Darn That Sudoku

It seems I've lost precious hours of my life that I'll never get back. All for the crazy addiction to an overgrown tic-tac-toe board. I just keep staring at it until my eyeballs dry up and threaten to fall out of my head. I know that when I get older and blindness overtakes me, Sudoku will be to blame.

I would never have tried the game if it hadn't been for Blogexplosion's constant addition of new features (gee, thanks, guys). They're releasing another new game soon, called Blog Tycoon, but that's a story for another blog.

At night, when I'm resting in bed, trying to jounrey to the lands behind wakefulness, the Japanese puzzle game intrudes upon the images in my mind's eye, and I'm left trying to solve puzzles that shift mercilessly as my imaginary numbers fill in the rows and columns of Dream Sudoku.

This can't be happening. I'm a hard-core gamer, darnit. This game has no graphics, no special effects, no audio to let a gamer know that he's defeated the boss at the end of level 20--just 9 rows and 9 columns, arranged to allow the precise placement of the numbers 1 through 9.

If you are facing similar addictions, let me know. Right now I'm off to slay the evil Sudoku monster.

Red Sovine Trucks On

I'm not much of a country-western music fan, but I do like some of the old stuff. Honky-tonk. Cowboy music. Johnny Horton, Eddie Arnold, and Marty Robbins are among my favorites. My dad listened to these as I was growing up. Before I ever got my first taste of rock n' roll, the patterns of cowboy listenin' were ingrained upon my noodle forever, aided by the ministrations of the 8-Track and the reel-to-reel. Songs like "Cool Clear Water," "Whispering Pines," and "Tumbling Tumbleweed" I will never forget, even when I'm old and senile.

Thanks to eBay, I recently won a bid for Red Sovine's Greatest Hits on LP. Never mind that I don't even own a turntable any longer. A coworker has a device that will allow him to convert his LP's into wav files and transfer them to CD. Once he has done this for me, I will convert the wavs into mp3 files and put them on my hard drive. Mind you, I am doing this for my enjoyment only.

Red Sovine was most noted for his balladeer-style recitations that took place in the cab of a rig as it hauled its cargo cross country. His biggest hits included "Giddy-Up Go," "Teddy Bear," and "Little Joe," a song about a blind trucker and his faithful canine companion.

Sovine died from a heart attack in 1980, while driving his van, but his music trucks on, oblivious to the passage of time.

The Big, Bad Short Story Challenge - Part 2

The Big, Bad Short Story Challenge is back!

I've posted a couple of paragraphs of a new short story that I have started, and ask that volunteers finish it. Here's the way it works:

1) I post my couple of paragraphs.
2) Volunteer No. 1 puts the next couple of paragraphs on his blog, and leaves a link in the comments of this post.
3) After the link is posted in the comments, I will edit my blog and post it here.
4) Volunteer No. 2 follows the link to the next blog and picks up where Volunteer No. 1 left off.
5) This continues until the story is finished.

Each time the story gets updated, I'll repost it with a current date. Also, be sure to check out the other challenge: "The Corpse of Danny Kilgore."

Cheers!

The Dig

Dusty Chambers looked up from his work just in time to witness the last sliver of the deep red sun disappearing into the horizon. As if on cue, the quartz halogen lights set up around the excavation site came to life, illuminating his find once more. The buzz that the lamps emitted bothered him no more than the cold that swept in to replace the sun's fading warmth. Dusty had been digging all day, patiently scouring away striated layers of packed dirt. He had worked through lunch, such was his concentration on the task.

Over the course of the past few weeks, Dusty and his crew of archaeologists had meticulously uncovered what they had thought would be a Native American village, but instead had been rewarded with something completely different. The entire top floor of a steel building now lay exposed to the elements. Dusty had earlier walked the perimeter of the structure, expecting to find a broken window through which he could enter, but found none. Intrigued, he researched the coordinates of his find, hoping to discover the nature of what had once been located here. Finding no information on the building, he continued the dig, wondering what circumstances would bury a building without raising reports of its disappearance.

