Nine days and five hours away

I had a little get-together for my birthday on Friday night. It was also a sort of coming-home party. I got to see some friends I hadn't seen in a year or two and also some friends I hadn't seen in a day or two. I got a slideshow going of all the pictures I had taken in Europe. It would have taken four and a half hours to complete, but everyone (including myself) left long before it could finish. The fun moved to TJ's house. That's where the fun usually is. I've also been there several times since to spend the night. I wish I could do that during the school year, but alas, college is five hours away.

I usually do a good job of following the news, but while I was in Europe for two months, I was basically living under a rock. I found out that Michael Jackson died, but that was about it. (That was the night we spent in Pisa. It was late, and Andy was outside the hotel room, making calls on our computer. I was channel surfing [we actually had a TV] and saw that Thriller was playing. When it was over, I saw "Michael Jackson 1958-2009" on the screen. I couldn't believe it, so I flipped to some other channels, including the BBC and CNN, which were all over the story. When Andy came back, I told him the news and jokingly asked if he had heard of Michael Jackson. The day before, I had found out that Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett had died; Andy had never heard of either of them.) (Oh, and I also found out that Billy Mays died. I wasn't completely cut off from the world.)

But when I came back, I learned that the government was providing cash for clunkers, that Microsoft had rebranded its search engine, and that there was a new reality show called Police Women of Broward County. As a citizen of Broward County, Florida, I thought it would be interesting to see how the area would be represented. I actually watched an episode. The show is every bit as horrible as it sounds. As a show that showcases crime, it's inherently unflattering to the region, and I can only wonder what went through the heads of the BSO brass when they decided to try to give our county a bad reputation across America.

When I upgraded to the latest version of Ubuntu in April, an annoying new bug/feature was that the operating system would only check for non-critical updates once a week irrespective of my preference to check daily. Or something like that. I was gone from my computer for two months, okay? Anyway, the official fix didn't do anything (or maybe it did but I didn't get any non-critical updates after that). The instructions I found here seemed to do the trick. In short: sudo chmod ugo+x /etc/cron.daily/apt, followed by the official fix (gconftool -s --type bool /apps/update-notifier/auto_launch false). Of course!!

The New York Times has a lengthy article about The Beatles: Rock Band, which comes out next month. If you're particularly interested in The Beatles or Rock Band, have a read. (Annoying registration possibly required; use BugMeNot.) (Via waxy.org)

This is what the Internet is all about: Cats That Look Like Hitler.

Here's the true and exciting story of the little-known State of Franklin. (Via The Presurfer)