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It FINALLY turned cold for real! Woo-hoo! More on that later, but for now:

Every once in a while I’ll think I can get by without staying on top of the Internet news headlines for a couple of days, then something like this hits me in the face: I didn’t know until today that Peter Drucker had died last Friday.

D’oh! I feel so out of the loop …

In case you don’t know who Peter Drucker was (no, he wasn’t the owner of the general store on Green Acres — that was Sam Drucker, no relation, and a fictional character), don’t feel bad — it just means you weren’t a business major. Drucker was one of the most important business management theorists of the 20th Century, helping to shape the way corporations are run. (Here’s a clue: Most of the bad things you see in business today weren’t his doing.)

This morning, when I saw an after-the-fact mention of the impact of his life on the front page of the business section of the newspaper, I went to see our accountant, Larry, the only other person here that I had any kind of certainty at all had also heard of Drucker, and of course he had already heard the news.

We speculated on how many other people in our company of 100 people would know who we were talking about; I said the number might be five. He said that was way too high, and he was probably right.

Anyway, go check out some of the other retrospectives for some idea on his impact on American business.

The Wife’s birthday is tomorrow! Please feel free to wish her a happy one in the comments.

Cold weather, at last! I know I’ve said that before, but tonight it’s going to get COLD for the first time this season –32F (or 0C, for our friends in the metric countries) in Dallas, and even colder for us in the northern reaches of the Large D area.

That’s quite a change, considering the high was in the 80’s yesterday, and the low this morning, 65F, was the high for the day as the Arctic front blew in. This kind of thing is not unusual on the American Plains, where air masses can slide around like drops of water on a greased baking sheet.

Anyway: The Wife and I are pleased as punch to be getting some relief from the heat, but the drastic dip in temperatures meant we had to scramble tonight to protect my prodigious crop of aloe vera plants, which has now grown to include three huge plants (which each weigh around 100 pounds in their sand-filled pots), three fifty pounders, six plants in smaller pots but which I should have re-potted this year (except I didn’t because it was too hot, and then we would probably have double the number of large plants by now), and about forty aloe “pups” hastily planted into three medium-sized pots full of sand.

And that doesn’t count about another 30 pups that have sprouted up in the pots of the large plants.

It’s a population explosion, I tells ya.

So I spent most of the chilly, windy evening hauling what I could into the garage, and covering the rest with sheets.

The life of a suburban aloe farmer is not an easy one.

Busy getting ready for my next trip to Lubbock, so this’ll be quick: Yay Kim sent us some cool postards last week — click on the picture to view full size.

And thanks much Kimster!

I’ve been meaning to post this for a couple of weeks, so you might know by now: The Boondocks, the controversial comic strip, is now a cartoon series on Cartoon Network (Adult Swim, of course).

It’s pretty shocking, even more than the strip, plus they’ve got some pretty good guest stars, like Adam West and some of the cast of Futuram, so check it out.

In keeping with my efforts to bring you the latest “subservient” websites, here’s one more: Subservient Donald.

Some commands that I’ve found he’ll respond to include dance, jump, sing, pray, sleep, and, surprisingly, die. (The down side: It’s not really Trump. But the illusion still pleases.)

Set your own imaginations loose on Mr. Bad Hair Day.

(Via Presurfer.)

Psycho New Jersey.

Psycho Mom — real video of a screaming woman. Can’t get enough of that.

Psycho Pong and other really cool games.

Psycho Studio: Edit your own shower scene.

Team Psycho, a competitive triathlon group since 1991.

Psycho Clown Posse paintball team.

Psycho Diver.

Lyrics to the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer”, and the parody song “Psycho Chicken“.

Psycho Humor.

Miss Psycho, professional photographer.

Psycho Clown Tattoo.

Psycho Squirrels!

Psycho bands: Psycho Daisies, Psycho Zydeco, Go Psycho, a French neo-rockabilly band.

Psycho Goldfish: A great collection of games.

Finally: Here are some numbers that don’t mean anything: 01010100011011110110010001100001011110010010011
1011100110010000001110011011001010110001101110010011001010
1110100001000000111011101101111011100100110010000100000011
010010111001100111010001000000010000001010000010100110101
100101000011010010000100111100101110

(Althouh if you were to try to decode it, you would need to remove the line breaks of course.)

