A Dave Novak Blog Exclusive

The Lovely Miss Amy Bien sent me an email asking if I could pass on some information to all of you.

Amy will be chairing a huge fundraiser for the Junior League of Stamford-Norwalk in November. It's the 27th annual Winterfair holiday gift market and gala. The gift market will be at the brand new DoubleTree Hotel in Norwalk (the one next to Costco) from Nov. 4th-6th and the gala is at the Stamford Yacht Club on November 5th. Connecticut Congressman Christopher Shays will be the Honorary Chair for the gala. For more information on the Junior League of Stamford-Norwalk, you can go to www.JLSN.org.

Miss Bien would also like you to know about the Fall Antiques Show for the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum in Norwalk. It's the weekend before Winterfair (Oct. 28th-30th) and she'll be chairing the preview gala on the 28th. Amy says that there will be many reputable exhibitors at the mansion as well as some special tours and lectures throughout the weekend. The website for the Mansion (www.lockwoodmathewsmansion.org) has all kinds of info on the show and (Amy thinks) an article that she wrote for the Junior League newsletter will be posted on the website soon.

Just a reminder, in addition to being a friend, Amy Bien is an Allstate insurance agent and she comes highly recommended. Should you have any insurance needs, you should visit her website.

Remembering Mom

It's hard to believe my Mother, Dale Ellen Barber, passed away over two years ago. She was very smart and funny and a lovely person to most who knew her. God forbid you ever disagreed with her though as she would debate you until you the end of time. After graduating Magna Cum Laude from Central Connecticut State College, she went on to become a computer programmer for Travelers Insurance Co. back when few common consumers knew what a computer was. She was a hard worker and did a fine job raising me as a single parent when my parents divorced when I was 5. My Mother was great and I miss her very much.

In 1986, Mom was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. She handled the disease very well up until her body got the better of her in 2003. I always tell people that I never wish death on anyone but I know that when the time came, my Mother was ready to go. I hope that wherever she is that things are going well for her and that she still thinks highly of me.

Were she alive, my Mother would have turned 61 today. Happy Birthday Mom. I still love you and I still think of you often.

Casualties Of War

Some of you may remember a while back in one of my posts that I got a little political with the whole war thing and what not. I think the post was called A Nation At War. One of the things I was thinking about doing was reporting on all the deaths that happened on a daily basis. It turns out that somebody already thought of that. To find out who we've lost in the war and how, click here.

I've Got A Hair Ache

So check this out. My beautiful fiance Krisine (NOT pictured here) was watching Martha Stewart (also not pictured here) and the guest was talking about how redheaded people require an additional 20% anesthesia. What the hell is that about? Upon hearing this, I immediately did some google research and it turns out to be scientifically sound. Even more scary was learning that it turns out noone really knows 100% how anesthesia works. Again...wassup with that?

The reason that this is relevant to me is that not only do I have red hair, but also that every time I go to the dentist lately, the Doctor has a habbit of saying, "I don't understand why that's hurting you so much." Tomorrow, when I go to get the rest of my filling's done, I will be sure to give the good doctor this little piece of info. For a more intelligent explanation of this issue, you can click here.

OH.....and I guess there's one other little thing. If you would like to see the website where I found this lovely redhead via a google image search AND your over the age of 18 AND your parent(s) aren't going to kick my ass because you saw this very lovely lady naked then you may click....here.

Sometimes I Wish I Lived In Jersey

Check this out. A music store chain in New Jersey that's tired of losing revenue to the internet has created a plan so that they can make a few bucks and you can get better quality music on your computer that doesn't have digital rights management(DRM). You go to Scotti's. Buy a cd. Go home and rip the cd at whatever quality you want. Then you return the cd within like a week or something and they give you up to 70% of your money back. As you probably know, I LOVE the iTunes music store but this plan kicks iTunes ass. Hopefully, some Connecticut stores will pick up on this idea.

Bloggers Influence The Failure of The Presidency

Thanks to last weeks TWIT, I've now been made aware of the "Google Bomb". It's quite an interesting idea really. This is where bloggers use their collective power to mess with the worlds biggest search engine.

Go ahead and google the words "miserable failure". I'll give you a sec....

Pretty funny isn't it? For those of you who didn't take the time, you would have seen that the first link Google returned was a link to President George W. Bush's profile on the White House webpage. Now I'm sure some of you would agree that this happened because it's his natural karma. That however was not the case. Apparently, a whole bunch of bloggers got together and put the words "miserable failure" on their respective blogs and then linked those words to that page. Since google's web crawler's take links into account, you have a somewhat amusing google bomb.

I'm pretty sure I got all that right but if I missed something, I'm sure Tim can fill in the blanks. Gotta go to work. L8r.

