Thoughts

Today is Spring Day in Romania

It’s the tradition in Romania to offer the woman in your life (wife, mother) a “martisor” today. It can be a snowdrop or an ornament designed for just such an occasion and packaged in a greeting card. Women can then pin them on their clothes, usually on the lapels. It’s quite the big deal there.

I used to drive myself cuckoo looking for just the right “martisor”. As happens often with these sorts of holidays, the list of recipients quickly expands from intimate family to close family, to relatives, then neighbors and teachers, etc… You end up carrying a stack of the darned things and handing them out like flyers. Thank goodness I don’t have to do that anymore…

Here’s to virtual “martisori”! 🙂

Snowdrop

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Thoughts

San Francisco's new energy source: Rover's poop

Rover at the toilet

San Francisco is planning to use dog and cat poop to create renewable energy… Renewable is right… these pooches will do it every day! Check out the photo of Rover, straining to do his bit for his beloved city! I laughed till I cried… Go here to read the article. (Photo courtesy of Discovery News.)

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Thoughts

Have you heard of a Klixx?

Me neither, until I picked one up at this year’s HIMSS Conference in San Diego. One of the vendors was giving them away, I believe they were CPSI. Anyway, the little things are addictive. They make little clicking noises as you twist and bend them into various shapes. So I thought it’d be fun to make different shapes and post photos of them on my blog.

I didn’t save a high-res version of this first photo, and the JPEG compression artifacts really show, I’m sorry…

Klixx shape

These next few ones are a little better in terms of photo quality. As for the artistic statement made through the shapes or the action of posting said shapes online, I’ll let you make the call on that… 🙂

Klixx shape

Klixx shape

Klixx shape

Klixx shape

Exciting, isn’t it? At least it gives me something to do when I’m stressed…

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Reviews

Why my Dell Inspiron can't go to sleep

I’d been having problems getting my Dell Inspiron 8500 to go into suspend and hibernation modes lately, and attributed it to yet more glitches in Microsoft software. I had been installing and uninstalling various software, and I figured the OS had gotten out of whack, although things were functioning just fine otherwise.

It wasn’t until I decided to unplug my Apple MightyMouse from the USB port that I discovered the problem was with Apple hardware, not Microsoft software… I had to smile… Here I am, an avid Apple fan, and the hardware’s failing me. Granted, I am using it with PC hardware… But it is funny nonetheless, and I wanted to share this in case any of you out there are having the same problem. What I do now is very simple: every time I need to put the laptop into hibernation, I unplug the mouse, and things work just fine.

Updated 5/9/2006: I’ve found out since that just about any external mouse plugged into this thing will cause it to stay awake. Unless the mouse is unplugged, it’ll stay on through the night. Not very good design…

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Thoughts

Saw a bumper sticker this morning

Honk if you don't existI couldn’t help chuckling a bit when I saw it. The fellow driving the car had a goatee and was driving on, oblivious to the fact that someone was looking at his car and at him, chuckling… I couldn’t help wondering if I should honk, but I just chuckled some more…

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