Lumpy's Corner

This is just funny. Seems two thieves decided to take a nap on the good they stole. The police were even nice enough to take a photo before they woke them.

I would like to think that the embarrassment alone would deter them in the future.

Good Day Readers,
I seem to have many many links that i wish to share and they are stacking up quickly. I thought I would reduce the list by simply doing a few quick and dirty posts.

• Topping the list is an important reminder from the DogReader over at Lockergnome. It seems that about half the surfers out there are at risk because of security flaws in thier browsers
• Alex over at the same super blog notes that the ValueSoft package of Ubuntu Linux is, more or less, a simply paying for something that is free
• This falls under "you gotta be kidding me" category. Some drunk decided to join a team of firemen!
• Over at Furl Dog I discovered that these missile photos may have well been poorly doctored. This however, was noticed only after> many major newspapers published the photos.
• Over at AdRant, they point out why translation is still best left to humans and not software.

Although I do not totally agree with the tone of this article over at Adfreak, I have to agree with the conclusion. I think the NPR show Car Talk is actually a great radio show. I listen from time to time and, some where amidst the rubble of my dwelling, I have a few episodes on cassette. I confess I find humor in the "Donnas" who all drive red sports cars and many of thier other running gags.

I am not sure that the brothers will fare that well in a cartoon. If you take a few moments to read over the information on this duo at Wikipedia, you find that they go to great lengths to assure that the show has a "live" feel. Click and Clack have gotten this style down to an art. That is what makes the show entertaining.

I have not yet managed to watch an episode but it seems my fears are shared by at least one critic over at The Boston Globe. I do not know if this is going to get running well enough to even leave the garage. I agree with the Adfreak article that PBS may not be the right niche for it. I disagree that another network may be the market. I hope I am wrong but I fear we will look back on this one as another idea that should have just stayed an idea.

This story fall under the dumb and dumber category. The lesson is that if you are wanted as a burglar, don't offer the police help breaking into a car.

Just curious, does any one know what happened to SuprGlu? I have been checking my page since Friday evening. (I hope it being a Friday the 13th had nothing to do with it.)

Good Morning Readers,
I hope everyone is well today. Lumpy is still somehow surviving this allergy season despite his chronically infected sinuses. I stopped to mention a few quick things.

Just in case you have not heard, Firefox 3 will be released today. Mozilla is asking everyone to set a world record for the most software downloads in a single day. Today is also my kid sister's birthday so they picked a good day to release it.

You have likely noticed that over the past two years, my posting frequency has been about as consistent as the Cleveland weather. The combination of poor health and having too many pots on the stove so to speak have taken a toll. I had hoped that my chronic sinus condition would just go away. It is not.

I had hoped that once I had my sinuses under control I could begin posting more material again. The reality is that my sinuses are going nowhere and the best I am going to quoting my doctor "manageble". Reality is not just so simple though.

My inner child has been trying to ignore the fact that, at 44, I should slow down. At present I publish at up to 9 different locations. That is too much. I am going to cut back. How much and where is yet to be determined. The only thing I have deffinitely decided on is that I will be doing more live streaming and podcasting since that is what everyone seems to enjoy the most. Check out and bookmark my LumpCast Site.

Sometime life is so ironic. I was planning to visit my folks this weekend but my cat kookie decided it would be best for me to stay home and deal with his infected eye. Instead of getting better after visiting the vet on Wednesday, the poor feline's eye was only getting cloudier on Saturday. The vet gave me additional instructions. Meaning more frequent applications of eye irrigation and eye ointment.

Now both of my feline roommates are very well behaved and docile animals. This however matters little when the animal does not understand that the "treatment" going to benefit him. His only though it "God gave me claws, you are not putting that stuff on my eye!"..

I have found that the only method I can deal with the furry spastic fearful ball of fur is to toss the poor little bugger into a military laundry bag. The draw string allows just enough cloth to bunch up around his neck so that he can't get those claws into me and ruin another set of pants but not tight tnough to choke him or bind his neck. He is actually adapting well to this new 5 time per day ritual. He hasn't hissed and growled since Saturday now.