EDIT:
Read Part 2 at Just a Girl, by Jean.
Part 3 at One Paradise View, by Greg Stewart
Part 4 at Pure Simplicity, by Earadriede
Part 5 at Life My Way, by Bozette
Part 6 at LunaStone's Celtic Rainbow, by LunaStone
Part 7 at The Blair News Project, by EthanM
Part 8 at Artistic Bytes from the Third Eye, by Jayne
Part 9 at Texas My Texas, by Texasbunch1

Jean has offered to keep the entire story on her site. Read the story from beginning to its current state by clicking here.

Bill Engvall in Concert

Oh, yes.

The man is funny. Never mind how stressed I was when I got there, due to the backup on the Interstate. When the wife and I left the Bottleneck Blues Bar, I was totally unknotted.

Lucky for us, the wife knew one of the coordinators, and we were seated in the front row. We were right there, within spittin' distance of the King of "Here's Your Sign,"Mister Bill Engvall himself.

For an hour and a half he delivered his comedy goodness, and I made an all-out effort not to snort Coca-Cola out of my nose.

The best part, though, was meeting him. That's right. I said it before: my wife knows one of the coordinators. Not only did he sign our tickets, but we had our picture taken with him. We'll be getting that via email probably tomorrow. Liz has to call to give them our email address.

Constitutionalizing Rosco

Each day it gets a little harder to rouse Rosco the wonder mutt, our half beagle, half basset hound. He gets out of his doggie bed with the grace and speed of continental drift.

You can't just pick him up and tumble him out of bed, either. There is a reason you let a sleeping dog lie. I tried this method once, and was rewarded with bared teeth. Not desiring to let my wife's dog taste my precious blood, I abandoned the pick-up-and-carry-him-outside technique. My ways now are more elaborate, and are becoming quite the morning ceremony.

The methods I have in rotation (because they weaken the more you use them) include the following:

Ring the doorbell. He likes to bark at strangers. If he thinks a stranger has come to our door, he'll get up and investigate, chuffing on his ponderous way to the front door.

When ringing the doorbell quits working, we advance to ringing the doorbell coupled with knocking on the wall. Somehow, he thinks this might be a more persistent stranger, I guess.

Trail of cookie or bread crumbs. This hardly ever works, but once in a while, we get lucky.

He hates brooms, the sickle I use for Halloween, and the extend-o-grabber my wife uses to get bottles of the top shelf. If I feel particularly malicious, I'll get one of these out and intimidate him out of bed. He hates this, I feel guilty for doing it, and it makes a lot of noise. He still bares his teeth, but he's not doing it directly at me.

A new method I discovered a few days ago seemed to work particularly well. Canned air. You know--the kind you use to clean dust out of your electronics. He doesn't like it and he'll move rather quickly to get out of its way. He retreats to the open space under the bed, where I blast him with the air again, and he's headed for the door.

This morning air alone did not work. He went as far as the bed. The trail of cookie crumbs that hardly works alone did the rest of the job from this point. Once he was out of the relative safety of the bedroom, he was perky and ready to visit his watering checkpoints.

I don't understand his lack of enthusiasm over going outside in the morning. Our other two dogs are quite happy to be let out (incidentally, when the wife and I are discussing whether or not to let the dogs out, and don't want to tip them off that that's what we're talking about, we use the word "constitutional," as in, "Have the dogs had their constitutional?")

What Would You Do?

Before the movie last night, my wife and I had to stop to get some money out of the ATM machine (Heaven forbid if we went to an eight-dollar-a-ticket movie and didn't eat the expensive snacks). Ten dollars was the amount we needed, so ten dollars was what I punched into the machine, along with the proper PIN.

What the machine spit out was ten dollars wrapped in a twenty and a five. When this happens at an ATM, your first instinct is to shout, "Hurray!" and drive away. But then you remember that there's a camera on the ATM.

I couldn't drive away with the money. It was after bank hours, but fortunately, the bank tellers had just finished balancing their tills for the night, and were walking out the door. I knew one of the tellers, so I approached her, told her what happened, and gave her the extra cash.

