Here’s a nice, juicy morsel from our friends over at www.dreamnotoftoday.com that needs to be spread far and wide. There’s a joke here about Palin, but I’ll let you make it.

Aaron Traffas, Lucas Maddy and Chris Goering

Thus ends the three-day weekend of relaxation. Today was the best day by far. Erica ate with us this morning and when I dropped her off she ended up with both of my cell phones. There is an unexplainable sense of peace that accompanies the knowledge that nobody can contact you.

It’s weird having Erica here and Megan gone. My sisters are quite similar and yet quite different. I’m excited to get to know her as I got to know Megan.

I’m watching Chelsea Lately with Lucas and Diane and plugging away at finishing the new shows section of the website. My mother was in town all day Saturday and never contacted me because she thought I was in Omaha because that’s what my website said. We had booked a show there and when I Twittered regarding its cancellation I never got around to updating the convoluted event calendar that was nailed on top of Wordpress. That’s all fixed now, as the new shows section now includes all shows, both upcoming and past - all the way back to the first launch of the site when Trevor Burgess and I were playing at Fats.

I’m typing away on my Apple slim aluminum keyboard. It’s the one I poured nearly a full cup of coffee into a couple weeks ago. I dried it, wet it, dried it again and when it wouldn’t work I’d left it for dead. A week passed and I tried it one more time and it’s been working well ever since. I guess I bought a pair to have a spare. With all the damn computers around here, I guess it will get plenty of use.

I’m selling my Cloudbook at Thursday’s auction. I couldn’t ever get the wireless to work as well as I wanted, though it seems I’m not the only one. The graphics always seemed weak, though VIA just released an open source driver for it.

I’m currently rocking the ASUS EeePC 900. It’s quite possibly the finest piece of equipment on which I’ve ever laid my hands. I turned it on long enough to hit restart on the Knoppix distribution of Linux so that I could install Ubuntu. I had good luck with Ubuntu-eee as opposed to Eee-Ubuntu. Everything worked pretty much right away. I had to load a different kernel to get the microphone working so I could play with Skype with Diane.

I got Diane an Acer Aspire One as an early birthday present. It’s slightly bigger than my Eee, but the difference in the keyboard size is pretty huge. It also runs Windows XP, which is pretty much a must for her iPod Touch. It was also crazy-cheap, weighing in at $349 at Best Buy.

It seems like John McCain’s Eskimo running mate’s daughter is knocked up. How fun.

Aaron is a proud member of the National Auctioneers Association

I was playing around on the NAA forum, a great member benefit for auctioneers, and I realized that what I was writing was applicable to just about anyone, not just auctioneers. Here you are, for whatever it may be worth to you.

I’ve been using Linux on the desktop for the last two years. It’s fantastic and provides many programs and packages available by simply selecting which ones you want to install. You don’t have to download and run an installer, for the most part, you simply select the programs from the list.

I can’t stand Microsoft Office or, worse, anything from Adobe, so not having these programs isn’t a problem. There are many other open-source alternatives that allow you to sleep better at night and get more work done easier.

For anyone looking for video editing on Linux, have you tried Cinelerra? I looked at it and was very impressed with the features and power offered.

For any of you who use Firefox on more than one computer, you should look at Mozilla Weave. It provides the ability to synchronize bookmarks, tabs, passwords and add-ons across different installations of Firefox. They have yet to support 64 bit Linux, which makes me sad, but it works great between my Vista notebook and my XP aux-box.

Are you still using OpenOffice or have you tried the Google Office version?  I can’t remember if I asked you in Nashville…

I’m still using OpenOffice. It’s not equivalent to Google Docs in that Google Docs is a web-based product that has a fraction of the features of a complete office suite like OpenOffice, StarOffice or Microsoft Office. Google is working continuously to add features, and rumor has it that they will allow for offline Docs use via their Gears package within the next six months, but as of now they the analogy is like comparing apples to band saws.

if I decide to move to this Linux system, do I dump MS WIndows completely and migrate to that desktop?…I have a computer that I need to erase a hard drive on and was thinking of using it as a trial computer.

The beauty of most Linux distributions is the live CD. My preference and recommendation is Ubuntu Linux. Download the ISO and burn it to a CD from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu. Put it in your computer and start it up. It will load the Linux desktop without touching your hard drive or installing anything. You can browse the Internet, work on documents and browse your network without ever installing the operating system. Note that because your CD isn’t nearly as fast as your hard drive this practice isn’t a good idea for anything other than trying it out, but its a good way to get your feet wet and make sure it will run on your hardware without dumping a computer.

You know, you should really try it on your Macbook. I always wanted to get a Macbook and put Linux on it. I bet it runs like a sewing machine.

The auction panel was a blast. I love talking about auctions and the tools we use to conduct them.

What other program/software etc creates/edits etc. a .pdf?  I was under the impression (wrong?) that Adobe owned that file tag…

Thanks in advance.

Adobe submitted its format for ISO certification and received it. PDF is an international standard. Many programs do a better job than those by Adobe for creating and modifying PDF files.

If you’re on XP, get PDFCreator.
If you’re on Vista, get CutePDF.

Both of these free programs will let you print to PDF anything that you could print to a computer.

Regardless of your Windows distribution, get Foxit PDF reader and ditch Adobe Acrobat for viewing PDF files. Foxit loads many times faster and takes up much less space on your hard drive.

Of course, if you’re running Linux, PDF support is built into the distribution.

