MadMup.com

The cats (unbeknownst to them) have started a diet as of this morning. No longer will the food trough be filled to overflowing. No longer will they stuff themselves willy-nilly. No longer will they gorge themselves until they have trouble walking. They are just too fat. It's not good for them, and getting a cat to exercise is like that old saying: "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig."

I've decided to follow the instructions on the cat food bag which clearly state that each cat should get 3/4 of a cup of food per day. Multiplied by two that means I'm only going to be putting a cup and a half of food in the food dish every day. Since they don't seem to make a 3/4 cup measuring cup, I've decided to split it up this way: 1 cup of food in the morning, 1/2 cup of food at night.

I have a few concerns.

First, I'm worried they won't split the food evenly between them. Nutmeg can be a jerk, and Dala is too nice. I've often come back to their room to see Dala crouched and awaiting a chance to eat while Nutmeg is pigging out. I'm worried that Nutmeg will eat 80% of the food and Dala will go hungry.

Second, what about when I'm away? I have "feeders" for my cats that let you put a week's worth of food and water in them, but that allows them to eat as much as they want. I guess the answer here is to never go on trips, and that's a fine solution for me!

Third, when my cats get hungry, they get obnoxious. Sometimes they whine, sometimes they knock stuff off my desk, sometimes they sit and stare at me as if to say, "Why must you torture us with starvation?"

We'll see how this goes. I'm guessing that even though they're the ones on the diet, I'm the one that will suffer.
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How do you relax? Ask five different people and you’re likely to get five different answers. Some of the more common answers are

• Listen to music
• Take a bubble bath
• Eat
• Read

I’ve done each of those at one time or another. (In fact, I’m doing one of them right now and did another one of them last night.) One of the most relaxing things I’ve ever found, though, is watching the Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter. Seriously.

Perhaps a bit of history or explanation would be in order. I know most of you are familiar with the concept of “defragging a hard drive,” but let me run through it for those who are not.

Imagine an empty desk or table in front of you. Now imagine that any bit of information you learn is going to be written on a Post-It Note and stuck to the table in the first available slot. So you learn something about aardvarks: it gets written on a Post-It Note and stuck to the table. Now you learn something about the average rainfall in Kansas – it gets written on a Post-It Note and stuck to the table. Now you learn something about constellations, about hydroponics, about the world record for eating potatoes, about bicycles, about the Nile River, about space exploration, about Kevlar – every bit gets written on a Post-It Note and stuck to the table.

Every time a new Post-It Note goes on the table, you also record its position on a larger piece of paper you have in front of you. It will act like a map so you know where to find that info when someone asks you about that topic.

Now let’s say you learn something new about aardvarks. While it would be nice to be able to put the new info right next to the original aardvark info, there’s already something there. So it goes into the next available slot, which just might be a slot in the middle of the table that opened up because you decided to discard a Post-It Note that had the number of that really disgusting pizza place that you ate at last week and got so sick afterwards that you decided to never eat there again.

So now, if someone should ask you a question about aardvarks, you need to refer to your index sheet twice and find the information in two separate spots. How very time consuming!

The exact same thing happens to hard drives – info gets written where it can be written, and it isn’t necessarily all next like-minded bits of information. That paper you wrote on why supermarket clerks should all be trained in the ancient art of kung fu could conceivably be in several different places on the hard drive.

This is where the Disk Defragmenter comes in. Its one purpose is to ferret out where these files are and how they could be put closer (preferably next) to each other. Once it figures that out, it does it. All of the separate bits of your paper will now be in one block, all in a row for easy gathering. Now instead of your paper being in “A1, G32, C7, Q92, and DF102” it might be in “C-7 through C-11.” This supposedly speeds up the computer’s “finding stuff” time and makes it run a little more efficiently. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. I don’t really care. I just want it to look cool while it’s working.

The Windows 98 version of the Disk Defragmenter could be expanded to be a whole screen full of little colored blocks. Different colors meant different things: light blue was a block that hadn’t been moved, red was a block that wasn’t going to be moved, and dark blue-green meant the block was done being moved and was where it was going to stay. As the program went about its business, the little blocks would change colors and jump around the screen, sometimes one by one, sometimes as a group, until they were all either red or dark blue-green and the program declared it was finished.

