My So Called Life

Coyote Crossing

/ Shane / Leave a comment

So we were looking at condos on Saturday and I looked over and saw a coyote walking on the el tracks!  I was like “Holy crap, there’s a coyote on the el tracks!”  Sara didn’t believe me that it was a coyote and not just a stray dog until I pointed out the roller skates and giant Acme rocket strapped to the little feller’s back.  No, in all seriousness, after a quick jaunt to Wikipedia to see a picture, she agreed that’s what we saw.  We also found an interesting article about the wild coyote population in Chicago.

I gotta say, you just don’t expect to see something like that in Chicago, but it’s still not as weird as the time I saw a wild boar in Philadelphia.

A new look! (sort of)

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Well, you will (maybe) notice some changes around here at ShaneBlog.  Actually, you might not since I am striving to keep the old look as much as possible.  I thought about changing it, but I still like it after all this time.  Anyway, anybody who has tried to do custom styles with LJ (probably none of you since nobody uses LJ anymore) knows that it is fairly frustrating.  Switching templates but trying to keep the same look took me about 3 hours. 

I think the biggest feature missing in LJ is the search capacity. Supposedly they are working on it. I would like to add a search section in the sidebar, but aparently that is for paid customers only, so until I figure out some way around the LJ restrictions…

   

Haven’t posted in awhile

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Last night our freezer/refrigerator decided to stop working for unknown reasons.  I never had one with an ice maker in it before, but if you have one and the freezer stops working, all of that ice melts and makes you a lake in your kitchen!  And so do frozen strawberries, except their lake is decidedly more sticky.

Awful snow storm today.  Work was closed but I didn’t know until I was already there, so I ended up working all day.  Needless to say, this wasn’t the best day ever.

Last weekend we went house hunting!  How exciting is that?  We looked at 8 condos but there are only 2 possibilities of the bunch.  We’ll probably have at least one more blitzkrieg of looking at places before we make any decisions.

Here is an interesting page debunking science myths (like the great wall of China is the only man made structure visible from space).  Many of these I believed!  I feel so duped.

You should check out this awesomeness both for the technical stop action lightbrite skills and also for the great song about the dangers of robots (mainly, that if they win, we’ll have to listen to techno music)

Guess who’s back….back again (and again and again)

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Well, it’s official, Brett Favre is back for another season with the Packers! A lot of people will not understand, but here in Packerland (and by here in Packerland I mean here deep in enemy territory)(I guess I mean Packerland here in my head) we are very exited about this.

I don’t know any other way to explain it than 10 postseason appearances, six division titles, three NFC Championship games, two Super Bowl appearances and one Super Bowl win.

You can say whatever you want about the decline of his playing ability, but he’s still easily better than 1/2 of the QBs starting in this league. So do you go with someone you know for sure is at *least* in the top half of QBs and at best one of the greatest of all time, or do you go with some backup who has never gotten a chance to play?

As far as the Super Bowl this weekend, gooooo Colts! I’d love to see Tony Dungy and the city of Indianapolis get a title, but more importantly I don’t think I can handle living here next year if the Bears win. On the other hand, I would enjoy living here next year if the Bears lose! 😉

Vista and Mooninites

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Who’s got Vista? This guy!

So I bought my new laptop and it’s pretty awesome. Here I am posting to my journal in front of the TV! I’ve only had it for a couple of days, so I haven’t gotten it all set up yet. I’m really enjoying the wide screen so far. Even though I have more RAM and dual processors, it doesn’t seem any faster…I think it’s because Vista is hogging up a lot of resources.

Speaking of Vista, its pretty cool. The biggest thing I’ve noticed is that it’s not totally revolutionary. I remember going from 3.1 to 95 and 98 to XP and just being completely lost. I felt like I needed to re-learn everything. With Vista I was able to dive right in. The transparent windows with the glowy buttons are pretty cool. Probably my favorite new feature is hitting win-tab and cycling through the open programs (similar to alt-tab, but cooler)(incidentally alt-tab is cooler now too)

In other news, I assume you’ve heard about the Boston Bomb Scare. At first I was like, “How could anybody be so dumb as to strap fake bombs to bridges and think that would be a good idea for advertising!” Well that was because the news was sensationalizing like it always done. For example, the article said “Photographs of the devices show several tiny light bulbs protruding from a circuit board that houses wiring and at least four batteries.” Okay, that’s one way of saying it that makes it sound very scary…another way of saying it would be, “Photographs of the devices show a litebright shaped cartoon character giving you the middle finger.” That’s right, it looks nothing like a bomb, and Bostoners should be absolutely ashamed at themselves for over reacting. And who should that light up cartoon character be? Why, none other than Ignignokt from Aqua Teen Hunger Force!

So then, the guys responsible held a press conference:

At a news conference after the hearing, Stevens and Berdovsky stepped to the microphones and said they were taking questions only about 1970s hairstyles.

When a reporter accused them of not taking the situation seriously, Stevens responded, “We’re taking it very seriously.” Asked another question about the case, Stevens reiterated they were answering questions only about hair and accused the reporter of not taking him and Berdovsky seriously.

Reporters did not relent and as they continued, Berdovsky disregarded their queries, saying, “That’s not a hair question. I’m sorry.”

So not only are they advertising a totally awesome show (and upcoming movie) but they’re obviously awesome as well. Another interesting piece of fearmongering:
Assistant Attorney General John Grossman called the light boards “bomb-like” devices and said that if they had been explosive they could have damaged transportation infrastructure in the city.
Okay, and if they had been actual Mooninites invading from the moon they could have taken over the whole country! It should be noted that these devices were in place for 2 weeks before being reported as bombs and also that they were in 8 other cities where there was no panic.

I don’t know man, must be the cold up there…