Originally published at A Wandering Mind. You can comment here or there.

Today we finished The Best Years of Our Lives. This movie followed a few days in the lives of three WWII veterans who had just come back stateside and showed them dealing with the changes that both they and the people they were returning to had been through while they were at war. Many humorous and poignant moments. Well acted and scripted, I highly recommend this flick.

I’m on the downhill half of the list now! 49 to go!

Tags: gtd, movies

Originally published at A Wandering Mind. You can comment here or there.

Ok! I have my list of books from the list of "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" that I will be reading over the next 984 days. Thanks to everyone who provided input via FB and LJ!

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Tags: books, gtd, personal

Originally published at A Wandering Mind. You can comment here or there.

I’ve narrowed my choices from the list down to the following 13 books. Of these books, I am currently reading Les Misérables by Victor Hugo and will soon be reading H. P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. Does anyone have any recommendations (using my list of choices below) for the remaining eight. I have 984 days to read them.

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Tags: books, gtd, personal, uncategorized

Originally published at A Wandering Mind. You can comment here or there.

Dear Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles,

Today, I attempted to exercise my Constitutionally-granted right to vote in my local and state elections. Unfortunately for me, you are full of epic amounts of FAIL and IDIOCY. Surely, even you must understand that if you make available the option to update voter registrations when your customers renew or replace their motor vehicle licenses, that you should provide the necessary information to the State Board of Elections. This is not a difficult task, yet somehow you managed to fail. You not only failed to submit my information, but also my wife’s and, according to the gentleman running my local voting location, several other citizens. I suppose that this is what I get for assuming that you could do something again that you have not failed before, in my experience. I did not realize that I was dealing with a child who needs to be followed behind to ensure that you do your job!

I considered lodging a formal complaint, but I believe that there must be a sizable black hole at your disposal in which you cast voter registrations information. I have to infer that complaints end up in that very same black hole, so this mini-rant will need to suffice.

Good day.

Yours in emnity,
Bill Hedge, disgruntled citizen.

Tags: personal, politics

Originally published at A Wandering Mind. You can comment here or there.

We finished watching Annie Hall last night. It wasn’t too bad, although Woody Allen’s neuroticism was a bit excessive in my opinion. Cameos from a bunch of different actors including Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Walken, and Shelley Duvall helped add flavor to the movie. Slight spoiler: that’s an awfully quick way to waste several thousand dollars of cocaine!

This movie puts me half way through the AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movies: 10th Anniversary Edition. Hooray for progress! Up next ought to be either The Best Years of Our Lives or All About Eve, though I could just opt for something that Netflix currently has available for streaming.

Tags: gtd, movies, personal

Originally published at A Wandering Mind. You can comment here or there.

Yesterday, I crossed number 56 off my list: Hang new shower curtain rod.

It took about an hour altogether. Using my "wonder tool" (a Dremel) with a cutting wheel and a polishing stone to smooth the edges, I was able to make fairly quick work of cutting the tubes that comprise the rod to a good approximation of the dimensions on our shower/bathtub. It looks pretty good considering that it was a one-man job, including the measuring, marking, anchoring, etc.. I think I’m going to need to give it a bit more support, though; I’m wary of having an L-shaped shower curtain rod without some sort of support at the angle. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if there’s an accessible stud at the spot that I need it, so I guess I’ll need to check out anchoring options.

Tags: uncategorized

Originally published at A Wandering Mind. You can comment here or there.

Last night, I completed number 24 on my list of 101 Things in 1001 Days: Go to a comedy club.

My brother-in-law and I went down to Liberty Center, which is a club of sorts hosted above a bowling alley, which was hosting Liberty Laughs last night and we met up with one of my friends and her date. The comedians were pretty good and, as far as I can tell, my brother-in-law also enjoyed himself. The comedians were supplied by First Laugh Entertainment.

I would recommend checking this place out for anyone who happens to be in the Fredericksburg, VA, area on a Friday night. Also, with your $10 paid admission, you get to bowl for free (excepting shoe rental) until 1AM (approximately three hours because the show wraps up around 10PM) and the 21-and-up crowd gets the cover charged waived for entry into the bar after the show.

Tags: gtd, personal

Originally published at A Wandering Mind. You can comment here or there.

