I’ve heard of bird crap on a car - and I’ve witnessed it first hand - but this, this is a little overkill:

Additionally, my coworker has so far gotten 3 songs stuck in my head, and it wasn’t even 10am. The most current song? Larry Gatlin & The Gatlin Brothers - All the Gold in California. It’s to early for country.

Here, listen to it yourself.

And speaking of Last.Fm - anyone else a member? I’d love to add some more people to it - I know JACC listens to some cool stuff. And Robert won’t shut up about John Kruth. So if you’re on it, add me - if not, get on it! Or tell me what you are using. I really like Last.FM’s Scrobbler, which hooks up to my iPod and automatically logs what I listen to - even when the iPod isn’t connected to the computer¹. Plus they have a lot of great free music downloads and a sweet event calendar so I can see who else is going to the shows I’m going to. It’s win win!

1. Though they call this experimental, and from what I’ve seen it is - it works great if you don’t skip any tracks, otherwise it won’t have anything to scrobble [↩]

I’ve upgraded to Wordpress 2.5. It looks pretty, now to play around with it.

Additionally, I’ll be posting again soon, I’ve just been slammed with work and under the weather - a combination that isn’t very conducive to posting, so sorry.

My home state of Minnesota is known for many many things. Our progressive politics and social policies. Our love of Norway. Our 10,000 lakes¹. Our health. Our highly educated and literate population. Paper mills. First iron ore, now taconite. Hockey. We get around.

We’ve also had our share of stars: Prince, Husker Du, The Replacements, Soul Asylum, Eddie Albert, Judy Garland, Jessica Lange, Winona Ryder, Vince Vaughn, Josh Hartnett, Jessica Biel, Melissa Peterman, Jonny Lang, Joel and Ethan Coen, Terry Gilliam and Mike Todd.

Our GDP is $234 billion (In 2005). Our state drink is milk. We’re the first state to mandate the use of ethanol fuel and we’re US’ largest producer of sugar beets, sweet corn, and green peas for processing, and farm-raised turkeys.

That’s all great, but none of them matter.

Our greatest natural resource is Angus “Mac” MacGyver.

It’s true.

Ok, so Mac is really Richard Dean Anderson - also a Minnesota native, but I won’t focus on that, even though he decided to become an actor when he took a cross-country bike ride from Minnesota to ALASKA after college. Friggin’ Alaska. On a bike. From here. Yes, it’s safe to say that Richard Dean Anderson and MacGyver are one in the same.

Mac is the reason I’ve carried a Swiss Army knife with me every day for over a decade. He’s the real reason I was in the boy scouts, and the reason I decided to learn dozens of knots and lashing wood together instead of hanging out with the other scouts at our Jamborees. He’s how I want Minnesota to be thought of: Quiet, Smart, Inventive. Someone you want on your side when the going gets tough.

Today is MacGyver’s 57th birthday. Born March 23rd, 1951 in Mission City, MN, he grew up to study physics at Western Tech, and then signed on to the Phoenix Foundation, where he learned to solve problems not with brawn, but with his brains.

Let’s all celebrate Minnesota’s greatest natural resource: MacGyver.

Mac is so epic that recently CBS decided to give him away to the masses, and as such you can now logon and watch every single episode!

And as great as it is to watch it online, it’s nothing compared to seeing it on a modern big screen, so go out and buy yourself the first season of MacGyver:

Then go out and buy yourself a MacGyver action figure:

Or, even better, the MacGyver multi-tool:

Add to that the appropriately titles “MacGyver” watch, with it’s combo watch/mp3 to round out the look:

And even more MacGyver links!

Read about him on Wikipedia, hit up MacGyver online to see every single MacGyverism he’s made. And be sure to check out TV.Com to catch those reruns!

It’s safe to say that Minnesota, and even the entire world, is a better place with him around - so happy birthday, Mac!

1. Actually, Minnesota has 11,842 lakes that are 10 acres in size or larger. Now you know. [↩]

So Mishka is went into work earlier then normal today, and she won’t be home until almost 8pm. I asked her what she wanted for dinner, and she said there were some chicken breasts and some pork tenderloins in the freezer - defrost something and mix it with something else.

So I took out the pork tenderloin.

And then I got to thinking. She does so much of the cooking - and she’s really good at it. She makes these big complicated meals, requiring 30,000 ingredients and a team of 7 to help assemble it. When I cook, on the other hand, I usually make a hunk of meat, side it with some form of tuber, and slap it on a plate.

But alas, I had a better idea today. Last week my friend Double M mentioned he made a lasagna¹. I love lasagna. So I decided, screw it - pork back in the freezer, I’m makin’ a lasagna. So I asked my Tweeple & did some Googlin’ and I happened upon this highly rated recipe called “World’s Best Lasagna“. With a title like that, how can I go wrong? So off I went to pick up the stuff I needed.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. It was the first time he’s made one, ever [↩]

So it’s Good Friday, Jesus died today, and in a few days he’ll be back doing Jager Bombs with Keith Richards. In the meantime, here’s some links he may or may not have visited.

Awesome Angle - Here’s a reason why I love photography, so I can hang with my fellow (wo)man and.. ahem.. check out their shooting styles.

Tetris Mirror - If you miss your old Game Boy, here’s a little something you can get to pay homage to the greatest game for it.

You weren’t meant to have a boss - Paul Graham, noted programmer, makes a strong argument on working for yourself vs working for someone else.

A synth for your DS - If you love your Nintendo DS as much as I do, and happen to dig synths, then you’ll love this. The Korg DS-10 is coming to the US!

Everybody kills Hitler on their first trip - Do I seriously need to add any more flavor text then this?

