christmas eve, twittering

Today is an amazingly beautiful day. The sun has been out all morning. There has been a little bit of rain, but nothing too bad. Snow is forecast at some point... hopefully it'll happen late this afternoon and stick a bit. Snow on Christmas would be absolutely heavenly.

The last two nights I haven't slept the best. My parents got a new bed for the small guest room at their house. It's really comfy, but it is in the wrong direction. I like to lay on my right side facing "out." Tonight I think I'm swapping the sheets and blankets to orient on the other end. Grrrrr.

Right now I'm leaning up against Gus, who is wonderfully warm, catching up on some holiday e-mails and facebook messages before the family events get fully under way. More to come once the gifts have arrived!

ruby, what to do with

Has anyone ever gotten a keg for a party and was then unable to empty it? I recently did, this past friday, in fact. It was full of McMenamin's "Ruby" ale which is just lovely lovely lovely to drink.

Anyone ever have a "kill the keg" party or similar thing? Our party ended with a keg containing roughly 5 gallons of beer left over. I don't know about you, but this is something that I really can't handle in just a few days. Not and remain moderately sober for the rest of the week (goodness I'm getting old). It's a good thing I'm on vacation.

Anyway, I just wanted a post for the week and this seemed just as good a thing as any.

Any creative ideas for dealing with the remaining brew?

emu, try roasting one

Ever had emu? I hadn't, not until tonight. I have to say that it is one of the most delicious protein sources I have ever experienced. If any of you ever get a chance to go through Corvallis, Oregon and are able to have a fairly expensive meal, check out Magenta, an excellent restaurant.

I hadn't really ever considered emu as a food option. On reflection, tasty, I'll do it again. Let's roast one!

RDC for mac on the VPN, woah!

Did that make any sense? Well, I'm really really really proud of myself.

A few days ago I learned that the folks at Windows had made a Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) client for us mac folks. Don't know what RDC is? Basically, it's a neat program that lets you connect to another computer and use it as if you were sitting in front of it, all of your files, programs, etc. are accessible just like normal. So, just like it sounds, RDC. Anyway, connecting to this with a mac has been a bit problematic, there are a few freebie programs that do it, but usually the graphics are fuzzy/pixelated or they are just super slow and laggy. I didn't have time to mess with it when I found out about it, but today I finally had the time, whee!

I installed RDC and was attempting to connect to my computer at work. I had gotten the IP address and knew I needed to log in to a specific network to validate myself. However, I kept getting errors. Then it donned on me, since I'm not on campus there are extra security measures to go through. I was able to locate the Virtual Private Network (VPN) info on the OSU website, install the appropriate version for mac, look through the config instructions and set it up properly. After this, RDC for mac connected just fine.

The only real tricky part with this was trying to get the display settings set up in a friendly way. After trying to match resolution types, I finally noticed at the bottom of the list in RDC (Full Screen) ... DUH. Now RDC displays my work desktop beautifully! This means I can check my work e-mail from home using Outlook 2003 on our Microsoft Exchange server, aka happy meeting requests approval/denial and calendaring central. Previously, I would have to connect to the Outlook web interface which blows CHUNKS. It doesn't even have a message search function. This means scrolling through the over 2000 messages in my inbox, manually. Eww.

It's so sad how happy this makes me. Uber geek? Maybe. This might be the first time I've ever said this, but... Thank You, Microsoft! 2 kudos!

boredom and cinnamon

Remind me to never work on the Thursday of finals week. In a 4 hour shift at the desk I have had 4 questions. I sent my student employee home so she could escape the torture. Unfortunately, I'm not so flexible.

On the optimistic side of things, this extra time has given me sufficient time to carefully consider the new brand of gum I am trying. It is a very nice cinnamon that has a slightly musky scent to it when removed from the wrapper. Long after most of the flavor is done the gum continues to provide a warming sensation in your mouth. I'm not sure if this is legal, but I kind of enjoy it. Now that you're all chomping at the bit to run to your nearest 7-11 and buy yourself a pack, the gum is called 5 and is made by the folks at Wrigley's. How presumptuous can you get? 5. They just got their website up and running, check it out, it promises to delight the senses. When you first see the package you have a moment of "are these cigarettes?" or maybe "über manly sexy condoms?" or possibly even "trashy trendy chocolate bar for yuppies." Nope. Gum.

I have to give it to them. It's sugarfree, the flavor is nice, the warming sensation is pleasant, and you get 15 sticks in a pack. It costs no more than Orbitz or any of the others and has a much higher cool factor.

subscribers, apologies to

Hi all, apologies if you received a slew of old posts as "new" in your aggregator. I did some tweaking around on the backend of the blog and it seems some readers are viewing this as a total "reset" of my blog. It shouldn't hurt anything otherwise. Thanks for reading!

natural products, aren't all they could be?

So lately I have begun a quest for living a more natural and less chemically-enhanced life. In most areas it is going pretty well: reusable stainless steel water containers, biodegradable laundry detergent and fabric softener, etc. However, there are a few areas I'm not quite satisfied with. Personal hygiene. There's a really amazing website that simply lays out the potential health risks for personal products. It's a good way to see the problems with what you currently use and get ideas for products to use that are less likely to give you cancer in the next 10 years. It's called Skin Deep, you'll find it at http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com.

For those of you with sensitive constitutions or an unwillingness to delve into my personal hygiene, disregard the following paragraph and come back later for my next post (right, like you're going to turn back now).

Since all of the hype about aluminum in deoderant, I got a little nervous about using my regular kind of deoderant/anti-perspirant. I'm currently trying out the Tom's of Maine Natural Original Deoderant Stick. It contains hops, yeah, as in hops that make beer. Tom's claims that hops are a natural anti-bacterial solution. It's been about 6 hours since application and I'm starting to smell myself a bit. Some days it seems to last longer, but today I did a lot of walking around with a jacket on which heated things up. Not so fresh and I have 2.5 hours left of work. Eww. I just discovered that Tom's has a long-lasting formula, I might give that one a try. Anyone have any favorites that don't contain aluminum derivatives? I really don't want my armpits to rot away. They're sort of necessary to keep my arms attached to my body. I do enjoy my arms.