Continue reading "Lumpy's Long Week End" »

For those of you not aware of it it seems that Ustream.tv is actually enforcing thier terms of service. I heard via IRC last night that this is the case. Apparently, the terms of service have always stated that you must be 18 or older to be able to actually broadcast. This has cause a bit of a shock wave over at McInTec.net.

Most of what these young folks do is stream. They live for it. They script and code around being able to do it. About half of them are under 18 years old.

They operate at a G rated level and, most of them, are mature and well behaved for their ages. Personally, I think it is a shame that this is happening. The ability to stream with what is, in my humble opinion, the best streaming service out there empowered them to experiment with code, web design and, based on what I saw, was a very positive thing.

Personally, it impacts me none. Unless they up the age limit to something over 45, I am safe. I feel however that there should be some viable solution to this. I agree Ustream should have the right to set their own terms of service but cant we find some type of compromise on this one? I personally feel that parental control should be left to parents. Most IRC networks that I am aware of have a 14 year old policy, why is streaming video so different than chat?

Jason has created a petition for those who feel this is not right. He is basically asking Ustream.tv to lower the broadcast limit to 14 years of age. If you feel this is reasonable would you please head over there and sign it.

Feel free to leave your thoughts via a comment

My father is an amazing craftsman. Give the man some Styrofoam, drill, a few wooden dowel rods and some glue and amazing things begin to emerge.

I am not going to mention each and every shot I have taken of this project but this one gives a good over view of the size of the town. (I reckon it takes up about 30 square feet at present.) This photo of the modeler standing amidst his project also puts it into perspective.

I first became aware of this project when I went to visit this Easter. I have been fortunate enough to spend some time on the weekends out at my folks of the late. I thought it might be interesting to share some of the photos that my father, mother and I have taken of this model town. I also though it would be a good opportunity to experiment with my mother's camera.

I took most of these photos with a Kodak EasyShare C360 that my siblings and I bought my mother. Ironically, I use it more than her. This does, however, give her geek son some experience with the device that he uses to better show mom how to use it.

Continue reading "My Dad's Model Train Town" »

I found this via my My delicious Network. Not only is it furniture but functional.. Thought it was worth a quick post.

Thanks to Johnnie Moore for bringing my attention to this video. I agree Mr. Moore, Facebook is fun but it can get excessive. The video is great! Disclaimer!!! If you can not get this one out of you head afterwards, I am not to blame.

I admit I found it a riot. Confirming the link to post it in delicious and part of the category TidBits. I watched the entire thing again. Then I went down the slope of You Tube's "Related Videos" and wasted some time. It was fun. Here are a few more YouTube Videos about Facebook. Also a more serious warning..

• Not Safe for Work and children!! A good two and a half minutes about Taking Facebook Poking to a new Level
• Bob Dylan's Facebook Song
• From College Humor; Facebook Off, a spoof on the movie Face Off
• Facebook - too much information is satirical monologue
• Here is another Facebook Parody
• Again not safe for work but The Official Cambridge Facebook Song is funny and high quality
• One last link; Facebook News Network

I thought this post over at LawGeek was kewl. It is a creative point of view "dog diary" and "cat diary".

Certain things can happen to anyone, other things only happen to me. Is my Google Reader angry because I am trying FeedDeamon 2.6?

Two days ago, I was rading my feeds with Google Reader. Check out the summary for this head line. This hiccup was gone by the time I came returned from work. It effected not all the feed but only a few. The headlines and summaries are scrambled up. I had no luck figuring out where the summarries actually belonged. The headlines go to the relevant post. Is anyone else having this problem? Does anyone have any explanations?

I thought it might have been a little glitch or such. I tried refresh and restarting the browser but nada. The issue remained for the same feeds. I have been using Google Reader for a good while now and have never noticed this before. Other than both summaries having a spelling error or typo, I see nothing in common between them. Has it been doing this to a few feeds right along and I have never noticed?

The economy is a wreck.

• Hundreds of thousands simply gave up looking for work
• Payroll was slashed by the largest amount in five years
• 63,000 jobs vanished last month
• Is it me, or is this tax refund simply a mute point?