Tune Up That Bike (A guide for beginners) - Well now, spring has sprung and if you aren’t crazy like JACC¹, it’s about time to make sure that bike is still in tip top shape. DIY Life gives us the run down.

I hope I never see this - I’m marrying another geek, so I think I’m pretty safe, but I still fear seeing this some day²

and finally…

Insomnia and Productivity - Coder Chad Perrin talks about how hackers who stay up until the wee hours of the morning are a lot more productive then their “early to bed, early to rise” brethren and from experience I’d have to say I agree. There is something almost magical about hitting that zen-like state called “Hack Mode“. It’s been awhile for me, maybe I won’t take the sleep meds tonight and get some serious code pounding done.

1. JACC rides his bike all year. I know [↩]
2. I have a really nice keyboard and would hate to have to replace it [↩]

Haven’t been posting much lately and I’m sorry about that - but when you’re rocking a pair of $40 coupons for a Digital TV Converter Box of your choice, it takes awhile to choose!

 In my post yesterday, I incorrectly assumed that the hotfix ID being used to query for the installation of PowerShell was wrong, probably due to an earlier release. The truth is there is a couple of hotfix IDs, depending on which operating system you’re on. If you’re on Windows XP, 2000 or 2003 you have one ID, if you’re on Vista or (presumably) 2008 it’s a completely different ID. I’ve since banged together a quick script to look for the OS version first, then to query for the proper fix. Hopefully you’ll find it useful!

Also, yesterday I got my Arduino starter kit! I haven’t gotten to play with it much at all, except for the hardware equivalent of “Hello World”, the blinking LED. I’m looking forward to using it when I get better and done with some work, especially since I have a few ideas kicking around.  And I love this starter kit, it contains everything I need to get through LadyAda’s first set of tutorials - no rummaging for an hour in the parts bin, then going to RadioShack to find out they don’t stock it instore¹

1. Yes, this happens to me, a lot. [↩]

In the MS Press book “Windows PowerShell Scripting Guide” one of the first scripts listed is how to detect, via WMI & VBScript, whether or not PowerShell is installed.

In the book, it says that the best way to locate PowerShell is to use it’s QFE hotfix ID, which is listed as “928439″. This will only work with Windows Vista. If you’re using Windows XP or Windows 2003, the hotfix number if PowerShell is installed will be “926139″.

I’ve edited the original script included with the MS Press book and have added a function to determine which OS we’re looking at, then search for the corresponding hotfix ID.

In the book, it says that the best way to locate PS is to use it’s QFE hotfix ID, which is “928439″. This is, however, an incorrect hotfix ID, at least now. The most current one is 926139, which is listed as SP3. I assume 928439 was the original number, before SP3 was thought of. Not to mention, they improperly format the WMI query, so even if you used the correct number, it wouldn’t show. Note: This is on Windows XP SP2, I’m unsure if this is on other versions as well.

One:

What the sign meant to say is the meeting was to be held at Senor Wong’s - an Asian/Mexican fusion place a few doors down from where we live.

Two:

Oh yes, I’m going to NOFX baby! I’m sure tickets are still available, come join me! This is the second time I’ve seen them, the first being at the Triple Rock when I was dressed as a priest for the shooting of their music video “Seeing Double at the Triple Rock” That also means that in preperation for Sunday, I will be listening to NOFX, NuFan and The Flatliners all day. And Bad Religion. They’re a staple in my diet of Awesomeness.

FYI: Here’s the video. I’m in it, but you have to really look for me - apparently the authentic Spanish Padre look wasn’t exactly what they wanted.

I’ve always been a PIC¹ kinda guy. PIC² is a microcontroller made by Microchip. It’s fairly popular in the hobbyist market because they’re so widely available and so very cheap. They can do a lot, but they can be a pain to develop with unless you know all the parts you need to accomplish your goals, tough for a newbie. I use the PICKit 1 development kit because it has a lot of the extra basic bits you need to do anything useful, less hunting == more fun.

Over the past year or so³ I’ve been hearing more about more about the Arduino⁴ The Arduino is a physical computing platform based on a simple I/O board and a development environment that implements the Processing/Wiring language. It looks like a lot of fun, and it seems like overnight a mountain of interesting tips, tricks and projects have popped up revolving around this little guy. It’s design is also open and you can download both the hardware design reference documents as well as the source code for the IDE and on-board library. So I’m temporarily jumping over the fence and just ordered one online from Adafruit.com. At $65, it’s a bit more then the PICKit, but the wealth of information out there makes it promising - especially simple how-tos and projects, dwarfs the information you can find on the PIC, even though the PIC does have “123 PIC Microcontroller Experiments for the Evil Genius” on it’s side.

The Arduino really seems more aimed at the hobbyist market - which makes sense as that is what it was designed to for. You can create programs that will run stand alone or connect it to your computer to allow the virtual world to interact with the physical world. People have built a lot of interesting things with their Arduinos from clocks, POV machines, theremins to even a hitcounter that rings a bell when someone visits their site. They do make it look quite sexy, no?

So I’ve got a few simple projects I’d like to make⁵ , and I think they would be an excellent way to test out what that ATmega168 can do. I’ll make a little write up about it in a few months. Wish me luck!

1. Programmable Interface Computer [↩]
2. More about PIC: Official Site, Mailing List, Tools [↩]
3. Ever since I started reading MAKE magazine - you should subscribe too [↩]
4. More about the Arduino: Official Site, Wiki, Photos, Tutorial, Introduction To [↩]
5. Projects: External iPod display/control, Canvas project, Proximity Clock, My grandiose living clock, etc etc - I’ve talked about some of these back in the day, time to get ‘er done! [↩]