Back to back reviews here: RUSH – first the band and then the concert from June-28!
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All posts by Randy
Lets Go Mets! Lets Go Mets! – So go ahead and go already!
I’m spoiled. I know this. If I’ve said it already, let me repeat myself: I was born into pinstripes and I’m a Yankee thrice over. Once by being an American (to my fellow Yanks that are clueless, in a worldly fashion, all Americans are Yankees to most other nations), twice by living in the North (at least as far as Southerners are concerned), and third because I was born into Yankees pinstripes. Not that I’m complaining about that – by living in Connecticut, the closest thing we have to a pro team is the Wolfpack or Sound Tigers and the Ravens, so you have to sign your allegiance to either New York or Boston. It just that I’m spoiled.
Continue reading Lets Go Mets! Lets Go Mets! – So go ahead and go already!
RandyRants.com Swag!
Just a quick plug here about a new addition to the site: Swag! Over to your right, the last item on the menu, is a link to a whole selection of RandyRants.com merchandice. Nothing too out of the ordinary, but I thought it would be neat to see my logo printed across a pair of breasts. Well, what I mean is that there’s a very female t-shirt available and where the logo is… um, well. Hm. Ok, fine – get the mouse pad instead if you’re going to make an issue out of it! Jeesh… try to be a capitalist and look what happens – there’s also regular t-shirts and mugs and frisbees… I don’t make any cash on it either, but it’s a great way to get the site some free publicity – I’m not giving up my day (or afternoon or night) job!
In God We Trust
Recently there’s been so much in the news, it’s hard to pinpoint any one thing to Rant on. I mean this whole Israel-Palistine thing would have been taken care of if they had just followed my advice in the first place, but since that wouldn’t make for more than a couple of days of news, no one seems to want the problem to go away. Anyway, it’s been a rarer and rarer thing that I’d get thought the morning news reports that and it would foster a Rant, much less one steeped in blind fury. Any yet, today is no ordinary day, now is it? No… today is the day after the California Supreme Court ruled the US Pledge of Allegiance to be unconstitutional.
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Ee-oh-eleven… Ee-oh-eleven…
This morning, Ocean’s Eleven was on one of the movie channels… not the remake from a couple of years ago, but the original from 1960 with the Rat Pack, Mr. Roper, a Boss from the Godfather, and a couple other ppl, taking place in Vegas when the Vegas strip was just about five hotels long. Good movie, actually, if you understand the Rat Pack at the time.
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RAVE: AIM+
Chat rooms have been around for a long, long time. How long? From the days of the Apple //e and the Commodore 64 so at least the early 80’s. Before the earliest chat rooms, there was still one to one communication, commonly found on UNIX terminals, in the form of “talk”. Actually, it’s because of AIM that I am writing this in the first place. It seems that there’s an ambitious programmer out there that got tired of some of the AIM restrictions and opted to do something about it. Enter AIM+.
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The MTD sucks bollocks. So do the Mets for that matter.
The Milford Transit Dept sucks major bollocks. Yes, I’m currently sitting on the train platform instead of my regular morning train because the people at the MTD (that control the commuter parking lots that I park in most mornings) have — oo! an Acela train just went by! — over sold the lots while under construction. Not only did they keep the “normal” amount of spaces for lot 1 and 2 but lot 2 is down about 75% of the original spaces and lot 1 down about 50% – obviously I have been put in Time Out in lot 3, which has more than enough parking for all of Milford, but it made me trek a bit to the platform, making me miss my train.
Continue reading The MTD sucks bollocks. So do the Mets for that matter.
Mozilla 1.0 released!
Mozilla 1.0 is finally done! It’s available for download now on a few different platforms… it’s all set to go. For those of you that may not know, Mozilla is an open-source initiative that was orchestrated to offer the world a “free” browser to surf the web with. No need to buy into Windows or buy AOL‘s Netscape Navigator – this is open-source! You could even add your own features, by getting the source code from Mozilla and going to town on adding your own things. It even includes a built in IRC client so you could stiff the no-longer free mIRC.
