Damn Dirty Cough

This cough really must go. It's annoying the crap out of me. Cough drops have helped but only so much. Ironically enough I ended up coughing a cough drop out of my mouth today. That's right, I coughed and the cough drop dropped.

I don't even feel like I'm sick. It's just really really irritating that I keep on having to cough. It's also really irritating to have too many cherry flavored cough drops in a row. So I spent the day waffling between letting the cough irritate me and letting the cough drops irritate me.

Here's how my cough usually goes:

caw cAW cuf cuf CAAf CAAf cAWCAAAWWW CAAAAWWWHAAAwHAAAw AWWWk fuck

The convulsions must be giving me some kind of a workout though, right?

TV show update

I just checked out the Steve Harvey's Big Time Challenge website and it shows that episode 219 (mine is 217) will be airing this coming Sunday (Mar 6th). Maybe Mar 13th then.

Ice Caterpillar

I submitted this picture to a Picture of the Day site and it's being displayed there today.

check it out

I just got back from Salt Lake City and I have a couple of stories to tell but they'll have to wait until later because it's just too late.

Sometimes when I feel really hungry, it makes me sneeze.

I just can't stop myself from singing along to Susan Tedeschi's It Hurt So Bad.

Camera Update

The new camera has been delivered. Woohoo. Well according to the delivering companies web site anyway. Hurray, hurray. I can't wait to get my hands on it. Why didn't I just work from home today? Oh yeah, because I wouldn't have gotten anything done. Is it time to leave yet? Hurray new camera.

TV Show Info

I'm back from LA all safe and sound. I'll be posting the whole story soon, but in the meantime here's the info on the show.

Steve Harvey's Big Time Challenge
Sunday's at 9PM EST on WB (check local listings for exact time and station 8-þ)

I believe my episode will air on 2/27 but I'm not positive. When I know more I'll put it here.

I'm sitting at the LA airport waiting for my flight home. The taping went great and I had a ton of fun. More later.

Exhumed Post

~kimberly~ left a some funny comments on my Sponge Blahb post that reminded me of an old post from my deadjournal. I figure why not resurrect it here.

Wednesday, July 14th, 2004
11:57 am
My cube mate is such a character. I'm often out of the office for long stretches, and occasionally I come back to find something new hanging on my part of the wall. Once it was an FBI Ten Most Wanted poster where my face was put on Osama Bin Laden's head. All of the information was also humorously changed. This included:
"Bin Laden is the leader of an installation organization known as Al-Gui, '5.0'. He is right-handed and walks with a hip hop beebop."
"Considered armed and extremely legged."

Another time there was a sign that said "Please do not disturb ongoing dust settlement experiment." I just noticed that it was gone, so I asked him about it. He said "I had to take it down. Didn't I tell you? There was no more funding for it. I said to the guy, 'But you're not doing anything. It's just sitting there.' ".

Welcome to the Dogg Pound

SpongeBlahb

Two of the three comics on my Yahoo homepage were jokes about the irritating, absorbent character known as SpongeBob. Not being a fan of the squishy guy it should have made my day to have two comics rip on him... but they didn't rip on him. He was just the punchline of the joke. As if he's funny enough just being there to carry otherwise very clever comics. I'm so disappointed.

For those of you that like talking cleaning supplies:

Close to Home

Non Sequitur

Keep an Eye Out

I'm about useless here at work today. I'm having a hard time concentrating because I found out that I'll be going to LA later this week for the taping of a tv show that I'm gonna be doing my can head trick on. Woohoo!

Check out this cool dragon. Watch the video to appreciate the effect.

Year of the Rock Gym

I bought the camera. Woohoo, how exciting! I can't wait until it gets here.

Back in January my brother(the guy in the picture up there) and I decided to start going to the rock gym on a regular basis. Unfortunately that was January of last year and we never really put our plan into action.

Well 2005 is the year of the rock gym. We've outfitted ourselves, prepaid visits and have managed to go twice this last week. Yesterday we even found a really nice place to eat not far from there. So there are no excuses to not go now. I can walk in, tell them my name, put my stuff on and start climbing. Afterwards I can go have a good meal with a good selection of beers on tap. Hey, you need to replenish carbs after a workout, don't you? No? That's ok, it's still better to have one beer at a restaurant after a workout than three at home in front of the computer. Plus it's good motivation. Hey, I wonder if they would let me hang beers at the top of the wall. They'd probably look at me like I'm crazy if I asked. I'll have to ask them. I like it when people look at me like I'm crazy.

On a related note. If you live in RI(or closeby) and you're looking for something fun to do check out the Rhode Island Rock Gym. They're open until midnight every day and the staff is always friendly.

To Buy or Not To Buy...

Anyone that's been reading my blog knows that I love taking pictures. What happens when you start getting into something like that? You want better equipment of course. Currently I have a Canon A70. It's a great camera and I've done alot with it but I've been drooling over the Canon Digital Rebel for a few weeks now. It looks like I have the money to buy one now, but before I do I figured I'd better think about it more closely.

Will it make me a better photographer? No, the camera itself won't make me a better photographer.

Will I be able to take better pictures with it? Yes, absolutely.

Will I be able to improve my photography skills with it? Yes.

Why can't I just use the camera I already have to improve my photography skills?

Well, I'm glad I asked this. Here's the crux of it: It's all about being able to see what's actually gonna be captured. I don't know how many times I've taken a picture and everything looked just fine and dandy on the camera's screen, only to find out that it's horribly out of focus when I pulled it up on the computer.

Can I really afford it or am I just telling myself that I can? I could use the money to pay down credit cards. This is however money in the bank account and will not further indebt me.

Ok, I'm done talking to myself now. I'll open the question up to you readers now. Should I buy it?

Hello New Phone

My new phone arrived today. It's so purdy and shiny and new.

That Content is Dynamic!

I searched high and I searched low. I tried using ready made scripts and I tried making my own. Forums didn't help and neither did tutorials. In the end I needed some good old html. What was I trying to do? Add that little thumbnail to my sidebar that will always show the most recent picture in my Lunch Special album.

The problem is that when I'm trying to figure something out I get a bit obsessed and I just can't let it go. I literally spent hours to add that one little thing to my blog. Of course the positive aspect of that is I now have some knowledge of how php, javascript, the object tag, and iframes all work. I love learning how things work. The biggest lesson learned by far was "look for the simplest solution".

Below is an explanation of how I did it in case someone that's trying to do the same thing stumbles across this. Warning: droll technical speak beginning now.

I use Coppermine Photo Gallery to display my pictures. I wanted to be able to show the thumbnail of the most recent picture uploaded to one specific album on the sidebar of this blog.

I found out about the ssi.php mod on the Coppermine Photo Gallery support forums. The instructions included are very good and will do a much better job of explaining how to use it to display different thumbnails than I could here.

Using the ssi.php instructions I created a new php file that calls the ssi.php script to display the specific thumbnail that I wanted. I wasn't able to use a php include or a javascript call. I found that I could do it with an iframe or an object tag. The object tag worked fine in Firefox but Internet Explorer bawked at it. So I ended up using the iframe. Unfortunately that meant I had to format it so it would display nicely. If you want to see the code just view the source and look for the iframe tag.