If you’re one of my regular 3 readers, you’ve noticed that the formatting looks horrible…at least a little worse than normal. It looks like Blogger is inserting this goofy <style="clear: both> tag in there that is messing up my formatting. It’s not just me, it appears that a lot of people have been affected by this.
It looks like Blogger is finally recognizing the problem and is attributing it to a side-effect of the new Blogger images upgrade. You can read more at Blogger’s status page.
Update
Blogger has finally fixed the formatting problem they caused when they added support for images. Now the problems with my site (and there are many…) are solely my own!
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posted 06/27/2005 04:57 PM
Does anyone else out there think Tom Cruise would be better off tooling around his garage or working in the yard instead of showing up on TV and answering questions? Honestly. I had a decent opinion of Cruise for a while – he seemed like a decent guy, fairly grounded, approachable, etc. But now, I think he’s heading down the slippery slope to celebrity silliness (i.e. Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, etc.) Maybe he was already there and I didn’t notice.
Take, for example, today’s conversation with Matt Lauer on the Today Show. When Matt started asking questions about prescription drugs that were slightly tougher than the normal softball ones he normally tosses out there, Tom started going off. On what, you may ask? Well, on his knowledge of the history of psychiatry and the amount of research he’s done on chemical imbalances. One highlight for me was:
“You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do,” Cruise said.
Another gem was:
“Matt, Matt, you don’t even—you’re glib,” Cruise responded. “You don’t even know what Ritalin is. If you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt, OK. That’s what I’ve done.”
Did the “research papers” come from Scientology Central or the New England Journal of Medicine? Just curious.
If you’re Katie Holmes’ father, what are you thinking right about now? “Let’s see…he’s nearly 20 years older than my Katie…this is his third marriage…he’s into that scientology stuff (does that mean no Christmas???)...he’s decided to marry her after about 2 months of dating…he’s an expert on Ritalin…sounds like a winner to me!”
[1] | posted 06/24/2005 04:27 PM
After purchasing a new TV a couple weeks ago, my wife started complaining about the number of remotes we were accumulating. There is a remote for the TV, the Tivo, the A/V Receiver, the DVD player and the cable box. All of them were used in one way or another, and my wife could not figure out which one to use when. Combine the remote quandary with the hassle of switching inputs, modes, resolutions, etc., and I knew I had to find a better way to do all of this.
Enter the Harmony 676 universal remote. 
This thing is sweet on so many levels. First of all, you connect it to your computer via a USB connection. Then you log on to the Harmony web site where you answer some questions about your components and how they are selected. You select the brands, then enter the model numbers. The next step of the process allows you to set up “activities”. There are three buttons near the top of the remote that correspond to these activities. One is for watching a movie, another is listening to music and the third is watching TV. So, for example, the “watch a movie” activity for me consists of: turning on the TV, setting the TV input to component 1, turning on the A/V receiver and setting it to ‘DVD’, and then turning on the DVD player. All of those steps are taken care of by one push of a button. Could this be done on another universal remote? Sure, but I don’t think it would be as simple as it was with the Harmony.
Now, I can control all of the devices mentioned above with one single remote. My wife tried it last night and was able to switch between watching a DVD and Tivo by pressing one button. She was impressed and pleased she doesn’t have to remember all of the steps to get this to work.
What else is cool about the remote? Well, for one, Harmony’s customer support is fantastic. I had some trouble getting my inputs to select properly. One 10 minute call to their 866 number and the problem was solved. I didn’t have to do anything except explain my problem. The tech was able to access my settings on-line and make the changes. All I had to do was click the synch button and I was in business.
Also, because your settings are stored on-line, you don’t have to worry about the batteries dying and losing your codes. Just synch it up and you are back to normal. This also comes in handy if you choose to upgrade to a newer model. You don’t have to re-program the remote, just synch it up.
I still have some fine-tuning to do – not all of the buttons I used on the various remotes are currently represented in my configuration. Making these changes is pretty easy using the web site, however. All in all, this is one of the best purchases I have made. Not having to create step by step instructions on how to watch a movie or use the Tivo, or spend 15 minutes teaching the babysitter which buttons to push and not to push makes this a fantastic investment. The family room is a lot less cluttered, too.
| posted 06/02/2005 05:08 PM
Ack! ABC is killing me with their HD choices.
The Indianapolis 500, the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing”, was obviously not a big enough spectacle to warrant coverage in HD. Why??? Let’s review what could be seen on Sunday in HD: Pistons vs Heat on TNT, Red Sox vs Yankees on ESPN and the neverending Coca Cola 600 on Fox. (I think that race is still going on, and it looks like there’s another yellow flag out…) The day’s biggest event, however, was not in HD. I just don’t understand what is going on over there at ABC sports. If you don’t broadcast the Indy 500 in HD, then what on Earth will get the HD treatment? According to ABC, “My Wife and Kids”, “George Lopez”, and the classic “According to Jim” all get HD broadcasts, but not major sporting events like the 2nd round of the NBA playoffs or the Indy 500. I just don’t get it.
