Aimless Wandering

So I downloaded the latest beta version of Microsoft Office 2007 yesterday. So far I’ve been very impressed with what I have seen, I haven’t dived too deep into the program just yet but it looks promising.

Except for one issue I’ve encountered in Outlook 2007. For some reason opening an HTML e-mail takes two tries…. On the first try a window opens that says that “Outlook has experienced a serious error and needs to close.” Outlook then closes, the little window pops up that uploads the crash information to Microsoft and then another window opens with a link to click on to see how to prevent this error from occurring in the future. Clicking on the link takes you to a page that says “Your error was caused by Outlook 2007 Beta, click here to download Outlook 2007 Beta.” So my problem was caused by Outlook so I need to get Outlook to fix it? Right…

Now everywhere that I’ve been that I’ve had to do anything remotely related to managing computer systems it was always made clear to me that you never did routine or schedule maintenance during normal business hours. In specific you never did such work during what could be considered a period of moderate to heavy usage…

With that in mind, what genius at Blogger/Google thought that it was a good idea to do scheduled maintenance from 2PM to 3PM Pacific time?

See, this is just another reason why I need to go back to England. First there was Tanks-a-Lot (www.tanks-alot.co.uk although their site appears to be down) where you can drive around retired English army tanks. I first heard about Tanks-a-Lot on American Chopper when the Teutels went to England. The episode pops up on DiscoveryHD every so often, if you have DiscoveryHD you should watch for it…

But this, this is something even better. In a field in Leicestershire you can play paint ball WITH TANKS!!!!! :D

The good folks at Southfields Farm are offering two hours of tank warfare for just 79GBP or $148. Now it may seem like a lot of money for two hour of paintball, but did I mention you get to drive TANKS!!!!! (www.funday.com)

Each battle consists of two tanks, each with a crew of three plus an observer/instructor. Your ammunition is ping pong balls filled with paint fired at 300 feet per second, because of that battles are conducted with the hatches closed

Rumor has it that they have a paintball bazooka and paintball airstrikes in the works as well

Check out the story in The Daily Mail

It’s been a while since I’ve posted some scrapings from YouTube, so I need to make up for lost time

Check out this weird car commercial…

I guess that you’re supposed to think comforted by the “human touches” in the car… Honestly I think I’d be more afraid that all those guys might get pissed off at me one day and decide to rip me to shreds!

You know I went through my own destructive phase as a teen. I remember disecting a cheezy calculator or some other broken piece of crappy electronics just to get some kicks… But this is just wrong…

Talk about kids with way too much time on their hands, and worse with WAY more money than they deserve to have… Before these hooligans destroy a nano there’s footage of them destroying an iBook and an xBox 360. I can almost understand the destruction of the iMac and the computer monitor, those could be old items that they found collecting dust in the family basement… But the rest of that stuff? Do these kids have parents!

I think I may have found the magic combination against the comment spammers.  I haven’t had a single piece of comment spam on the Cruise Planners site in a little over a week now.  While I won’t make the mistake of saying that I’ve won the battle permanently, it’s the most progress I’ve had so far.
Part 1 is the Akismet plugin for Wordpress.  It has done a terrific job of catching spam before it gets to the blog, comments that Akismet suspects to be spam sit in a seperate moderation queue.  While Akismet has probably caught 99.5% of the spam comments sent to the site, there’s two downfalls to the plug-in, although they are minor.  First, Akismet runs someplace else and if the owners of Akismet make a goof in their maintenance of the Akismet code the spam flood gates can open up.  This is actually something that has happened in the past.  Second, while Akismet is good at preventing the spam from being posted, it doesn’t keep the spammers from the site.

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Wow it’s been quiet here lately.  It’s been way too long since I’ve made a post here….

So yesterday The Wife and I headed to San Francisco for a presentation onboard Princess Cruises’ Dawn Princess.  This was an event that was just open to travel agents…  You know, travel professionals… i.e. people who should know what’s expected of them security wise when they go to board a cruise ship or airplane…  People who should know that just like when they go to the airport, when they go to board a cruise ship they will have to go through a metal detector and that their bags will be x-rayed.  People who should know that to speed their way though said metal detectors and x-ray machines that it’s not a good idea to be wearing lots of metal items.  People who should know that to ease their clearance through said security devices that that having sharp metallic objects in their bag isn’t such a good idea…  Heck, these are people who should be telling their own clients not to do these things!

Instead we get stuck behind a woman who was wearing metal bracelets that were big enough for Roman gladiators to use as wrist shields!  Notice I said bracelets and not bracelet…  That’s because she was wearing THREE of these monstrosities, and appeared genuinely surprised when she was told that she needed to remove them before proceding through the metal detector…  Oh and let’s not forget the massive metal pendant and earrings that matched her wrist shields which she was wearing as well…

But if that wasn’t bad enough.  The armored woman also felt the need to carry a pair of scissors in her bag as well.  From what I understand (and based on the reaction of the security folks) we’re not talking about simply a small pair of sewing scissors either.  These were apparently a pretty sizeable pair of shears that she was toting.  I might add that she was also quite attached to these scissors, and not willing to part with them unless she was assured that she would get them back when she disembarked from the ship…

Exactly why do you need to carry around a pair of scissors large enough to trim hedges with on a regular basis?  How often do you happen to be wandering down the street and come across a serious haircut emergency?  You know I can’t think of the number of times I’ve been in the car driving around and thought, gee if only I had a pair of scissors large enough to cut electrical conduit with me right now…. 

Well, the creators of the NY Subway Smell map have found a way to get around the problems going on at onnyturf.com as the map is up and working even though it appears that onnyturf is still down.

While it’s been a few years since I’ve ridden on the NY Subway system, doing so was and probably still is a bit of an adventure.  The system has come a long way from the grafitti sprawl and crime ridden days of the ’70s, but it still can’t compare to the newer systems like those in DC or even Atlanta.

Just how much of an adventure you ask?  Well, the folks over at Gawker have created the NY Subway Smell Map.  I previewed the icons used on the map a few posts ago, but now you can experience the map in all of it’s glory.

Some of the more interesting locations when you click on more.

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So, a few months ago we ordered The Best of The Electric Company DVD set. We’ve had the set for a few months, but tonight was the first time we sat down on started watching it. We didn’t get past the first episode but wow…

This was probably the first episode of The Electric Company I’ve watched in more than 25 years. I know the show had cheesy ’70s styles, songs, hair, etc… but I really forgot just how cheesy things were.

Despite the super cheesy feel (like Morgan Freeman wearing an outfit that made him look like Jimmy Hendrix) the boy seemed to enjoy it.

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So for the past few days I’ve been planning on putting up a post about Gawker’s new “Smells of the Subway” map.  It’s supposed to be a really cool map of the New York Subway system that uses pops to show reader reports of smells in NY Subway stations.

Unfortunately, the map is down…

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