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SETI@Home Stats

I added my SETI@Home stats to the Miata Diaries site. I got it to work after several failures. I wanted to add it to this site as well, but I was stymied by the same thing that slowed me down on the other one, I couldn’t get it to work in anything but the root directory of the plog. So I had to use two copies of the PHP script and two copies of the XML file. For whatever reason the one on this blog doesn’t update. It still has last night’s stats.

So I tried once again to get it to link to the one file that is residing in the diaries directory. After one messy failure I think it hooked up to it, but it still shows the old stats.

I guess it wasn’t linked after all, I just deleted the supposedly not being read .php and .xml files and the script fails and outputs what you see on the left.

Back to the drawing board.

American’s Love Stuff

We have way too much of it. A majority of the people I know have two car garages and it is rare that any one uses them to park even one car inside. Those are really 20′ x 20′ storage sheds connected to the house. They are a place to keep toys, old exercise equipment, boxes full of old books, the lawnmower, whatever, just not cars. Once your garage is too full to even walk through you can drive, usually, less than 2 miles and for a small monthly fee, rent another 10′ x 20′ space to put the overflow. What is so amazing is that these places are hives of storage rooms, hundreds per location. Man we have too much stuff.

While watching TV this weekend I saw an ad for the latest in American storage solutions, PODS. now you don’t have to drive two miles to the hive, these people bring a cell of the honeycomb to you!

Harry Belafonte

Whenever the three of us go anywhere, we of course have to drive Donna’s Moms’ Civic because the Miata holds just two. Mom has a 6 disc CD changer in the car and it is always stuffed full of music that is appropriate for the listening pleasure of a 70 year-old woman.

It has always been a rule between Donna and I that whoever is driving, gets the music choice. This works out well for me because I do 95% of all the driving. It is different in the Civic, maybe in deference to her age or because of the fact that it is Mom’s car, I usually listen to whatever is in the changer. Most of the stuff is tolerable and we are usually going under 30 miles so it won’t be for too long.

Unfortunately one of her favorites is a Harry Belafonte CD in which he thoroughly butchers several recognizable songs. And then in others, the production is way over the top for the song involved. His rendition of Michael Row Your Boat Ashore is a shining example of this. I just spent the last 30 minutes listening to this tripe and my head is swimming. Where is my copy of Guns ‘n’ Roses’s Appetite For Destruction? I need a little “Welcome To The Jungle.”

RADIOIO II

To listen to the free stream with Windows Media Player you need a plugin called Abacast. Tried installing it here at home and for whatever reason it doesn’t work. The low band (mono) mp3 stream is still there, but I can’t listen to mp3 at work because it uses an IP address and the network weasels have blocked access to anything with just an IP. In searching for a replacement I found something really close, Radio Paradise, and there stream is stereo. They are also listener supported and if I can get the stream at work I will consider donating something to the cause.

Well That Shit Ain’t Cuttin’ It

A couple weeks ago at my last Doctor’s appointment my blood pressure had creeped back up to the 150/100 mark. Whatever drugs we tried and though worked had lost their effectiveness. The Doctor tossed up his hands and said, “let’s send you to a Cardiologist.” Not only was the BP back up, but the palpitations that started at Thanksgiving hasn’t totally gone away either. Last Thursday I saw the heart Doc and he said, we’ll put you on this different medicine Lotrel 5/10. It is a combination of a couple of drugs, come back in 3 weeks and we’ll do a check and see how you are doing. He suggested I buy a home BP monitor and check my pressure everyday. I have been taking the new meds since last Friday and I have been checking my pressure and it has been hold steady and actually today it was the highest it has been, 152/104. Trouble is, I have been feeling crappy the last 2 days and is it because my BP is up or is it something that makes the pressure rise? I’ll call tomorrow and see if I need to muddle through another week or should we change something now.

What Color Is Your Pee?

Because my old friend the prostate has been bothering me, I went to the Doctor today. He prescribed an antibiotic and analgesic/antispasmodic. The antibiotic probably won’t do much, I’ve taken stronger in the past. Usually after a while my symptoms go away, but always they return weeks or months later. Taking antibiotics either works on the placebo effect on me or whatever happens to cause the flare-ups goes away on its own accord for these instances. The antispasmodic is a new thing, supposedly this will ease the pain/burning. One of the side effects is it may turn your urine blue-green. Cool, can hardly wait for that to happen…

Somebody Needs To Take The M Out Of MTV

In my extremely lazy day around the house today I have watched a bit of TV. Everything from a rerun of SportsNight at 7:30 AM to some of the Saints/Bucs football game at 9:30 PM. As my habit, and probably most men’s, as soon as a commercial break happens we go hunting other things to see. In the probably 25 times I passed through MTV today, not once did I stumble onto a music video being played. Because it is of no interest to me, I didn’t stick around to see if it was Road Rules or Real World or whatever. VH1 is falling into the same rut as well, only about half the time we they playing videos. The rest was Behind the Music stuff….