Dave

It's 7am. Do you know where your workout mix is?

Yesterday I went back to work so I decided to organize my life a little better so that I go thru the day in a more schedulelike fashion. That includes getting up early in the morning and doing a little excersizing. Here's this mornings 30 minute workout tunes.


Gold Digger - Kanye West ft. Jamie Foxx
Beverly Hills - Weezer
This Is How A Heart Breaks - Rob Thomas
Get It Poppin' - Fat Joe ft. Nelly
Let's Get It Started - Black Eyed Peas
You Could Be Mind - Guns N Roses
Dirrty - Christina Aguilera ft Redman (Note for my older crowd: Dirrty is not mispelled.)
Live Like You Were Dying - Tim Mcgraw

Just maybe there will be another list tomorrow.

My Critics Have Spoken

So I got a couple responses from Rob and my Ant Sara on the audio blogging thing and it was not met with rave reviews. They did bring up some good points so I'll have to decide how to approach blogging in the future.

One point was that reading a blog is something someone can do while they're doing something else. Another point was that my Ant Sara can read my blog faster than I can say it. That may be true but in the grande scheme of things, it takes me at less than a quarter of the time to speak my blog than it does to write it. (For instance, just now, I had to go back and change "right" to "write".)

I think what I've learned for now is that I'll approach my blogging on a day by day basis. I don't necessarily think the audioblogging makes my blog better but it certainly is easier. A number of times people have gotten on me that I haven't updated my site for awhile. That usually happens when I get hung up on the writing and I don't get around do blogging because it overwhelmes me. On the other hand, it's no biggy just to put on a headset and talk for like 15 minutes and then move on. That's due in part to the fact that while I can be particular about my writing, I have no problem with my babbling.

In a perfect world, I would write out the blog and then perform the audio version instead of rambling off the cuff. That, of course, would add more time to the process and that's the opposite of what I'm trying to do. More than likely, I will write when I feel I have the time and I will audioblog it when I'm pressed for time. We'll see how that goes.

In other news, I may be moving this site in the future. As I've told you before, I have a .mac account (http://homepage.mac.com/tvguydave) and the people at Apple Computers have been nice enough to bump my webspace to a gig. They split it evenly between email and your website, but I just happened to discover the other day how to adjust it so only 40 meg is going to my email and the rest goes to my .mac website.

I also learned about a cool piece of software from the This Week In Tech podcast called Rapid Weaver that I may use to revise my .mac website. When and if I do this, I will let you know here that I've moved.

One last thing b4 I go. I'm sorry to see the lilpuppy blog go. It was one of the greatest reads of all time. I will miss her and her stories very much.

Oh...ok...One more last thing. I'm currently listening to the new Bon Jovi album that came out today called Have A Nice Day. I'm digging it.

There ya go. Talk 2 u l8r.
Dave

Audioblogging Day 2

I threw together another audioblog today. Please let me know if you like this format or if I should go back to writing. Click Here to here me talk.

Thanx Much.
Dave

P.S. My Ant Sara posted some good comments in my last blog entry that I will take into consideration. FYI, this audio entry is 10 minutes and 28 seconds long.

Audioblogging

Hay Everyone,

Decided to do a little test to see if I could make blogging a little easier for me while still being an entertaining entity for you. I used my computer to record myself talking for fifteen minutes and hopefully, you should be able to click on something and here me talking. Let me know what you think about this approach to blogging and if it's something you don't mind me doing. I think in the long run, it will be easier for me to do these "little" recordings. Click Here to listen to my first audioblog entry.

Talk 2 u l8r
Dave

Back To Life. Back To Reality.

It's a little strange coming back from vacation. There was a movie that starred Bruce Willis & Michelle Pfeiffer called The Story Of Us about a married couple having troubles. At one point, the two go off on vacation and have a marvelous time and it looks like things are going great and then they come back and the troubles start all over again. The movie pretty much sucked but it did teach me that if you subscribe to a newspaper and you go away on vacation, it's best to cancel the paper for the week.

But I digress. The reason the movie came to mind was that when we can back on Monday, things seemed to be a bit of a pain in the ass. Getting our luggage back was a bit of a pain. So was flagging down our limo. The limo didn't have any cold beverages so I had to settle for a warm whiskey and diet coke. Then, I come to find out the cleaning people decided not to show because of Labor Day and they opted not to make the day up so our place wasn't nice and tidy. The cleaning people have become a bit annoying in the last few months and missing the last Monday while we were away was what I think to be the final straw. I think I'm going to let them go.