Good thing I wasn't expecting a reward. Banks don't do that.

Has this ever happened to you?

The Wachowski's Do it Again

These guys really know how to spin a yarn. From start to finish I was captivated by the brilliance of the movie V for Vendetta. The plot was tightly wound, the characters were real, and the dialog was no slouch either.

Hugo Weaving's portrayal of Agent V was absolutely wonderful, the kind of acting only Mr. Weaving can pull off. Although we never see his face, he is able to convey feeling and emotion in his body language and never take off the mask.

Stephen Rea's role is similar to that of the one he played in Michael Collins, an English policeman named Ned Broy, who is seeking to capture the leader of a group of dissenters.

Ah, the lovely Natalie (Hershlag) Portman. We see her character grow from a scared girl working for a television news service to a woman who has conquered her fears of death. But it's not the destination, as it has been said: it's the journey that matters.

After the credits rolled last night, my wife and I walked to the car, got inside, shut the doors, looked at each other and said simultaneously, "We're buying that movie."

Funny Hat Night

If you were chatting on BlogExplosion's shoutbox last night, you may have seen some odd things.
Here's one of them:

One thing led to another, and Funny Hat Night was born. From left to right, that's lindseymitchell, me, dswatik, and buddyfoote. Luna showed up later, hatless but with a cam and joined in the mischeviousness. Other users were online, but off cam. Who knows if they were wearing their hats or not? We'll just have to take their words for it, right?
Myself, I couldn't settle on the safari hat, my stocking cap, or the coolie. At one point, I wore all three at once. Ya had to be there. Especially as our chat session was dj'd by dswatik. He was rollin' out some great tunes!

Had a great time, guys!

Oh No! I've Been Tagged!

And by a redhead, no less! I must respond. My weakness has been identified!

Here goes:
The rules:
List seven songs you're into right now. No matter the genre, whether [or not] they have words, or even if they're any good, they must be songs you're really enjoying right now. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs, then tag seven other people to see what they're listening to.

My List:

Alice in Chains - Whale and Wasp
Blessed Union Of Souls - Hey Leonardo (She Likes Me For Me)
Dexter Freebish - Pretty People
Eagles - Pretty Maids All in a Row
Dar Williams - The Babysitter's Here
Maroon 5 - She Will Be Loved
Mike Cross - The Scotsman (funny!)

Who I'm tagging:

ParaTed2k
KizzyKim
Catseyes
Fofusa
SamRyan
bozette
dswatik

Have fun everyone! And as these things always go, let me know when you've finished.

The Old Switcheroo

Ah, much better...

Since I walked into work this morning, my system fan has been giving me grief.
But no longer! After 3 and a half hours of constant buzzing, rattling, and just general irritating noise, I gave in to temptation and pulled it out of my PC.

Next time my co-worker comes into work, he may notice that his system fan is really noisy...

Them's the breaks when you're a part-timer.

Thursday Hide and Seek

Thursdays. What was it that Arthur Dent said about them?

Oh, yes.

"I never could get the hang of Thursdays."

Rightfully so, I think. This morning I searched the house for the USB cable that goes to my Fujifilm Finepix 3800 digital camera, but to no avail. I searched every conceiveable place it could be. Then, when I went to work, I searched there too. Now I have to search every inconceiveable place. What good is a camera if you can't get the pics off of it?

I hope I don't have to buy another one. I've got tons of USB cables sitting around, but Fuji cameras use a cable that has a USB mini B male connector on one end. It's the only cable like it I own. I don't relish the idea of plunking down money for a cable I already own. Somewhere.

At least they're cheap.

Beware the Ides of March!

Originally, the Ides of March was on the 15th day of Martius in the Roman calendar. After the Roman calendar fell out of use by the modern calendar, the phrase "the Ides of March" continued to be used. The most famous use of the phrase was in Julius Caesar, the play by William Shakespeare. Caesar was assassinated on March 15 in the play.

