January 15, 2004 - VooDoo Daddy's Magic Kitchen
Agenda
Andrew Tobias
George and I had previously noted that while Andrew Tobias does provide some great information on financial matters, he often drifts into completely different subjects. He's been more political of late, and clearly doesn't like the current U.S. administration. I mentioned on Tuesday that I ought to send an e-mail to Tobias and tell him about my new website, JustOneTerm.com. George agreed, so I sent a short note to Tobias along with a link to the site.
I really didn't think much about it, but noticed as the day went on Wednesday that I was getting an unusually large number of e-mails from people requesting a free Just One Term bumper sticker. About 7:00 pm, I received another sticker request, but this one said they had found my site thanks to Andrew Tobias' daily column! Wasting no time, I immediately jumped over to Tobias' website, and there was my name, right at the top of the column (you can still read it in his New Columns Archive). Thanks to the plug from Tobias, JustOneTerm received an extra 300 hits on Wednesday.
After we had lunch (but before I could write up these notes), George managed to get published on Andew Tobias' web site! George was writing to tell him about the Free Farmed program which encourages farmers to treat their animals humanely (we talked about this at some length on December 5th of 2002. Tobias also had a link to a great Matrix spoof which reveals the real world of factory farm animals. Enter The Meatrix!
Two in one week! Maybe we should start sending e-mails to Dave Barry...
Sailing Update
George had told me earlier that the rudder on his sailboat had acquired a build-up of calcification. He managed to remove pretty much all of the build-up by sealing the rudder in a plastic big of muriatic acid! that's fine for a relatively small object, but how do you get the calcification off the waterline of your boat? George was lucky enough to bump into an employee of the Sailboat Shop, and this kind (and knowledgeable) fella told George to pick up a package of 24 plastic spray bottles at Costco, then spray it on, and rinse it off. Why the 24-count package? well, it seems you can only spray for about 45 seconds before the acid destroys the inner workings of the spray.George tried this with a spray bottle he had, and 45 seconds was just about right. Before he headed for Costco and a flat of spray bottles, he decided to try his garden sprayer. Voila! Not only did the garden sprayer do the job, it continued to work without fail.
Next he decided to give his entire bottom a new coat of bottom paint (his boat's bottom, that is). He also ordered some new rgistration numbers for the side of boat, and says they really look sharp. I'll try to get a photo soon.
Things are happening on Mars!
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| Mars rover spirit |
There's been a lot of news about Mars lately, and I was telling George (or did I just mean to, but never did?) about a full panoramic view of the area around the Spirit Rover. I'd swear that I saw a cellular phone antenna on that far hill!
According to the latest reports (the evening of Jan 24), scientists at JPL proved their theory regarding a faulty flash memory module by rebooting the onboard system to run from RAM instead. They've upgraded the rover's status from "critical" to "serious."
Firefly Update
I received my Complete Firefly DVD set about a month ago, and boy, is it a treat. I've re-watched most of the originally-aired episodes, and they're just as good the second time around (the quality is a lot better than the bootleg VCDs I bought on ebay, too).
I've only been able to bring myself to watch one of the three un-aired episodes (I'm rationing!). "The Message" is just as good as any of the previous episodes. There's more romantic problems with Simon and Kaylee, and plenty of surprises. Jayne even gets an unexpected package from his Mom! I won't give away any more-- just buy them and see it.
On a related note, I read on the internet that the Serenity (that's the ship from Firefly) made a cameo appearance in the SciFi Channel's new mini-series, Battlestar Galactica. It seems that the same special effects company who created the special scenes for Firefly also produced the effects for Battlestar. To pay homage to the all-too-brief Fox series, they showed the Serenity as one of several ships seen out a window, taking off from a spaceport. I taped the Battlestar series (it was pretty good), and had to rewind the tape... and there it was. Serenity Lives!
My favorite Firefly quote (it's Captain Reynolds speaking to Jayne Cobb about Jayne's desire to trade his gun named "Vera" for a woman): "Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle."
World's Coolest VCR
My wife Teri wanted a digital video recorder, so she would never miss her favorite TV shows (and also be able to pause them wven when watched live). I knew there were a few options, so we decided to do some research.
I remembered that George had bought a ReplayTV for Toni, so I asked him why a replay and not a TiVo. George had a very logical answer: The logo for the TiVo was so ridiculous-looking he immediately bought the ReplayTV. Hey-- I can understand that kind of reasoning! Unfortunately, Teri wanted a few more specifics.
In addition to TiVo and Replay, we had another option: Cox Cable offers an integrated DVR service for $15 a month. The device replaces your cable tuner box, and gets all its programming info directly from Cox.
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| ReplayTV model 5504 |
All DVRs share several important features:
- Allow repeated recording of TV shows using a downloaded programming schedule.
- Allow for flexible recording choices (e.g. all episodes vs. first-run episodes only)
- Allow a live broadcast to be paused
- atleat 40 hours of recorded programming
There are some things that set them apart, so here's a quick comparison:
| DVR | Price | Fees | Stuff that mattered |
| TiVo Series 2 (40 hours) | $199.00 | $12.95/mo or $299.00 lifetime | Goofy logo, no easy networking, and reports of poor customer service. |
| ReplayTV 5504 (40 hours) | $149.00 | $12.95/mo or $299.00 lifetime | Highly intuitive, networkable, reliable, and easy computer interaction. |
| Cox Explorer 8000 (30-50 hours) | n/a | $15.00/mo | Very flaky hardware/software, no commercial-skip feature, fees add up over time. |
A New Church
I found a link on BBSpot about the Church of Emacs. Did you know that vi stands for "Venom Incarnate" and "Vile Insult"? read more about the One True Editor, if you are worthy.