Yesterday was a bit annoying as well. I had planned to have a buffer day of relaxation before I did much of anything. I was very excited that Season 1 of the TV Show Lost came out on DVD while we were away. Neither Kristine or myself had watched the season in it's initial run but we were watching the summer reruns. The problem is that ABC started running reruns at other times besides the time slot they told us the show would be on. We missed three episodes before we realized there was information in the "previously on Lost" portion of the show that we had not seen. I tried going the bit torrent route but it's time consuming and there's a huge difference between watching a hi def show on a 60" tv and watching it on a 17" laptop. By the way, for those of you who don't know, bit torrent is a file sharing thing people use to download tv shows, movies and other files of large size.

So anyway, my plan yesterday was to wake up whenever, drive to Best Buy to buy the Lost dvds and the new Stones cd and to spend the rest of the day watching Lost on the couch. When I proposed that plan to Kristine, she had one "minor" addition. She was wondering if while I was out if I wouldn't mind picking up some groceries. Let's just say that when I said yes to that question, it was the last time I'll make that mistake again.

Adding insult to injury, since yesterday was supposed to be a day of relaxation, I opted to go the day medication free. For those of you that don't know, I have ADD or Attention Deficate Disorder. I can go without medication as I did for over 20 years of my life, but if I need motivation or need to make decisions, I'm much more comfortable doing so when I'm on Ritalin. Sending me off to the grocery store with a long list of items when I'm not medicated is insanity at it's highest.

That nightmare ended when I got home around 2. I cleaned myself up, put on the pajama bottoms that my cousin Len got me a couple of Xmas's ago and Kristine and I caught up on our Lost episodes. Then we watched Big Brother 6 and the season premiere of House which featured a fantastic guest performance by LL Cool J.

Now, Kristine and I are on the couch watching more Lost. Everytime I say just one more episode and then the end of the show is crazy and we have to watch the next one. It remains to be seen if we will leave the couch this afternoon. We will be leaving it this evening though. Kristine is thanking me for the shopping insanity I endured by accompanying me this evening to The Aristocrats at the 2nd run theatre down the street.

One last thing before I go. I have not forgotten about telling you about my vacation. It's just going to take some time. I mean, look at how much I filled up here and I didn't think I had that much to say. I can tell you that it was the best time I've ever had and I will remember it always.

Until next time.
Dave

We're Back!!!

Just wanted to let everyone know that Kristine and I are back from Jamaica. What a trip. Maybe I'll tell you about it sometime. Talk to you soon.

Dave

Goodbye, Loose Ends, and Rob's Blog

Hay Everyone,

I have to wake up at some rediculous hour tomorrow morning to catch a car that will take us to JFK so we can go to Jamaica. I have decided not to post to the blog during my vacation as I'm going to try and live computer free for the week. Well, maybe 90% computer free. I can't just give it up completely. So I wanted to give you one last post before I go to say farewell. This is that post.

Before I go, I have a couple things I wanted to let you know. The first is regarding the Green Day show. As I told you, it was awesome. I have a huge blog entry regarding Green Day that exists solely in my head at the moment. I may or may not get to it depending on how the scope of the story overwhelmes me. If you never see the story here....well...then I didn't do it. Still, great show. Go see Green Day.

A few entries back, I mentioned this great deal Apple was doing with their Mini computers where you could try them free for a month. Well, the deal didn't last a day. Apple cancelled their idea on the first day and didn't give a reason for doing so. I guess the idea was just too good to be true.

Last but not least, my Godbrother Rob has gotten into the ring with W. In case you haven't heard, the very popular rapper Kanye(pronounced Con Yay) West spoke out against Bush on an NBC telethon that was raising money for the Katrina victims. He basicly said that Bush doesn't like black people. Rob wrote about it and now there's conversation aplenty on his blog. Go check it out.

Must go. So much to do. Talk to you guys l8r.
Dave

GREEN DAY ROCKS!!!

Just got home from the Green Day show about 15 minutes ago. I'm sure I'll have more to say about it later, but it was one of the best concerts I've ever seen. If you have the slightest interest in Green Day or have ever been a fan, I highly suggest you get your tickets to their concert right now as it will be by far the greatest show you see this year.

Green Day Pre Show

Hay everyone. Chilling out here in Long Island reading up on some Green Day stuff before we leave for the concert at Giants Stadium. I've learned a couple of interesting facts. For one, apparantely, a "green day" is a day spending doing nothing more than smoking a lot of weed.

Second, it turns out that Ernie from Sesame Street used to be on the back of the Dookie album until Greed Day was forced to remove it. It seems that more than a few parents bought the album for their young kids because when they saw Ernie and thought Dookie was a Sesame Street album. Needless to say, it didn't take long for the Mothers to find out they were wrong. Threated with lawsuits, Green Day took Ernie off the back cover.

I'm posting the picture here because it took me what felt like forever to find it. You'd think something cool like this would be easily accessible. I finally found it on a UK website selling the cd.