Googlism is Whacked
Permalink | October 31, 2006 by John in Uncategorized
john bedard is gone
john bedard is standing at the base of the falls for scale
john bedard is looking for diplomacy players in the atlanta
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Perspective
Permalink | October 30, 2006 by John in Uncategorized
So I got my ass handed to me in our monthly poker game on Friday (this is strictly nickel-dime-quarter type stuff). A month prior the cards loved me and I cleaned house, so it was somewhat statistically probable that the cards would turn on me this time, and oh boy did they ever. Generally I set a $10 limit for myself and whenever that runs out, I’m done. The only time I broke that rule was Thanksgiving week ‘05 when I lost $17 - that’s why I decided not to throw good money after bad any more.
On Saturday I was still smarting a bit from the loss, but feeling better as I was looking forward to my first bike ride in weeks. I knew snow was coming (and it did last night) so this could be my last ride of the year. I headed out Montana Ave and turned left on Lincoln Road. I figured I’d just do a simple Silver City-Birdseye loop. Probably only about 20 miles total.
Approximately 1 mile from Silver City, my throttle cable broke. Riding season was officially over. I could get a replacement in a few weeks and maybe squeeze in a few more rides if we have a mild winter, but I decided against it (see below). I cranked up the idle to the 3000rpm maximum and limped the bike back to Tom’s house, a few miles back towards Helena, where I stashed it overnight. The Fenskes helped me trailer it home on Sunday, which was a whole other ordeal.
So losing $10 in poker was suddenly quite trivial.
The Rest of the Story
Gene has been bugging me off and on about repainting the bike. So I guess that’s what we’re going to do this winter. When I replace the throttle cable I’m going stainless steel braided, and replacing the clutch cable at the same time. I have a number of other mods planned, it all depends on how the money holds out. In the next few weekends I’ll start dismantling the bike and I’ll take the tank and rear fender to the strip shop.
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Dream. Job. Number ONE.
Permalink | October 27, 2006 by John in Uncategorized
Pixar just got bumped to #2: “Work as part of Valve’s
core applications and marketing teams, adding web sites and web components to our best-of-breed computer games and pioneering e-commerce platform.” (Valve is the creator of the Half-Life game universe. Half-Life 2 is probably the best game I’ve ever played - sorry Halo). Other than having an not-very-well-developed portfolio, I’m completely qualified for this job. Not even fibbing a bit.
I would move.
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This just in: First Amendment repealed in Iowa
Permalink | October 26, 2006 by John in Uncategorized
Independence Teen Accused of Burning American flag: “Iowa law makes it illegal to publicly mutilate, deface, defile or defy the American flag.” Okay, ignore for the moment that this is ludicrous. HowTF do you “defy the flag?”
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Paint.NET
Permalink | by John in Uncategorized
Pretty cool little free photo editing application. This is what should ship with Windows instead of Windows Paint or with most digital cameras. It’s nowhere near a Photoshop killer for heavy retouching duties and special effects, but it’s very good for most basic tasks such as resizing, cropping and adjusting images. It’s lightweight enough that I may just start using it up for simple tasks. Even with a 2.8Ghz Pentium 4 machine and a gig of memory, Photoshop CS2 takes a few minutes to start up. It’s a PITA for a quickie photo crop and fix.
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