Been doing a betatest for Lightscribe. It's a cool piece of equipment that burns the label right onto a laser sensitive coating on the disk. Burn the data flip the disk and burn the label it's pretty neat.

been listening to the first few disks of the grateful dead beyond description on Windows Media Player They are really tasty. The extras alone are worth the cost of the set, 12 cds for 150 or so, which of course is the point. If you are a deadhead you probably already own the albums in one form or another. So of course you wouldn't buy them unless they had something on them you didn't already have like a lack of scratches and hiss.

Well go forth and purchase them if you got the scratch. The jams on Blues for Allah reminded me why I liked the dead so much in the first place. They will bring tears to your eyes.

Just did a spell check on that last entry and the word blog wasn't recognized!

OK so I went to Church this morning and they read the story of the loaves and fishes from Matthew. Well when I heard this story the first time they loaves and fishes came from a kid and in Matthew they come from the disciples or at least the kid isn't mentioned. Well there have been a lot of changes to the service and a revision of the bible since I went to church on a regular basis but I thought that this was a bit to much. I had always thought that the kid was something special. He had the faith to give up his lunch to Christ and poof the multitudes are fed. Well there were some logistics involved so that the 5000 could be fed but they were fed.

It turns out that the kid is in John. The apostles were human after all and humans tend to see things from an individual view point. One leaves in the kid, others don't.

I do feel a little better and maybe I should pay a little closer attention to the books. Course if I really wanted to have some say over all this I could go to seminary and try and build a flock. But I think I'll just stick to my blog for now.

Maine has been redistricted. A lovely and painful process to be sure. I just spent way to much time trying to find out who is running for what to represent me. I found out I was right about my senator, Ethan Strimling, but wrong about my rep, Glenn Cummings. As a web designer it really annoys me when politicians don't have web sites or don't do basic search engine optimization, but that's mostly me looking for work. Still it's not like it's hard to put one up and have a few people link to it.

Anyway here is a page to find out which candidates are running for what office in Maine.

Just a reminder that there has been some redistricting in Portland, Maine. I have set up a list of polling places in Portland, ME, at http://vote.skartdesigns.com. There is also a link to confirm your district and precinct.

just got my blood donor card today. wish they had noted when I'd last given blood on the back. Oh well I guess I can call em up and ask.

This is just an email to see what mailbots are phishing my blog and see how long it takes them to send me stuff. So if you send blogemail@skartdesigns.net an email, I probably won't respond. I probably won't respond if you email me at this address either. Probably won't see an answer from blognot@skartdesigns.net either.

October NetPM at Lightship Telecom

Well after a short absence I was back at a Mesda NetPM last night. This one was at Lightship Telecom's data center. I really love the smell of a server farm. It's sort of like new car smell for me. It says power, it says information; and knowledge is power. Is raw information really knowledge? yeah but it's not wisdom. I guess the power comes from the use of the use of the information. And knowledge isn't wisdom, and certainly power isn't wisdom. Wisdom isn't power ... but I digress.

Saw some fun folk there. Mark Ford showed up. He is doing some neat stuff at UNE with patient simulators. That is machines that pretend to be human patients not machines that pretend to have patience. I left early and still people were coming in.

The food was good and plentiful. Finger sandwiches, and brownies. Corn Chips and salsa. assorted sweets. other tasty stuff. give it a 3.9. I like more along the lines of chicken fingers and deviled eggs still it was quite tasty.

Beer didn't run out. It was shipyard. Give it a 4.1. Could have been a bit more varied I'm drinking Sam Adams these days.

I had a good time and they did a good job. It's always nice when one of their execs greats you as you come in with a smile and a cool light up pen. Overall give it a 4.1.

Well it finally happened, I put some gas in my tank and went in to pay for it. When I came out they had raised the price 2 cents. I guess timing is everything.