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Boston Sucks! Boston Sucks! Boston ….! Boston ….!
A few weeks ago, the Seattle Mariners made national news – no, not for their playing of Ichiro – for a new policy they put into effect at SafeCo field for the Yankees-Mariners’ homestand. Fans that were showing up to the ballpark with the traditional “Yankees Suck” t-shirts were being told that they had to either turn them inside out or take them off, should they want to get into the game. Fans were a bit pissed off about this “new” policy, and a whole media circus occurred.
Continue reading Boston Sucks! Boston Sucks! Boston ….! Boston ….!
got date.NET?
“Been there; done that.” A great expression. “Let’s not and say we never did it?” A little tweak on another great expression. “It’s all fun and games until someone uses a fallopian tube!” Good words to live by. Ok, I’ve already digressed from this Rant and I haven’t even started it yet. The title says Internet Dating, doesn’t it? Well, the truth is that I’ve done it already, long before the Internet was trendy and certainly long before services like Match.com or Lavalife were around, that’s for certain. Does it work? It can… it depends on what’s involved and how much the people want to work at their relationship; sound familiar? It should – it’s what’s required to make any relationship work in the first place.
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dOWN WITH caps lock WITH kEYBOARD rEMAPPING!
I used to be the type of person that always always hit the CAPS LOCK button on a PC keyboard… when I used a straight/standard XT/AT keyboard, I would physically pop off the damned key so it was a non-issue. When I switched to the split-natural style keyboard, the problem seemed to go away (ta to Microsoft for that) if only because it became a key that was “out of the way”. So for the last seven or eight years, I’ve been able to keep my keyboard intact without worry. Even on my original Sony Vaio (N505VE) I didn’t seem to have a problem, if only because it was a smaller keyboard, I just kept missing it. Times change. What I discovered is a method of keyboard remapping that is pretty much absolute.
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Hey man, got a butt?
What else made this morning bizarre? The scene on the train platform. Scene might be too strong a word, but while standing on my Northbound side of the tracks, there was a bit of activity on the Southbound side that made for a nice anti-Norman Rockwell episode. Not that I’m anti-Rockwell mind you! He just seems to have such great still shots of a “perfect” moment from a “perfect” American life and this was quote the opposite. I use the quotes there for a reason – what is perfect to Rockwell might not be perfect to all. What I saw today would make a tobacco executive get sticky pants and the MTV exec’s stay up all night with marketing to find the next big “spoodge” for their industry.
Continue reading Hey man, got a butt?
Chat rooms and Parent and Malls!
I’ve been chatting online on and off for about 16 years now – yes, I’m that big a Geek – and as I’m now 29, you can see that I started chatting rather early on. 16 years ago, the only chat services were the ones that no one really knew about – just computer people – so the chat was rather “normal” as were the majority of the people. Sure there was lots of GeekSpeak, but it wasn’t a breeding ground for non-Geek weirdos; a subtle but very pointed distinction. For the most part, parents didn’t know about chat rooms, but if they did there was less to worry about, given the people online.
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Skipping Christmas
If you have any amount of family or friends around where you live you can related to Skipping Christmas, a recent book put out by John Grisham. If you’re Italian and still near your active Italian family around Christmastime, you will want to use the plot of Skipping Christmas as a timeline or check list to survive the holiday season.
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The Rising Price of CD’s
This is a monopolistic industry. It’s outrageous and frankly, I’m pretty pissed off about it. It’s been something of a slow rage to me, but here’s the end result of it. See, I started listen to music when vinyl was on its way out (because it wasn’t trendy anymore) and cassette tapes were in the mainstream. OK, fine, I was around for 8-Track too, but that’s moot because I never had one of my own. Cassettes sucks. They were fragile lil things, constantly breaking, unspooling, melting in the sun and sounded like crap. Dolby-B/C never did anything but muffle the highs and every tape player had a slightly different speed to it, so music never sounded the same from machine to machine. Oops, got techy again. Anyway, I what I’m trying to say is I was around for the DAT debacle and the introduction of CD’s.
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