36 rules of life.

1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

2. Don’t worry about what people think, they don’t do it very often.

3. Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian anymore than standing in a garage makes you a car.

4. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

5. If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you’ve never tried before.

6. My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.

7. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.

8. A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.

9. For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.

10. If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.

11. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.

12. A conscience is what hurts when all of your other parts feel so good.

13. Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.

1 4. Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.

15. No man has ever been shot while doing the dishes.

16. A balanced diet is a muffin in each hand.

17. Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.

18. Opportunities always look bigger going than coming.

19. Junk is something you’ve kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.

20. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.

21. Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

22. By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.

23. Thou shalt not weigh more than thy refrigerator.

24. Someone who thinks logically provides nice contrast to the real world.

25. It ain’t the jeans that make your butt look fat.

26. If you had to identify in one word the reason why the human race has not achieved it’s full potential, that word would be ‘meetings’.

27. There is a very fine line between ‘hobby’ and ‘mental illness.’

28. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

29. You should not confuse your career with your life.

30. Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.

31. Never lick a steak knife.

32. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.

33. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.

34. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she’s pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

35. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that deep down inside we ALL believe we are good drivers.

36. Your friends love you anyway.

Nearly 3 months to the day. Interesting.

Today is Saturday. I feel terrible. Yesterday wasn’t much better but I knew it was the beginning of something. It was that feeling of a good day mixed with that of knowing it was going to end and there was nothing that could be done. The bug was already caught. Upon realizing this commences the futile attempt to fight it off and realization of denial. It’s the day of scramble – digging the vitamins out of the back of the closet, taking them with orange juice and hoping that they weren’t expired. Not that it would matter. Last night was typical pre-illness evening. Cold medicine and vapor inhalant prior to going to bed just to ensure some form of quality sleep in further hopes of by body gaining that last bit of strength to just fight the damn thing off. Follow through to the morning. I awaken to dry throat and the odor of stale vapor in my nostrils. I eagerly get out of bed, telling myself that it’s going to be a great day and I feel fabulous. That lasted until I sat upright followed by the headache I still greedily posses. Clearly I don’t want to give the damned thing up since I have taken multiple doses of medication and yet it persists. Regardless and likely out of pure spite accompanied with efforts of keeping my daughter healthy I soon got right in to making breakfast. Pancakes and scrambled eggs are her favorite. I ate a healthy portion, myself. My appetite hasn’t really faded, regardless of the pain of swallowing with my angry throat. Naturally, I can’t help but fear the ever so [over] common threat of Swine Flu; not so much for myself but for my daughter and pregnant Wife. I get sick on a regular basis and think nothing of it but once I get it so does everyone.  Today, I rest… waiting to see whether tomorrow will be better or worse and more notably, Monday. I have too much going on at work to miss a day due to illness.

Truth about Margarine

Pass The Butter, Please

This is interesting . . .
Margarine was originally manufactured to fatten turkeys. When it killed the turkeys, the people who had put all the money into the research wanted a payback so they put their heads together to figure out what to do with this product to get their money back. It was a white substance with no food appeal so they added the yellow coloring and sold it to people to use in place of butter. How do you like it? They have come out with some clever new flavorings..

DO YOU KNOW.. the difference between margarine and butter?
Read on to the end…gets very interesting!

Both have the same amount of calories.
Butter is slightly higher in saturated fats at 8 grams compared to 5 grams.
Eating margarine can increase heart disease in women by 53% over eating the same amount of butter, according to a recent Harvard Medical Study.
Eating butter increases the absorption of many other nutrients in other foods.
Butter has many nutritional benefits where margarine has a few
only because they are added!
Butter tastes much better than margarine and it can enhance the flavors of other foods.
Butter has been around for centuries where margarine has been around for less than 100 years .

And now, for Margarine..

Very high in Trans fatty acids.
Triple risk of coronary heart disease ..
Increases total cholesterol and LDL (this is the bad cholesterol) and lowers HDL cholesterol, (the good cholesterol)
Increases the risk of cancers up to five fold..
Lowers quality of breast milk.
Decreases immune response.
Decreases insulin response.

And here’s the most disturbing fact….. HERE IS THE PART THAT IS VERY INTERESTING!

Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC..

This fact alone was enough to have me avoiding margarine for life and anything else that is hydrogenated (this means hydrogen is added, changing the molecular structure of the substance).

You can try this yourself:

Purchase a tub of margarine and leave it in your garage or shaded area. Within a couple of days you will note a couple of things:

* no flies, not even those pesky fruit flies will go near it (that should tell you something)
* it does not rot or smell differently because it has no nutritional value ; nothing will grow on it. Even those teeny weeny microorganisms will not a find a home to grow. Why? Because it is nearly plastic. Would you melt your Tupperware and spread that on your toast?

Share This With Your Friends…..(If you want to ‘butter them up’)!

Make your own iPhone ring tones

Just download Audacity (free) and open any MP3 in it, shorten it down to <30 seconds, export it as an M4A, CMD-I and change it’s extension to M4R and drag them into iTunes & Sync.

http://osx.iusethis.com/app/audacity

It’s surprisingly easy. You’ll need the free ‘LAME’ plugin that Audacity asks for the first time.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help…&item=lame-mp3

Hope this helps.

