\jeff{krimmel}

Received My Check from Blingo

Ariele and I made a trip through parts of the Northeast the first two weeks in September. On one of those nights at Ariele’s parents’ place, I was playing around on my laptop, watching the Red Sox play the Toronto Blue Jays. I was using Blingo to search for something, as I always do, and all of a sudden…a screen came up and said I won $1500 cash!

Pretty cool, huh? The next day Blingo had emailed me two forms I needed to fill out and mail back to them. One was an eligibility form, and the other was an IRS form. When we got back from our trip, I printed those forms out and sent them back in. I probably actually mailed them a week or so after we got back from the trip. Well, yesterday, I checked the mail and, sure enough, I had a $1500 check from Blingo. The delay from when I mailed the forms to when I received the check was approximately six weeks.

I wanted to wait to write this post until I actually had the check in my hands, because I wanted to make sure it was for real. Sure, I have won a couple of $10 iTunes gift certificates and a $50 Amazon gift certificate previously, and I was able to redeem all of those without any hint of a problem, but $1500 cash is quite a bit different than one of those gift certificates.

Blingo works by awarding prizes at random times throughout the day. The first person to submit a search via Blingo after one of these random times wins a prize. Most prizes are gift certificates to iTunes or Amazon. Some are Fandango movie tickets. But they have even bigger prizes, like the cash prizes and vacations and the like. Supposedly if you join as someone’s friend, you are more likely to win prizes. I originally joined as the friend of a guy who writes a very nice beer, wine, and cocktail blog. While you get an increased chance to win, your friend gets something even cooler: the same prizes you win. So, when I won $1500 cash, the guy who writes the cocktail blog also won $1500 cash. He has won everything I have. That’s the way the system works. Kind of cool, huh?

That’s my pitch for you to join Blingo as my friend. It’s a piece of cake to do, and you’ll get paid, sooner or later, to search the web like you always do. I have had zero complaints about the system, and I’m $1500 richer because of it. Pretty sweet deal. You can join as my friend by using the link below.

Posted in Musings | 9 Comments »

Some OS X X11 Tips

I have been setting up this new iMac for the past week or so, trying to get all the little things squared away just the way I like them. It’s taken a bit of effort given that I am moving from a Linux system (Fedora Core 4) to OS X, and I’m trying to get Apple’s X11 installation to do the kinds of things I’m used to in Linux. So far, so good.

I installed MacPorts immediately after installing X11 from Apple. MacPorts lets me install a whole slew of things, the most important of which is my window manager of choice, IceWM. A quick sudo port install icewm gets me up and running on that front. One of the little things I like about IceWM is that it allows me to tile my xterm windows as they open. They don’t sit on top of each other, and they don’t open up at random positions on the screen. They open in an orderly fashion, one next to the other, and then below each other. A quick edit of my ~/.icewm/keys file allows me to open new terminals with the click of two buttons, Cmd T:

key "Meta+t"                    xterm -ls -geometry 120x30

Great. Now, I want to change both the prompt and the title of these xterm windows. Ideally, I would like the title of the xterm windows to change dynamically. I was fortunate to stumble across this bit of code on the web, which I placed in my ~/.bashrc file:

term_directory_update ()
{
    if [[ ! "$OLDPWD" = "$PWD" ]]; then
        echo -en  "\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME%%.*}:${PWD/$HOME/~}\007";
    fi
}

if [[ $TERM = 'xterm' || $TERM = 'xterm-color' || $TERM = 'linux' ]]; then
#   export PS1="\[\e[33;1m\][\[\e[31;1m\]\h:\W\[\e[33;1m\]]>\[\e[0m\] "
   export PS1="[\u \W]\$ "
fi
if [[ $TERM = 'xterm' || $TERM = 'xterm-color' ]]; then
   export PROMPT_COMMAND=term_directory_update
fi
#
if [ $TERM = 'dumb' ]; then
  export PS1="dumb:"
  return 0
fi

Another thing I did to allow myself to SSH to our computational cluster without a password is install SSHLogin for OS X. It appears as though the easiest way to find it is to search Google for sshlogin os x. When I initially log in to OS X, I am prompted for the passphrase for my private SSH key. After I enter it this one time, every xterm I open recognizes it, and I get the same behavior I would get from ssh-add in Linux. As best as I could tell, there was not a straight forward way to make all xterm windows in Apple’s version of X11 recognize ssh-add the way it is recognized in Linux. But SSHLogin fixed that for me very easily.

Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux | No Comments »

Three Bottles of Wine and a Pack of Condoms

I made a quick trip to the grocery store last night. Only two registers were open, and the lines were five or six people deep at each. I was in line at the express register, and I was standing behind a woman, about my age, who was buying three bottles of red wine and a 24-pack of Trojan condoms. Wow. It’s pretty clear where her evening was going. I mean, can you think of a grocery basket that would give you a better idea of what was in a person’s immediate future than that? Maybe a dude with a jar of vaseline and a gentleman’s magazine? Maybe.

So the woman gets to the front of the line, and the checker, also a grown woman, asks this lady if she’s planning on having any trick-or-treaters come by tonight. The lady in line said no, she lives in a condo, and they’ve never had kids stop by. A small conversation ensues, and this lady says actually she’s on her way to a Halloween party a bunch of her friends are throwing.

And I immediately think, “Holy sh*t, I’m in the middle of a porno shoot.” It felt like if I turned around and looked, I’d find a couple of sleazy looking dudes with handheld cameras circling around us. It actually felt like it was the opening scene of the porno, and after the lady in line mentions she’s going to the party, the scene white-washes away, and we transition to the part where the party is just getting interesting.

So, if you see me in the opening scene of a soon-to-be-released porno, that’s why. If you see me in the main scene of a soon-to-be-released porno…you’re welcome.

Posted in Musings | 1 Comment »

Rockets and Spurs Are on a Collision Course

Last night was the opening night of the 2007-2008 NBA season. My Houston Rockets defeated the Los Angeles Lakers 95-93, and the San Antonio Spurs beat the Portland Trailblazers 106-97. You know what this means, don’t you? Both the Rockets and the Spurs are on pace to go 82-0 and eventually meet in the Western Conference Finals. It’s only a matter of time, now.

I’m waiting to see which team is going to be the biggest disappointment this season. Maybe I’m a pessimistic person in this regard, but I get a bigger kick out of seeing who flops than what surprise teams comes form nowhere to make the playoffs. Who’s poised for a flop? The Mavericks, I think. Maybe flop is too strong a word in this case, but I think the Mavs will under-perform in the sense that the won’t be a top three seed in the playoffs. I see the Spurs, Suns, and Jazz being one, two, three in some order come playoff time.

And what about the East? Who knows? Who cares, really? I’m pretty confident the Cavaliers won’t be back in the NBA Finals this year, but I have no idea who will be. I’ll go with the chic pick and say New Jersey. But it won’t matter, because whoever makes it out of the 82-0 Rockets versus 82-0 Spurs Western Conference Finals will waltz to the championship.

Posted in Pro Basketball | No Comments »

Transitioned to the new server

It looks like I have transitioned more or less successfully to the new server, which is a brand new iMac. I am surprised how relatively painless the transition was. The old server just died a horrible death, one that would not allow the machine to boot. Fortunately I had made backups of almost all my posts, so I didn’t end up losing too much.

I lost my 2007 World Series prediction post, where I predicted Red Sox in five. They won in four, but it was the first time I correctly predicted the winner in three years, so I was happy about that. I also lost a Chuck Norris post, which is a shame, but I have almost everything, if not everything, left. So, onward and upward, as they save.

Posted in Meta | 4 Comments »

Why Fire Joe Torre?

I’m content that I’ll never get to the bottom of the morass of issues surrounding Joe Torre’s situation with the Yankees. But I can’t help thinking, why fire Joe Torre?

What’s the one, primary job a manager has? To put his players in the best possible position to succeed. Don’t get me wrong, the manager has other responsibilities, but the primary one is to help his players succeed. How has Joe Torre not put his players in optimal positions? Has he misused his pitching staff? Was his batting order imperfect? What game management miscues did he make?

I don’t get it. He makes all the right moves. He’s a calming influence on the team with the most chaotic off-field situation in baseball year in and year out. The biggest free agents available say his departure makes them less likely to play for the Yankees.

I certainly understand it’s frustrating to lose in the first round of the playoffs in three consecutive years. I also appreciate it’s frustrating to have gone seven years without a World Series. But is in-game management the culprit here? What about a flawed roster? What about players who are repeatedly put in game-changing situations and repeatedly fail to produce? How is that Joe Torre’s fault?

I have a strong dislike for the Yankees, so I don’t really care what they do. But Joe Torre seems like a very decent and respectful man, and it’s a shame that a flawed Yankees organization is making him out to be the scapegoat when I just don’t think it’s his doing.

Posted in Pro Baseball | 1 Comment »