I find the whole process to be very hypnotic. A very badly fragmented hard drive can take a couple of hours to defragment, and sometimes when I’ve stopped by to check on its progress, I’ll end up watching for a while because it is so transfixing. I get mesmerized by the moving blocks and I find myself relaxing and tuning out anything else that might be going on. I have literally watched the process a half hour at a time more than once.

I started using Windows XP a few years ago. While I think it’s the best version of Windows Microsoft has come up with yet, I’m bothered by one particular thing: they changed the way Disk Defragmenter looks. If I remember correctly, they actually changed it back in Windows Millenium, which might explain its awfulness (Translation: Windows Millenium was one of the worst versions of Windows ever unleashed on an unsuspecting world). Now, instead of a full screen of jumping and moving blocks, I’m treated to two small multi-colored bars: one showing the state of the hard drive before the process, and one showing the progress while the program is running.

Yes, it still shows progress being made, but on a smaller scale. It has no relaxing effect on me at all. In fact, it actually tends to cause me tension, as I’m never sure things are going on. Rather than giving me an indication of how much more work it has to do, it will all of a sudden tell me it’s done. Sure enough, the “what’s happened” bar looks a lot different than the “before we started” bar, but I still feel let down, and I’m not at all relaxed.

Windows 98 is, in computer terms, a dinosaur. You might guess from its name that it was released in 1998, and you’d be right for the most part. Computer years are worse than dog years, with one human year being equal to 10 or 15 computer years instead of 7, so Windows 98 is somewhere around 60-90 years old. Any new computer runs Windows XP, and new computers would actually have some trouble running Windows 98, so Windows 98 is gradually disappearing from the tech landscape, and with it, the Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter. Luckily, at my schools we’re still running Windows 98 on most of the computers, so I occasionally have call to run a defragment. Those days, my friends, are good days.

So take your baths, read your books, eat your éclairs, and listen to your Kenny G. I might occasionally join you. But if you want to join me in watching a hard drive defragment, just be aware that I may not realize you’re even there.

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It's Thanksgiving Day here in the United States. Most who can share in a few traditions: getting together with family, eating (turkey, usually), and maybe watching football. These traditions, of course, mirror what the Pilgrims did back on that first Thanksgiving. (Of course, back then the Cowboys were a much better team.)

So I did most of those things. I talked to my parents on the phone, I ate some turkey at Cracker Barrel with a friend, and I watched a few minutes of football. A semi-traditional Thanksgiving, I guess.

I was surprised by how many people were at Cracker Barrel. Have you seen The Santa Clause? Remember the part where Tim Allen takes his kid to Denny's and it's a few sad-sack dudes and that's all the people that are there? It's not like that anymore, I guess. It was packed. Lots of families with tables pushed together and no tables with just one person at them. How very odd. At least, it struck me as odd. Of course, when you think about how much work it takes to make a traditional Thanksgiving meal, it's actually suprising that more people don't take the Cracker Barrel route.

I also watched a couple of movies, played a game or two, kept up with the very-slow THorum, and took a bath.

Now I'm listening to song on repeat that has the opening lines:

People just ain't no good
I think that's well understood
You can see it
everywhere you look
People just ain't no good

There's a nice Thanksgiving song, eh? Sure it might be depressing, but it's beautiful.

Thanksgiving's a good time to take stock of everything that's good in your life. Actually, let me expand that: it's a good time to take stock of everything in your life, good and bad. Let's face it, without the bad stuff we wouldn't be who we are - at least, we wouldn't really know who we were. So be thankful. Don't be thankful in comparison, either, because that robs the sentiment from the thoughts. "I don't have it as bad as so-and-so" isn't nearly as thankful as "I'm so glad to have this particular person in my life" or "I'm alive and I like it!"

So be thankful.

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So I saw The Incredibles last night. Again. It was the third time, actually. There are very few movies I've seen in the theater more than once, and even fewer that I've seen three times. I saw this one five days before it was released, then twice since it's been out.

It's one of those movies I feel dumb saying anything about because it's so good you should just go see it. It instantly became my favorite Pixar movie (no easy feat with movies such as Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo under their belts).

If you don't like superheroes in general, there's a chance you won't like this movie, but there's still actually a chance you will. It's got a heart that's bigger than the superhero aspect of it, and the superheroes in it are actually more humanly portrayed than most superheroes are portrayed in movies.