__________________
Regards,
Ian http://www.twitter.com/IanMaffett
15″ MBP, 2.66, 4G, 250G;
G5, 1.8, 4G, 1.5T
16 GB G2 iPod Touch;
16 GB iPhone 3G

Academic Discipline

All the way home today the only topic on my radio was this Senior kid who didn’t listen to his teacher and was texting on his cell phone in class. Damn near his last class. Now, since this was obviously such an involved story, I will be honest and say that I did not get the entire story upfront but rather pieced it all together as I listened to the feedback. As I understand it, since the kid got caught using his thumbs, he was not allowed to attend the senior day at a rather large local park (Dorney Park) where the big senior trip was to be held. Supposedly there were food stuffs and activities there related to the school activity – likely isolated in a tent as the park was still open to the public. (I have attended related trips to this park) Please, PLEASE note that primary key word (Public) as we’ll reference it again shortly.
Now, as I understand it, this kid is not allowed to attend this trip for the seniors – he simply didn’t follow the rules. Whateves… so, I guess the kid discussed this with his (I must add, rather modern) parents and came to the conclusion of ‘Who is the school to tell me what I can / can’t do at a PUBLIC place?’ and decided to go to the park at the exact same time the rest of the class showed up. He hangs with friends, rides the rides, does the doo, just does not attend the class specifics in the class specific tent.
Now, I am a first class Idiot, I’ll readily admit, but I just can’t see anything wrong with that. Moreover, I have to agree that he is well within his right to do this. But these narrow minded simpletons on the radio are going crazy over the audacity of this kid. I mean, just who does he think that he is? An 18 year old kid (most likely, or damn close) attending a PUBLIC place at the same time as his uptight teachers / administration units right after he didn’t do what they wanted him to do. Wow – the gall.
Now, I do admit – rules apply to all and exist for good reason, usually, but to what extent and to what end do you attempt to enforce them? People were throwing around ideas as to how to get back at this kid such as to drop all of his letter grades by one. Are you kidding me?!? If not completely, that would be borderline illegal – not just a slap in the face. Which, I must add, is just what he did. I do not know who he was but applaud him, nonetheless. I mean, so many things go down today that are so much worse. He just wanted to Tweet his final grade, Teach… WTF?

OS X Screen Sharing link on Desktop or Dock

It is as easy to create a link directly to your favorite remote Mac running OS X as it is to bookmark a website. Now, I say remote but of course I am referring to a machine on your local network. Additionally, screen sharing must be enabled on your target Mac.

System Preferences – Sharing and Screen Sharing, etc. will take care of that for you. In here you will also see the name and/or IP you can use to connect to your Mac.

Open Safari and instead of entering a web URL such as http://www.google.com you would enter vnc://10.1.0.100 or whatever your IP address is. Alternatively, you can use the machine’s Bonjour name such as vnc://G5.local but you must use the ‘.local’ after the name. Once you do this, do not hit Enter as you would if you were going to visit a web link but instead simply drag the link image immediately to the left of the V of vnc to your desktop or your dock. Once it copies, it is a shortcut directly to your screen sharing session – once your password is saved, if you choose to do so, all that needs to be done is to open this link.

I use this regularly to control my G5 which is connected to my HDTV and sound system.

Using

It’s time that I start using my blog once and for all – I am going to share anything I feel is useful and you can choose whether or not it is so. If you find it useful, feel free to share it. I would have to say that anything I post here is open source as far as I am concerned.
Enjoy.

MBP Stickers

I am looking for a few good stickers for my MacBook Pro. I have a couple, as you can see, but I would like to find a few more that fit – 2 or 3 perhaps. I have looked at StickerGiant.com which is a great site but I can’t find any social network stickers at all. I have looked for Seesmic, Twitter, Viddler, Digg and even Piratebay but can’t find them anywhere. Now, Pirate Bay, I can rightly understand – nonetheless, I still want one. SO, if anyone knows where I might be able to find stickers in this genre, please let me know.

…secrets

I haven’t posted in a while – nothing going on lately that Twitter can’t handle. However, as I was making breakfast this morning, I thought of something simple yet effective that people might like to know about. Some of my cooking secrets. Ok, so these may not be secrets to you all but I am sure at least one of you didn’t know at least one of them – so that alone makes it worth the share.
The secret to:
The best scrambled eggs: add a splash of milk
The best pancakes I have made were from the cheapest pancake mix I have found. Now, I don’t have a problem with that but I am still surprised. Genero mix where all you have to add is water but I add a little bit of olive oil which causes them to cook a little slower and makes them lighter and fluffier. This has no effect on the taste as far as I can tell. It has, however, caused me to have to make them more often.
The best vanilla milkshake: add 2 drops of vanilla extract
The best chocolate shake: add however much choco syrup you want, of course…

And here’s my favorite – hard boiled eggs… it is tough for most people to do this just right. This might help.
Put cold water in pot – add a little salt and olive oil (veg oil is fine) – this makes them peel very easily. Right away, put your eggs in the cold water – this stops them from cracking. Turn on the heat and set your timer for 17 minutes. I don’t care if you have 3 eggs or 23 – it’s all the same. When the timer goes off, remove from heat and take to sink but don’t empty the water. Instead, run cold water right into the hot to displace the heat more gradually for about 30 seconds – then drain. Of course your eggs will still be hot but the rest of the routine is as you have always done it – let them cool and peel. Since you added the oil, the shell won’t stick to the egg when it contracts from cooling. I can generally crack and roll the egg and remove the shell in one or two pieces. .

Breaking Ice

Well – that’s a lot of what I have been doing lately. Both literally and figuratively. I recently began a new job where I am out traveling quite a bit. Locally, which I am happy about. I visit several clients in a day supporting various systems and networks. It’s great overall – I am quite happy with it I think. The indecisiveness comes from the fact that it’s only been 2 weeks. Even so, I have done so much it feels more like 6.
Anyway – I wanted to get something out here since it’s been an extended while. Once I get more comfortable with my day to day I can get back into it (hopefully, even more so).