Actually, the Romans had names for 3 specific times of each month. They were, according to Wikipedia:

• Kalends - first day of the month, from which the word "calendar" is derived. Interest on debt was due on Kalends.
• Nones – depending on the month, could be the 5th or the 7th day; traditionally the day of the Half Moon
• Ides – depending on the month, could be the 13th or the 15th day; traditionally the day of the Full Moon. An auspicious day in the Roman calendar.

I am Spider-Man

Well, well, well. After all these years of wondering who Spider-Man is, it turns out to be me!

I would have thought I'd end up being more like a different hero, but Spider-Man is okay, I guess. After all, he was one of my favorite heroes when I was just a wee lad growing up in the suburbs of a medium-sized town in Mississippi.

My first encounter with the red and blue-clad hero was when my next door neighbor's son (six years older than me) sold his comics in a garage sale, and I got the lot of them cheap (Still have 'em, too). This was a defining moment for me. I had discovered comic books and Spider-Man.

Who are you?

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 80% Superman 80% Green Lantern 65% Supergirl 60% The Flash 60% Robin 55% Wonder Woman 55% Hulk 45% Batman 40% Catwoman 35% Iron Man 35%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Free Ribbon Hunting

Any of you who have gone blog surfing have probably seen the little ribbons up at the top corner of someone's page. It may proclaim things like "Open-Minded" or "Impeach Bush!" or any number of things.

I'm looking for one of those ribbons, assuming, of course, that's it's free.
No, I'm not looking to become controversial. I don't feel like our President has done anything to merit impeachment, although he has made some grave mistakes. And exactly what does "Open-Minded" mean, anyway? That I could let my dog go poop in the front yard or the back yard, because it doesn't really matter to me?

I'm just looking for a banner that I can customize, hopefully, and put in the text "Best viewed at 1280x1024 resolution." HINT, HINT: those of you reading this who have not already adjusted your resolution may wish to do so, at least to 1024x768, for goodness' sake! Then you can cram even more icons onto your desktop, like games, more photo editing software, solitaire... You get the picture.

Well...

I'll keep looking.

Playing With Template - Technical Difficulties May Arise

A special thanks to T.Marie for sending me a copy of her template. I am attempting to incorporate its layout into my own webpage, as I'm getting tired of my own messy layout. Unfortunately, as I haven't had much experience with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), this may take some time.

A special thanks also to Sean Wilson, who did the character art for the page.OASAASLLS!

With the aid of NVU, a free multi-platform web editor, I have been tweaking a working copy of my own template, copying bits of hers, bits of mine, pasting them in where the bits seem most appropriate, and hoping for the best. Generally, the layout looks good, but it's still not where it needs to be before it can be published for all to see. One of the nice things about NVU is that you can copy whole elements and move or paste them into other parts of your page. Another is that you don't have to know any HTML to make pages. You can do it all graphically if you want.

Fate only knows when I'll be done, though I feel like once it's there, it'll be a lasting design.

EDIT: It's done! Thanks, T Marie!

The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of

Take two shows that were popular in the 80's and add to it a smidgen of popular TV from the 60's, and you've got my dream from last night, complete with plot and theme song.

As the General Lee is racing down the dirt roads of Hazzard County, I've got a view of the passenger seat from above and outside the famous orange Dodge Charger. Of all people to be seated there, elbow propped up on the window, I didn't expect it to be Mister Spock. Nor did I expect him to be speaking the Southern dialect of English, with a few "ain'ts" and "y'alls" thrown in. Waylan Jennings was singing in the background, "Just the Good 'Ol Boys." When did Spock become a good 'ol boy?

Spock and Bo Duke return to the house to find it ransacked and in a very poor state. Even the floorboards were smashed. Change scenes to find Boss Hogg, Rosco P. Coltrane, and his cousin, played by Dick Sargent (if you'll remember, he played in 2 episodes of the Dukes of Hazzard, but he wasn't really Rosco's cousin), talking knowingly about it. It's obvious to me who did such a dastardly deed. Switch back to find Uncle Jesse reminding Bo, Luke, and Spock that this house, fortunately, is not where they live anymore, and that they live in the big, new house in the woods. How could Rosco not know about the big, new house? I dunno, but what's important here is that for some reason, the Dukes are now unable to deliver their batch of shine on time. How do I know this? Waylan Jennings told me in his Balladeer narration, of course.

