Blog Master G

I think it’s safe to say that spring has officially arrived when it’s warm enough to return the beach chairs and table to their proper positions on the front porch. We haven’t yet had quite as many sunny days as we did around this time last year, but yesterday was a step in the right direction. After work, Jen and I enjoyed some Sauvignon Blanc on the porch while watching the sun set.

Later in the evening, we headed to the local Italian club to meet up with Justin (who recently earned his membership there) for some drinks. We stopped in at Ken and Rachel’s place for a bit — they were kind enough to loan me Alias Season 1, a show I’ve long been curious about and about which I’ve heard nothing but praise, but have yet to see — then checked in at a few potential bars before settling in for a couple more drinks at Gaffney’s. Yup, nothing like a crazy Tuesday night out on the town in Saratoga Springs. And we weren’t the only ones. It wasn’t anything like a weekend night, of course, but many of the bars last night were hopping. I guess everyone has spring fever.

Whatever You Do, Don’t Read This…

Where Are The Good Christians? / The fanatics and nutjobs now running the show sure give honest believers a bad name:

They do not call themselves the Parent’s Television Council or the Right to Life Marauders or the Family Values Coalition or some other dumbly misleading and patently bogus moniker. They are not attempting to cram already gutted public school textbooks with imbecilic “Intelligent Design” BS, nor are they writing uptight letters to the FCC en masse or ranting about nipples or dildos or low-cut jeans on teenage girls while at the same exact moment repressing their own gay fantasies and kiddie-porn collections.
…
The bad news is, the rabid evangelical set is growing, this cluster of lost and weirdly undereducated people for whom the Bible is literal word-for-word verbatim truth and the Rapture is imminent and the Earth is just a disposable lump and the flesh is a disgusting afterthought and should be ignored and loathed and made really really fat and sexless and sad. And, to my mind, these people deserve all the fiery verbiage and raw satire and intelligent ideological counterforce I can possibly lob their way.

We live in an automated world. From programming your TV to record your favorite shows to telling your coffee pot to have the morning brew ready for you, there’s not a whole lot that can’t happen automatically these days. Will cars drive us around automatically some day as depicted in movies like Total Recall and iRobot? Probably. Along these lines, I noticed yesterday — following Sunday’s spring ahead to Daylight Savings Time — that there were very few clocks in my house I had to manually change.

I’ve always been into gadgets and technology. Thus, growing up, it was always a treat for me to run around the house twice a year and adjust the time on any time-keeping device on which I could get my hands (watches, VCRs, digital clocks). This year, however, I found myself (so far) having adjusted only two clocks manually (the guest room clock and the kitchen wall clock).

I realized that most of the time-keeping devices in my life these days know what time it is without my intervention — my cell phone, the cable box downstairs, the cable box in my room, my computer, my email. All these machines with electronic brains know what time it is — and have been programmed to adjust to the American convention of changing the time twice a year.

It’s fascinating, really, this world of automation in which we live. Younger generations will likely take it for granted.

If you missed this story to which I linked the other day, check it out: Spring Forward Faster is an argument for keeping Daylight Savings permanent, or at least extending it by a week in the spring and a week in the fall to conserve energy and reduce evening traffic accidents.

I realized this morning while walking the dogs that it’s now warm enough to go outside without gloves. Spring is finally here! Only small traces of snow remain here and there.

Google to start ‘video blogging’

If only this headline applied nationally: House Condemns Patriot Act:

Montana lawmakers overwhelmingly passed what its sponsor called the nation’s most strongly worded criticism of the federal Patriot Act on Friday, uniting politicians of all stripes.

I understand it’s a big deal that the Pope of 26 years has died (conveniently, on my birthday, so that my special day will now be forever linked to the passing of John Paul II), but how long will the 24 hours of news coverage go on? Pope dies, people mourn, selection process for new Pope begins. He was 84 and in ailing health. Was anyone really surprised that he died? Maybe it’s that I didn’t grow up Catholic and that I don’t practice religion now, but I just can’t relate to or understand this worshipping of a single man.

Around the time John Paul II became Pope, my dad was writing a daily column for the Sacramento Union (now an online magazine, then a daily competing with the Bee). The Pope was a skier, so my dad wrote a tongue-in-cheek column about having run into the Pope while skiing at Heavenly. A student at CSUS took the columnn seriously and was amazed that my dad had skied with the Pope. She got an exlusive interview with my dad about the experience. He ran with it. She published a piece in the student newspaper about the Sacramento columnist who skied with the Pope.

Anyone researching lazy Americans will find me king of the lazy heap. What an honor.

The troops gathered at the A_nderson abode last night for some rip-roarin’ karaoke birthday fun. A big thank you to Jen for organizing such an awesome party, and to everyone who joined us for the festivities!

Tradition goes on
Here come the birthday haiku
Three years in a row

Small gathering of
Friends tonight to celebrate
With sushi Gabe’s birth

Gorgeous and thoughtful
Wife I have gives me great gifts
Party, vines, Star Wars

Past year has brought much
Home, new town, cool friends, good fun
Here’s to many more

Twenty eight years here
On this crazy Earth our home
Life is so precious

Friends and family
That’s what counts, don’t you know it?
With health, too, what’s left?