Either my Google-Fu is weak, or there is no readily available comparison (preferably, non-biased) on the candidates in this year’s Virginia gubernatorial race. I cannot believe that out of the billions of web pages floating around the Internet that such a page does not exist. I have no particular affiliation with any major political organization and I do not believe in voting a particular way because [insert random talking head here] says to do so. In the past, I have refused to look at the candidates individual web sites; neither would I look at their respective political party’s web site, nor anything distinctly promoting either candidate. What I really want is a compiled list of the candidates proclaimed stances on the major issues, such as education and transportation. Of course, one really cannot guarantee the non-bias of a given list of anything political in nature, so I suppose I need to suck it up and do my own research.

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Tags: politics

Originally published at A Wandering Mind. You can comment here or there.

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Tags: gtd, movies, personal

Originally published at A Wandering Mind. You can comment here or there.

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Tags: gtd, personal

Originally published at A Wandering Mind. You can comment here or there.

I rediscovered the Day Zero Project this morning thanks to my Delicious network and it got me thinking about all of the different things I want to do (and in many cases, need to do).

I can see great potential in my life for having a list like this one. I tend to stick to my plans a bit better when they are written down, so hopefully I will actually get a lot of things done. There are so many tasks that need completion around the house. Unfortunately, something always seems to come up and my ideas for projects are simply forgotten for the most part (others are merely neglected).

I’ll be following up this post with a list. I may be hard pressed to come up with 101 things, though. We’ll see. With luck, this will be the push I need to start getting things done!

Tags: gtd, personal

A little later, I'm headed out with blackoween to her rheumatologist appointment. I have some questions that I would like answered regarding things such as the flu vaccines (one or both and whether it matters if her brother and I get the live or dead versions); those "liver numbers" (exactly what they mean, what we can do about them, and how long her treatment's going to be pushed back because of them); travelling (not that we can afford it anyway); visiting and having visitors (specifically regarding the flu); and anything else I can come up with in the meantime... Hopefully, it will be an enlightening experience.

I also need to contact my aunt about getting the windows and carpet in the attic done so we can move my BIL up there. We need the couch freed up for when/if I get sick because I can't sleep with blackoween when/if that happens. If worse comes to worse, I'll just have to put the carpet, windows, and labor on credit, but it must get done soon.

Current Location: 22407
Current Mood: curious
Current Music: PC fans...
Tags: family, personal

Looks nasty... but very tasty!




Tags: mobile

Originally published at A Wandering Mind. You can comment here or there.

What if researchers could reboot a misfiring immune system? That is the intriguing possibility raised by stem cell transplant specialist Richard Burt. He is pioneering a new treatment for autoimmune disorders, one in which patients’ immune systems are suppressed and then replaced with an infusion of their own immune stem cells, filtered out from their blood. These then grow into all types of blood cells, including the white blood cells of the immune system.

via Body Attacks Self; Body Protects Self | Stem Cell Research | DISCOVER Magazine.

---

This research is particularly interesting to me because of my wife’s recent diagnosis with Wegener’s Granulomatosis (WG), an autoimmune form of vasculitis. The current treatment for this debilitating disease involves some rather toxic medications, such as cyclophosphamide (a.k.a. Cytoxan) and prednisone.

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Tags: wg

Originally published at A Wandering Mind. You can comment here or there.

I saw this today and had to re-post it.

Hypnotoad IRL

Enjoy!

Tags: humor

Originally published at A Wandering Mind. You can comment here or there.

I have decided to give this thing another go. I will attempt to update this blog weekly, at a minimum. Everything that I post here should also be viewable at my Livejournal.

New name. New look. Same old fool behind the keyboard.

Until next time!

Tags: uncategorized

Anyone have a use for a couple of old Socket 939 CPUs or some PC3200 RAM?

Current Location: United States, Virginia, Fredericksburg
Current Mood: geeky
Tags: computers, personal

Can anyone recommend a digital TV tuner card (preferably PCI Express) that works well (or at all at this point) with WWindows Server 2008?

I miss having TV in my computer room but have limited space. The card I've been using for the past several years (WinFast 2000XP) doesn't have any drivers that I can get to work for it after I rebuilt my server and put WinServ2k8 on it.

Thanks!

Current Location: United States, Virginia, Fredericksburg
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Silversun Pickups - Panic Switch | Powered by Last.fm
Tags: computers, geek, personal

... and it's causing my mind to wander.

