jonathanhickman.com

Thank you spam filter

I couldn’t figure out why my local email lists - all three of them - suddenly went quiet in the middle of a heated discussion.

It turns out, my spam filter decided that they’re all spam. Nice.

An oddity about my taste in music

I have discovered that the albums that I grow to love - the ones I listen to the most, the longest, and come back to over and over again - are the ones I initially didn’t like. Over and over again, I have noticed that my favorite albums are the ones I first listened to and thought “ugh, that’s disappointing.”

I think it must be a complexity thing. I downloaded this album (album cover NSFW) a month or so ago. For the first week, I could barely get into it. Now, though, I think it’s one of the best albums I’ve discovered in years. This album, on the other hand, I discovered last year and loved it immediately. Now I can hardly stand it. One major difference in the two albums is that the first one is far more complex. I guess it has more to offer over time, which means it takes longer to comprehend while having more staying power.

The trouble is that it’s hard to find new music that you’ll really love when you know you might not like it until you can really get into it. Sometimes I download an album and just can’t ever get into it, and sometimes I have more luck.

It’s also extra hard to introduce good bands to friends, because I know they won’t get it on the first try. And I bet that’s starting to drive Katie insane!

I do have standards, after all

I refuse to read any children’s book that uses the word “oughter” to rhyme with “water.”

First heat of the year

Here at the office, I just turned the heat on for the first time this season. I hated to do it, because usually it’s plenty warm up here by midday, but I did it anyway because it was 60 degrees in here and it’s supposed to stay pretty cold today.

I was feeling really drowsy until the heater started burning off summer’s accumulation of dust. I can tell you that the smoke detector definitely works!

Today’s deep question:

Why does my spellchecker not know “nephrologist,” when it does know “phrenologist?”

Rush Limbaugh is possibly the most negative force in the country

I can’t stand Rush Limbaugh.

It’s not because we disagree on who to vote for on November 4th. And It’s not that we disagree on almost everything else, either.

Rush is simply one of the most negative, divisive people in the country, if not the world. He hardly has anything valuable and nice to say. I can’t fathom why anyone would listen to him.

He must have ignored his mother when she said “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” How about that for family values?

Yesterday, I wandered into a co-worker’s office while he was listening to Rush. Rush was going off on democrats, as usual. I can’t remember the exact wording, but the gist of his talk was “Libruls are evil! They’re voting early to discourage you! It’s a conspiracy! You can’t get discouraged!! They are trying to get everyone out now to vote so you will be discouraged and give in!”

Something like that.

According to Rush, early voting is now a liberal conspiracy. Never mind that it’s not. Never mind that lots of people vote early. Never mind that people are voting early to avoid the crowds on election day. Never mind that people vote early because they want to be done with this election. Never mind that even my co-worker who was listening to Rush will almost undoubtedly be voting early himself.

But a lot of the early voters are voting Democrat. They are voting early because they’re excited about voting. They’re excited about their candidate. They’re not voting early because they’re evil or because they’re part of a conspiracy.

The crowds at early voting locations are a good thing, although they might not help Rush this year. So Mr. Negative has to see it as bad.

What on earth is his positive contribution to society?

Dear Dell: I’m really irritated with you right now

Dear Dell:

I just bought a brand new Latitude D830. I’m really happy with my purchase, and I’m really excited about the potential increased productivity with my new purchase. I am especially happy with its speed, RAM, and security features.

But I can’t express how annoyed I am with your choice to cripple the sound card.

My old computer, a Dell E1405, met an untimely death just a month after its warranty expired. And I’m not bitter. What gets me is that it had a fully working sound card, one that was nearly identical to the card in this machine.

So why did you have to cripple this sound card? Why won’t you allow me to use the stereo mix features? Without it, you have rendered my nice, newish Roku almost completely useless. It is now almost a paper weight.

There is some question as to whether you crippled the card via hardware or software, but I have now wasted too much of my time trying to get this card to work as I expected it to when I bought it. And I am further dismayed to read in your forums that I am expected to go out and throw more good money after bad and buy a new sound card just to get basic functionality right after buying the computer. You could have at least warned me of this on the product page. Shame on you, Dell.

I for one am disgusted.

Lovin’ this weather

It’s 61 degrees in here, and I like it!

On babies entertaining themselves

Last night Katie commented to me that at this age (14 months), babies require your absolute focus every second their awake. The Bug had been in a good mood most of the day yesterday, which was extra nice considering her cold. But by the time I got her home (6ish), she only wanted her mother to hold her. And when she wasn’t being held, she screamed. Neither one of us could figure out what was wrong.

Silly us. It turned out we just weren’t noticing the Bug’s signals that she was ready for supper and bed. I guess it just seemed too early in the evening, although seven o’clock isn’t really too early for such a youngin.

Sure enough, C went down without a fuss. She was ready.

And today, the baby who needed so much attention last night has been completely entertaining herself for at least thirty minutes. What’s keeping her so busy? A large cup and two drum sticks.

What else does a child need?

Another thing I hate about this cold

I’m about to go to bed, and I can just tell that it’s going to be a long night.

Ugh, my throat.

Cuteness abounds

C went down for her nap an hour and a half ago. I have the monitor on my desk, and she is now chatting and singing to herself, much like she occasionally does in the middle of the night. I assume that means she’ll be ready to get up soon, but I’m not going in there as long as she sounds happy.

She definitely sounds cute.