Vox mcwetboyi

QotD: All My Computers

nobody@vox.com(mcwetboy) — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 10:22:03 -0400

How many computers do you have in your house?
Submitted by Foomper.

It depends on how you count them. At the moment we have two computers in use: a 20-inch Intel Core Duo iMac and a 17-inch G4 iMac. We also have older laptops kicking around in storage: my G3 iBook with the broken screen was occasionally plugged into televisions as a media player but has since been retired; Jennifer's old Toshiba laptop, still running Windows 98, gets hauled out once in a while to test my web sites in Internet Explorer; and I've got a prehistoric (Pentium 150) Thinkpad kicking around the basement somewhere that hasn't been booted up in years (its screen went blooey about a year and a half in).

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QotD: Bring Back the Snack

nobody@vox.com(mcwetboy) — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 19:45:44 -0400

Are there any snacks, food or candy that are no longer made that you desperately miss?

Now that you mention it, yes: Nabisco Team cereal. As a kid I inhaled the stuff, liked it better than any other brand. When Nabisco sold its cereal brands to Post, apparently, this was the one they decided not to keep. Bastards.

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QotD: Baby Love

nobody@vox.com(mcwetboy) — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:01:36 -0400

How cute were you as a baby/child? Let's see those baby pics!

Okay.

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QotD: Weekend Goal Follow-Up

nobody@vox.com(mcwetboy) — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 23:01:24 -0400

So, how did [you] do with that weekend goal? No goal? What did you do this weekend?

Done!

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QotD: Weekend Goal

nobody@vox.com(mcwetboy) — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 14:35:38 -0400

What's one thing that you'd like to get done this weekend? Is there anything holding you back?

We have to clean all our reptile cages today, owing to a snake-mite infestation we discovered earlier this week. We just finished dosing all the cages with nice organophosphate insecticides, now we bleach all glass, plastic and ceramic effects, bake all wood, dispose of all paper, cardboard and wood chips, and rinse. All 34 cages.

Fortunately, we have the reptile keeper's secret weapon: child labour. Kids -- in this case, the neighbour's son and his friend -- love helping reptile keepers take care of their animals, so long as they get to play with them; and, thanks to them, as I write this we're at the two-thirds point. Without them, we'd be fighting fatigue and my own physical limitations -- our basement flooded earlier this week, and we're already pretty tired after cleaning up after that.

But right now, we only have about 10 cages left to do. Unfortunately, they're the big ones.

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QotD: You've got to blog!

nobody@vox.com(mcwetboy) — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 20:42:06 -0400

If you could get someone in your life to start a blog, who would it be and why?

My ex-girlfriend, if you can believe it. She's a French news junkie and a professional translator, so I think she'd be able to add something unique to the Series of Tubes™ -- besides, maybe then she'd stop forwarding me links via e-mail . . .

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QotD: It's hot in here...

nobody@vox.com(mcwetboy) — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 21:09:18 -0400

What's the most extreme weather you've been in? A memorable storm? Heat wave? Or something else?

It's not extreme by my standards, but it's probably extreme for the rest of you:

January 1996, Winnipeg: a month or more where the daytime highs were always below -20°C (-4°F) and the overnight lows were always below -30°C (-22°F). One morning it was below -40°C (-40°F), and that morning I not only had to start the car, I had a job interview. (Layers under the suit.)

One day, when the cold snap finally broke, it got up to -19°C (-2°F): I felt warm -- I had my jacket open and everything!

None of these temperatures include wind chill. Wind chill cannot be expressed by temperatures -- "feels like minus 70" -- does anyone know what minus 70 feels like? Screw the new system; I miss the Siple-Passel equation.

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