Switching back…

Well, I think I have most of the tweaks done for moving back to my personal site at http://www.tchansen.org. Thanks to all of you who have followed me here – time to update the bookmarks again!

Save ApexDigest Raffle!

Mary Robinette Kowal is sponsoring an effort to help save Apex Digest, The Science Fiction Horror Magazine.

Once upon a time when someone needed help, people chipped by throwing a rent party in their home or putting on a play. Now, instead of, “My uncle’s got a barn,” we’re saying, “I’ve got a website.”

The list of items and services donated is nothing less than astounding! Seriously, if you have a jones for fine fiction and want something unique, buy a few tickets and score something amazing.

The Things You Can Do With A Bike

For His Royal Highness Bill…

Bike Furniture Design

Updates

For those of you playing along at home, I have updated several recent articles with the correct categories. They may show up as new again for you. My apologies.

Not Talking Like a Pirate

I’ve got to admit that ‘Talk Like A Pirate Day’ was fun… the first two times. A little dry the next couple of times and now I just dread it. I think it started in a big way in 2002 and it was fun, especially as my boy is into pirates in a big way.

So, I’ll still probably do something silly tomorrow, but I won’t mean it. Definitely need a new meme…

Update: I just noticed that Mary is advocating the swashbuckling vocabulary tomorrow, so please ignore my gloominess above.

Argh.

Minor Annoyances, part unknown

Most days, minor annoyances are just that, minor, and fade after a moment’s frustration.  For some reason, today’s annoyance has stuck, because, well, read first and then we’ll discuss.

The restroom at work has the toilet paper roll that sticks – it doesn’t turn a full turn.  I’m used to that.  Pull on it and it will tear off at about the point it needs to.

Today, however, someone has fixed that and it spins freely, almost as if someone has applied graphite to get that extra bit of spinnage. So, I give it my usual tug and now there is a quarter of a roll of toilet paper on the floor.  Do I roll it back up, contaminating someone else with the stuff off of the floor?  (I threw it away.)

The thing is, that is the way it is supposed to work, I’d just gotten used to the wrong way for so long that it was more comfortable than the right way. Now, I’m seeing bunches of stuff that I’m too used to the wrong way and I want to fix them – just don’t have that much time in the day!

I did, with the help of Jeff in IT get my Pocket PC to sync with work’s Exchange Server (add a Root Certificate to 2003 Pocket PC, Synchronize a Pocket PC with Exchange 2003) so one down, a bajillion to go!

Oops?

Well, I didn’t realize that not only were comments being held in a moderation queue but that I wasn’t getting email if the comments was in the queue!  That has (hopefully) been rectified and the comments in the queue have been published.

badbillyz, I don’t know where your comment went originally but I’ve added it.  Just saying.

Augh! It BURNS!

I’ve got to go listen to some Pearl Jam or something after this:

http://tvinjapan.com/blog/2006/09/10/big-in-japan-right-now-the-tarako-cupie-girls/

Augh!

My Birth Date Throughout History

Molly (TIP) posted back in July about a interesting meme where you go to Wikipedia and search for your birth date without the year and then post about “…3 events, 2 births, 1 death and a holiday, if there is one.”

So, without further ado here is the info about my birth date:

Events

• 1898 – Caleb Bradham renames his carbonated soft drink “Pepsi-Cola“.
• 1943 – In Denmark, a general strike against the Nazi occupation is started.
• 1963 – During a 200,000-person civil rights rally in at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his famous I have a dream speech.

Birthdays

• 1925 – Donald O’Connor, American singer, dancer, and actor (d. 2003)
• 1917 – Jack Kirby, American comic book artist (d. 1994)
• 1828 (O.S.) – Leo Tolstoy, Russian writer (d. 1910)

Holidays

• Many Christian churches: feast day of Saint Augustine of Hippo.
• Hong Kong: Liberation Day (1945).
• Yugoslavia – Uspenije Presvete Bogorodice – Velika Gospojina (Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos (Mother of God).

So, it is your turn – what happened on your birth date? Leave me a comment with your bits or a link to your post please!

Minor Victories

I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, mostly because I’ve had a rather good couple of days.

One fun bit was that I took a CPR/AED certification class last night so now I’m certified… or certifiable, depending on who you talk to. 

The class was interesting and the content has changed a great deal since I was a non-attentive fifteen year old boy scout.  What was startling was some of the changes for dealing with choking victims (they added back blows to the process) as well as the number of compressions per minute, which I remember being quite a bit slower.  Taking yoga for the last five months helped out the compressions though; I could have gone on quite a bit longer, which is a good thing.

One of the real startling aspects of the class was that there was very little explanation about why you do something – it was all about how to do it.  I know that the how is important; you need to be able to do this stuff without having to take the time to analyze and figure it out in an emergency.  Still, knowing why you do something gives you the ability to adapt to a non-standard situation; if you know why then you can work out how.

Still, it is a good thing to have some training – I’m tempted to continue on with some of the classes.  Problem is that the classes are downtown so there are rather inconvenient and only on Monday nights, which is just as inconvenient.  Food for thought.