Network Weasels

Last week I received this email:

Periodic audits by IT indicate that you have Mozilla Firefox software installed on your computer. Unfortunately this is not Emerson approved software and must be removed. John Smith* (our in house colateral duty IT guy) will schedule a time for removal of this software.

*his actual name

The best I can figure out the reason they wanted Firefox off is they couldn’t figure a way to prevent folks from viewing embedded video on web sites with it like they can with IE. So now I was stuck looking at annoying ads when going to websites andhaving to dimiss a several warning dialog boxes that a website was trying to connect to the intranet that was never a problem with Firefox.

I thought maybe just leaving a thumbdrive with Firefox Portable installed on it was pushing the limits, so I tried Chrome Portable. Chrome may be the fastest browser, but it was pig slow off a thumbdrive, so I gave up after 3 days. Now I just live with Internet Explorer…

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 664

Yo Saf Bridge Returns To Space

After a stint as a con woman that was a pain in the side of the crew of the Firefly a couple of times in the early 26th century and recently seen stuck on Madison Ave, Earth in the middle 20th century on TDTVS2, Christina Hendricks returns to the ‘Verse sometime in the far future where space travel costs an arm and a leg, literally, as an android in a music video from Broken Bells.

The Emperor got a well deserved bath after work today.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 661

Frustration

While returning from Hendersonville on Saturday afternoon I witnessed the true definition of frustration.

We were zipping along south on I-26 somewhere south of Spartanburg with Donna at the wheel and me watching the world go by at 70 MPH. Up ahead I could see three turkey buzzards right on the edge of the shoulder moving back and forth towards the road. One would take a couple steps towards the right lane and then quickly hop back. Then another would do the same thing. When we got right next to them I could see what was going on. There was a small piece of roadkill about 2 feet into the right lane and after a car passed, one bird would take a few steps towards what it considers food, he would get about 5 feet from a tasty morsel, then another car would approach making it hop back to safety. Trouble was, traffic was fairly light and there were single cars in the right lane spaced evenly about 200′-300′ apart, so there was never enough time to get a nibble safely.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 659

Happy Memorial Day

As we passed through Saluda on our way to Hendersonville on Friday there were several people plaing a passel of tiny American flags in front of a building. Donna said that we should stop on the way home on Saturday and get a picture. Fortunately for us the rain had slowed when we got to Saluda so that we could hop out of the car and get a few photos. On the county library front lawn there were 5485 flags, each one honoring a service member who had lost their lives in the middle east since 2002. Pretty sobering sight (and site.) What is more depressing is that on the left hand lawn there is an area that was empty of flags that someday might get filled in.

Click on the photo above and go to a small gallery of the other photos I took.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 655

Bad News Bear

We visited my sister and her husband in Hendersonville, NC yesterday afternoon and today. This morning Donna and I did a little geocaching around the Blue Ridge Community College campus. It was nice modern campus that obviously placed more emphasis on academics than on athletics comparing the buildings that house classrooms and the baseball field.

There was a cache called Bad News Bears here.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 647

108 Thousand Button Pushes

One hundred and eight was sort of an adjunct to TDTVS’s famous numbers (4 8 15 16 23 42) because that is what they added up to and that is how many minutes you had between entering them into a computer terminal before bad things happened. 108,000 is probably how many times the number and execute buttons were pushed by Desmond during his little over three years down in the Swan Station hatch when he was doing the entering.

I wonder what I should do with my eight LOST links in the left sidebar now that the show is over, delete them? Yeah, probably. So what would be a proper mourning period before moving them? Simple, 108 days. Guess I’ll add a countdown for it…

One hundred and eight thousand is the number of miles the Emperor had traveled when we got almost to work this morning.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 643

Hamsters Got Soul

The KIA Soul is one of those “cute” little cars targeted towards the younger set and their ads for have it have been interesting. I personally think the car is ugly and I’m not a big fan of Hip-Hop music, but I’m smiling now having just watched this latest one.

It hits the all the right notes (pun sort of intended.)

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 638