Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

Found out through the grapevine that a chapter of an international college fraternity -- my college fraternity -- in Colorado may be closed because they did something really stupid. I'm not mad about the chapter closure; I think they deserve it. I'm mad at what was allowed to happen there: Pledges (or to use the more correct term, "associate members") were left alone in a hotel room with a keg of beer, and were told to "get to know each other". $10,000 worth of damage was done to the hotel room. Someone peed in the in-room coffeemaker. And other things that I can't remember from the story.

For years, the fraternity's leadership has been trying to teach their members that hazing and alcohol abuse is bad. Most of the brothers over the years have listened. And a chosen few have not.

The story is making the rounds in the press. It's unfortunate that the press like to reinforce the "Animal House" stereotype. And despite all the good things that have been done by greek-letter societies over the years, an incident like this will be remembered for years, if not decades.

As for the perpetrators, they are my brothers, but they will be held accountable by the court of law, the fraternity's leadership, the university's leadership, and their parents.

I've been tagged by dragon_pet!

A. List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
B. Tag seven people to do the same.
C. Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag 'whoever wants to do it.
It's my meme and I'll do what I want now. :-P

1) I have perfect pitch.
2) I chew on ice cubes and my fingernails.
3) If my grandmother was alive when I was born, I would have been named after my grandfather.
4) All 4 of my grandparents were dead before I was born.
5) I was pushed up a grade in elementary school.
6) I made up for (5) by spending 7 years in college.
7) I started off as an electrical engineering major, but soon defected to computer science.

I'm not tagging anyone because they've probably already done this meme.

One of the things I like about Marketplace is that they play songs apropos to the news items. Today they played the opening to Roxy Music's "Love Is The Drug".

Love is the drug I'm thinking of.

Your mission: Post a line or two of a song that has the word "love" in the title of the song.
[Updated 12:45] Yes, this is a twist on the rules of Encore, in which a player sings a lyric that contains the word in question.

moar funny pictures

One of the kitchen appliances I "inherited" from my parents was an old Veg-O-Matic manual food processor. This past month, it's been getting some use. Last week, I made lentil soup, and used the Veg-O-Matic to dice an onion and to slice the celery and carrots. Today, I have beef stew in the slow cooker (I believe "crock pot" is a registered trademark). I'm using a co-worker's recipe, which doesn't list exact amounts of most ingredients, so I had to guess at the amounts. Once again, the Veg-O-Matic came in handy in dicing the potato and onion, and cutting up the carrots and celery. (Oops. I didn't mean to include celery in my stew, but it's in there.)

The hardest part about cleanup is picking out the vegetable pieces from the top of the unit.

As far as I know, Ronco no longer makes the Veg-O-Matic.

The only thing I'd change would be to make the body and "hammer" of the unit out of high-impact plastic. Even though they may have used the best and strongest plastic at the time, I have a feeling that it may break someday. At least I can get another one on eBay.

Tell me about some of your favorite kitchen gadgets.

It's been a year since I upgraded orac to XP Home (with Service Pack 2). It's definitely an improvement over Win 98. However, it's far from perfect. Here are the problems I've been having.

1) Even though I have "show volume icon in the taskbar" checked, it doesn't show up there.
2) Windows Media Player 9 craps out on me after about 90 seconds if I'm playing an audio CD.
3) Sometimes my browser (and other processes) hangs for a couple of minutes while it's allegedly doing something that I can't find in Task Manager.
4) The real grr argh: I still get the occasional BSOD with critical stop and core memory dumps, and I can't pick up where I left off; I have to reboot and restart from scratch.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. That it, other than "switch to Linux" or "buy a Mac". If you want me to start using a Mac, then buy me one. :-|

We have a construction crew working on our building today. There's a huge crane in front of the main doors. I think they're going to replace one of the building's air conditioner units, since I received an email from my boss to not mess with the thermostats until further notice. And so I'm spending a fair amount of time getting up from my cubicle and watching them work.

I look at the stuff I want to buy, and most of it is relatively inexpensive (<$100). I don't need to have a high-definition flat-screen TV; I'm fine with the one I have.

But there's a whole bunch of little stuff I'd like to get. Part of me says, "it's OK to buy, it's relatively cheap". Meanwhile, another part of me says that even though they're inexpensive, these little things will add up, like drops of water in a bucket.

I do like to shop. I like to get out of the house and visit places I want to buy from. But I rarely go for the sake of looking around. If I visit a store, I feel obligated into buying something from them. Otherwise the people who work there might think I'm casing the place or going to shoplift from them.

I suppose this is why dollar stores exist. People can go and shop, buy cheap things, and not feel very guilty about spending lots of money.

[Updated 14:20] Of course, I'll wait until I have the cash to spare. Some things are more important, like the mortgage, utility bills, and spousal support. Maybe this will be an incentive for me to get my taxes done.

Now that I've upgraded the hard drive in my laptop, I think that will be the last hardware upgrade I perform on it. I think I've pushed and hit the limit on what I can do with the laptop. While it's fine for email, web surfing, and downloading (via a wireless card), it lags behind in word processing and multimedia. (The processor inside is an Intel Pentium MMX 166 Mhz, and I have 80 Mb of memory.) OpenOffice crawls on it, and I hear Flash files before I see the associated video (which is jerky at best).

I'd like to upgrade the laptop with a new or used one, but the price is still out of reach, unless it's a free one.

There's one at work I have my eye on. No one's used it for over a year, and I'm waiting for it to be surplused. It's missing a hard drive and caddy, but I can get a replacement on EBay for a reasonable price.

Even after I upgrade to a new machine, I'll still keep the old laptop. Why? Because I still like old technology. I've had this laptop for over 6 years, and it's become a good friend. Besides, I doubt anyone else will want it. I still have its predecessor, an NCR 3180 Safari, stowed away. Nobody wants that, and I don't blame them. 33 Mhz processor, 16 Mb of memory, no USB ports or CD-ROM, runs Windows 95. It would make a good toy for my daughter.

Isn't is amazing how quickly we've become accustomed to new technology?

...which means I'll be glued in front of the TV on Sunday night watching the multi-million-dollar 30-second spots and rating them. At least I hope so. R and M may have other plans for me.

In the meantime, I saw one on New Year's Day that made me laugh out loud and cheer. Amp Energy (a product of Pepsi-Cola) featured one with Ryan Miller, goaltender of the Buffalo Sabres, and a goalie from the Los Angeles Kings, dueling with "your mama" insults. A Flash version is available on the Amp Energy website; click on NHL to watch it. And I'm sure it's on YouTube by now.