You’re welcome.

Okay, so far so good. Last night I knocked out a miscellaneous post in only 45 minutes, let’s see if we can cut this time in half:

Improvisational comedy pioneer Jonathan Winters turns the big Eight Decades today.

This is also Veterans’ Day in the U.S., and also Remembrance Day in the U.K., and Steve over there across the pond has a great collection of links for both holidays; check it out. We’re only here because of those who came before us who were willing to make the big sacrifices.

Back to more trivial matters: CBS has shifted Threshold to someplace on the schedule where we’ll never find it.

And they can’t figure out why people aren’t watching TV like they used to.

But speaking of this season’s Lost ripoffs, the next best of the lot is Surface, which NBC seems to be supporting despite lackluster ratings.

One of the big draws of that show is the female lead, Lake Bell, formerly of Boston Legal (during premiere week, she was on Leno talking about how much she hates her name). That young actress has an excellent set of acting abilities on her, and the show gives her lots of opportunities to wear tank tops and swimsuits.

My theory is that getting her under contract came first, and the show’s concept was incidental. “We need a premise that has her leaning over tables a lot — like looking at maps or something?” “Ooh, we could make her an oceanographer!” “Perfect! That would mean she’d be wearing wet clothes a lot too!”

The sea monsters taking over the world are just icing on the cake.

Tonight Attack of the Show featured the world’s youngest professional video gamer, who’s all of seven years old.

He took on Kevin Pereira in a game of Halo 2, and totally pasted the older gamer, with four kills in 90 seconds.

HAW-haw!

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Okay, not bad time; not quite down to 20 minutes, but it’s okay, because I’ve got excuses.

Okay, let’s see if we can knock this one out in less than the freakin’ hour like I usually take:

First an announcement: Today is out ninth wedding anniversary! If I can go one more year without her coming to her senses and booting me out, we can make it an even 10 — woo-hoo!

Speaking of anniversaries, do you know what happened exactly 30 years ago today? I know about the anniversary only because I heard it on the radio on the way home from work — twice. The first time was on the local oldies station, when they played the song that was written about the event, and the second time on All Things Considered on NPR, where they did a serious commemoration.

Give up? It was the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, immortalized in a 1976 song by Gordon Lightfoot.

We finally got some cooler weather! Not that much cooler, mind you, since it still got over 70F today, but last night was nice and brisk, almost like November oughta be.

About freakin’ time.

My mom is doing better these days. She’s still in the nursing home, for now, but she’s responding well to therapy, plus she’s able to get from the bed to the wheelchair without help, and thus to motivate all around her floor of the facility, including the TV room and dining area.

The nurses have nicknamed her Speedy Gonzalez, and her doctor has told her she need to slow down and take it easy.

That’s always a good sign.

She’s going to turn 85 later this month, but except for the hip and back pain, she’s still going strong, and it would be a shame if that stopped her from living on her own.

She told me that got into a conversation with a fellow resident today who’s 94, and there’s a 100-year-old man who walks down the hall every day by himself.

I have a feeling that by the time we Boomers are in nursing homes, we’ll be 110 and 120 — and rollerblading down the hallways.

And finally, here’s a note to myself for future ref, that I found thanks to Steve at Look at This: Small Budget Photography. I’m particularly interested in the section on lighting, which is a big problem area for me. Our house lighting is woefully inadequate for lighting for our Sony camera, and the flash, even on the low setting, is major overkill.

Some rigged up light source augmentation could only help.

(And speaking of Steve, be sure to check out his wonderful-as-usual Free Music Friday.)

Since my “My Name is Earl” post last night was supposed to be short but rambled on for 1000 whole freaking words, I think I can get away with just a few words on tonight’s episode of Lost – and those words are:

HOLY. FREAKING. COW.

I don’t want to spoil it for anybody, but one of the main characters does indeed die (I won’t see which one), and the way this person gets killed is truly shocking.

Also: I don’t think Kate appeared at all, Hurley had only a couple of lines, and Jack was seen only for a couple of seconds, in Shannon’s flashback scene. (It was Shannon’s father that died in Jack’s emergency operating room, being fatally injured in a collision with Jack’s future wife.)

Anyway, for a full report, check out TV Squad’s ongoing Lost coverage.

It includes an MP3 of what Walt said — both forward and backwards. Check it out.

I’ve been off my posting rhythm lately, what with being out of town, then trying to post those experiences, then trying to partially catch up — now I feel I’m to a spot where I can do a long, single-topic post, and then wite up on my other blog all the miscellaneous stuff I’ve been accumulating if time allows.

Like so:

I’ve been meaning to post about this for some time: One of the best shows of the new season is My Name is Earl. I didn’t think I would like it, from seeing the early commercials, so I didn’t start watching until about the third or fourth episode, but when I did start watching, I got hooked.

In case you’re not familiar, here’s the premise: Earl Hickey was a lowlife white-trash petty criminal, until the day he won $100,000 in the lottery — and immediately got hit by a car, his winning ticket blowing away on the wind. It was while he was laid up in the hospital, with lots of time to think, that he hit upon the concept of karma, or at least a very particular version of it.

He realized that he had done nothing but bad things in his miserable life, and that might be why nothing but bad things happen to him. He figured that “karma” thought he didn’t deserve the prize money, and immediately had him run down by a car.

From there, it seemed reasonable that if he started doing good things — especially if those good things involved making up for all the bad deeds he had committed — then maybe good things would happen to him, or at least he wouldn’t be punished by the cosmos when something good did happen.

Thus Earl started making The List: A tally of all the bad things he had done to people, so he could start making up for them, so that he could finally deserve for good things to happen.

And sure enough, just as soon as he started doing good, the lottery ticket blew back into his life, and made him a believer.

Now, he spends each episode trying to right past wrongs, a job that is inevitably more complicated than it looks at first, but which is always rewarded by the end of the episode.

Tonight’s installment was entitled “Stole Beer from Golfer”: Seven months ago, Earl was in the kitchen of a fancy country club, losing all his money in a game of craps to a bunch of his friends that worked there. On his way out, flat broke, he happened to be passing the bar when a golfer announced that he had just made a hole in one, and was thus buying drinks for everybody in the bar.

Earl was so impressed with this that he went and told his brother Randy about the free drinks, and the next week they went back, thinking that a hole in one was common occurence for this guy, so therefore the free booze was just there for the waiting.

They were mistaken: Aces are fairly rare occurences, and and so then were the free drinks.

They decided to help their luck along by hiding in the bushes near the green whenever he played, and depositing his ball in the hole to make it look like a hole-in-one.

This trick actually worked, so of course they did it week after week, always waiting in the clubhouse for his triumphant and generous return.

Soon, his generosity grew from just beer to actual food, with the golfer promising to buy Earl and Randy lunch if he broke 80 … which of course he did, with their help.

The golden goose was killed, however, when Randy started bragging about what they were doing, and soon all their lowlife friends started showing up, and soon the country club got more picky about who they let in to the clubhouse.

Now, more than half a year later, Earl and Randy find the golfer and attempt to load him up with up with several cases of beer … only to find that he had subsequently lost his job, his girlfriend, and his apartment, due to an obsession with golf.

It seems that Earl’s cheating had convinced the golfer that he was good enough to turn pro, and when his game suddenly turned mediocre again (i.e., when they stopped cheating for him), he became obsessed with trying to become a great golfer, and thus lost everything that had meant anything to him.

So Earl had a lot more to make up for than just a few dozen beers.

That’s what sets this show apart from run-of-the-mill sitcoms: The “Karma” aspect — Earl’s concerted effort to be an active force for Good are a big part of what makes this different from, say, The Jeff Foxworthy show.

But other things help too, starting with Jason Lee in the title role. With that trademark twinkle in his eye, he creates a complex character in Earl. You’ll really like this guy who’s now trying to put things right — but you’ll also be disgusted at some of past transgressions.

The style of the show is refreshing too, filming on actual locations like a drama, instead of on a sound stage like 99% of all sitcoms since All in the Family defined the form in 1971.

