Universal Remote

News flash...Universal remotes (for TV, audio, DVD, etc.) really do work! We'd tried to get them to work before but never succeeded till now...thanks to my son.

HDMI and PIP

[For 8/29]

Even after getting a cable box that supports HDMI (cables), it's still hard to get PIP (picture-in-picture) to work because I can't get a signal from the YPbPr1 cable. It's like the HDMI overrides it. But there supposedly is a multistream card in the box which one would think would allow multiple streams of input. Hrmph!

Rodgers to Jennings

I didn't get to see it, but on the first offensive play against the Titans, the Packers scored a touchdown on a pass from Aaron Rodgers to Greg Jennings -- 68 yards.

I won't say, "Brett who?" just yet though. This was still preseason.

MSIE8 Beta 2

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 was released today. It breaks some of the CSS on Living Word's site unless you set it back to MSIE7 emulation. I thought 8 was supposed to do that kind of stuff better than 7. Hm.

San Juan

Time for another new game -- San Juan. If you are already familiar with the game of Puerto Rico (currently #2 on the Geek second now to Agricola), then you can learn to play San Juan very easily. San Juan is the card game cousin of Puerto Rico. We found it very enjoyable and, as usual, will need several more plays to find some good winning strategies.

Kola Superdeep Borehole

[For 8/25]

The Russians dug a hole over 7 and a half miles down into the earth in the 1970s and 80s. They unexpectedly found water far under the surface. I'm not surprised they did.

"In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened."

Wedding in 2009

Another niece asked me to play (piano) for her wedding in 2009 today. I was honored to be asked and gladly agreed to do so.

Wedding #2

[For 8/23]

There was another wedding this weekend amongst the relatives. My oldest Miller niece got married in Milwaukee. I was privileged to be the organist.

Math Trade Trades II

[For 8/22]

I gave away my second copy of the game Hive today and received Travel Blokus, Vagabondo, and Squint.

Niece

[For 8/21]

My daughter became an aunt-to-be tonight, so to speak.

Usain Bolt, Olympic Runner

Usain Bolt is the fastest short distance runner known to modern man. He now hold the world record for the 100 meter and the 200 meter races -- even though he supposedly slowed down for the last 20 meters of the 100 to showboat.

Better Place

[For 8/19]

The future of cars and other ground transportation for the world can be found here: Better Place. Thank you Shai Agassi.

Mario Party

My three 20-somethings still enjoy playing Mario Party together. That's cool.

I still enjoy watching them play too.

Travel Time

[For 8/17]

If you don't stop for too long and the traffic isn't too heavy and there isn't road construction and you don't get stopped for speeding, it's possible to travel from the Woodbury, MN, to Waukesha, WI, in under 4.5 hours.

Ballpark Wedding

[For 8/16]

My brother-in-law got married at the minor league ballpark in the Twin Cities today. Unusual, but enjoyable, and very fitting for both of them. God bless their family.

Game Table

[For 8/15]

Tables in standard motel rooms aren't big enough to support many (most?) board games. I think there's a market for portable game tables for use on such ocassions.

Michael Phelps - #6

Michael Phelps now has 6 gold medals in the Beijing olympics. Don't you kinda feel sorry for Laszlo Cseh who keeps finishing 2nd behind Phelps?

Chippyrat Removal

[For 8/13]

I got rid of a second chippyrat using my "trap" today. Maybe the others will take the hint and stay away from the bird feeders.

Timbuktu, the Game

Timbuktu (aka Tombouctou) is a pretty neat brain-burner of a game. I initially rated it a 9 out of 10 which is quite high considering I currently only rate one game (El Grande) a 10.

Packers Preseason vs Bengals

The Green Bay Packers lost their first preseason game, but the first string under Aaron Rodgers went 10-0 against the Cincinnati Bengals in the first quarter.

Emily's Fault Web Site

[For 8/10]

Emily's Fault has a Web site.

Fantasy Football Draft

My first pick in the Wisnet War Zone Fantasy Football League Draft this year was running back Joseph Addai. My last pick was kicker Jason Hanson.

Wisconsin State Fair

[For 8/8]

After not having been to the Wisconsin State Fair since college (over 25 years ago), I found that it is now chiefly a place to eat and drink. You can eat and drink most anything you can think of, but that's it's main function. The animals, crafts, etc. are not the main attraction. There's a little good music to listen to as well.

Canon A550

Our new (used) Canon A550 downloads pictures to my hard drive with very little muss or fuss. Our previous digital camera (an Olympus), as you might expect, could do the same but took several more steps to complete the process.

Gary Sonnenberg

[For 8/6]

Someone at MLC mistook me for the Gary Sonnenberg who works there.

VLTESTI

VLTESTI is a PARM used with SYNCSORT when doing INCLUDES or OMITS on a file with variable-length records.

Yeah, I know, but that's today's lesson.

Ego? Not.

Some people actually believe that the devil is just your ego convincing you that there is a devil and that it's not really you yourself that's the whole problem. Some people are in for a big surprise one day.

She's a Gamer

[For 8/3]

My niece from California is a gamer just like the rest of us. She enjoyed the strategy games we taught her and even has that necessary touch of OCD that requires game bits to be lined up "just so" in their appointed spots on the game board.

Oh yeah, and by the way, speaking of games, Brett Favre is back with the Packers again.

Computer Slow? Check Your RAM

[For 8/2]

It seemed my computer had been running really slow lately. It wasn't spyware or anything like that because I'd taken care of that stuff recently using SpyBot, Ad-Aware, SUPERAntiSpyware, and Spyware Blaster. I had also cleaned unneeded files from my hard drive so I had plenty of space. Yet it still seemed that the hard drive was being accessed for almost every little task.

So I opened up the case and checked the RAM cards. Sure enough, one of them -- even though they're clamped in at both ends -- seemed a little loose when I pushed on it. When you only have 512K and just half of that is functional, everything is going to slow to a crawl. Now everything seems back to normal speeds.

Moral of the story: Check your physical banks of RAM from time to time. You may not be using all the memory you think you are.

Washing Machines

The GE Profile and the Maytag brand washing machines aren't currently as highly rated as the LG, but they're a strong second place and are probably cheaper.