Random Thursday – The Saturday Edition

The following would make a passable series of Facebook posts, but I’m behind on my blogging quota. Plus, I’ve had literally one or two people (OK, one) ask when I would be updating the Gazette again.

• We’re planning to attend a charity dinner and dance tonight, and because it’s within a week of Halloween, it’s billed as a “Masquerade Ball.” This is not our cup of tea, but we’ll put up with it for the chance to do some ballroom dancing. But we won’t be going completely unprepared. To wit:

  

  Pretty awesome, huh?

• If you’re wondering if the front-facing camera on the iPhone serves any useful purpose, I think the preceding provides a definitive answer.
• I’ve refrained from saying anything about the Texas Rangers and outcome of the World Series. Now that I’ve calmed down a bit, I feel confident in saying that I’ve seen more polished performances from preschool t-ball teams than the Rangers exhibited in Game 6, and this Series is going to haunt them in the off-season worse than losing in five games last year. I thought I’d be content if they won three games – a huge improvement over last year – but to lose it like they did is almost unbearable. Good thing I’m not a baseball fan.
• At least until next summer.
• I’m in the process of simplifying my computer setup, now that I no longer rely on it for my work. I’m getting rid of an external DVD burner and a couple of external hard drives that I used for backup. I decided to erase the HDs using Apple’s Disk Utility application, and one of the options is a secure erase using something called a 7 Pass Erase. This essentially writes over the drive seven times and exceeds the US Department of Defense’s specifications for secure erasure of media. It’s also been working for seven hours and is only 2/3rds finished. This is for just a 160gb drive; I can’t envision having the patience to do this for a 2 terabyte drive. (And I declined the option to do a 35-pass overwrite.)
• This does seem like a lot of trouble to go to just to keep people from discovering I have an online account with a temporary tattoo supplier.

Well, in hindsight, this probably wouldn’t have been that great a series of Facebook posts after all.