Cool nights have returned to the mid-Atlantic states. Leaves have begun turning, albeit sparsely. Soon it will be time to go get apples from our favorite orchard and go for a drive in the mountains.

Too bad it's supposed to be in the mid-80s today. Bleh. Enough of this summer crap already!

I'm hoping to utilize my brother-in-law to get some yard work done over the next several weeks including cutting the grass a couple more times before it goes dormant as well as aerating and over-seeding the lawn so that we can have a nicer looking lawn next year. I think I'd like to build some sort of patio with a fire pit using pavers. Perhaps we can get the wood splitter out, split some of the old logs laying around, and either sell the firewood (well seasoned over a couple of years) or use it in the previously mentioned fire pit.

Also, I'd like to get more of my grandmother's belongings out of the attic and into the POD so that we can get to work on refinishing and re-carpeting the floor of the middle "finished" section and turn it into a spare bedroom. It's amazing how much room there actually is up there when it's not full of junk. It will be much easier to work up there now that the weather's cooling off.

Now to figure out how we're going to celebrate our anniversary ....

Current Mood: working
Tags: personal, rambling

blackoween's home and on the long road to recovery. Her brother's been a big help around the house. I'm trying to help him out with getting his GED so that he can do something with his life besides turn into Ed from Shaun of the Dead (sit around and play video games all day, not the selling weed part).

I really like the improvements in the overall game for Guitar Hero 5. The interface is easier on the eyes (even on the Wii) and the ability to simply jump into or out of a song in their new "party mode" is great if you just want to play for a few mintues without any worries about scoring or failing out or even deciding on a song to play. The ability to import some of the GHWT and GHGH catalogs is a nice touch as well (and I might add that it's about time, too). Because of this, I'm considering picking up GHGH just for some of the older songs and so I don't have to think about hooking up the PS2 which then causes me to not want to play those older songs anymore because of the extra work involved. :P

Our license plates have been renewed for three years so I don't have to worry about dealing with them until 2012. Too bad it can't go until 2013 and then (if you believe the hype) I wouldn't have to ever worry about them again!

Cooler temperatures outside have been nice this past week, though they don't do anything for this month's $200 electricity bill. (ouch!)

blackoween and I tried to go for a long, pleasant drive "to the country" this past Saturday, but that was a bust. Damned idiots on the road mde me angry and thus I couldn't enjoy the drive. We made it past Flint Hill, VA, before I turned around and came back home, so we still had a long drive, just not a pleasant one.

I have a short work week (three days!), so this week should be good.

Current Location: 22060
Current Mood: working
Tags: personal, rambling

blackoween's been in the ER since about 1700. She was still waiting for a room when I had to come home to gather a few things and take care of the animals. Her current diagnosis is bilateral extensive pneumonia, so she's been given an antibiotic drip and a shot of... something... in her belly (can't remember the name). She was still running a decent fever of 101.5, so they gave her some Tylenol for that. I haven't received a call/text yet from her or the hospital, so I assume that she's still waiting. Hopefully, we'll find out more soon. She's getting another CT scan tomorrow to check for a pulmonary embolism.

Current Mood: nervous
Tags: family, personal

Now for June 2008...

( June 2008 )

More tomorrow... If I don't fall asleep from reliving the apparent tedium of my life... >_>

Current Location: 22407
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: PC cooling fans...
Tags: personal

Moving on to May 2008, again I must refer to emails.

( May 2008 )

Strangely, I'm kind of enjoying this. I may come back and add to these entries if I happen to remember anything that I missed.

More tomorrow... maybe.

Current Location: 22407
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Caps beating the Lightning
Tags: personal

I suppose April 2008 would be a good place to begin. Unfortunately, I have a memory about as long as my pinky finger, so I have to resort to looking at old emails.

( April 2008 )

Apparently, that was it. No wonder I haven't bothered with updates. I don't do anything! ;P

More tomorrow... maybe.

Current Location: 22407
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: PC cooling fans...
Tags: personal

So it seems I have been a real slacker with my LJ. In fact, it's been nearly an entire year since I've posted anything of real substance. I shall rectify this "soon." (For non-CoX players, "soon" refers to an indefinite amount of time between now and when the referenced event happens.)

Until then!

Tags: mobile, personal