I totally and absolutely LOVE......

the software from OpenOffice.org. I've used it for years and love the functionality. There's a new version out and if you haven't tried it and have any interest in something like this, give it a shot!

If that's not exactly your cup of tea and you want something you don't even have to install, try Google Docs. You can edit your own documents directly in your browser and have the ultimate level of document portability (as long as you have a net connection) about anywhere. Rockin'!

OK, my normal level of weirdness and cynicism drove me to make this tonight. Who knew one could have so much fun with the weekly Presidential radio address?

Happy Valentine's Day, Suzanne!

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Yeeeeeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwww!

I've put a new little ditty up at indieonestop.com. It's meant to be at least a little funny. Hey, I'll say in advance that I hope you like it.....

The title?

HOUSE(music) of Chairman Bush

Heh-heh-heh!

Nuts, I almost forgot.......

I get an e-mail from the Department of Defense every week day that has various pictures of various military goings-on......

You can get the same e-mail by clicking here and sending the resultant e-mail. There are some awesome pictures. There are also mundane pictures, but the great ones more than make up for the ones that are semi-boring........

And then..........?

Last week at this time, we were expecting at some SUPER-CRAPPY weather in the area. It materialized. Unfortunately, a number of people lost their lives. The local (Huntsville) branch of the National Weather Service has the write-up of the storms that occurred in the area. There are pictures included. See it for yourself.

At the same time, the results of Super Tuesday were rolling in. This week, there's also some voting going on. The stakes are lower this week, but so far it appears that Barack is easily outpacing Hillary. Though I'm not for either of them, I'd MUCH RATHER see Obama take the nomination. My humble opinion is that Hillary (and her other half) have too much baggage from their previous time spent in DC. On the Republican side, I find the rift between "conservatives" and McCain laughable. It would be excellent (though probably unlikely) to see a STRONG Libertarian sweep in and beat both of the major parties....

I've mentioned the idea of Open CourseWare. As far as I know, MIT was one of the first schools to establish an outlet for free college level materials using OCW. MIT has a variety of materials available at their site. Check it out!

I will end with some self-pimping! Peace out!

Check out my daddy-o's page at indieonestop.com.....

Dick Metcalf, aka Rotcod Zzaj @

Heck, check mine out while you're at it......

vejadu @

Here we go....

Si, si......!

We were kind of jazzed to see that a new one of these is being built right down the street from us. Word has it that the restaurant in Big Cove has pretty good food so hopefully our new Mexi-joint will follow suit.

I've included a song in this post, but I'm only putting it on the individual post page because there's one auto-play song on here at the present time and I haven't taken the time to figure out how to stop that so I can auto-play this one. BTW, this song isn't for or against the subject, it's merely my "artistic" interpretation with guest vocalist President George W. Bush...

If you desire, you can access it by clicking "read more"....

I was talking with my dad..................

earlier this evening. We were yakking it up with the MySpaceIM. I don't use these types of programs often anymore. Hell, I remember when I first started using ICQ roughly 10 years ago. I just don't chat often enough. Anyway, he brought up my post covering the rough weather on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning and the crazy number of tornadoes that were reported. I just looked at NOAA's Storm Prediction Center data for that day again and in the space of about two days, the number had jumped from 78 to 91. I sure as hell hope that this unusual set of weather circumstances doesn't foreshadow the spring storm season......

Goodbye Mitt! And, hey I'm sorry, but good riddance! For some reason, I just wasn't overly fond of this guy. First, it seemed suspiciously as if he had a BIG agenda if he financed nearly 1/3 of his campaign with his own cash. Add his remarks at CPAC announcing the suspension of his campaign today and I'm more than happy to see him bow out.

"If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror."

--Mitt Romney/02-07-08 addressing CPAC

I'd laugh my ass off if Obama or Clinton win. I wouldn't like it but it would be an ironic twist.....

Speaking of things Presidential....

My grandmother's 90th birthday is coming up in March. I thought it would be cool to send her a birthday greeting from the White House. You can have a White House greeting sent for a baby's birth, a wedding, someone's 80th (or greater) birthday or a couple's 50th (or greater) wedding anniversary. Need more info? Click here.

Peace, y'all!

Whew, I'm glad last night (really early this morning) is over....

It's a complete bummer to hear that over 50 people were killed in the storms of last night/early this morning. This was some ABSOLUTELY FREAKY weather. If the numbers are accurate, this month will probably be a record breaker. The highest number of tornadoes reported for the month of February between 1950 and 2004 was 83 in 1971. The storms from last night/this morning are reported to have produced 78. How freakin' nuts is that? While looking up some of this info, I found some other interesting sites.....

NSSTC Collaborative Weather Blog
NWS Huntsville preliminary local storm reports

One other interesting spot (there are millions, I'm sure)....

A recent conversation we were having with our best friends brought up a big (and unusual) snowstorm that happened when we were back in high school. I didn't remember when it happened, but I found a little more info here. Yeah, our little freak snow happened in January 1988........

Now onto lighter things....

I was leafing through a catalog from J&R Music and Computer World after I received some software that I used an amazon.com gift certificate to purchase a few weeks ago. One of the items in the catalog was the Nabaztag/tag. That's kinda weird!

Well, Super Tuesday is over. At least the Republican race is becoming less muddled. I'll still vote Libertarian in November.....