| posted 05/31/2005 11:24 AM
I don’t know when Google/Blogger released Blogger Mobile, but it is pretty neat. The idea is that you can take a picture on your cell phone, send it in a sms message to go@blogger.com, and then have it automatically posted to your blog. It works well, but I’m having a problem with the uploaded image path. When I send a picture, it gets posted to the blog here, but the path in the img tag is incorrect. If I update the post to fix the path, the image appears, as seen below. But, I can’t find a way to do this automatically. If blogger would use a relative path instead of a fully qualified one, this wouldn’t be an issue for me. I’ve sent blogger an email so we’ll see what they have to say. I hope we find a solution because this is pretty cool.
| posted 05/24/2005 05:13 PM
We finally decided to ditch the phone company and go with a voip solution at our home. After doing some research, I decided to give Vonage a shot. I went to Best Buy and picked up one of the Linksys/Vonage routers with 2 phone ports on the back and sent in my rebate forms which pretty much covered the cost of the router. After connecting the Vonage router to my Linksys wireless router, I plugged a phone in and was in business.
Or so I thought. One of the neat things about Vonage is that you can keep your current phone number and transfer it to Vonage. This was a big selling point to me because I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of telling everyone our new number. Vonage has a fairly simple form you fill out and fax in to them to initiate the process. This is where I ran into trouble, however. The process is supposed to take about 20 business days, but it ended up taking me about 3 months to complete the changeover. One time they said they didn’t receive my fax. Another time they said the account names didn’t match. The third time I think they just plain forgot about it. So I faxed it in a fourth time and things finally went through. I plugged a phone cable from the router into an open phone jack I had near my setup and all of my phones were working.
Discounting the nightmare I encountered in transferring my number, we’re really happy with the service so far. First off, it sounds great. I was hesitant about sound quality but it sounds as good or better than the previous land line. Second of all, it’s cheap. We’re doing the $15/mo. plan that gives us 500 minutes per month. Finally, you get a lot of features – call waiting, call forwarding, voice mail, you name it, all for $15. You can go unlimited for $25, I think, but we haven’t talked enough on it to warrant the switch. All in all, it’s a great service as long as you don’t have to deal with customer service too often.
| posted 05/20/2005 11:32 AM
OK. So let’s say you get a new HD TV. You have Comcast cable, which provides HD feeds from a number of stations. Life is good.
Now, let’s say your favorite basketball team, maybe the Detroit Pistons, is playing its rival from Indiana in a big game 6 matchup that might also be the final game for Reggie Miller. Life is very good.
Next, you know that the NBA playoffs are being broadcast on three different stations – ABC, ESPN and TNT. You also know that all three of these stations have the capability to broadcast in HD. This is fantastic! So, if you were a betting man, which station would you place the highest odds on broadcasting NBA playoff games in HD? Being the HD rookie that I am, I would bet the order would be ABC, ESPN then TNT. Since ABC owns ESPN (actually, Disney owns both), and ESPN broadcasts all sorts of things in HD (even the deuce is HD!) I thought it would be safe to assume that the game on ABC would be HD. No problem. “Lost” was in HD on Wednesday night, as was “Alias”. Playoff basketball games would have to be, right?
Wrong. I was shocked when I put my son to bed, sat down on the couch and fired up ABC and the Pistons-Pacers playoff game. No HD. None. Why is this? As I said before, if ABC and ESPN are owned by the same company, and they both produce HD content, why would you not broadcast a playoff game in HD? Is it because Al Michaels is afraid his wrinkles and dyed hair would appear in greater clarity? Reggie Miller’s ears might frighten small children? Maybe we might be able to read all of the various tattoos on the players. I can’t figure it out.
After the Pistons game ended (a big Detroit win, btw, and a great final performance by Miller) I switched over to ESPN where the Spurs and Sonics were playing. Of course, it was in HD, and it looked beautiful. Why ABC doesn’t broadcast these playoff games in HD is a mystery to me. Maybe they’ll do it for the conference finals.
| posted 05/20/2005 08:41 AM
OK…I’ve had it with Jim Price, color analyst of the Detroit Tigers, referring to Jeremy Bonderman as “Bondie”. Adding the ”-ie” sound to the end of a player’s name works great in hockey (Stevie, Shanny, Cheli, etc.) but that’s about the only place. I’m OK with Higgy (the name, not the player) but Bondie just sounds wrong on so many levels. I don’t care if that’s his nickname around the clubhouse, either.
And it’s not like Price says it once or twice a game. I think he’s being paid by 1270 to say Bondie as many times as possible. Does Bonderman actually like being called Bondie? Is this possible? Bondie??? Ack. Enough.
| posted 05/05/2005 10:10 PM
Got the ESPN RSS feed working today. I still need to work on the looks but it was pretty easy using asp.net and xsl. Some day I will get this all figured out.
| posted 05/02/2005 09:59 PM
This is to test out what happens when I make two posts on the same day. Something unlikely to happen in real life but who knows?
Here is a space followed by a link to ESPN.
More space…
| posted 04/27/2005 10:49 PM
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