Kelly and I were on the screen porch last night enjoying the long, wet thunderstorm. As we talked in the dark, I suddenly saw Kelly’s face in full color.
Kapow! A huge clap of thunder sent us both ducking for cover. Obviously, that lightning strike was a bit closer than the others!
I think we’ll enjoy the thunderstorms from the inside from now on.
My place of employment was featured in today’s Triangle Business Journal. Included is a picture of my boss forecasting the weather near the Black Sea (forecast: “mushroom cloudy”).
I’m probably one of the top callers to Raleigh’s Graffiti Hotline, the number to call when graffiti is spotted anywhere in the city. In fact, I’m on a first-name basis with them! After walking by a clean spot Monday that 24 hours earlier had spray paint on it, I felt I had to let someone know what a great job Raleigh’s Street Maintenance division has been doing to keep the city clean.
Below is my email to the division’s director, Elwood Davis, which cc’d city officials:
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Why is it bad when something is said to be “going downhill?” I mean, going downhill means coasting, right? How is “going uphill” any better?
Remember when I wanted to get my Asterisk phone system monitoring my home alarm panel? I did it today! It was surprisingly easy, too. Took about a half-hour of geeking to get it done.
Why monitor my alarm with Asterisk? Because the house has no land line and I don’t see the wisdom of paying some company $240 a year to do what I can do much better myself. Plus there’s something cool about having your computer do things when something physical happens – and Asterisk can do just that.
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I’m forced against my will to use Microsoft Outlook at $WORK. Frequently, Outlook will pop up a message balloon informing me that its accessing the network.
“Well, duh!” I say. “That’s what you’re supposed to be doing! Thanks for interrupting my work so you can bring me that critical information!” Talking to my computer is no use, though, as it just stares blankly back at me like a stupid dog.
Luckily I’ve found the recipe to turn off these useless messages for Outlook 2003. I made these registry changes and, voila, problem solved!
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Display Types\Balloons]
"Exchange"=dword:00000000
"NetConn"=dword:00000000
"NetWarn"=dword:00000000
(Hat tip, the Microsoft forums)
I recently watched NOVA’s program on Hurricane Katrina called Storm That Drowned A City. It was a fascinating program detailing the timeline of Katrina’s march to New Orleans, focusing on how the storm’s surges undermined and overran the city’s levees. The takeaway was that the city is no better protected now than it was three years ago.
Now comes Tropical Storm Gustav, a storm which could quickly get nasty that is now making a turn towards New Orleans. The next week may provide a chance to see if we’ve learned anything.
I’ve been following the fight against leukemia waged by brave little Esten Maxwell, son of local musician Tom Maxwell. Tom posted today about Esten’s recent visit to the sedation clinic. Its a very emotional read.
Get well soon, Esten! You’ve got a lot of fans out here on the Internets.
I love the marketing campaign for Raleigh Wide Open III, announcing the grand opening of the new convention center September 5th and 6th. The signs hanging from Fayetteville Street lightposts are hilarious. They say “Thou art now in Funky Towne,” “Get down with thy bad self,” “Get thine merriment on,” among others.
Very clever!
Here are the commands I’m using for importing DVDs into the iPod. Shown is the script for the Muppets DVD. It requires the libdvdcss libraries to be added, as well as the MP4Box app. MP4Box takes the mencoder-encoded file and stamps it with the appropriate iPod bits to make it show.
GUEST="Vincent_Price"; time mencoder dvd://8 -dvd-device /dev/scd0 -sws 9 -of lavf -lavfopts format=mp4 -vf scale=320:240 -ovc x264 -x264encopts bitrate=1381:vbv_maxrate=1500:vbv_bufsize=2000:nocabac:me=umh:trellis=1:level_idc=30:global_header:threads=2:pass=1:turbo -oac faac -faacopts mpeg=4:object=2:br=160:raw -channels 2 -srate 48000 -o Muppets-$GUEST.mp4 && MP4Box -add Muppets-$GUEST.mp4 output/Muppets-$GUEST.mp4 && [ -f output/Muppets-$GUEST.mp4 ] && rm Muppets-$GUEST.mp4 && echo "done."
Also see this helpful Ubuntu forum post for other cool tools.
