I hope this helps somebody.

For a client of mine I installed Microsoft Expression Media on my computer, and the little bugger worked fine on my laptop but would crash every time I tried to add media to it on my desktop PC. Hours were spent troubleshooting this... different versions of the software, different versions of QuickTime installed, etc. I even ended up filing an official bug for it. No luck.

After more research, it turns out the problem is with QuickTime and my nVidia video card (which happens to be a GeForce 7600 GS). With recent drivers, dated approximately somewhere between August 2007 and now (October 2007), they just don't jive with QuickTime, and since Expression Media depends on QuickTime for everything, it just blows up.

The work-around - go to your Control Panel, then QuickTime and the Advanced tab. Under the Video fieldset, switch it over to Safe Mode (GDI). That'll turn off any weirdness between QuickTime and your video card (because now QuickTime is essentially using software to display images and video, not your video card). That fixes it! Hopefully this will be fixed with an upcoming driver update from nVidia. An alternate solution would probably be to roll back your video drivers, but forget that.

In other news... a while ago my friend Sara brought some nuts back to her place she found while gardening (job, not hobby), and I told her those were chestnuts and we could eat them. I threw one in her oven... at 500 degrees (to cook fast!)... for a while... and when it was smoking slightly I took it out. As I held it in my oven-mitted hand I saw that the top was gurgling a bit. I asked Sara and hombre Piper to check it out, and we all leaned in real close to see the gurgling... and then...

...that bastard exploded ALLLLLL over us! And the walls! And everything! It was like a hand grenade went off, I'm surprised we all still have our eyesight! It was so hilarious, Piper's all-black shirt looked like a star field, and Sara just ran around shrieking. A lot of the blast is still on Sara's fridge as a memento.

Afterwards we learned you're supposed to carve little Xs in them so the internal steam can get out and it doesn't explode... and we cooked a bunch, but they tasted terrible, and it turns out they were Horse Chestnuts which are filed under 'Inedible' and 'Toxic'. Damn!

Aside from that, I redesigned PirateJokes.net (with some help from Won Ton) before Talk Like A Pirate Day (I was out of town for that unfortunately, but managed to do a lot of pirate-talk).

Ok, I'm out. Alice and I are headed (again! Woo!) to Disneyland next month, and this is the 40th year anniversary of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride... so beware ye scurvy landlubbers!