• 11:05 On the road w/Alex & Lani, going to Sac for the day. #
• 11:51 Traffic sucks. #
• 13:53 At a Mexican restaurant, the name of which I have already forgotten, in Old Sac waiting to be seated. #
• 13:58 Ps. It’s hot. Really damn hot. #
• 14:02 There are, however, horses. #
• 17:23 At Raley Field for the River Cats / Grizzlies game. #
• 19:54 Grizzlies 7 River Cats 0, bottom 2nd. Ouch. #
• 20:00 Scenes from AAA baseball: fan offered either a coffee mug or $50 to hit his wife in the face with a pie. He took the cash. #
• 20:54 15 – 0 Grizzlies, top 5th. Was a no-hitter until a few minutes ago. #
• 21:57 And the final score is 15 – 0. #
• 22:24 On the road home. Entertainment was basically a bust but the company was good. #
• 00:27 Home. Bed. #

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• 09:43 Happy Anniversary AVP & Tony from the guy who pressed "Play" on the CD player. #
• 10:20 It’s really disgustingly hot already. A little worried about kitties, though I did check their water bowls before I left for work. #
• 15:38 Fiddling with Blogger layouts. Trying to go to three columns. #
• 16:41 Little-Known Facts about Sarah Palin: tinyurl.com/56ofm6 #

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• 10:33 Cat owners: Suggestions for digestive aids? Rita eats too fast & doesn’t keep it down. #
• 10:54 Good news: Bonus hit account today. Bad news: 50% withholding?! #
• 13:05 Anyone else getting AIM spam from bots with "trout" in their name? #
• 13:07 Google is my friend: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheGreatHatsby #
• 14:47 I heart Outlook rules. They’re great for binning meaningless, misdirected corporate announcements. #
• 17:26 Bill Richardson: "John McCain may pay hundreds for his shoes, but we’re the ones who pay for his flip-flops!" Classic. #
• 18:55 Waiting for Obama’s speech. #
• 20:15 Dear John: There’s no shame in acknowledging you’re completely outclassed and bowing out gracefully. #

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• 10:04 At work with a lovely headache. :/ #
• 12:59 Lunchtime. I don’t feel particularly hungry but I need to get away from the desk for a while. #
• 14:59 Meeting time. #
• 15:04 Wait… strike that… reverse it. #
• 15:47 HRC moves convention suspend rollcall votes & nominate Obama by acclimation. #
• 17:18 Heading home. #
• 20:34 Monterey Bay Aquarium has a new shark on exhibit! #

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Following up on this post from earlier this month, about the trials and tribulations in adding external storage to my DirecTV HD-DVR. I’ve returned the Buffalo DriveStation unit back to Fry’s. We used it with moderate success to buffer two weeks of Olympic events, but the DVR was markedly less stable and there were noticeable gray-screen delays when deleting saved programs or browsing the list. That, combined with DirecTV’s lack of support for the eSATA port and anything their customers might want to attach to it, made the decision to return it a pretty easy one.

What would DirecTV have to change in order for me to use external storage on the DVR?

1. Supporting the port in hardware, by which I mean acknowledging its existence; recommending specific drives and performing compatibility testing.
2. Supporting it in software, by which I mean not having to reboot the DVR to use external storage; using external storage as additional space for the internal drive and not, as is presently the case, an either-or situation that doesn’t transfer saved programs or Prioritizer entres.

For now, I’ll stick with the internal drive. The Olympics were really the only situation, aside from our recent three-week vacation, in which we risked running out of space on the internal drive, so I don’t anticipate needing more any time soon. If I do, and DirecTV still isn’t supporting eSATA, I’ll probably investigate an internal upgrade.

• 09:57 The coffee is not working. #
• 12:26 Working. Also, working. #
• 13:09 The eternal debate: soup at desk or go out? #
• 13:43 FYI to those interested: I’m returning the eSATA drive. Performance and usability not there yet. Waiting for D* to officially support. #
• 14:28 License plate frame of the day: "IMMUNE TO IOCANE" #
• 15:07 How do I perform basic math functions in Ant or XSLT? Does that even make sense? ::tearing hair:: #
• 15:55 I have to type "rm -rf *" as root entirely too many times per day in the course of my job. #

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• 16:40 Gee, Terry McAuliffe thinks Biden is a "huge win!" This guy hasn’t had an independent thought in years. #
• 23:21 Just finished watching "Nightmare Before Christmas" for DVD review. It includes very neat Haunted Mansion Holiday backstage stuff! #

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Our DVD review of The Nightmare Before Christmas (2-Disc Collector’s Edition) is up on MousePlanet today:

Once the actual feature begins, the care with which Disney’s artists and technicians did their work in creating this restored and remastered version is plainly evident. The picture is clear, with no pops, scratches, or compression artifacts. In fact, it’s crisp enough that you can clearly see minute details like Sally’s fluttering eyelashes and the textures on Jack’s books about Christmas, and you can easily see characters and objects in dark scenes, such as inside Dr. Finklestein’s laboratory. The graininess mentioned in the 2001 review is completely absent. As compared to the earlier DVD release, this remastered transfer is true anamorphic widescreen, meaning that the picture expands to fill the entire screen on widescreen televisions.

The surround sound presentation is equally clear and bright, with good channel separation. Song lyrics—this is, after all, a musical picture—are easy to understand even for me, and I usually have to turn on subtitles when watching musicals.

I want to take a minute to thank MousePlanet’s chief copy editor Lani Teshima, who accepted this article at 11:30 pm last night for publish today and got it done.

