Dave Mancuso dot Com

Goodle, Good News.

Check out the song list of the Mars Rover mission.

I never did post any pictures from when we went to the PA Farm Show last month. The Farm Show is held every year in the appropriately named Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg, PA. We spent six hours there this week, until everyone but my wife was exhausted (she was raised on a farm, so she used to come here when she was a kid with steer for competition and stay for several days, even overnight). We saw steer, cows, horses, ducks, pigs, you name it–even baby chicks hatching in a huge incubator.

Here are my own chicks at the show:

When I posted the last Microbus pic, some people thought that it was the new design. Actually, no one has a picture of the new design that I know of. Here’s one artist’s concept–I hope the new one is closer to this than the original concept:

I wish I could remember the original author for attribution, but I can no longer find his site on the net.

Intel has spent over two billion dollars on a good concept that failed in reality. The Itanium chip seems doomed as a successor to the Pentium family. It really made things easy for AMD–the rival chipmaker took the time to effect a much-needed revamp. Capitalistic competition is great, isn’t it?

I got a little folded-together post card in the mail today that said “IMPORTANT: SETTLEMENT MATERIALS ENCLOSED.” So I opened it up and it’s a class action lawsuit check for $13.86! It was for music CD price gouging?

I searched my memory and remembered that I’d put my name in at a website waaay back a year or two ago to be part of the lawsuit. It was the only Internet rumor I’d ever heard that I determined was true.

And so it was. I’ll think I’ll buy some more songs with it–or maybe the Donnie Darko soundtrack. Or something.

Cool.

Sorry for the lack of updates–I recommitted to Atkins (and started losing weight almost immediately), and one of the temporary side effects for me is that I get sleepy earlier. So I’ve been catching up on sleep, which is good since I usually get only 5 hours or so a night.

It could also be my body telling me I’ve got to take better care of myself–things at work have been highly stressful since last fall (the workload increased dramatically but no extra help came in), and I developed “extra heartbeats” from it. Apparently the technical term is extra bigeminy and trigeminy. Luckily, the cardiologist said that my EKG shows that I did not have a heart attack. So he says that this arrhythmia pattern is benign. So it doesn’t hurt me for the time being, but it can bug the heck out of me (better than some–he said some people feel pain with this).

So he gave me some Toprol-XL and told me to take a half a pill a day if the heartbeats bother me. But when I looked at the Internet about Toprol, the side effects creeped me out. Don’t stop taking it suddenly or you could have a heart attack?! I guess that’s why he prescribed such a small dose. I’ve had to take it three times in the last week, but that’s all. I’m hoping that losing weight, getting back in shape, and lessening stress will remove the condition without the medicine. The stress is the biggest thing according to the doctor, but all three need work. It’s funny to note that since I re-studied the Atkins book and went back on Induction, I’ve felt dramatically better (and have eaten more salad this week than in the last month).

So Bill, you still want to become a tech? (grin)

From Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire: US Secretary of Education Rod Paige called the National Education Association a “terrorist organization.”

He’s just feeding the fire for the “Get Bush out at any cost” Democrats.

I wish I could remember where I read this, but one of the news sites I check regularly stated that Kerry’s campaign was virtually broke, and that Kerry had already mortaged his house to keep things going. If so, this may make the next few primaries with Edwards interesting, especially if Dean throws his support to Edwards.

All the Republicans out there can breathe a collective “whatever” at this news. They’re just waiting for the real campaign to begin…

An American icon has passed. We share a fondness for Bat Boy at the office, for reasons which are offbeat and inexplicable here.