Add to those features the fact that the show makes excellent use of songs in the soundtrack — tonight featured music from Smokey and the Bandit — and the constant references to past episodes (giving a nice feeling of continuity) and you’ve definitely got a show worth following.

My Name is Earl has the potential to become a classic show in years to come.

So watch it now and avoid the rush.

Okay, various topics today, and since it got close to 90F in the MIDDLE OF FREAKING NOVEMBER, I’m hauling back out the blazing sun bullet point:

There was an interesting sweeps gimmick last night on The West Wing: A live debate between the Democrat (Jimmy Smits) and the Republican (Alan Alda).

What puzzles me is that a big part of the post-show publicity campaign is asking people to visit the website to vote on which candidate won the debate.

Who won??? Are they kidding???

The Democrat won, of course. The show is written, produced, directed, and acted by Democrats (or Democrat sympathizers, at least, and Republican haters), and for all the forced window-dressing of “fairness”, the Democrat got all the best lines, the easy questions, the cohesive and forceful arguments, and the chance to upstage the Republican at every turn. Who do you think won?

Of course, if it were the other way around and the show were handled by Republicans (IF it were possible, in Hollywood, which it’s not), it would be the Democrat who would have ended up drawing the short stick. Politics is like that.

Just don’t pretend that it was a real contest.

Shortly after I got DSL in 2000, I started listening to LuxuriaMusic.com, a fine source of exotic music of all kinds, from lounge to salsa to vintage surf to Bollywood. I also enjoyed hanging out in their chat room, where you could see the DJ’s on the webcam and even be greeted by name “on the air”.

That was in the middle of The Internet Bubble, though, and like most free things of the time, the station went bye-bye in short order.

But now it’s back, and although the chatroom traffic is thin to nonexistent, it’s still a good listen, so check it out.

And one of the fine bands I discovered back then, and that the station played just a few minutes ago, is a Japanese retro-pop combo called Pizzicato Five. They seem to not be recording for the past five years, but the site is still up, so check them out as well …

And finally: The Geek Week of which I spoke yesterday resumed in full force this morning. Within minutes of getting to work, I heard someone say that the high-dollar computer consultant that came in on Friday had not actually fixed Jackie’s computer like he said he had, because it was still crashing.

I didn’t ask why they didn’t come to me after Main Computer Guy couldn’t diagnose the problem, I just volunteered to take a look at the problem.

Sure enough, I got the Blue Screen O’ Death within minutes — it could be the first time I’ve ever seen the BSoD on Windows XP — and read a page full of programmer gibberish, including the key phrase IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL. I wrote down a few pertinent strings and went back to my own computer to Google the garbage.

I found references to the message on several tech boards, and I saw why the other guys were confused: The board “experts”, including moderators, had a whole handful of possible causes, including a faulty video card (the first theory on this one particular board, and the one siezed on by Main Computer Guy, and apparently the only one he considered), mouse driver problems, malfunctioning motherboard, and incorrect cabling order of the various IDE drives.

The one that got my attention, though, harmonized with my own current pet theory that 95% of computer freeze-ups, crashes, and BSoDs are caused by software conflicts.

This particular board user said he fixed a similar problem by going to the Startup tab of MSCONFIG and clicking on Disable All, then rebooting; all the necessary startup processes would automatically be installed by Windows on boot.

I was skeptical, and I don’t know if I would try it as a quick fix for minor glitches, but since the PC was already mostly immobilized, and since two people who were perceived as more qualified had failed to fix it, I knew there would be no repercussions from trying it, so I did.

And it worked. Jackie was able to use her computer all day. She said she even did one maneuver that was usually the kiss of death (opening two mainframe terminal windows at the same time) , and didn’t crash.

And that one little chore just made my whole day. I’ve been walking around just a little happier, a little prouder, and a little more hopeful that the higher-ups will bear in mind that I do more than wrangle documents.

Vindication is SWEET, people — it’s a big ol’ heaping dish of cherry pecan ice cream with fudge brownies crumbled on top.

I’m going to end here, because for some unexplained reason I suddenly feel like raiding the fridge …