This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
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Item 1: On Friday I was at a meeting at work. As is common, everybody had brought their laptops. There were more Mac OS machines around the table than there were Windows machines. I think that was a first for me in a corporate environment. From what I understand though, at least in the world of tech oriented companies, it is becoming much more common. Interesting.
Item 2: I have not yet seen my first iPhone in person. However, at 02:42 UTC today, 4 hours and 42 minutes after the iPhone first went on sale on the East Coast, and only 1 hour and 42 minutes after they went on sale here on the West Coast, I saw a couple with two iPhone bags while we were waiting to be seated at a restaurant for dinner. They were sitting at a counter near the window. Now, OK, this restaurant was less than a quarter mile from an Apple Store, so this shouldn’t have been too surprising. I kept a close eye on the pair that was there with the two iPhone bags, but they never took their iPhones out of the bags, let alone the boxes within. How could they do that? If I’d waited in line for an iPhone today, I’d have that thing home, out of the box and activated as soon as humanly possible, not sit calmly having dinner while my new iPhones were still trapped in their boxes!
Item 3: On Friday Matt sent me an email noting: “wow… if you post something tomorrow (saturday) then it’ll be the first month ever that you made a post every single day. good for you!” Yes. Indeed. Thank you for noticing. I have been trying to stick to one post a day. No more, no less. The last day I missed was May 8th. Of course, now that I have actually mentioned this, I’ll be sure to miss a day any day now. Or maybe I’ll start posting two some days. Either way, I’m likely to start breaking the pattern. But it has been a good run so far. I admit however that some days the posts have been rather weak, but hey, I posted something anyway!
Brandy and Amy are quite a pair. Over the winter Brandy misplaced a foot going down some stairs and was in a walking brace thing and crutches for weeks. In April Amy forgot to put her feet on the ground before the top of her got off the couch, and her hand was in a brace for several weeks.
Earlier this week Amy was coming up the stairs and did something to her toe. When Brandy and Amy went to the Doctor the Doctor suggested that they order some crutches for Amy. “No, that’s OK, we already have two pair at home.”
And thus, now it is Amy’s turn to be on crutches for a couple weeks probably.
Nothing major, but a “just stay off your foot for a little while” sort of thing. Nice.
I just don’t quite understand. The one time I hurt myself badly enough that I probably SHOULD have had my arm in a sling (although I didn’t, and so it still hurts to this day years later) I was at least attempting (badly) to ski down an icy slope that was a bit too steep for my skill level (or lack thereof). These two seem to be able to break bones just walking on a flat surface.
Just as long as I don’t get a knock on the door from social services. I’m not doing it! I’m not beating up my family! I swear! They are just klutzes! :-)
On Monday Amy gave me an iPod Shuffle for a father’s day present. It says “#1 Dad You Are” on the back (intentionally Yoda style).
I’d been wanting one of these for a long time, but had been holding off cause I didn’t really have a good reason for one. And yes, I’d been more wanting one of these than a full iPod, although I guess that would be nice in a different way. But I almost always listen in shuffle mode, and I don’t tend to have much in terms of video content on iTunes, so this is perfect.
I need to have a little AppleScript run as an hourly cron to make sure that Podcasts get included in the shuffling though, because by default they are not, and Apple has no preference to change that.
How I listen almost all of the time these days, both on my computer and on the new shuffle is as follows.
I have a smart playlist containing the 10% of my music library which has been listened to the fewest number of times. I have another smart playlist of podcasts which have not yet been listened to. I have a third smart playlist which combines those two playlists.
When on the computer, I always Party Shuffle out of that third playlist.
And I autofill the new shuffle out of that same playlist.
Only (very minor) annoyances so far… I have to manually press the “Autofill” button to refresh the iPod shuffle instead of it doing it on its own as long as it is docked. Also, when you redock the shuffle after having listened to it all day, the “last played” date for all the songs you listened to is time stamped to when you sync, not to when the songs were played. I guess unlike full size iPods the shuffles do not have internal clocks, which kind of sucks. But I guess it isn’t too bad.
Then finally, less than 30 hours after I got the thing, I had it plugged into my car with a cassette adapter, but still clipped to my belt. Of course when I got out of the car it went flying. And then I did the exact same thing again about 3 hours later. So the poor thing already has a bunch of dents and bruises. You can see several of the blemishes in the picture above. I was very upset about that. I like my toys all pristine and shiny, but I can never manage to keep them that way very long.
