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Charles L. Black on Louis Armstrong

4 Jan

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I am in the middle of watching Ken Burns’ awesome Jazz DVD Set.  I never realized the importance of Louise Armstrong had in our music and culture:

Charlie Black, a freshman from University of Texas, happened to go see Louis Armstrong at a club in 1931.  He knew nothing of jazz and never heard of Louis Armstrong.

“He played mostly w/ his eyes closed.  Letting flow from that inner space of music things that had never existed.


He was the first genius I’d ever seen. It is impossible to underestimate the significance of a 16 year old southern boy seeing genius for the first time in a black person.

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The Best Roasted Chicken Recipe

14 Nov

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This chicken recipe consists of making a “compound butter” consisting of garlic, spices and butter and sticking it under the chicken skin while it cooks.

I have made this a half dozen times and each time people are completely blown away on how good it is.

The only problem I keep running into having to watch the video each time to figure out the recipe because for some reason, the I’m Cooked website is broken and won’t email it to me.

Here is the recipe followed by the video where I learned about it:

  • 1/2 Stick Butter

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Save Money - Get DSL Without a Phone Line

12 Nov

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Here is a great tip that could save you over $500 a year:  You no longer need to keep a home phone just for internet access.

Costs and Savings

Historically, DSL or “Digital Subscriber Line” worked over your home phone line, which forced us to have to pay for basic phone service in order to get DSL.

Not only is this no longer true, but you would be astounded how much money you could save by eliminating the phone cost.

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Stevie Wonder’s Election Night Toast

5 Nov

+ 1

Recounting the story of seeing Stevie Wonder at Mr. Chow’s in Beverly Hills on election night, Taylor Swift told this story to Ryan Seacrest this morning on his radio show:

“…Half way through the meal, they dim all the music in the restaurant and it was completely silent and one of the waiters said:

“Hey, somebody wants to make a toast.”

And Stevie Wonder stood up.

I will never forget this for as long as I live, and I was just like, ‘Remember his words, remember his words…’

He stood up and said:

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A Parent Must Have: Flip Video Camcorder

12 May

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Every parent goes through a video phase where they want to document their kids life. Most realize pretty fast that their $1,000 HD video camera purchase was a waste since:

  1. It’s a pain carrying around the video camera
  2. Extemporanous moments don’t happen because to catch it you would be forced to shoot ALL the time.
  3. No one wants to watch two hours of videos
  4. Editing two hours of video takes a LONG time

So after the first video session, the video camera is forever left in the box.  And if it is ever used, the video it produces just sits on a disc never to be edited.

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Ebay’s Paypal Shipping Is Raping You

8 May

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I just sold an old video camera on ebay for $203. The buyer paid via paypal, and normally my next step is to go into paypal to print the shipping information.

This time instead of presenting me with the buyers shipping information, Paypal prompted me to try to their new UPS Shipping solution.  Paypal said they had worked out a special deal for their users, so I decided to try it.

For my 5 lb, 10” x 10” x 8” box, Paypal told me it would cost $21.40.  I paid it, thinking I would just verify how much it should cost at the shipping place down the street.

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How to Eat in the Apple Store

6 May

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I just happened to look and see Phoenix doing this out of the corner of my eye.  It turns out he was doing this each time I gave him another cheesy.

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Google Reader Broken In Firefox

6 May

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Google unveiled their new “Notes” feature yesterday, and ever since I can’t use it in Firefox 2 (even Safe Mode).

This is what I see:

Google Reader

The errors below it are:

in file 1104796821-en-scr… (line 205)
missing } after function body
var Zs=”entry-via-link”;Qs.prototype.gC=function(a,b){if(!a||a.length==0)return;…

in file reading-list (line 111)
_FR_scrollMain is not defined
var userId = “GR-” + parseInt(_USER_ID, 10).toString(16);

Now playing: Nine Inch Nails - Letting You

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Twittering Samantha’s Delivery

18 Apr

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In order to keep everyone updated as often as they want to be informed, I am twittering the pregnancy from this stage forward.

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Nasty IIS/ASP Querystring Cookie Case Bug

29 Feb

+ 1

I just stumbled on a nasty, nasty ASP bug that took about 7 years for me to see.

The problem happens when using cookies and querystrings with the same name. A page on the site reads in a variable from the querystring and sets a cookie with the same name to its value, e.g.:

strSrc = Request.QueryString(”A”)
Response.Cookies(”A”) = strSource
Response.Cookies(”A”).Expires = Now + (2 * 30)

However, if the variable name in the query string is different from the capitalization of the cookie name (e.g page.asp?a=xxx) then a new cookie gets set with the name matching the captialization of the
QueryString variable.

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