• 15:50 Watching USA vs ESP mens basketball final from last night. #
• 00:19 Glad I extended the DVR recording for the Closing Ceremony. Can’t wait ’til Vancouver 2010! #

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• 16:13 Watching mens basketball from yesterday, USA vs ARG semifinal. #
• 20:19 Why exactly is NBC using the "Escape From New York" as incidental music? #
• 20:26 Fix for Silverlight (NBC Olympics Web site) crashing Safari: tinyurl.com/6b833f #
• 21:46 Watching this morning’s USA vs AUS womens basketball final. #
• 22:31 The announcers in the womens basketball final just gave away the result of the womens volleyball final… which hadn’t yet aired. Lame! #

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• 12:57 Lunchtime. #
• 13:06 Waiting for a text… #
• 16:58 Heading home. #
• 18:21 After 9pm Eastern, guess it won’t be today. Sigh. I want it to be Caroline Kennedy! #
• 01:29 The text came in at 1:04 am! I sure wasn’t expecting it that late/early. #
• 01:44 Finished watching last night’s beach volleyball final. Dual golds! #

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Iron Chef video game coming to the Nintendo Wii and DS:

Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine lets players square off in Kitchen Stadium and battle through a series fast-paced and intense culinary challenges. Each victory advances players closer to a final showdown that will determine who will reign supreme as the next Iron Chef America.
I hope the bonus rounds let you battle it out with the real Iron Chefs. Give me Hiroyuki Sakai and Rokusaburo Michiba any day over these Iron Chef America guys. And don’t forget floor reporter Shinichiro Ohta shouting out ‘Fukui-san!’ every few minutes.

We absolutely will be getting this when it comes out. Allez cuisine!

• 14:42 Why in the world would anyone pay $250 to go to someone else’s birthday party? Where even at full price it would be less than half that? #

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• 10:06 Escaped the vampire lair with most of my vital humors still intact! #
• 10:48 Made it to work safely. #
• 12:16 More evidence the Chinese gymnasts are underage: tinyurl.com/6yeupa #
• 13:07 Not feeling well, going home. #
• 15:31 Phone meeting. #
• 15:37 Overheard in meeting: "I think we can fix that by educating the Product Manager." Hah! #

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Angel the dog credited with saving kittens:

A two-year-old dog that had been turned over to the Nevada Humane Society’s shelter in Reno is being credited with rescuing six abandoned kittens.
[...]
They were walking on the hot day with temperatures in the 90s when the dog became obsessed with something in the bushes. When she refused to move on, Gomez investigated and discovered a box full of 3-week-old orange tabby kittens that were frightened and hungry.

Photos of Angel and the kittens at Reno Gazette-Journal.

• Learn SketchUp.
• Design new three-column layouts for this site, Restaurant Reviews and Mission Palo Alto.
• Actually review a restaurant occasionally.

• 10:06 Off to work. #
• 12:47 Lunchtime. #
• 15:30 Maddow gets own show on MSNBC: tinyurl.com/6a2wnd #
• 15:50 Upgraded phone recently? What to do with the old one: wimobot.com/ #
• 16:47 Configuring virtual servers. It’s fun!* (*not actually fun) #
• 17:10 Heading home. #
• 21:27 Watching May/Walsh from last night. #

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Rachel Maddow to Replace Dan Abrams on MSNBC:

Just in time for the closing rush of the presidential election, MSNBC is shaking up its prime-time programming lineup, removing the long-time host –- and one-time general manager of the network — Dan Abrams from his 9 p.m. program and replacing him with Rachel Maddow, who has emerged as a favored political commentator for the all-news cable channel.

The moves, which were confirmed by MSNBC executives Tuesday, are expected to be finalized by Wednesday, with Mr. Abrams’s last program on Thursday. After MSNBC’s extensive coverage of the two political conventions during the next two weeks, Ms. Maddow will begin her program on Sept. 8.

What can I say? I already mentioned how Rachel Maddow is tops in my book (with Keith Olbermann a very close second) so this for me is terrific news.

(From SNL, October 6, 1984)

• 09:39 At work after dropping off OMNIMVR for regular service. #
• 12:58 Lunchtime. #
• 15:49 Waiting oh so patiently for this day to be over. #
• 16:07 Listening to Rachel Maddow. #
• 23:24 Watching synchronized swimming- where are Harry Shearer & Martin Short? #

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• 22:45 iChat is being weird. Make it stop! #

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• 09:25 Why are backpack air blowers not illegal? #
• 16:16 Neighbor kid comes over with his laptop: "I have 3,000 viruses, can you help?" #

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• 10:10 At work. Hot. #
• 13:00 Lunchtime. #
• 15:15 The Google has made me stupid. How did I used to comparison shop for books? #
• 17:43 Homeward. #
• 20:53 101 sold out. All divisions sold out in just over 12 hours. #
• 21:22 Attempting to install Wine on the Mac. #
• 22:05 Wine sort of works, but the object is to be able to run Picasa and that’s not working. #

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• 09:36 Thursday == work from home. #
• 13:42 All of my many email addresses eventually forward to a single inbox, except the spam-filled addresses I’ve abandoned. #
• 15:54 A clue: If I give you a tool to do (x) and you do (x) not using my tool, don’t blame me if my tool does (x) a different way than you do. #
• 18:37 Costco, Pet Club, probably Safeway. Then Olympics. #

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• 13:11 Salad for lunch. (I live in a lake.) #
• 17:58 Heading home. #
• 23:29 We are gradually falling behind in Olympics viewing. Couldn’t make it to tonight’s prime-time after zipping through everything from today. #

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