But I am still loving it. Using it in the car to and from work every day, and also at work at my desk occasionally. It is looking like I’m averaging listening to about 20-25 tracks a day off the shuffle.
![]() Early on Sunday while I was in the office I heard a cry from the other room. “Sam, I need you!” I rush out. What is going on? Birds in the living room. Finches or sparrows or something.
Two had flown in through the open sliding door to our patio. We’ve been keeping it open when it is nice out and we are home. Unfortunately one of the birds had flown straight through the house and attempted to go out the other side, hitting a window full force and breaking his neck instantly.
But the second bird, seeing what had happened to his friend that he was chasing, had turned aside and was now flying around the living room. We got the dog downstairs. We put the curtains and such in front of all the remaining open windows, and started trying to help the bird find the way out. After sitting in a couple of different places he had gone to hide above a cupboard in the kitchen.
I got up on a chair to try to catch him. I almost had him, I had him mostly in my hand and was about to close around him when he flew again. In a big circle around the kitchen… then he landed on my head.
“OK, that’ll do” I said and slowly got off the chair and walked toward the back door. He just stayed there on my head. I made it to the patio with the bird still sitting on my head. Obviously a very scared little bird.
He stayed on my head about a minute. Long enough for Brandy to get her cellphone and snap a couple of pictures. Then he realized that we were outside again and flew off to a nearby tree.
I’m sorry only one made it. :-( But at least we were able to help this one a bit.
And he sat on my head!
This week I am trying to be good. Brandy is on a wider “healthy food” campaign. But my focus is on trying to do just one thing: See how long I can avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup. I started trying on Monday. Apparently I probably failed, because someone at work brought in donuts, and I had, um, a few, without checking the ingredients, and I gather there is a good chance they had HFCS.
Tuesday onward I have been good though. I’ve been reading ingredients on stuff I buy for snacks, and avoiding the ones with the corn syrup. And I’ve basically been skipping things with no visible lists of ingredients, “just in case”. Although I have somewhat been assuming that if I order the roast beef and such at the cafeteria, it doesn’t have HFCS.
But let me tell you, this SUCKS. All the good stuff has HFCS. For me it basically means no soda, cause I think the Diet stuff is foul. The sweeteners they use there are just as bad or worse. But it isn’t like cutting out soda isn’t good for me anyway.
I’ve been eating stuff I probably wouldn’t otherwise. It is annoying, but so far (since Tuesday at least) I have stuck to it. Not sure how long it will last, but I’ll go as long as I can!
On Sunday when I was getting the mail, I noticed that about 15 feet away this black dog was wandering, and that he had no collar or tags. I called out to him, and he came to me wagging his tail and eager to be petted. He then followed me back to our front door when I told him too. Brandy got a leash on him and we sat on the porch with him for a bit hoping his owners would come by.
After about half an hour when nobody came by, we decided to let the dog lead us. We told him to take us “home” as Brandy and I walked with him. He took a right from our house. Out to the bigger street. Another right. Then after a bit onto a path through a little park, then to another street. Then quite a way down that street. Then a right for a ways. Then before long another right. We were now after taking a big long loop heading back to our own house.
Right when we turned a corner so we could see our house in the distance he started walking faster and faster. And right up to the front door of a house about six or seven houses over from ours to the LEFT.
I knocked on the door and his people answered and gladly took him in when I said “Is he yours?”. He’d gotten out from the back yard and I don’t think they had realized he was missing yet.
Of course, when we’d said “take us home” he COULD have just turned left and been there in seconds. But instead he took us for a nice walk first. But he was home.
Good. Cause I’m pretty sure I’m not up for two dogs. And I’m pretty sure it would have ended up that way if we hadn’t found his home. :-)
I forgot to ask his name though.
I’ve removed both pingbacks and trackbacks from this blog as of a few minutes ago, as they were invariably just being filled by spammers, and I don’t have the time or desire to go through looking for that and removing it. I think the cases of those features ever being used legitimately were few and far between if ever… so nobody should really miss this.
As of the end of school yesterday, Amy is now a 7th Grader.
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