Belief-O-Matic

Very interesting. Answer 20 questions and it’ll define
your religion (if any).
I was skeptical at first, but it seemed to come up
with the right answer for both of us and gave us an opportunity to discuss our
results. They linked information about the religions it identified as the ones
we may belong to or might consider.
I certainly learned a bit more about
some that I didn’t know much about
Give the Beliefnet
Belief-O-Matic a try.

Happy thanksgiving

We
have had some fantastic experiences up here in Maine. Last weekend we drove up
to Quebec to an area that looked so desolate on the map…. and it was more
populated than where we live! I was dazed at how many houses and industry there
were. We didn’t find the northern lights, but we got to hear Canadian French
again in a little corner of the earth that hardly anyone ever sees. We ate in
this St. Hubert chicken restaurant which Carolyn loves and so must visit each
time we stumble into Canada They went more upscale since we last were there.



No
northern lights because of the clouds, but the stars were so visible on the
border of Canada/Maine … UNBELIEVABLE!! Frank was even able to photograph
them with his digital camera on the roof of the van. Now THAT is bright! We saw
an adult moose by the side of the road as we drove back in the darkness. We
stopped again to look at the stars and it was so creepy to be in the total
darkness and complete quiet. I just knew aliens were going to beam us up and
subject us to anal probes at any second (or was it a Mainer walking from his
cabin with a
shotgun?).

Anyway,
on this thanksgiving, we are thankful to call you all our friends. We hope you
all have a wondeful day with your family, and we hope to hear you are all happy
and
well.

Love;
C
& F

8 words with 2 meanings

1. THINGY (thing-ee)
n.

Female……Any
part under a car’s
hood.
Male……….The
strap fastener on a woman’s
bra.
- click read
more -

92″ Panorama LCD screen for PC

Not hot news as these
appear to have been announced in February … but still!

We all would like to use
a bigger monitor, right? 19″ – 23″ scratch that. How about a whopping
92″(6400×1200) LCD! Check out the Grand
Canyon which also comes in 76″ (5120×1024) & 81″ (6400×1200). For
budgets smaller than $8500-$17500 there are also 45″, 51″ & 57″ 3 panel
Cinerama
models ($1800-$3000-$4000)

… time to order a
bigger desk before Santa comes?

Recent news

Apple launched the 20 inch iMac. The G5 1.8 single
processor has been discontinued for a dual 1.8 processor model. OS
X 10.3.1 is
out which solves the initial problems with Panther as well as two small security updates.

PCs can now record DVDs at 8x with Plextor
and Pioneer
hardware. I don’t think there’s 8x media though.
The next Windows OS
(longhorn) launch delayed till Q4 2005 or later. OS X 10.5 should be on the
shelves by then

No snow = 6th time on record

From the weather forecast: this year is the 6th time on
record that there has been no snow yet. There is still hope as long as we’re not
going for #1 this winter (hum hum), but eh, why o why is it that when we go
somewhere there are these weather extremes or abnormalities in some form or
another? Like the heat-wave that broke all records in Europe past summer -
without air-conditioning! And before that the …

[
Can't be coincidence! But then other people have this too so it must be
conspiracy! ]

… let it snow … let it snow … let it snow
…

Quiet week

Yes, it has been a quiet week at the icerabbit residence.

Nothing bad, just nothing major to report. We were a bit less
online, viewed a few foreign films (for the US), did some shopping &
unshopping (dead HDD), picked up a few books to read (well, mine are reference
guides), started planning a few things, … and I’m still going through a bit of
“mission organisation” (data onto DVD – WINK) and solving a few hardware &
software puzzles. You have to love a challenge!

We’re waiting for
snow – big time! Both for outdoor activities & photography. I can’t believe
it, but it’s the end of November and not a single snowflake yet. Some overnight
frost and once again another warm spell with rain is approaching. No snow = No
snowmobiling in foresight :/ In fact we found no snow in the state of Maine,
only North of Quebec City (CAN) where we headed this weekend to view the
Northern Lights. Did we see them? No, as luck would have it clouds rolled in
during the later part of the evening, covering the night sky at 10-11PM. Same
luck earlier in the week when I tried to view the Leonid meteor shower between
1-4 AM. A cloud left and right around midnight. An hour later I couldn’t find a
break in clouds.

We had a nice long drive though, refreshed memories
of being in NW Maine 3 yrs ago, discovered a bit more of Canada and saw more
stars than we ever did. Hours away from civilisation (in NW Maine) we saw
countless stars spanning the sky. It was pitch black outside but the sky was lit
with stars. I can’t remember driving in the car and seeing stars just
everywhere, left & right as low as the horizon. It was breathtaking.

