The Sun God

For the past several years, this time of year has been a bit of an unhappy affair for me. It was never an issue until fairly recently in my life, but for some reason the lack of daylight in the evening really bums me out! And I know there's things like seasonal affective disorder, but I wouldn't really say that I'm depressed or that the season has a significant affect on my life or happiness.

I just like seeing the daylight when I'm awake. The problem is that I tend not to wake up very early in the morning, so sunshine isn't a big part of my life this time of year. Maybe I'm suffering from a vitamin D deficiency?

Regardless of causes, this has me quite motivated to celebrate December 21st: The Winter solstice!

I've been debating how best to celebrate in style, but I'm leaning towards taking a hot citrus bath in the style of the Dōngzhì Festival revelers, as well as imbibing plenty of ale as per the pagan holiday of Yule. (This was before it was absorbed into and adopted by the Christians as part of their Christmas holiday.) I'll likely also enjoy a large feast (probably chicken nachos, I'm thinking) to commemorate the turning of the celestial tide like they do for Şeva Zistanê. Longer days, here we come!

I'm thinking I will not be decorating cattle dung around a bonfire as the celebrants of Lohri apparently do, nor will I be celebrating Mummer's Day style by rubbing charcoal on my face and dressing up as an animal.

In any case, I'm a firm believer that the modern world needs to celebrate many more holidays than we currently do... So if you know of a good reason to celebrate an annual tradition, lay it on me!

For now, I think I'll order some Chinese takeout to help me commemorate Alabama Day. Yay Alabama!

Happy Memorial Day!

I'm going to celebrate today with lots of hotdogs, hamburgers, and movies!

Hope everyone does the same :)

Cinco de Mayo

A Californian columnist thinks that Americans should stop celebrating Cinco de Mayo.

I completely disagree with him.

Don't get me wrong; I have no illusions that when we celebrate Cinco de Mayo, it has anything to do with a Mexican military victory against French imperialists.

We just celebrate it because its fun. In the same vein that we celebrate St. Patty's day, even though most of us aren't Irish. Or how many non-Christians celebrate Easter & Christmas. And many non-pagans celebrate Halloween. And on, and on, and on.

Holidays are about having fun, and one thing I love about Americans is that we don't really need much of an excuse to create a very in-depth holiday replete with very specific traditions and ways to celebrate.

Anyways, this Gringo's off to enjoy some drunken revelry at my local Mexican restaurant!

Merry X-mas!

Merry X-mas, Futurama style!

Although my Christmas loot this year was rather lackluster, it feels rather like I got my old PC as a Christmas present since it arrived right before the holiday and then I got a new LCD as a present from my folks! It was a nice Samsung 23" Widescreen, model SW2333.

When reading reviews of the gaming LCDs in my price range, I was immediately impressed by what I read about this one. Only one thing gave me pause, and that was several people who purchased this model claiming that it arrived with one or two stuck pixels. Having never had to deal with any pixel-related LCD problems (my last one was an LG and it was absolutely flawless), I was quite concerned.

On Christmas morning, as I plugged in my new LCD and got it working, I immediately noticed a blue pixel that wasn't changing unless the screen called for "white". An obviously stuck pixel; I was dismayed.

However, a quick google search revealed a lot of different techniques for solving such a problem, and so I downloaded an excellent application called Undead Pixel, which will flash through all colors on the dead pixel(s) only, at like 60 colors a second, which sometimes helps to unstick a pixel.

I also tried gently putting some pressure on the screen as this program ran. I only applied pressure for like twenty seconds or so, and immediately wanted to check my handiwork. UD Pixel had only been running for about ten minutes, so I wasn't really expecting any results since the suggested run-time was between one and eight hours.

When I stopped the program to check the pixel, it was fixed. Awesome! So now I have a flawless Samsung SW2333 LCD that I'm quite happy with so far. Haven't quite used it enough to give a full review, but so far I haven't found anything at all to make me regret my choice. I'll try to update later on with a final verdict, once I've had time to really put this thing through the ropes.

Until then, Happy Holidays everyone!