Clearing the brain so it keeps working
Hobbies and Games
Not about books
Apr 6th
My youngest and I spent part of the weekend cataloging the movies in the house. What do we have on DVD, VHS and Blu-Ray? Not too many on blu-ray yet, but I’m sure in the coming months there will be more movies I want to own.
I was thinking of this, because I never can remember if I own a specific movie or not. I have a number of VHS that I did by DVD replacements for. I’m wondering if there will be any that I ‘NEED’ the Blu-Ray replacement for the DVD. I can’t see that yet, but I do like the quality of the Blu-Ray. I guess I enough of an audio-video geek that I can tell the difference, even in cartoons.
Anyway after counting the movies, I have 400+ movies in my collection. This collection started when the kids were small, so in some cases the movies are 25+ years old. I’m surprised those old VHS tapes still play. And with all of those movies, I have seen all of them at least 1 time. Most of them at least twice. Over 3/4 of those movies I’ve seen 3 times. And there are others that I lost count of the number of times I’ve seen them. Now of those movies, the rest of the family also so a lot of them numerous times.
Interesting fact, if the movie was ‘full’ price, I know I’ve seen it more than 3 times. That only makes sense with the cost of a movie and the cost of a rental. If I know I’m only going to watch a movie once or twice, I like to rent them. If they were bargain basement movies ($5.00 dollars or less), I may only watch them once, but usually at least twice, it depends on my mood.
So at an average of 2 hours per movie (give or take), it would take at least 80 days (watching 8 hours of movies per day) to make it through my collection. So back to books… Around the movies in 80 days??? Should I make a wager to see if I can watch all of them? Nah, there would be no time for books!
I didn’t mean to use that much
Mar 31st
I made chicken for dinner and thought that it would taste good with some salsa on it. It did, but I put on a bit much. Now I’m paying for it. Up late at night waiting for antacids to kick in. You can’t put it back in the jar after it hits partially cooked chicken. And it was the good stuff too, lots of heat.
Ahh, the joys of aging. I still like all the spicy stuff, but it doesn’t like me as much as it used to. The cast iron stomach seems to have some rust.
On another note, I miss my laptop. Even though I got the tower up and running again, it was so easy to have the laptop with me wherever I wanted to be. I have an old machine going, but it is very, very, very slow. I think it is slower than my internet connection. I do have it loaded with a full version of Unbuntu Linux at this time, maybe that is pushing it a bit. I wonder if it would work with the netbook version of that OS. I may have to try it and find out. I need to get a list of USB or other wireless cards that work with Unbuntu or Puppy Linux. I have two old laptops that I have installed Linux on and only 1 wireless card that works. The newer of the two laptops has an internal wireless, but Linux doesn’t like that one either. I even tried a backdoor way that was supposed to allow the use of the windows drivers. No go. I guess for now I share. I really can’t use two laptops at once can I?
A promise to me.
Mar 30th
As March comes to a close, I need to reflect or dream about the first part of April and the coming Major League Baseball season. While I have followed the spring exploits of my favorite team, I can’t really get excited about spring training. Until this last week of spring training, we hardly ever see a complete starting lineup. There are a variety of minor league prospects, players past their prime and those with little or nothing to offer all trying to get the the 25 player roster. Those that have it made are just getting loose for the coming season. Some good ball is played, but as it is often said, it doesn’t count.
Next week the real games start. I will be following every score. Grumbling at losses or poor play. Feeling aggravated when a star player is hurt or not doing well. Cheering for every win.
So if you follow baseball, this is the time of year you’ve been waiting for. If you don’t, your time will come. 
My promise to myself. I’m going to go to at least 1 major league game this season. I don’t know when or even where, but I will do it.
And to my fellow old-time tangenteers, Good luck to your teams, until they play my favorite team.
Go Tigers.
Finally cleaned up another problem.
Mar 24th
I’ve been complaining that my laptop is broken for some time now, but I never used that opportunity to fix my Power Box. I’ve had stuff to do on it for a couple of years now, but it just wouldn’t boot up properly after I installed a new hard drive. I thought I knew what the problem was, but I never undertook the job of actually looking at it. So today I did.
Yes, the problem was exactly what I thought it was. It was trying to boot from the old disk drive. Unfortunately, this drive no longer had any operating system on it. It was still formated as a bootable drive, but there was nothing to boot to. Quick spin through the bios, and that drive is no longer on the boot list. YEAH.
Now I just have to find all of the stuff I needed to do and finish it up. Yes, there may be a Godspell video in there somewhere. I guess I’ll have to stop blogging after my software updates from more than 1 year of inactivity.
More work for me. I’m glad I took a break from theater for a while…
This really won’t work…
Mar 24th
For a while, my laptop’s screen started working again. I took it in to have it checked out, and they cleaned some contacts in hope that it would solve the problem. It did for a while. Buy now, it stopped working again. I guess I need to fork over some cash now to get a new backlight.
Right now I have it hooked up to my TV, but I have to sit too close so I can see the writing. Just not a comfortable way to do this unless I move the couch to within 2 feet of the TV, or set the screen resolution to a bigger size, so I can see the print from across the room. Oh well, I hope to back up the drive tonight and take the machine in tomorrow.
I also finally hooked up a wireless keyboard to the machine. This actually works very well. I’ve had the keyboard/mouse for a long time, I just never bothered to hook it up. I was hoping to be able to sit across the room looking at the TV screen.
I just set the screen to a different resolution, and can almost make out the print from across the room. I could definitely play computer games this way. I just don’t play that many computer games.
Maybe I could use this to watch baseball soon. If my connection speed is still good, I may have to sign up for the MLB package.
