Monday morning at work.

First off, I found the coolest application over at Recommended. Go to the site PortableApps.com. there you will find portable versions of many applications, such as Firefox, Thunderbird, Gaim Chat Client, and OpenOffice. “Portable” means that you can drop the program, such as Firefox Portable, onto a USB key drive (or other removable media) and the program will run directly from the removable drive WITHOUT LEAVING ANY INFORMATION BEHIND ON THE LOCAL COMPUTER. This means you can take your web browser with all your cookies, cache, and favorite bookmarks to any computer (school, library, work, home). The same for your email (using Portable Thunderbird), and your Office documents (using Portable OpenOffice). It is very cool and worth checking out.

This weekend, I mowed our lawn, washed our dog, and, of course, went to Concord for a test-run of NH Blog-Con. After meeting Joanie and having lunch at the Common Man, Original Cindy and I went over to the Steeplegate mall. I bought two new, inexpensive pipes (I’ll post pictures later - try not to swoon when you see them), and Cindy, amazingly, didn’t buy anything but a DVD.

On the home front, this is going to be a short week for me. I have Wednesday to Friday off (plus the weekend). Original Cindy and I are going camping at Lake George, NY. When I say camping, I don’t mean RV-with-a-television-and-all-the-amenities-of-home camping. We will be camping in an actual tent. We don’t have any activities planned, other than horseback riding, and a trip to the Great Escape amusement park.

Hopefully, Cindy will be well enough so we don’t have to cancel our trip. I won’t go into details, but she is going to see a doctor today, and I hope they can help her quickly. Otherwise, we may have to postpone our trip, which would suck since this is our last weekend without the kiddies.

Technorati Tags: portable apps, life, camping, vacations

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Today, as planned, I headed over to Concord, NH for what was to be a BETA test of Blog-Con. Basically, I wanted to check the location out in preparation for the real thing.

Joanie from Grain of Salt, the other organizer of the NH Blog-Con (aka, Blog Free or Die), was there, and my wife tagged along as well.

Atmosphere: 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, 1% other gases (water vapor, argon, carbon dioxide, others).

Ambience: We sat in the upstairs lounge which was very comfortable and well appointed. In addition to a well-stocked bar, there were comfortable chairs and couches set around the lounge in case you didn’t want to play bar-fly. A selection of cheese and crackers was set out for anyone to help themselves to.

Food: I ordered an open-faced sandwich called “the Nightmare” and a pint of Sam Adams. Joanie had a pint of Demon IPA and a Quiche. The wife, Original Cindy, had the Chicken & Spinach Canelloni. We all agreed that the food was excellent.

Customer Service: The waitstaff were friendly and responsive.

Overall, it was a great place, with plenty of room to spread out. It should work very well for New Hampshire BLOG-CON 2006 — Blog free or Die.

Technorati Tags: common man, restaurant, concord, new hampshire, nh blog con

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Dana Asks:

If mineral spirits were distilled, would the condensed matter be refined mineral spirits or something different? For example, a solvent bath which is contaminated. If distilled would the end product still be mineral spirits (allbeit somewhat cleaner or would the distilling process change the chemistry to such a degree as to make it ineffective?

Mineral spirits (sometimes called white spirits or Stoddard solvent) is simply a distillation fraction of petroleum. In other words it is characterized by its boiling range. Mineral spirits can be fairly crude (using a broad boiling point range) or fairly refined (using a narrower boiling range). The composition of mineral spirits varies depending on the location and the company doing the distilling.

If you have a contaminated solvent bath of mineral spirits, you can distill the contaminated bath and you will end up with mineral spirits if you use the right boiling range. Your distilled mineral spirits may not be the exact composition of the original mineral spirits, but it will still, by definition, be mineral spirits, as long as it falls within the typical boiling range for mineral spirits.

I hope this answers your question.