That's when I show up with a solution that saves the day (I'm always the hero in my dreams). Consulting with Alf (yes, the furry, brown alien), I conclude that the best way to get that shine delivered is to use the Enterprise's transporters to materialize the moonshine onto a stolen 18-wheeler. Then the Dukes can get it to their buyers on time, and everyone will be happy.

Roll credits.

Strange, eh?

I Want You to Be Happy Day

No kidding.

Today is I Want You to Be Happy Day. I didn't make this up, although I did make up a bunch of holidays for kicks once in high school. One such made up holiday I remember was Talk to a Shrub Day.

There is some speculation that I Want You to Be Happy Day was created by a greeting card company. Regardless of who started the "holiday," the intent is for reminding people to be thoughtful of others. It's sort of a Practice-the-Golden-Rule-Day. You don't have to go out of your way for someone, but show them how much they mean to you with simple, thoughtful gestures.

Here are some simple things you can do to make someone happy:

Send a card or flowers
Call them on the phone for a chat
Cook them dinner or take them out to eat
Buy them a cup of coffee
If it's a family member, tell them you love them. We often forget this in our busy society.

I hope YOU have a happy day!

Leave a comment, and I'll be sure to visit your site!

Muddy Template Design

Once, not so long ago, I felt the need to get away from that bland template that I chose when I first started blogging, so I changed a few things in my blog template, and was satisfied.

For a while.

Now I am no longer happy with the way my blog looks. It just looks crowded. Jumbled up. Muddy.

My HTML skills are not phenomenal. I suppose if I really wanted to, I could muck around for a while and come up with another design, but it would most likely be worse than what I already have.

My question for you is this, then: is there some software package out there (preferably freeware) that I could use to easily create my dream template? If not, can I implore you to be a web philanthropist and create one for me at no cost? I know that's a tall order, but I'm a poor, starving blogger who must spend what little money he has on coffee and Coke to stay awake at work so that he can blog while he thinks no one is looking. Heck, you can even put your name on the blog somewhere, stating that you designed it, and that I couldn't script my way out of a wet paper sack!

Texas Independence Day

On March 1, 1836, a committee consisting of George C. Childress, Edward Conrad, James Gaines, Bailey Hardeman, and Collin McKinney were appointed to draft a document to declare the declaration of Texas' independence from Mexico and to become a free republic. Due to the urgency of their need, that document was literally drafted overnight, as the Alamo was under seige in San Antonio.

This did not mean that Texas was part of the United States, however. It was feared by some that several slave states would be created from the Texas territory. Texas did not join the United States until 1845, under the Presidency of John Tyler, the 10th President of the United States.

The Significance of Today

March 1 is the 60th day of the year, using the Gregorian calendar.

Today is Law Day, Loyalty Day, and May Day, all wrapped up into one. Today also begins Astronomy Week, Health Care Administrator's Week, Be Kind to Animals Week (after all, yesterday was Spay Day), Safe Kids Week, National Safe Drinking Water Week, Suicide Awareness Week, and Teacher Awareness Week.

One would think that with all the attention today was getting, it would be a holiday and we could take off work!

Jump ahead or backward exactly two years in time, and this would be February 29th, because 2008 and 2004 are leap years.

In 1845, President John Tyler signed a bill that authorized the United States of America to annex the Republic of Texas.

In 1912, on this day, Albert Berry made the first parachute jump from a moving airplane.

On March 1, 1936, the Hoover Dam was completed.

Celebrating birthdays today are Ron Howard, Javier Bardem, David Niven, and Harry Belafonte.

Today would have been Johnny Cash's and June Carter Cash's anniversary.

Bruce Willis' movie 16 Blocks opens today in the Phillipines. Sorry, USA, you have to wait two more days to see it.

Finally, if you're a Harry Potter fan, today is Ron Weasley's birthday! Why not celebrate by eating some Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans?