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United States, North Carolina, Carrboro, English, Paul, Male, 56-60, All Music, All Food.

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Saturday, October 11, 2003

Peeps They're not just for Easter anymore. 6:09:45 PM    comment []

This store, now apparently known as “ IG   AP,” will be closing soon, along with other Big Bears in Columbus, Ohio. I don’t know if an IGA or GAP will open there, as the sign seems to predict. I do know I loved the Big Bear when I lived in Columbus, almost as much as I liked the Buckeyes and White Castles. Now it appears they will soon be gone. Many a fine meal of barbecued ribs started out with a trip to the Big Bear. I really hate to see them go. I still sometimes call the Food Lion in NC “Big Bear,” for me it’s synonymous with “supermarket.”  They were one of the first, if not the first. 8:13:01 AM    comment []

Animal House   What’s the point in being a boring prude? Get out and have some fun! We’ve got a President who was a legendary coke-snorter, went AWOL maybe to protest Vietnam, and got at least one DUI in his prodigal youth. There’s Bill Bennett, who probably would have lost his right arm to RMDs (never to be confused with WMDs…hmmm, I wonder….nah!…) if they hadn’t automated video poker machines. Then there’s Arnold who likes to grab a little ass and smell musky waitress fingers. What kind of wine would you like with that, Guv’ner? And now the undisputed king of talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, turns out to be a crazed pill-poppin’ wild man!   Don’t be sanctimonious or call them hypocritical; admire these guys for what they are! They really know how to party! Life is a cabaret, old chum. 7:17:32 AM    comment []

The Cobbler’s Child   I bought a DVD-burner on Thursday and it just sat in the box until this morning. Computer #2 has been sitting neglected all summer and not used much at all since last January. First up, install all the Windows updates (including XP SP1) and tune it up. That took about two hours. Next up, remove the 12X CD-burner that is my oldest piece of equipment still in use. I’m going to give that to my friend Jeff who has been struggling to get a USB 2,0 external burner to work with his antiquated Win98SE for several months. I set the new DVD-burner as secondary master IDE device and the other DVD player to be secondary slave.   Full of hubris, I put the cover back on the case and fired ‘er up. XP did not see either DVD drive. Out with the screwdriver, check the connections, and boot again. This time I got a disturbing “ATAPI incompatible device” on boot, but XP did see the burner. Evidently, the cable had worked loose from the system board. I put the old DVD drive as slave on the primary IDE channel, but the system still did not see it. Into BIOS, I forced detection and it saw it. The drive is good, but apparently doesn’t like being on the same cable as another DVD drive. Unfortunately, the IDE cable (it’s really EIDE, but who cares?) was about a foot too short on between the master and slave connectors, so it looked like I’d have to but another cable.   Then a moment of inspiration. If I moved to hard drive up to another bay and the old DVD down to the lowest front access bay, maybe, just maybe, the cable would be just barely long enough to reach. The hard drive went to its highest possible position and the DVD drive to its lowest. Thank god for Antec cases, the flexibility and maximum elbow room made this all easier than it sounds. The logic cable connected to the DVD drive with maybe a 1/16-inch to spare. Booted up and auto-detected the drives in BIOS. It saw them all and I opened a beer (it is Saturday). Cheers! 6:16:47 AM    comment []