This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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Podcast Fix Coming

Looks like something got horked on the first section(s) of the podcast this week after my original editing. It will be fixed in a few minutes. If you haven’t downloaded yet, hold off a bit. If you have, wait until I post again that all is fixed then force a redownload.

November 2004 Top Ten!

It has once again been a long time since I did one of these, so for background anybody new can check out the post I did last time. In any case, yesterday I finally put out the results of another Email Top Ten and notified the winners. Today I post on the blog. Click through on the link below for full results:

November 2004

When I put out the October 2004 list back in March of 2007, I said that I would try to catch up by counting subsequent months at a rate of at least one month a month… well, given that it is now 21 months later, and I am only now putting out the results for November 2004, I obviously failed utterly at that. I have no real excuse either, as October 2004 was the last month effected directly by the great email disaster of 2004. November 2004 was intact and easily counted by the normal means… as are all months since then.

The timeliness and relevance of this exercise is now more than questionable, and the original purpose of the top ten… namely as a mechanism to encourage friends to keep in touch by sending email, has been eroded quite a bit by the fact that these updates are now more than four years behind real time. But never the less, being stubborn as I am, I will persist. And once again I will say that I will attempt to do these counts at a pace fast enough to eventually catch up with real time. But sometimes life gets in the way.

As I said, I will try not to wait quite as long before doing the next one. I have to do more than one a month in order to eventually catch up.

A Change on the S&P

I have heard through the grapevine, although I have not confirmed for myself, that my old employer, Merrill Lynch, which will soon cease to exist as an independent entity, is being replaced on the S&P 100 by my current employer. Seems somewhat appropriate. At least for me.

Late Stuff

OK, out of the things I ordered that were supposed to be here the 24th at the latest there are still three presents for Brandy, 2 presents for Amy, 1 present for Roscoe and one non-present package for Brandy that are not here. Almost every single one of the above is sitting at the local distribution centers for the various shipping companies and have been for several days. They just haven’t delivered because of the White Christmas thing that is going on here. Grrrr….

Brandy says a number of things she was expecting have not yet arrived either.

Oh well, just means Christmas lasts longer I guess.

It is *still* snowing, so I’m not holding out hope for these things arriving Friday.

Maybe Monday.

Merry Giant Tomato Day!

And Still It Snows

It was supposed to change to rain at some point today. It didn’t. At least not here. It is still snowing big white fluffy flakes.

Meanwhile, a bunch of packages, from more than one vendor, that were all supposed to be here today at the latest, are still not here. Most of them appear to be within 10 miles of here in the hands of the delivery companies. But they are not here.

Some of them even say things like “delayed due to natural disaster” on the tracking information.

Whatever, just bring the damn presents.

Still Snowing

Storm Effects

Well, it looks like the storm knocked out our DirecTV. Probably just enough accumulation of ice and snow on the dish to block the signal rather than the dish actally being knocked out of whack. We’ll see if it comes back on its own when things start melting, or if someone has to get on the roof to fix it. (Brandy says I am not allowed to be the one to go on the roof, something about falling.)

Also, just checked my work email and got word that they are saying to only come in if you absolutely have to and can do so safely. So I’ll be working from home yet again today. Given that the current forecast only shows a one day break or so before it starts getting snowy again (with a nice dash of freezing rain!) I wonder if we’ll even manage to squeeze in a normal work day this week at all.

I like the working from home thing in moderation, but I think I’m almost ready to be back in the office now. :-)

Wind Fizzle

We didn’t end up getting any significant wind. No power loss. No trees smashing the roof open. Nothing exciting. We did get a couple more inches of snow, and indeed it is still snowing. Nothing disastrous though.

Of course, everything is still completely shut down and paralyzed. Our street has yet to see anything resembling a plow or a salt truck, even though the first snow was a week ago now. Basically they are taking care of the highways and other major streets, but residential streets probably just have to wait for things to melt on their own.

Storm a Comin’

We’re supposed to get another storm tonight. For our particular area the last forecast I saw said that most of the snow will be a little east or a little west of us, but we are supposed to get a LOT of wind. Sustained Tropical Storm force winds, gusts of Hurricane force winds. Trees are expected to fall. Power outages are expected all over the place. The wind hasn’t really started yet, but is due soon. We shall see how that goes.

We stocked up on a few basic supplies yesterday just in case.