Verizon Galaxy Nexus started rebooting continuously after I updated Google Maps. 288 words.
  • The Secret World. 2012-06-29 9:08 PM.
    • Gaming
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    I’ve had a burst of gaming enthusiasm lately, which has led me to play in The Secret World head start this weekend. 283 words.

July, 2012

  • The Secret World, Likes and Dislikes. 2012-07-02 2:08 AM.
    • Gaming
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Here are some of my impressions from playing The Secret World for a weekend of beta and a few days of the head start. 836 words.
  • Fireworks Frenzy. 2012-07-04 1:28 AM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Why are people in my neighborhood so obsessed with fireworks? 60 words.
  • Canine Allergies. 2012-07-08 7:17 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    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. 46 words.

August, 2012

  • Moving Weekend. 2012-08-15 12:53 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    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. 43 words.
  • The Museum. 2012-08-17 2:22 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    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. 108 words.
  • Liveblogging Deliveries. 2012-08-17 5:08 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    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. 377 words.
  • High-Efficiency Washing Machines. 2012-08-19 11:10 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    I am using a high-efficiency washing machine for the first time. 48 words.

September, 2012

  • Two Related Observations. 2012-09-04 5:28 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Two quick and related observations. 19 words.
  • The Kindle Fire HD. 2012-09-07 6:36 PM.
    • Technology
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Is it finally time for me to get a tablet media player? It suddenly seems very convenient to have a dedicated Netflix player that I could set on the table while I’m computing, or I could carry into the kitchen or living room or bedroom, or whatever. Coincidentally, Amazon just announced a new line of Kindle devices. First they announced a new e-reader called the Kindle Paperwhite. This is a no-brainer, and I have already pre-ordered it. It has a slightly higher 195 words.
  • SGU (not to be confused with SG-U). 2012-09-24 7:33 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    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. :) 254 words.
  • Jelly Bean Arrived. 2012-09-25 2:40 PM.
    • Technology
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Got Jelly Bean on my Galaxy Nexus this morning! (Otherwise known as Android 4.1.) It’s … um … better? I can’t really tell much difference, to be honest. It might be a tiny bit snappier. And the notifications look slightly different. 41 words.

October, 2012

  • The First Debate. 2012-10-04 10:07 PM.
    • Politics
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Hey, did you know there was a presidential debate last night? I did, but I forgot to watch it. So I did what anyone else would do: I went to C-SPAN.org and started watching it tonight, because I watch television on my own schedule! Because I’m a rebel. And stuff. 50 words.
  • The First Debate, Partial Recap. 2012-10-06 4:03 PM.
    • Politics
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    So I didn’t finish watching the first debate, I had to turn it off after around 45 minutes. 254 words.
  • An Annoying Hurricane. 2012-10-29 1:04 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    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. 135 words.

November, 2012

  • Falling Back Sucks. 2012-11-06 8:48 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    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. 49 words.
  • Oh, Forgot About That. 2012-11-06 10:15 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    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. 26 words.
  • Apocalypse. 2012-11-07 7:54 PM.
    • Politics
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    I have to admit I’m fairly surprised that Virginia went for the blue president, considering the general anti-Obama atmosphere around here. The only thing I can figure is that Virginia Republicans didn’t think Romney was red enough, so they stayed home. (I know they hated McCain, so I can only assume they didn’t like Romney either.) I’m also very surprised that Virginia went for the blue senator. I have no explanation for that. (Admittedly, I didn’t follow that race much so I don’t know how it went. I assume it was a bloody massacre from start to finish.) I’m not at all surprised that the 7th district went for the red congressman, though. I’m not sure why they bother having congressional elections there. 359 words.
  • Secession. 2012-11-17 3:50 PM.
    • Politics
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    I see that there are a bunch of petitions for states to secede (I like to link to Fox News stories so conservatives can’t complain about biased sources) from the Union after the president was re-elected. These make great sensational headlines which further push people into “us” and “them” camps. Of course, the first thing I thought, and the first thing any critical news consumer should have thought, was: It makes sense that there would be an increase in secession petitions after every election, so this is probably not news. I set out to prove my theory and provide a tiny bit of context to these stories. (You’re welcome, journalists.) 549 words.
  • New Theme. 2012-11-18 3:33 PM.
    • Administration
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    I installed a new theme, obviously. I like the simplicity of it, and it looks pretty good on mobile devices, so I think I will stick with it for a while. It’s called “Blaskan.” 34 words.
  • Hi!. 2012-11-18 3:41 PM.
    • Administration
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Hi! My name is Tom. I’m a veteran software developer from Virginia 53 words.
  • What’s a Fiscal Cliff?. 2012-11-20 1:58 AM.
    • Politics
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    So I’m trying to catch up on this whole “fiscal cliff” thing. What is it? Well, according to Wikipedia, the only information source that it’s completely safe to link to, the fiscal cliff is a combination of events that are scheduled to take place on Jan 1 2013, if no one intervenes. One is the end of Bush tax cuts. Another is a broad set of spending cuts. A third is something about new taxes related to Obamacare. 381 words.
  • Happy Thanksgiving!. 2012-11-22 1:32 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    (This picture was stolen outright from travelblat.com, a site I know nothing about.) 13 words.

December, 2012

  • My First Smoothie. 2012-12-02 9:32 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    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. 112 words.
  • Playing the Age Card on Facebook. 2012-12-08 2:57 AM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    I decided to leave a comment with a Snopes link on a dubious Facebook post. But why this one? 699 words.
  • Sigh. 2012-12-15 11:39 PM.
    • Commentary
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    I first heard about the shooting around noon on Friday when I overheard a coworker telling his cube-neighbor about it. The second words out of his mouth were something about gun control, so I guess it’s never too soon to opine after a tragedy. The world is very, very dangerous, and it is a miracle that any of us have survived this long. It’s easy to forget that. It’s human nature to search for answers, but most of the time there aren’t any. 283 words.
  • Meaningful Action. 2012-12-16 5:14 PM.
    • Commentary
    • Politics
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    I was pretty disappointed when I read reports that Obama had called for “meaningful action” following the shooting tragedy Friday. If you’re not familiar with the lively debate over the Second Amendment in this country, those words mean that he is planning to push through tough new laws to take away our rights to arm ourselves. It was disappointing to hear him say that, because I have always enjoyed giggling when I hear fear-mongerers misguidedly ascribe a radical left-wing communist agenda to the Obama regime. 342 words.
  • A Few Loose Ends. 2012-12-17 11:35 PM.
    • Commentary
    • Politics
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    A few more comments on uncontroversial topics like mental health and gun control. 1,318 words.
  • New Smoothie. 2012-12-19 12:48 AM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    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. 77 words.
  • Merry Christmas!. 2012-12-25 2:05 PM.
    • Personal
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    And the Christmas season begins! That’s right, I said BEGINS, you secular pseudo-Christian retail slaves. 50 words.

January, 2013

  • Fiscal Cliff Countdown. 2013-01-01 12:41 AM.
    • Commentary
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Forget the Times Square ball drop, what channel is the Fiscal Cliff countdown on? 14 words.