Just one word for today...........

VOTE!

Diigo....

Social Annotation: Seamless Integration of Social Bookmarking, Web Highlighter, Sticky-Note & Clipping

I've used diigo for a little while. I'm sure I haven't even scraped the surface of its functionality. Here are some of the bullets they use in the standard "invite your friends" e-mail:

• The Best Web Annotation Service: Add highlights and sticky notes on any web page, anywhere, and access them anywhere.


• A Great Webpage Clipping Tool: Highlighted portions of any webpage are clipped and collected centrally, which can be shared and searched.


• An All-in-One Bookmarking Tool: Bookmark webpages to Diigo, local folder, delicious, Simpy, Furl, Spurl... and make them permanently cached and full-text searchable.


• A Powerful Blogging Platform: Annotate webpages and quickly turn them into blogs with a built-in blog editor or enhanced linkrolls.


• A Great Collaborative Platform: Share and interact on online findings, complete with highlights and sticky notes.


• The Most Customizable Search Tool: Like Google's toolbar, but far more customizable, so you can access any search service with one-click --- music, maps, references, local library, New York Times, ...


• Unique Content Selection Menu: Interact with any word on a webpage just by selecting it, do not even have to click! - highlight, search, look up - whatever you you want!

I just dig the ability to add a "virtual sticky note" to a page and highlight content that I find pertinent. Muy cool!

Oh, I meant to bring something else up in my earlier post. If you are an Alabama taxpayer and don't have a library card, what are you waiting for? I wasn't overwhelmed with my local library, but they are (last I heard) trying to upgrade. What the hell, it's kind of a small town! But nice....

Anyway, home access to the Alabama Virtual Library can be obtained at school libraries (for students and educators) or your local public library. As a research tool, the AVL is AWESOME! The AVL can be used to access thousands of information sources covering probably every walk of life. Check it out, please. Hell, if you live here, you're paying for it anyway...

Wazzup y'all?

Check out one of my latest songs!



I've probably mentioned this already....

My 20 year reunion from Butler High is coming up this year. In light of that, there are several spots online dedicated to our high school class. Linky-linky:

http://www.myspace.com/srbutlerhighclassof88
http://classreport.org/usa/al/huntsville/bhs/1988/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/butlerhigh1988/

Hopefully, the reunion info will also show up here pretty soon.

Oh, to end this I think I'll say......

Please vote on Tuesday if you can!

And....

Happy birthday, Mom!

Mai kittee iz on the internetz....

moar funny pictures

So, I guess it's pretty close to official that Barack has taken SC....

There are a few more contests in Maine and Florida and then it's Super Tuesday. Hopefully the field will be much more narrow after February 5.


moar funny pictures

There's a little boycott going on in Alabama. You might wonder what the boycott is about. Alabama has some EXTRAORDINARILY quaint laws that limit the alcohol content and size of beers that can be sold. Unfortunately, that means that many "gourmet' and specialty beers can't be sold in this state. "Free The Hops" is part of a drive to fix Alabama's silly laws regarding the alcohol content of beer. Heck, you can run down to the package store and pick up Bacardi 151 or Everclear....

Anyway, back to the boycott. If you live around Birmingham, the Birmingham Budweiser distributor is fighting local efforts in Birmingham to change the Birmingham statutes to allow the sale of higher alcohol content beer. Free The Hops is spearheading a boycott of Budweiser distributors and products in the Birmingham area. "Oh no, we can't allow GREAT BEER to be sold in Birmingham. We might lose business......."

It's been a while! If you're asking "For what?", I've posted some new songs over at my MySpace artist profile. They're the top four songs on the player. Check'em out......

Two weeks from right now.....

it will be "Super Tuesday". Don't forget to go vote......

OK, I'm showing my bias here! What the hell, I'm human. Like everybody else.....

For those of you who might be brainiacs.....

Jeopardy will be having an online testing period on the 29th, 30th and 31st of this month. For more details and info (registration required to participate), go here.

Hey, it's January 20, 2008! Guess what that means........


Get Your Own! | More Flash Toys

If I was one of the "Record Store Cats"....

It would very likely be this one (they call him Techno Tim):


Techno Tim

I happen to own an Olevia LCD TV....

One of the features that it has is the ability to have its firmware upgraded via an included USB port. That's all well and good, but the .zip file I downloaded from Olevia's site didn't have all of the required files. I was getting HIGHLY annoyed and couldn't find any additional info from Olevia's site. A little digging FINALLY led me here (in either the "Firmware" or "Utilities" directory) (as of August 2008, this link isn't working but give this a look). This allowed me to download the specific USB driver required for my laptop to communicate with my TV. It took me two days (not continuously) to find that crap. So, keywords here.....

pixelworks boot connection
olevia firmware
olevia usb
pixelworks usb

Something like this shouldn't have been as hard to find as it was....

A little politics....

I DO NOT LIKE Romney. I could give a damn less what religion he is. He just seems to have suspiciously "flip-flopped" too often for me. My take is that he follows (or at least used to) the route of political expedience. Just my opinion. Besides, his little barb of a remark to Ron Paul in Myrtle Beach the other night just struck me as annoying. He basically seemed to be accusing Ron Paul of being a lackey for Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Perhaps it was only jest but it just left me with a sour taste in my mouth for Romney. Go Ron!