If you want to do things other than view or create PDF files, check out the great solutions from Lifehacker, where you can find many posts about cool tools to create, modify and tweak PDF files without paying hundreds of dollars for Adobe products that will just bloat your system and infect it like a root-kit virus.

So what do you do when a page is set up for IE only? Typically, I find this on GIS websites. Is there an add-on to emulate IE?

Use IE. IE isn’t evil. An up-to-date version of IE is just as good as Firefox, in my opinion. I prefer IE to Firefox, in fact, but I can only get IE 6 to work on Linux. When Mozilla released Weave, I started using Firefox 3 on my Windows machines, but because Weave doesn’t support 64 bit Linux, I may be moving back to IE on Windows.

Firefox 3 has a speed improvement that arguably puts it slightly ahead of IE 7, but when IE 8 comes out I’ll probably be recommending it as it will be the first Microsoft browser that will default to standards mode instead of quirks mode. I can’t wait for everyone who designed a site without using web standards finds that his or her site is completely hosed when viewed in IE 8 for the first time.

I did notice that Dell offers ubuntu as an OS on some of the newer laptops and desktops it sells.

Yeah, but they’re all Intel-based systems and I’m an AMD guy! I just can’t do it!

Seriously, they’re still not a good deal in that they’re about the same price as a similar Windows-based system. The advantage to Linux is that it should cut down on manufacturer cost, but because of all the deals OEMs make with Windows crapware companies, the systems still cost about the same.

The best thing to do is to buy the system with the specs you want with Windows, then call the manufacturer and get your Windows refund. It takes a while on the phone because most phone-grunts don’t know what you’re talking about, but there are widespread reports that many people are getting as much as $50 back by not using the Windows that comes pre-loaded on a laptop.

For more information on hippie-propagated bullshit, see Douchethirsty.

ATS finished up yesterday. A very successful endeavor, the class generated positive feedback that hopefully will encourage others to take it in the future.

What a show last night was the Counting Crows in Lawrence! I haven’t blown out my voice from yelling in years, but I did last night. My favorite quote was when Adam Duritz said something about getting ready to play an old song, then remarked “at this point, anything before this album is pretty fucking old.” He’s right. The last studio album was 2002’s Hard Candy. It was a great disc, but six years is a long time between fresh material. Sure, they put out a compilation, a live CD and remastered their first CD August and Everything After, but six years is just too long to wait. Maybe that’s why the moved from what is now Verizon Amphitheater, where I last saw them in 2000, to Liberty Hall.

I just ate with John and Sara Grahm. It was the first time I’ve met my newest first cousin once removed, Maggie. Maggie is short for Margrett, and her brother is Will and sister is Ainsley. That’s right, folks, now they just need to have Josiah, Leo, Josh, Donna, Toby, Claudia, Charlie, Amy and Kate to be an Aaron Sorkin tribute family. Better get crackin’, John.

I’m relaxing to HBO, which is kindly airing John Adams for me. Its oratory often resembles Deadwood without the sex and violence. Truly not quite as good, it does serve as the best replacement so far to the ill-fated, canceled series.

Is it me or does Sarah Lacy look like Justine Joli?

I’m on Twitter as atraffas. Follow me, where I go, what I do, and who I know…

headed to eat with the family
Erica and mom are in town this morning
AXO charity auction tonight
my friend Ron Clark and I are going to have us a time

I wrote this on Tuesday.

Going to Kansas City this morning to work on stuff for the NAA. I spent a ton of time working on the new auction technology specialist course, only to ave the majority of my changes not included in the final version.

It really needs edited. One slide has “Website” and “website” in the same title, while another discusses including “bio’s” on a site.

We went to Wildcat Creek on Sunday after playing golf on the Xbox for three hours to try to play golf in real life. I still haven’t swung my set of Ping irons since I got it last summer. While the course was already closed, we did hit the driving range. I put a hurt on the guy driving the ball sucker truck, as my 100 yard line drive doinked him square in the drivers door. I felt bad, not because I was trying to hit him, but because it was the best shot I had all day.

After the golf, we hit the batting cage. i haven’t swung a bat since I played base ball in high school, and while I today can’t lean over to tie my shoe without horrific pain, doing so felt so good I may go back.

Diane and I watched the Kansas v. Memphis game last night on our new 56″ 1080p HDTV with a standard-definition signal. It made me want to cry, knowing how good the screen could look had we purchased HD cable.

New Year’s was fun. We had the Salty Rim[job] to ourselves for the better part of the night. Diane had family in town, Lucas had friends and I had Wayne. We lost Wayne right before midnight as he got pwned by some girls who wouldn’t let him through the crowd. We didn’t get doused by the confetti, though, but we’re still finding some from last year.

Diane and I watched The Kindgdom the other night and Two for the Money last night. Both were excellently refreshing, bringing me closer to batting .500 on good movies in the last 30 days.

I’m beginning to realize how much the corporate world rewards not working in favor of actually being productive. It’s scary how much meetings and presentations are valued higher than actual labor. I actually miss carrying around heavy shit. At least we had fun back then.

I’m looking forward to the Kansas caucus on 5 February. I’m going to convince everyone to vote for Edwards, if he’s still in it by Super Tuesday. While I’m sticking with him as my guy, I’m quite happy that I’d be excited about either Obama or Clinton if he doesn’t finish. Usually I’m disappointed when my guy loses a race, but this year everybody wins.