Broadband overpriced in the US

John C. Dvorak writes in the Dec 9 issue of PC Magazine
(US) that in Japan customers have access to 26 Mbps ADSL for $24 US dollars a
month! This is a whopping 20 times faster of plain vanilla broadband for half
the cost! Oh my … oh my … time to learn Japanese? WINK

The wait is over (end of data recovery)

We didn’t get much data back. The data we really would
have loved to see recovered wasn’t found :/
The drive with the vast amount
of files on it died during the latter stages of the recovery scans (murphy #?!).
It only makes scratchy metal whining spinning sound now and nothing recognizes
it as a valid drive. Recovery on the second drive was limited even though the
majority of files had been copied there prior to the big crash.
So, the
photo library gap (fall – winter 2003) remains & Carolyn’s extensive
documents folder is out the window.

We remember

” A
soldier of the great war – Known Unto God “
In Ieper, Belgium there are 120
cemeteries for a portion of the 500.000 men who lost their lives fighting in the
trenches in WWI. This grave marker in Flanders Fields stands with countless more
for an unknown soldier who died in “the war to end all wars”. Thousands more
died without grave or stone. This day honors their and all veterans’ sacrifice
in the service of humanity.

Do not disturb while roaming

So you are on a national cellphone/mobile plan from ATT
and wonder “Why
doesn’t it ring when someone tries to call me? for weeks!” I blamed it on
this remote area with some competition & roaming quirks (like I have to dial
every number twice). Angry that I missed an important call, I decided to call it
in and it turns out my account somehow had
“do not disturb
while roaming” active. Which is odd, as I received calls in the past
while roaming, don’t know that I requested that feature (nor even had it) and -
LOL – if it was on my phone I wouldn’t know where to find it. Computer snafu?
Most likely. According to the service representative they have lots of calls
recently where that turns out to be the issue. Funny thing is they don’t know
what caused it.
If you are an ATT wireless customer and missed some calls
you may want to give them a call.

Cow politics

DEMOCRAT
————
You
have two cows.
Your neighbor has
none.
You feel guilty for being
successful.
Barbara Streisand sings
for you.

(click read more
to continue)

Bad kitty! Panther causes dataloss

Very bad news on the Panther upgrade front. 2 issues are
now official.

People that upgraded to Panther last week with their
FireWire 800 external hard drive attached to their system, lost the data on
those extrnal drives!!! (updated
story) Drive manufacturers like Lacie have posted
updates & Apple is looking at fixing the issue, but that’s a little too late
for those who lost ALL their data, backups, etc. Many people backup all their
data & documents as well as their entire Operating System with programs etc
up to external hard drives for speed & convenience (without burning DVDs).
When you think you have a backup – think again! Given our own drive issues I can
imagine a little bit what some users, artists, professionals & small
companies are going through.

A new Panther feature called
“firevault” is also causing serious problems (story).
It allows 128 encryption of your data (nice & safe) but when you reboot and
click ok to reclaim gained disk space (who doesn’t like some MB / GB of space
back?) it basically throws your personal settings etc in the trash & doesn’t
allow you to recreate them nor save them. Thus rendering your system unusable.
Nice …

Wouldn’t you pull your hair out if you had an external
firewire 800 drive, backed everything up prior to the upgrade to that drive,
upgrade to panther, use firevault with reclaim disk space. Then find yourself
with an unusable system & no backup to restore?

I can’t believe
this even happens. Either of these things should have been caught in beta phase.
Nobody tried firevault in beta? A big manufacturer like Lacie didn’t get a copy
of Panther for testing?

This time I’m really glad I didn’t jump on
the upgrade wagon on day one, like I have done so many times in the past. That
firevault problem on top of our data loss would have caused me to short circuit
… or something like that.

(Our data recovery on the two hard
drives btw has not had the hoped results so far, and my feeling is it’ll stop at
what we recovered ourself unfortunately)

Election day

Glad today is election day so we’ll be done with the
dozens of pro- / contra- ads on TV. We had them coming out of our ears with both
the California governor race and local state topics (casino, gambling, tax
reform, education, …) Big relief when the California Recall was over, only to
see an increase in local political ads. It would turn you mad. Really! Every
commercial break – and there’s too many of those – they’re back. One more day
… one more day .. right, they’re already starting for the Presidential
election next year. Oh well.