I don't have the answers and it is depressing. Best I can do is offer up some mostly light-hearted stuff.

Continue reading "2008.03.11 - Links, Mostly Funny" »

2007 was a year that was less than kind to me. I was ill and posted little. I thought I might take a moment to clean out my rather large starred items folder (683 items to be exact) in Google Reader. In the process I thought it might be a good time to create another list of links. Old links, nonetheless, but that allows me to be more selective.

• Number one on this list happened on day scant of a week before I was born. Nonetheless, the 100 greatest music events in history, certainly changed my life. Although, I don't know if I would put the "nipplegate" incident on this list.
• Having already given away my age, I can now also confess to remembering the total kewlness of easter eggs in the Atari 2600 games. Did you know they are in linux as well?
• Wanna put your favorite gadgeteer to shame by showing him or her up with a really neat gadget? This knife will do that. (I hope it comes with a crowbar to pry my wallet open; the 499 dollar price tag is gonna need it.)
• My ToDo list just got longer by 40, I must check out Top 40 Linux Blogs.
• Even though I am a Ubuntu lover, this is a well written How To on Suse deserves a mention here.

There is more if you wish to read on...

Continue reading "Links for You are Back" »

Well, it seems like my nature for sharing, or perhaps showing off depending on your view, and my room mates have combined to produce a few questions. Lumpy's cats will likely do that agin in the future. Fluffy balls of fur tend to do that.

The first being; can you train a cat? The answer is a definitive yes. How else would they have existed as domesticated animals since the Egyptians? All jest aside, more often than not a person really means; "How well can you train a cat?"

In my opinion, they can be trained very well. The cat below, is not even a year old. His brother is just as manageable. Check out the video and then you decide.

I think, considering my efforts, my cats are very well trained. I attribute much of this to just a few things. First of all, I really love them and enjoy working with them. Second, is many years back I read this book.

The second question was why does your flickr set include so many photos of your cats sleeping?

Mainly three reasons:

1. They sleep about 17 hours a day presenting lots of opportunity for such shots.
2. Feeding mode and napping mode are about the only time they are stationary enough to get an easy photo of... I have many action shots of "parts" of my cats.
3. When napping, they are likely behaving and looking cute.

Continue reading "My Good Cat Freakie" »

I thought it was rather kewl that my cats could do some basic tricks. I am rather impressed with this link I hard about on one of many Leo Laprote's podcast. John Dvorak mentioned that he liked it so much he posted it to his blog.

I would also encourage you to check out the actual YouTube Page for more videos and check out the number of views.

I just stopped in to wish all a happy new year!

I hope you all live up to your resolutions.

Check Here

Well, I finally got with the new mellinium and got myself a YouTube account....

I am in love. Not the typical, usual, I "met her at the club and she swept me off my feet" love. No this was far from that. I have seen this apple of my eye around for a long while. I thought nothing of her at first. However, for many a years I kept hearing about her.

I heard good things, like she moves very fast and does not demand much and she, amazingly given the subject matter, is very stable. I heard about her often enough to keep looking her up once in a while. Each time I "checked her out" she looked good, usually somewhat different but always more appealing than before. Each time I yearned though I had to flee. I'm shamed to admit, she still wasn't "easy" enough for me.

I know I shouldn't have been afraid. There were times when I made attempts to conquer her by putting forth an effort. I always ended up aborting and quiting because I could not get her to perform as I wished. Too much work... I wanted effortlessly Easy. Rather than digging in and trying harder at what I could master and for free, I found it easier to spend hard earned money to achieve the performance I desired.

Continue reading "Ukufisa? or is it True Love?" »

Finally, I found it... Well actually, somebody else, a certain leprechaun over at wyldryde did. In a humbling manner, I have finally found a long sought book again. Thanks Leprechaun!

You Can Train Your Cat (A Fireside book) was a paperback I owned and swore by years ago. As soon as Leprechaun put the link up to it at Orphan Treasures, I realized why all my searched for "Yes, You can Train a Cat" had failed... because, it is not the title. Color me simple. Thanks again Leprechaun.

Continue reading "The Actual Title is "You Can Train a Cat"" »