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[johnridley]

Recent Facebook posts

• Wed Dec 22 2010 09:35 am
  Got my first Farmville request on the new account, and rather than put up with the never-ending torrent of crud as I block one app at a time, I Googled and found this. Turns out there's a setting to just disable the entire app platform for your account. Yay! Of course, FB will probably unclick it for me as part of a security "upgrade" every month.
  How to Block all Facebook Applications Forever!
  

• Wed Dec 22 2010 09:01 am
  Is there a method of posting FB posts back to LJ? I know LJ will go the other way, but I don't want that. I'd like something like a daily summary of FB posts, ideally behind a cut, automatically done. I'd like to archive FB stuff in a non-noisy-on-LJ way, and FB itself seems to think that anything over a month old is not worth mentioning. I'll whip something up myself if there isn't already some way to do it.
  • Margaret Bumby Don't know of one, but I'll happily steal yours once you're done. :-)

• Wed Dec 22 2010 06:51 am
  Interesting, clear explanation. One of the reasons I love the "self scan" lines at stores is that at least in this ONE case we get to form a proper queue and take the next available station, even if it's only 4 stations out of dozens in the store. It's so much faster than separate lines.
  Why the other line is likely to move faster
  
  • Cute video. The T.J.Maxx/Marshalls stores have the one queue/multiple registers setup. Ikea more or less did at the self serve checkouts. Meijers I just try to go to when there are fewer shoppers (early mornings)
  • Jeff Haas Cabellas also goes to a dispatched queueing model during this time of year as does Best Buy.

• Tue Dec 21 2010 08:41 pm
  Just saw this on a BBC documentary: "If an intelligent person says they don't like science fiction, there's something wrong with them." --Arthur C. Clarke
  • Dermot Dobson Wonderful!!!
  • Dermot Dobson Which documentary?
  • John Ridley "The Man Who Saw The Future" - It's rather old, it was certainly made before 2000. They interviewed him directly at his home, and have several notables talking about him. Roger Ebert flat out says that 2001 is the best movie every made, not just the best SciFi movie that has ever been made.

• Tue Dec 21 2010 10:37 am
  is eating a very yummy apple, and there's free pizza for the team in an hour.

• Tue Dec 21 2010 08:12 am
  The clouds kept the lunar eclipse mostly hidden last night, though I did see a bit of the last 1/4 of it through wispy clouds on the way to the garage this morning. But they also gave us a beautiful magenta on blue sunrise. It faded quite a bit by the time I got to my camera though :(

• Tue Dec 21 2010 08:01 am
  Wow, giving blood at 7AM at work rocks! On the table in 15 minutes, cookies eaten and out the door in about 35. Usually it's an hour MINIMUM, sometimes 90 minutes.
  • Dermot Dobson I donated today too. 12 weeks after last one, minimum time but bloodbank getting a bit short. Mince pies instead of cookies!
  • John Ridley One of the exclusions for blood donation in the US is if you've spent more than 3 years in the UK, or if you've received a blood donation in the UK since I think 1986. I think it's a lifetime ban. We can donate a unit every 6 weeks, or do a "double red" apheresis donation every 12. A unit here is 500ml.

• Mon Dec 20 2010 08:54 pm
  New glasses! My first bifocals. Wow, I can read comfortably again! Distance Rx basically the same, slight tweaks to take me from 20/20 to about 20/15 according to the doc. It is a touch sharper, though it was pretty good before. The bottom of the bifocals is the best though. I can turn the font size back down on my eReader and press "next page" half as often.
  • Jean Jambas It is a huge, huge difference in price. We paid completely out of pocket for mine but I couldn't see a darn thing and was a standard bifocal "failure."
  • John Ridley For me it's not a big deal. The bottom part of my vision is just a little fuzzy for mid to long distance, not displaced or weird or anything. It is still clearer than without my glasses at all. After only about 6 hours with them, they're getting very natural.

• Mon Dec 20 2010 02:32 pm
  Back from Toledo lunch run. I no longer own a telescope, but I have a fistful of greenbacks to cram into the ATM tonight.
  • Todd Johnson At least that scope will be immortalized, as it were.
  • John Ridley @Todd: Yup, I thought about that as I was putting it up for sale. It made me a little sadder to be selling it, but I just couldn't justify tying up that much cash and garage space for a scope that I used maybe 4 times a year, and I'm not sure I wouldn't enjoy a $200 scope that would fit in part of a closet just as much.
  • Todd Johnson Yes, it's gone to a good home and as you say, you'll probably get more fun out of a $200 scope that you can use 20 times a year and will fit in your car.

• Sun Dec 19 2010 08:10 am
  I've been donating my tabs to vaccinations. I've only contributed 4 or 5, but altogether the 5 day drive has donated something like 360,000 vaccinations, plus donations in several other good causes.
  Chrome for a Cause
  

• Sat Dec 18 2010 11:19 am
  Put up with ads for a month or so, because, well, it's the economic model, right? Finally reinstalled adblock this morning after a Bing ad expanded on cnn.com and filled 60% of my screen. It's totally possible for them to not display content if ads aren't displayed too, so if they don't like their ads getting blocked, they should do that, and I'll go elsewhere.

• Mon Dec 13 2010 08:11 pm
  Power was back when we all showed back up home about 5:30. The neighbor's 3000 watt generator kept the place warm, BARELY. With just the furnace and two fridges, things were decidedly in a brownout mood. The 6250 watt generator powers the whole house in a snappy fashion.
  • John Ridley @Bob: yes, I'm thinking about one of those. The upside to this generator is that it runs everything BUT the AC and it was $700. The ones like your parents have are > $2000, more like $3000 installed. This is the first time I've had a generator totally fail me, and it just meant going to the neighbor's for a backup, so it wasn't too bad. Still, I am thinking about a built-in.
  • @Rob: my folks had one of those. They needed it -- their house was built, as it turns out, on a spring, and if the sump pump didn't run for a few hours there'd be water in the basement. We don't usually need one, though. This is the first time we've had an extended outage in the winter *and* a generator failure at the same time.

• Mon Dec 13 2010 01:29 pm
  I put a set of 4 blood donation pins on eBay a week ago that I earned back in about 2003. The buyer said they were a Christmaas present for her dad who is on chemo and can't donate anymore, and someone stole his pin collection. I'm sure he'll appreciate them much more than I have; they've just been hanging on a towel with a few hundred other random pins and badges.

• Mon Dec 13 2010 01:07 pm
  Ugh, power failure, and the generator is dead. Borrowed spare generator from neighbor to get heat running. Generator left at shop in town, I don't have time to mess with it. Engine runs, generator no make power. Power company keeps thinking they have restored power, we keep saying "no, you haven't."
  • Jean Jambas Keep at them and try to work your way to get to real people. We are at the end of the power line so often if it says fixed, we are the house that isn't. Are you at the end of a street?
  • John Ridley It seems to be our whole subdivision that gets overlooked. Happens quite a lot. Our power is all underground, but something in the feed to it seems to get hit a lot.
  • Jean Jambas Ahhh, we had really old wiring. When the new sub down the street was built, they replaced all the poles back to it and ignored the rest of the street. We lost power about 10 times a year. Then an actual pole came down. It has been much better since then.

• Fri Dec 10 2010 02:10 pm
  Oh, what the f**k. Stop bitching and have fun, John. back on teh fb.
  • Peter Richardson wb and ss. I check in rarely but you made me!