Nerd Post (RIP Veronica Mars)

Now that Veronica Mars has officially ended its oh-so-brief run, I'm going to have to find some other equally superficial topic to rant/rave about. I'm not sure what it will be yet, but here's a fun nerd post for now (well, it's not really that nerdy -- I won't name names, but I've read some REALLY nerdy posts, and this doesn't come close).
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My new job requires me to use Windows XP. For the 3+ years before that, I had been using Linux for my work environment. It hasn't been a huge deal to switch (more point-and-clicking, less typing), but the main thing that I had gotten used to was the "virtual" desktops in Linux. Basically, you could have several different backgrounds and taskbars which made it easy to separate programs that had nothing to do with each other (email/chat on desktop #1, documents on desktop #2, source code on desktop #3).

Well, after searching for a bit online, I found out that Microsoft has developed what they call "PowerToys," and one of them is a "virtual desktop manager." It's not quite the same as the built-in Linux feature (the process to move a program to a different desktop is a little more complicated), but it's a lot better than just having one desktop. Now I have 4 "desktops" and 2 monitors at work.

Check it out: Microsoft's PowerToys
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They removed the mouseover in Gmail that revealed the sender's email address (or even displayed their picture if they set one) without opening the message. The feature appeared one day without notice and now it's disappeared just as quickly. Normally, Google makes a big announcement or at least describes the new feature somewhere, but I never saw anything about this one. I've also never seen them remove a feature from any of their products (especially without warning).

I hope they bring it back.

Good news, bad news, lunch

Me: You could be a trophy wife for some people.
Female friend #1: For some people?!? Could I be a trophy wife for you?
Me: Well... I dunno about that.
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First the good news:

Paris' sentence cut in half!

"the Sheriff has agreed to reduce the amount of time she'll have to serve to 23 days. The Sheriff has also agreed to put her in a celebrity cell, away from the general population."

Now the bad news:

Veronica Mars canceled!

I can't believe it. It was the only good show left on television. Now what am I going to watch?

As for lunch, we had this terrible waitress who couldn't get our orders right, forgot our drinks, and was overall very absent-minded. She was pretty hot though, and I felt sorry for her since she had to manage 10 tables on her own, so I gave her a big tip.

Female bathroom attendants?

You know how they have bathroom attendants in some bars/clubs?

Well, I think it'd be awesome if they had female bathroom attendants in the men's restroom.

You might think that'd be kinda creepy, but I honestly think they'd get more tips than the guys currently do. Especially if they're attractive and follow the same dress code as the waitresses/bartenders.
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Happy hour tonight was pretty eh (as usual). We won another VIP party at the same place as my birthday (which meant cheaper drinks and free appetizers). It was nice weather tonight, so they put us on the porch and instead of having to fight for table space, we got a huge area for the entire night. We ended up needing it though since we had about 13-14 people total.

Overall, there were fewer people than my birthday party, but it was still a good turnout and great to see everyone again.

Race for the Cure

On a more serious note, I am participating in the Race for the Cure this year to raise money for breast cancer research and awareness.

If you would like to make a donation, please visit my page at:

http://race.komennorthtexas.org/site/TR?pg=personal&fr_id=1010&px=1089226

Gwen concert

I went to my second Gwen Stefani concert last night. The first one was back in 2005 (I'm sure there's a post about it somewhere). You're probably thinking it's unusual for a guy to like Gwen and to actually pay the money to go to a concert, and you're right!

The ratio was about 4-1 girls-to-guys. Of the guys who were there, they were either dragged there by their significant other or were gay. And then there was me.

There's certain advantages to having fewer guys; one being the bathroom line is ridiculously short, and another being that there's plenty of eye candy.

Back when tickets first came on sale, I thought it'd be a great idea to go. As the day neared, I started to wonder why I wanted to go in the first place.

It was an awesome concert though, so no regrets. Openers were this short British rapper named Lady Sovereign and R&B star Akon.

The girl next to me (who kept dropping all the papers from her wallet!) said Lady Sovereign was pretty good, but probably won't make it in the US since she has a really strong accent and people can't understand her. Yeah, it was definitely hard to understand her, but most of her songs had a good beat.

Akon rambled on about how he didn't care about money and started tossing out dollar bills. I looked it up this morning, and apparently he was dropped from Verizon for a risque onstage dance in the Carribean.

Funny that he can do freaky actions like that, but won't curse onstage (even though both Lady Sovereign and Gwen did). Oh, and one of his songs was about living in the ghetto, so he asked the crowd how many people actually lived in the ghetto. He obviously didn't see any of his audience since they were all upper-class white girls. Plus, I don't think anyone from the ghetto could afford the ticket prices. Ironic, don't ya think?

Then Gwen came out and did her thing. I hadn't heard most of the songs from her new album, but she played a lot of songs from the first album too so I wasn't completely lost. She also came out into the audience at one point. Oh, and she said that they're going to make a No Doubt album soon.

I still prefer the first Gwen concert since the Black Eyed Peas were the openers and it was just a better deal overall. But last night was still a great concert. There's nothing quite like the energy produced by 20,000 people.

VM quotes

Veronica: How is it that you have so many friends? You don't even like people.
Logan: And yet they adore me.

Veronica: Why settle for something not good just because it's something?
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I don't know why I keep posting quotes. I think it's because I read the overheard* websites too much and like to pretend that my quotes are somewhat comparable ;)