b.rox

I guess I will listen to Kerry’s speech tonight. I haven’t really checked him out.
There are a number of things he could say to win my vote. If he denounces the war in Iraq and pledges to bring our troops home immediately, I’ll vote for him. If he denounces the Patriot Act [...]

At last, someone has acknowledged the iMovie “Save Frame As…” bug. I was beginning to think I was crazy, because this damn thing has been annoying me ever since iMovie 3 came out back in early 2003, and I could never find any mention of this bug, though surely it must have bewildered thousands [...]

As I was riding to work this morning, about to pass a big Ryder truck that was parked in the street, a motorist came up behind me and honked. Horns are ambiguous, but this one seemed to be saying, “Get out of my way.” I was pissed, but I braked and waved the [...]

Back in June, John Gruber tried something daring. He asked his readers for money to support his blog, Daring Fireball.
It’s a great blog, probably the best I’ve seen on the Mac OS. I might have thrown some cash his way just out of general principle. It’s that good. What really clinched [...]

Today I evicted a tenant.
She had been living in the shed behind our house for I don’t know how long; she took up residence on our bed about six months ago and has been there about 23 hours a day ever since. She wasn’t paying rent, but she was very affectionate, aggressively so, and [...]

I’ve been letting the Mac OS X Mail client decide what’s junk for the last seventeen months. As of this morning, it has identified 100,031 e-mail messages as junk and filed them away, sight unseen, in a designated junk folder. That’s 44,288 messages to my “private” rox.com e-mail address; the rest have accumulated [...]

Sweat is a good thing. I love to sweat. Lucky for me, because I’m doing a lot of it. It’s summer in New Orleans, and it is hot.
I just rode my bike in the midday heat to PJ & Andrea’s new house. It’s in Broadmoor. They closed the deal this [...]

I was unable to replace the faulty hose connecting the toilet tank to the water supply. Seems my shutoff valve has a flange coupling, odd for this application, and the hardware store doesn’t have a hose that could do the job. They recommended replacing the valve altogether. Ah, but that is [...]

Over the last few days, I’ve noticed a haze hanging in the air, especially on my morning ride to work. It’s remarkably thick. Yesterday morning, as I squinted from the Jeff Davis overpass at the shrouded skyscrapers beyond the Superdome, I said to myself, “Hazy enough for you?” But I thought it [...]

XY and I have wondered for a while about these plants growing in our courtyard. A neighbor lady brought another one over in a small pot this weekend, and she said she’d heard it called the Mother of Thousands.
Yup. A quick Internet search reveals it’s also known as the Mexican Hat Plant, the [...]

My boss came by after work today, and we tackled the toilet again. This time we junked the old floor flange. Turns out it was held to the floor with tacks! So we drilled holes in the concrete and bolted a shiny new flange into place. Then we installed a Fluidmaster [...]

I love Nathan’s pickled herring snacks. My favorite variety is the kind packed in white wine and onions. Straight from Canada, loaded with sodium and cholesterol. Mmmm. I eat ‘em right from the jar.
They’re also said to be a good hangover cure.

We bought a Kenmore Tumble Action Washer (which the Sears website calls a Kenmore White-on-white 3.1 cu. ft. Front Load Electric Washer w/Eco Care™ System!) last Tuesday. It was delivered Thursday, but I didn’t see it in action until yesterday.

Wow. I’m not one to wax on about appliances, but this thing is awesome. [...]

Donika, Crystal & Shontanay do a little computer work for Xy.

Nothing beats getting up early after four hours of sleep, still drunk from the night before, to fix a troublesome toilet. Except failing to fix it.
We were replacing the wax gasket that sits between the bowl and the floor flange (for the second time — long story) and in so doing we discovered that [...]

Thursday night means pub trivia at the Crown & Anchor. That can sometimes lead to Vaughn’s to see Kermit Ruffins, if I’m lucky.
Tonite I got lucky.
Kermit rocks. And I say this despite the fact that he never ventures into the rock idiom. He’s all about the jazz. Cool, sweet jazz — [...]

The shrook.com website has been down since July 4th and it’s really chapping my ass.
See, my favorite news aggregator, Shrook, uses shrook.com for distributed checking of all the sites I read. Distibuted checking is cool; it appeals to my notions of a good cyber-ecology.
Sure, I could run Shrook without using shrook.com, but that seems [...]

In an old house like ours, there’s always some work to be done. But in the last couple of weeks, the number of projects demanding attention has multiplied dramatically. Even keeping an up-to-date to-do list is challenging.

Here’s a few things that have recently been accomplished:

We had a plumber replace leaky drainage pipes from [...]

Have you checked the ROX website lately? For heaven’s sake, why not? I’m adding lots of content; old stuff, mostly. It brings back memories.

A few nights ago, XY & I walked past Jackson Square with our friend David Bryan after coffee and beignets.
The park is locked at night, but through the bars we’ve often observed cats — lots of cats — cavorting or merely lolling about. I’ve counted as many as twenty cats within spitting distance of [...]