Technorati Tags: chemistry, mineral spirits, stoddard solvent, distillation

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Since its just me and my wife this month (the kids are in Las Vegas with their bio-dad), I thought I would make a list of some of the crazy/stupid stuff the wife and I do:

• We chat on Yahoo. . . even though we are sitting right next to each other
• We always kiss 3 times whenever we kiss goodbye *peck* *peck* *peck*. We get offended if the other person tries to rush off with only one or two pecks.
• Although I frequently call her “Original Cindy” in these posts, my actual pet name for her is “Boo”
• Her pet name for me is unprintable
• She is a devoted fan of V.C. Andrews, and is in the process of trying to read every single book she has ever written
• We are both very weak-willed when it comes to the other person. We can pretty much talk each other into almost ANYTHING
• Every time I sit down to work on my Blog at home, she asks “What is a ‘blog’ again? I still don’t get it.”
• Our 3-year-old Godson is autistic, and we love him like he is our own son.

What sort of weird, quirky things do you and your spouse/significant other do?

Technorati Tags: marriage, love, quirks

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The Official NH Blog-Con will still be held on October 14, 2006 at 4:00 pm at the Common Man in Concord.

This is just a rememinder that there will be a mini-Blog-Con this Saturday (July 29th) at 1:00 pm. I am heading over there to do some shopping (manly shopping, that is - tobacco, books, power-tools) and to check out the Common Man and see what sort of place it is.

If you are in the area and want to check the place out as well, just show up. If not, then we’ll see you in October!

Technorati Tags: NH Blog-Con, blog free or die, nh, new hampshire, blogger

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I don’t know who to blame this on, so I’m blaming it on the internet in general. . .

In order to clean up my sidebar, I had moved my Blogroll to a separate page. It turns out, however, that if your blogroll is not on the main page of your blog, then technorati (and probably other tracking services) won’t see that you linked to those other blogs.

So in order to make sure my linkageness gets “credited” on technorati (et al), I have moved my blogroll back to the main page of my blog. So there. My sidebar is all cluttered up again.

Technorati Tags: technorati, internet, blogroll, linking, stupid

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Product warnings have become more and more absurd as manufacturers attempt to cover their ass-etts by making their products liability-proof. Everyone has seen the list of supposed product-warnings that list things like: “for indoor or outdoor use only” or hairdryers that warn “not for use in the shower”.

And now, from this site, we have a list of product warnings for the fundamental physical behaviors of products:

• WARNING: This Product Warps Space and Time in Its Vicinity.
• WARNING: This Product Attracts Every Other Piece of Matter in the universe, Including the Products of Other Manufacturers, with a Force Proportional to the Product of the Masses and Inversely Proportional to the Distance Between Them.
• CAUTION: The Mass of This Product Contains the Energy Equivalent of 85 Million Tons of TNT per Net Ounce of Weight.
• HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE: This Product Contains Minute Electrically Charged Particles Moving at Velocities in Excess of Five Hundred Million Miles Per Hour.
• CONSUMER NOTICE: Because of the “Uncertainty Principle,” It Is Impossible for the Consumer to Find Out at the Same Time Both Precisely Where This Product Is and How Fast It Is Moving.
• ADVISORY: There is an Extremely Small but Nonzero Chance That, Through a Process Know as “Tunneling,” This Product May Spontaneously Disappear from Its Present Location and Reappear at Any Random Place in the Universe, Including Your Neighbor’s Domicile. The Manufacturer Will Not Be Responsible for Any Damages or Inconvenience That May Result.
• READ THIS BEFORE OPENING PACKAGE: According to Certain Suggested Versions of the Grand Unified Theory, the Primary Particles Constituting this Product May Decay to Nothingness Within the Next Four Hundred Million Years.
• THIS IS A 100% MATTER PRODUCT: In the Unlikely Event That This Merchandise Should Contact Antimatter in Any Form, a Catastrophic Explosion Will Result.
• PUBLIC NOTICE AS REQUIRED BY LAW: Any Use of This Product, in Any Manner Whatsoever, Will Increase the Amount of Disorder in the Universe. Although No Liability Is Implied Herein, the Consumer Is Warned That This Process Will Ultimately Lead to the Heat Death of the Universe.
• NOTE: The Most Fundamental Particles in This Product Are Held Together by a “Gluing” Force About Which Little is Currently Known and Whose Adhesive Power Can Therefore Not Be Permanently Guaranteed.
• ATTENTION: Despite Any Other Listing of Product Contents Found Hereon, the Consumer is Advised That, in Actuality, This Product Consists Of 99.9999999999% Empty Space.
• NEW GRAND UNIFIED THEORY DISCLAIMER: The Manufacturer May Technically Be Entitled to Claim That This Product Is TenDimensional. However, the Consumer Is Reminded That This Confers No Legal Rights Above and Beyond Those Applicable to Three-Dimensional Objects, Since the Seven New Dimensions Are “Rolled Up” into Such a Small “Area” That They Cannot Be Detected.
• PLEASE NOTE: Some Quantum Physics Theories Suggest That When the Consumer Is Not Directly Observing This Product, It May Cease to Exist or Will Exist Only in a Vague and Undetermined State.
• COMPONENT EQUIVALENCY NOTICE: The Subatomic Particles (Electrons, Protons, etc.) Comprising This Product Are Exactly the Same in Every Measurable Respect as Those Used in the Products of Other Manufacturers, and No Claim to the Contrary May Legitimately Be Expressed or Implied.
• HEALTH WARNING: Care Should Be Taken When Lifting This Product, Since Its Mass, and Thus Its Weight, Is Dependent on Its Velocity Relative to the User.
• IMPORTANT NOTICE TO PURCHASERS: The Entire Physical Universe, Including This Product, May One Day Collapse Back into an Infinitesimally Small Space. Should Another Universe Subsequently Re-emerge, the Existence of This Product in That Universe Cannot Be Guaranteed.

Technorati Tags: physics product warnings, science humor

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I don’t believe in these tests much, but I was bored so I took the Jung Personality Test

Free Jung Personality Test (similar to Myers-Briggs/MBTI)

Based on my Personality Type, the authors of this test have determined which careers I would LOVE

philosopher, game designer, scientist, software engineer, freelance artist, research scientist, ASSASSIN (Really!!??), freelance writer, physicist, software developer, mathmetician, geologist, computer scientist, philosophy professor, webmaster, slacker, medical researcher, painter, mortician, systems analyst, comic book artist, computer technician, website designer, scholar, archeologist, computer repair, forensic anthropologist, astronaut, researcher, historian, systems engineer, genetics researcher, astronomer, enviromental scientist, egyptologist

And which careers I would HATE. . .

human resources, public relations, social worker, guidance counselor, health care worker, trainer, school teacher, wedding planner, movie star, hospitality worker, SUPERVISOR (guess what I am?), child care worker, fundraiser, customer service, stay at home parent, office administrator

So, there you have it. Me in a nutshell.

Now if I could just get a job as a supervisor of assassins I could be “break-even guy”.

Technorati Tags: Jung, personality test, life

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• I never realized how dull life can be without any kids around. No emergencies, no kids fighting, nobody to give orders to (”take out the garbage!”, “feed the dog!”, “clean your room!”). Its just work, dinner, TV/computer, bedtime. Seems almost pointless. . . so it goes.
• We just hopped on board the Netflix bandwagon. I did the math, and it worked out to be cheaper than renting from the local vid store, and with a broader selection, and no late fees. Seemed stupid not to.
• THIS JUST IN: My wife crawled into bed with a headache, and she put a DVD movie on. She fell asleep halfway through it. Just moments ago, as I was writing the above two points, my wife woke up and rewound the movie to the place where it was at before she fell asleep. She then promptly fell asleep again. Silly wife.
• Work is work

That’s about it.

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Pointless Drivel has posted a terrific selection of pictures of some twisted person’s knitting projects.

Check these out!

This one is my personal favorite:

Technorati Tags: knitting

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