Jeff Duke

For those who may inquire what one of my secret projects dividing my attention a bit from KN could be, here’s one:

http://www.esquire.com/features/unspeakable-odyssey-motionless-boy-1008

I didn’t write the article, but I did make the website (and host it) which is linked at the end of the article.

A pretty amazing story, and the more I learn, the more questions I find I ask myself.

More later-

J

I’ve hung on to my $50 Fry’s birthday gift card for a few months now, occasionally taking it out to look at it and consider… just what should I get with it?

Then, our loving cat, Scarface brought the solution to the decision by chewing my pretty nice Plantronics USB headset cable in two.

Thanks Scarface, jerk.  We named him well, he’s so mean.

Bluetooth was the obvious solution, but which one?  Well, after several reviews and countless looks, I chose the Motorola HT820, which I picked up a few days ago.

It’s really great!

It offers good comfort, but as a glasses wearer, there is a typical longevity of wear issue which pains the ears over time by pinching the ears between the headset and arms of my glasses.  Doesn’t hurt at first, but as those of you out there who wear glasses know, eventually it gets annoying.

The audio quality is very nice for bluetooth, approaching a decent pair of wired headset.  Keep in mind I use a pair of trusty Sony in ear silicon buds, for reference.

The convenience of no wires is just lovely.  I can get up, brush my teeth, walk downstairs and only have minor blips in connection at my furthest travel from the trasmitter.

There is a small problem with connectivity that has come up a few times, where it sort of stutters the audio in and out.  This is relatively easily fixed by rebooting the headphones and allowing it to reconnect.

The big question I had to resolve was how to hook it up and use it.  I initially thought that I’d be able to use them as stereo headphones with a mic, just like my old USB Plantronics headset, but I was wrong, sort of.

Consider the idea that this headset has two separate radio types.  Number 1, it can be a hands free device.  This allows use of the microphone on the headset, but reduces the quality of the audio in the headphones to somewhere around AM/phone audio.  Number 2, it can be a pair of nice quality stereo headphones.

This means that you can’t have the best of both worlds, sadly.  You can’t talk on the mic and listen on the quality stereo headphones at the same time, doing one or the other disables the other until that resource is “released”.

A bit annoying, but I understand the reasons now.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments, maybe you have some tips I haven’t mentioned or thought of.

-J

No, seriously, our church service was interrupted by a grenade "scare" yesterday.  Just before service started, the state highway in front of our church was blocked off by police, ambulances and several fire trucks and told to stay inside as directly across the street was a suspicious looking WWII era hand grenade.  Obviously the first reaction is that it could be a toy, but with anything like that, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

So service started an hour and a half late, and with about 60% of our normal attendance.

If you click to the image above, you can sort of make out the police bomb squad guy walking towards "certain doom", which turns out actually to be an obvious fake upon closer inspection.

If I find a news article about it, I’ll push that up here.

In the meantime, we have two kittens left, and they need your love!  Contact me if you are interested in giving them a good loving home.  Here they are doing that thing all kittens are good at… playing:

On our way to the pet store to help out Hannibal the ever enlarging goldfish, (now approx 14″ and counting), who has pop-eye, a fish disease that makes the eye(s) pop out of the socket, or at least become very inflamed.  Got him some tetra cycline and it seems to be on it’s way better…

Anyways we noticed a box with several kittens on top of it in an abandoned parking lot.  Laurie and I decided that we’d drive by on the way out and make sure they weren’t just dropped there by themselves.  Sure enough, on the way out, there they sat, huddled on top of a box looking pretty concerned. We got out, to see if they were feral, as is typical of the area, and approached them.  Instead of shying away, they approached us!

I opened the box they were on, and put the 4 kittens inside, and we decided leaving them there was not an option.

Some kitten milk replacement and food and a good nights rest and they are looking and feeling a little better.

It is unbelievable that someone could do that, but I’m glad we were able to bring them home.

At home was the tricky task of hiding them into the upstairs bathroom and creating a small nursery for them with litter, food, water and a sleeping condo, (their old box).

Here’s a photo of the little kittens:

We are hopeful that we can find them all nice homes in the next few weeks, as we certainly have no room for more animals at this time.

If you are in the Atlanta area and would like one, please let me know by commenting below!

A quick description that just came to me:

Imagine a painter, with a blank canvas, sitting down and beginning to paint.  Sometimes the paint cooperates, sometimes not, but the painting always occurs in steps and leaps, with a curious abandonment of the previous form as it progresses.

Just something I thought of.

More soon-

J

At least so far. ;)  Laurie is once again employed, I’m not having any more seizures, I have a job that I love, and so far, our biggest issue these days is figuring out what to do with our enormous goldfish, Hannibal.  He is about 14″ long now, and far too big to fit in our 30 gallon tank.  A suggestion has recently been brought up to give him to someone who has an outdoor koi pond.  I am leaning towards this idea, but transport is the next issue, due to his size, I will probably have to hand catch him and find a large bucket or maybe a cooler of water to put him in temporarily for the ride.

Decisions, decisions…

Lots more updates soon, but for not, suffice to say, I have some interesting new projects under wraps that will be revealed shortly, none of which have anything to do with KN unfortunately.

More Later-

Jeff

Tada!  Yes, I do have a spine, and there is, or at least, was, fluid in it.

And here it is for your viewing pleasure.

My back hurts a bit today from where they got it, and my head hurts too… kind of like a bad bit of congestion or something.  It hurts when I laugh, so I’ve been trying to think of things that aren’t funny… no success yet.

I’m on a new medication now, so that should be fun.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy the photo… now, back to work.

-J

Well, the computer that saw the primary development of nearly everything that has gone on, (including the podcasts), at Krimson News over the last 4+ years, has finally done the clickity clack of death.  The hard disk went deep six this time, and with the screen having been gone for quite some time, there’s just not really enough there to justify an investment into repairing it.

At this time, I’m running on my uber unreliable old desktop machine which randomly turns off, so I must make this somewhat brief.

Anyone want to take up a collection for their favorite webmaster?

Party in the back.

Call it a technological mullet if you will.

Thanks to Zach for taking the shot, it’s remarkably difficult to get a good shot of the back of your head without a mirror.

Changed the batteries this morning, and now, back to work after a tasty lunch.

-J

It’s an interesting life being a mummy.  People certainly give crazed stares.  There was a few people doing double takes with looks of, “Huh?”

Then looks of, “Wow!” when they saw the cables coming out of the back of my “head”, or rather, gauze.

Tomorrow morning I get to remove these infernal bandages, and wash my hair of the electrode cement.  It’s all quite itchy, but not really any more than usual… I just can’t scratch it!

Today, we go for tacos, so it’ll be interesting to see reactions there.  Is it twisted to find it so interesting how people react when someone appears to have some grave medical malady?  I find it more interesting when that person is yourself.

More later-

Jeff