Oh yes, fun for all
And happiness, too, hear ye
Life’s so short. Party.

If you live in the Capital Region, set your alarms for 6 AM this Sunday morning, April 3, 2005, tune your radio to Continuous Soft Rock B95.5, and get those cassettes ready to rumble. Why? Your very own Gabe of gabeanderson.com: life will be featured on the 30-minute show, Capital Region People.

Dave Lucas, who’s been hosting the local show for the past two years, recently became fascinated by blogs. While researching the phenomenon, he came across the Saratogian article that mentioned mine. About a week ago, he dropped me an email inviting me on the show, and the rest is history.

In a former career, I managed production for a team that, among other things, produced a radio show. Before last night, that was the extent of my radio show experience.

The interview went really well and was a lot of fun. It was very casual — just a couple guys chatting about blogs. I talked about the history of my blog, Web servers, and some of the funnier search terms that lead here (such as Hooters San Francisco). But I won’t give away any more.

For the full scoop, you’ll have to tune in Sunday morning at 6 AM to B95.5! (Don’t forget to spring ahead those clocks Saturday night.)

(The picture of me includes my blog in the background with this post on the screen. Photo credit: Jen.)

As I suspected they might do at some point, Google has increased the capacity of Gmail as of this morning. “Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GBs by giving you more space as we are able.” My account is showing a total of 1308 MB right now.

On the Gmail login page, they even have an April Fool’s joke about offering a “top secret Infinity+1 storage plan.” Who knows? They just might some day as storage becomes cheaper and cheaper.

Still, today also brings a cool new Gmail feature, rich text formatting for sending messages.

There are still plenty of features I’d like to see — increased file size of per-message attachment, “locking” of display external images on a per-message or per-sender basis, more keyboard shortcuts, message backup, etc. — but I’m sure Gmail will only continue to get better over time. I continue to be very happy with it.

Other Gmail posts by Gabe.

In my continuing effort to prove to the world how tone deaf I really am, I performed last night such classics as New York, New York and I Got You Babe during the breaking in of our new PS2 game, Karaoke Revolution 3. I learned two important lessons last night: My wife and my friends really can sing and carry a pitch, and I really, really can’t. If nothing else, my attempt at singing is good for a roomful of belly-aching laughs (and dogs who howl along with me… or lunge at me in a plea to stop the pain).

BlogsforTerri gives you a taste of what it’s like to see this national charade, which should be a private family matter, as “The longest public execution in American history.” I just wonder if the folks behind this blog are anti-death penalty no matter what. Or if they’re first in line to send murderers to the gas chamber because the American legal system is clearly flawless. I feel for Terri Schiavo’s family, but there are plenty of more important issues that deserve national attention.

Do You Need A Living Will? / Keep Congress and rabid Christians off your sad, brain-damaged body — fill this out today!

Happily, it would seem, according to a Time Magazine poll, the majority of Americans disapprove of Congress and Bush for trying to interfere with the Schiavo case and may end up voting against their representatives as a result. America has a short attention span, so let’s see if that sentiment lasts until the next Congressional election.

Mad at me? Don’t like what I write? Send in the dinos to attack my blog. Or if you’re feeling a bit more nuclear, you could choose to nuke my site. Or flood it.
[ via Political Wire ]

On the cusp of April, signs of spring are everywhere. There’s still plenty of snow on the ground, but our four-month winter looks to be coming to an end. With Daylight Savings Time going into effect this Sunday, Mother Nature seems in synch with our human time-keeping conventions.

I got the car washed on Saturday using a free coupon that Jen won at work. At select locations, it would’ve been good for a full inside and out wash, but at our local Hoffman’s, which apparently does a more thorough inside job (they really do a great job, despite some kid’s having stalled my car last year), it was good only for a deluxe exterior wash plus wheel cleaning. I love getting the car washed. It’s like getting a brand new car right off the lot… especially when you haven’t washed it in a while and have been driving around in snow, mud, and ice.

Since Hoffman didn’t do the inside, I went to town on it when we got home Saturday. I Armor All’d the inside surfaces and used this kick-ass Armor All tire foam on the tires. It worked great and gave the tires that shiny wet look. The car looked really good all weekend long.

Then, of course, it poured and poured yesterday. Figures. But so it goes. Such is life in the Northeast.

There was a flood warning in the whole Capital Region yesterday. We experienced a bit of our own flooding. Our driveway isn’t exactly flat or well designed, so the water tends to pool in the middle. There are dips in the driveway just in front of the garage and in the lawn outside the garage, so that whole area was flooded yesterday, too. A small layer of water had even pooled inside the garage.

Overall, for being 80 years old, our house is in amazing condition. Even the foundation and basement are great, but I must admit I do worry about those areas. Last night I went to the basement to make sure the water wasn’t making its presence known down there. Overall, pretty good results, but some moisture is leaking through various parts of the foundation. So that’s a concern. We have to look into ways to prevent that from happening.

We do have a lot of keepsakes and 90 pounds worth of dog food down there, so it would really suck to have any kind of serious leakage.