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Keeping the shitstream going:

• Arrived at my doctor’s appointment 20 minutes early, didn’t get to see the doc until 50 minutes later AND he gave me less than two minutes of face-to-face time.
• Since the appointment ran so late, I get to work at that purgatory period: after the bulk of employees have arrived but before lunch. The parking lots at work are double and triple parked by 10 AM so arriving at 11 AM is a lesson in frustration, futility and lots of gear changes. I can’t find a spot at the local lot so I got to park a couple of blocks away. No big deal, unless it rains. This is Seattle. This conclusion left up to the reader.
• My favorite internet station, WOXY, the station I listen to every minute I’m at work, is moving to a pay model. $5/month, I’d think about it, $10/month, I’m not so sure.

God damnit again! The Seahawks lose and I’m having nothing but trouble with Gallery. There is no feature for “bulk upload”. Come on, everyone stores their pictures in some sort of directory hierarchy and there is NO support for uploading from a directory. The best I can find is some hacky perl script that will allow me to upload a directory-full of images. It doesn’t even create and name the album for you! I think the old albums from my gallery will be down until such a script is written.

God damnit, I can’t seem to restore my gallery. I guess I get to fully reconfigure it for a third time! I hate the lack of a reliable backup/restore for this software.

I have decided to upgrade my home computer to Media Center Edition, basically since I have the 360 to act as an extender. My current PC only needed a few things (new video card, TV tuner card) and I decided to tack on an extra 300 GB drive. The downside is that I haven’t reinstalled Windows in forever and my current build is well used. I believe I have backed everything up, but I’m still going to have to reinstall and reconfigure:

• Apache 2
• PHP 5
• MySQL 4
• Gallery 2

That is going to be difficult, let alone all the userland applications. I may be able to get away with installing WAMP, but I might have to install everything manually like last time. All of that, just for a photo gallery? I think the gallery2 setup is just too complex for it’s own good. The database points to the picture files on the hard drive, but maybe it’s easier to control all of the other data using a full-fledged database.

Anyway, the point of this post is to warn you that my gallery will be unavailable, and probably for some time.

Bwahaha, I “upgraded” my computer from a GeForce3 Ti 200 to a GeForce 6600 and decided to run 3DMark 2006 just for fun. A whopping 446 isn’t all that fun and is by FAR the lowest score for anyone running the GF 6600. I think most people have upgraded from a 1.3 GHz processor by now.

Transparent monitors, some of the examples are fairly well done. It’s a shame that I have blank walls behind my LCDs at work and home.

The worlds most beautiful car will be released this year. This is not opinion, this is certifiable fact, as defined by this sketch that Aston Martin has released of their upcoming DBS model:

AM should just register http://www.worldsmostbeautifulcar.com/ (which is available) and put that sketch on it, just to solidify that fact.

I am not going to link to the video in question because it is a bit graphic, but a stabilized version of the Zapruder Kennedy assassination film is available. We’ve all seen the original version, probably many times. It’s so jerky that it’s pretty hard to tell exactly what happens when Kennedy is shot multiple times. In this stabilized version, you can tell he was hit early on in the clip as Jackie is extremely concerned and trying to figure out what happened. She is leaning in, seemingly trying to take off his jacket to get to his chest/back wound. Just as she gets in real close, a bullet zips in and absolutely explodes his face. It is simply shocking to see it stabilized and is so much more grotesque.

Gmail has a fairly innocuous feature called “web clips”. Basically, it will show you a headline, quote or definition near the top of your mailbox. I usually ignore them, but they occasionally make for good reading. Today, I was presented with “Rotten Tomatoes: Movies – 96% King Kong”. Unfamiliar with how Rotten Tomatoes rates their movies and fully expecting a monster movie to suck, I thought that a rating of 96% meant 96% rotten meaning that movie was abysmal. On the contrary, this is one of the highest ratings they have ever given! Just check out some of the review quotes on the site; I may want to see this.

Tomb of Carlos II

A fascist rally in support of Franco on the 30th anniversary of his death

Tower at the Mezquita

One of the many oranges growing everywhere

The colors of the Alcazar in Seville

Tomb of Christopher Columbus

Reflecting pool at the Alhambra

Blurry picture of Guernica (no pictures were allowed, I was naughty)

Our rented Smart forfour

Countryside near Zahara

Ancient lookout in Zahara

Bullring where modern bullfighting was developed

Gorge in Ronda