There are laughs a-plenty in the movie, but that's not my overall feel of the movie. The characters feel real and react realistically. There's a desparation in some of the fights that you always wondered if Batman or Spider-Man felt. The dynamic of having a super-mother being fearful and protective of her super-kids in a fight is both inspiring and heart-wrenching at the same time. In fact, the scene in the plane where she is frantically trying to protect her kids has gotten me teary all three times I've seen the movie. There are at least two other points in the movie that cause me to tear up, but that's enough ammo for you.

If you've been looking for a good movie to see, this is the one. Go see it. In today's arbitrarily-chosen rating system I'd give it a 95%.
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There's a word I know way too much about.

In this particular instance, though, I'm referring to my updating this week. I promise to do better next week - I see much more free time on the horizon.

I'm about to leave for Wisconsin for what's left of the weekend. Have a good weekend, all ya'll.

Labels: meta

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I had a really long piece written and it disappeared into the Matrix somewhere.

Grrrr.

I don't have the time or the patience to try to recreate it now.

Labels: meta

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I've been ill for the last several days, and I hope that excuses me from my lack of blogging lately.

I apologize unreservedly.

I have a few entries in mind and will try to do one this evening.

Consider yourself warned.

Labels: meta

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Sheesh. The title is longer than the post.

Here's my latest review.

Labels: game review

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Even if you don't agree with why wars are fought or with the idea of having a military in the first place, can you at least appreciate people who are willing to die for beliefs they have?

I hope so.

Here's a site with info on the origins of Veteran's Day.

My grandpa was in the Army during World War II. I never talked to him about the experience, but it was always one of those things that made me look at him in a different light. He was the kind of man that didn't seem affected by many things, but I can't help but think he was affected by his time in the Army. I wonder sometimes how it changed him.

Of course, the world was a different place in the 1940's. I'm always amazed by stories of how Americans banded together to save iron and energy. And, of course, it was WWII that got women into the workplace, forever changing the landscape.

I digress - Veteran's Day is a day for honoring veterans from any war: WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq. It's expanded, even, to include members of the military in general.

Joining the military was one of those things I always "kinda" thought about doing. It was something I always respected in other people. Whenever I pictured myself in the military, though, I couldn't picture myself doing very well. I'd be the guy that got beaten by socks full of soap because I caused the whole platoon to have to do extra work because I could only do 15 pushups. I'm at my best when I'm being told what to do, though, so maybe it would've worked out.

Anyway, if you know a veteran, take some time out today to let them know you're thankful for their commitment and their courage.
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Over at the THorum, we have a webcam portal. Basically that means members can include a link to their webcam pictures and other members can see them all in one (usually) happy place. The idea is to change it frequently so as to keep people's attentions.

Turns out, I've got 26 pictures in the archive. I thought I'd use this program to put together a video of them.

Here's the video. It's 2.7M and it has audio, so be careful at work or wherever you don't want to awaken people. The song is "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" by Green Day, and it is one of my most favorite songs ever. It immediately infuses a semi-sad feeling of nostalgia on whatever is happening along with it. I first became aware of the song when they played it over a video montage in the clip show preceding the Seinfeld finale, so I always think of it as "the Seinfeld song."

So, anyway, enjoy.

Labels: meta, Seinfeld

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I wish I had more things to say.
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I figured out how Listerine (yes, the mouthwash) works: it burns off the top layer of anything it touches, germs and all, much like the entryway to the facility in Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain.

All I can say is that if you're going to have a fire in your mouth, it might as well have a hint of orange flavor to it.
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Most sites you'll visit today will tell you to go vote.

Not here. Not me.

I mean, yeah, I think you should and all - if you're informed. If you're not, though, and you're voting "because you're supposed to" or "because you hate so-and-so" or "you want to write-in Q*Bert," just do us all a favor and don't vote, okay?

If you're uninformed: don't vote.
If you're too young: don't vote.
If you're an idiot: don't vote.
If you're Canadian: don't vote here.
If you're voting because someone told you you should: don't vote.
If you're voting to get out of that "you can't say anything bad if you didn't vote" clause: don't vote.
If you're dead: don't vote.
If you've already voted: don't vote again.

If, however, you know anything about the issues: vote. That includes people who are voting basically on one or two issues. Know the issue, know the candidate, and vote.

You know who you are, and you know what you need to do (or not do).
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