This idea intrigues me. Aside from the “does this mean that we get to play Mad Max now?” facet of it, I’m forced to wonder: When all those folks were saying we’d destroy ourselves over oil, I’m not exactly sure this is what they had in mind.

For those who think I’m being flippant here, I’d retort that there’s not much I can do about this problem. It is both outside my realm of control and my realm of professional experience. This is for other types of experts, not me.

For those who think that I’m being callous, I’d retort that I’ve been driving a car which gets 40MPG since 2004, and it is ready to run sustainable biofuels (specifically, biodiesel). Do I see any biodiesel around? Nope. Everyone put in ethanol pumps, which is a much worse solution than biodiesel (harder to make, less energy dense, competes with food production, where you can make biodiesel out of damned near anything). My house runs on home heating oil – that can be biodiesel too (same stuff). Still, nope.

Anyway, off to bed. I think I’ll read a bit of the Afterpeak setting. Seems apropos.

Lizzy finishing up the iMacQuarium

All set up

It's Woz!

We’ve since added a heater and a bit of terrain. I’ll take pictures once we route the wires correctly for it. However, in order to do so, we need to empty out most of the water, and we don’t want to disturb Woz quite yet. He got a little cold a couple of nights ago, and we want to give him a few weeks of nice warm temperatures before we go rearranging his world.

This was a kit from Jake Harms. The instructions were very detailed, but the process does take some time. Of course, he has ready-made ones already built, so if you don’t want to spend the time, it might be worth ordering one.

Case in point – the fellow behind the United Breaks Guitars music videos is estimated to have cost United Airlines $180 million. Aside from the fact that they shouldn’t have broken his guitar in the first place, they should have made it right when they did. It’s simple:

• Acknowledge when you screw up.
• Make it right.

There are several companies with which I’ve recently had dealings who do this very well. As such, they have me as a repeat customer, and I am blogging about it here:

• Indie Press Revolution – They had some shipping problems awhile back. They sent out an email telling people of the issues, apologizing, and explaining. I believe they even offered some store credit or free shipping or something. Keeps people in the loop, offer some recompense for it.
• Carnivore Games – I pre-ordered The Unexplained in hardcover. When it arrived, it was in softcover. However, contained in the package was a letter from Brad (author and owner) explaining his troubles with the printer, and explaining that this is the reason for the delay. In an attempt to make it up to his customers, he enclosed a copy of the Ghosts of the Lady Grace adventure.
• SodaStream – We ordered some extra bottles for the unit. After several weeks, they had not arrived. Liz emailed them, they apologized, and immediately shipped out the order. We had it two days later.
• CoffeeAM – I placed an order. After several weeks, it had not arrived. I emailed them. They apologized, explained that they had been moving offices and my order must have been lost in the shuffle. They processed it the next day and I had it a couple days later. They also included a couple half-pound samples of free coffee for the inconvenience.
• FineArtStore – I ordered a box for my brushes. The box I received was not the one I ordered, but all the numbers matched up. I emailed them. They replied and explained that it was one which they were substituting as they are out of stock on the first one. If I don’t like the style, they will ship me a replacement (in the original style) when they come back in stock in a couple of weeks, and will enclose a prepaid shipping label so I can ship the old one back to them.

This is the way to do it folks.

fearsclave

Now, I should probably mention that I don’t tend to go off main roads when going to work. State highways, populated, with traffic. So, it’s unlikely that I’d really get into serious trouble for a period of time. Even in worst weather, I don’t think it would take more than an hour for someone to help or to get somewhere.

Thus, my loadout consists of:

1. First aid kit
2. Collapsible shovel
3. Fire Extinguisher
4. Small set of hand tools (screwdriver, socket set, etc.)’
5. DC powered compressor
6. 50lb bag of sand
7. A thick blanket
8. A flashlight
9. All the other associated stuff (spare tire, tire iron, jack, etc.)

So, think about what you need, where you go, and be prepared.

• Battlestar Galactica: Done (and the ending sucked)
• Monk: Finishing up
• Sarah Connor Chronicles: Canceled
• Firefly: Canceled (years ago, and I’m still sore about it)
• Dollhouse: Canceled

So, what does that leave?

• Big Bang Theory
• Good Eats
• Psych
• Iron Chef America
• No Reservations

And, let’s be honest: do eny of those shows really benefit from HD? I don’t really think so.

So, we ordered a Refurb Blu-Ray player which can stream Netflix.

My first thought on this was that TiVo’s revenue stream was going to be negatively impacted by this dearth of decent shows. I mean, once you have reasonable market saturation, your continued revenue is based on replacement (which is bad if too many things break) and upgrades. The upgrades go away if no one cares. Of course, this is wrong – they have a subscription model, which means they have a continued revenue stream unless people actually cancel their TiVo subscription – and the above shows are worth that…

Edit: Liz says that TiVo’s subscription rates are actually down to about 2004 levels. Between people streaming content and Cable DVR’s, they’re apparently eating into their subscriber base pretty heavily.

So, I guess I’m just full of it…

• Been sick with the seasonal flu. Got better. Mostly. Have this nagging cough which is bothering me. But, feeling a little better each day.

• A guy emailed me asking about his website. WTF? Well, apparently there is another Matt Caron, who owns 8bitorange.net, and this guy was looking for web design. Of course, I go look at the site, and I’m like “gack! You need a website redesign, so instead of just doing it, you put up a witty placeholder?” So unprofessional. I didn’t even do that when I redesigned this site, and it’s just a hobby/personal site, not something for a business. But, this ia one of the problems with the state of the industry today. Surprising that anything works.

• A friend sent me this very amusing video clip

Let me just state that I’ve never had any serious orthodontic work done, so this is all new to me. The most work I had done was extraction of some stubborn baby teeth, and a retainer to push an adult tooth into place.

Today I had one of my wisdom teeth pulled. It was actually growing in, and chewing up the side of my mouth. It had been sore, off and on, for some years, but recently it was constantly painful – not agony, just a dull ache for the past couple of months.

So, yeah, today they pulled it out. Novocaine, pliers, pry, extract. It was over in 15 minutes – 5 minutes to get it loose and 10 minutes to figure out how to get the roots unhooked and maneuver it out.

Of course, I couldn’t feel anything, but it was about the freakiest thing I’ve ever had done – probably because it was in my head. See, surgery in the extremities, even in my torso, doesn’t really bother me that much. Go above the neck, however, and it freaks me the hell out. So, something that I could feel (but, I need to reiterate, didn’t hurt) where someone is prying/pulling on a tooth that I can feel in my jaw. Totally weird.

That said, the Novocaine has warn off, and it is a dull ache (no painkillers, just homebrew). In fact, it may actually be less painful than it was before they pulled out the tooth (not sure, I’ll tell you tomorrow. )

Awesome, hilarious episode.

That show is such a slam dunk.