Zorin's blog

So I've found .torrent files of the complete Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers TV series on gawkerweb.com, and have been downloading it over the past few days.

I was obsessed with this show when I was a kid, and it's been wonderful to re-live all the memories! Of course, it's also a reminder of how much TV animation has gone downhill since the mid-90's. You just don't see creative, well-animated shows like Rescue Rangers anymore.

So if you remember this old cartoon and want to re-live it, here it is, right near the top. Be sure to seed when your download completes, so that others can finish their transfers too! I hope this series is someday on DVD so I can own a legitimate copy.

Oh, and I still want my very own Ranger Wing.

Gadget: "That's the hover switch. It should turn the Ranger Wing into a helicopter."
Chip and Monty: "SHOULD!????!?"

So this morning I get in my car to go to work, and put on 93.1, and.. Party 93.1 is GONE! What the hell? They're playing boring 90's rock music now!

Party 93.1 was an AWESOME South Florida radio station that played nothing but dance music. New dance, classic dance, you name it. They had these great classic freestyle mix shows at noon and filled a market that simply didn't exist anymore in this area.

They seemed to be doing well, too, with lots of promotions, and lots of people I know were listeners.

So why the hell did they abandon their market? They were the ONLY dance radio station in this market at the moment; there are already several rock stations. How can they possibly hope to compete? Not to mention they now have millions of angry listeners wondering where the hell Party 93.1 went. Power 96 is completely useless now, since they play nothing but hip-hop. So us dance music listeners have nowhere to go.

I called the old number, but couldn't get through. I bet thousands of former Party 93.1 listeners are complaining at the moment. I honestly hope they get mercilessly harassed into changing back to the dance format.

If not, I'm going to miss hearing all those freestyle tracks again. It was such a great path through memory lane...

UPDATE 3/25/2005: I'd like to thank everyone for their comments here. I never expected my little rant about this station dying would draw so many comments. It just further proves what a great station this was and what a crime it was for Cox to do a format flip. Hopefully dance will be back; Party 93.1 had good ratings, so I bet some other company is working on filling the hole... The market is out there!

Another UPDATE 4/19/2005: This has become a somewhat popular post, so any trolls or flames will be deleted. Thank you. }:)

UPDATE 4/29/2005: I found Salsa 98.3FM playing Freestyle today a bit after noon while scanning for radio stations across the dial. The fact that a Spanish station is playing Freestyle with english lyrics shows that there is indeed a market for it!

Well, the adorable spotted fuzzball you see at the left is Sierra. She was out at Sawgrass today, along with Ann-Marie, Junior's sister and littermate. Sierra is around four weeks old, and really enjoyed the day, sleeping on a warm heating pad most of the time and getting fed milk from a bottle several times. I wish I could take her home! Alas, maybe someday I'll have the necessary credentials to do so. After Sawgrass I went to the property. Tiffany was being a sweetie today, chuffing up a storm. I hope she gets a new cage-mate soon; she must get lonely in there. That's why I give her extra-special attention. Well, today's pictures are all here, feel free to enjoy!

So, in a technical discussion, I just randomly typed:

"You can kill off Apache children without hurting the master server, usually."

Of course, this refers to child processes of the Apache HTTP server daemon, not native Americans.

But I nearly cracked up laughing when I noticed how offensive that sentence could be out of context. };)

-Z

Cheetah movie!

Okay, I'm probably going to see this. In fact, I can't wait. It's about time cheetahs get good exposure in the theaters...

But... why would anyone call their company "Gaylord Films"? I mean, don't get me wrong, I have NOTHING against gays, but it sounds like a name like that would be bad for business. I mean, what teenager wouldn't at least giggle at that name? It just seems odd.

But the movie looks like it has potential. Gotta love the little cheetah-cub squeaks at the beginning of the trailer. }:)

Here's a classic SNL skit...

Da Tooncinator! (xvid/divx codec required)

Hmm, maybe he should run for Governor of California. }:) Toonces the driving cat!

[inline:1] Ancient Hard Drive [inline:2] Ancient B/W porn! [inline:3] Old 486 and disk

Well, I just got back from the hamfest. It seems the hamfest gets smaller every year; I wonder if it's due to the economy, or if people are just selling on eBay instead, where they will likely get more money anyhow. I don't know what the deal is, but I still found something spiffy. An ancient hard drive! This circa 1990 44MB Western Digital drive uses a stepper motor (instead of the common voice coil actuator these days) and is a true IDE drive! While looking at it, the guy said "You can have it free, I don't want it anymore." So of course I took it home, just to solve the mystery... what the hell is on it? I dragged out my old 486 and plugged it in. Upon startup, it started making a disturbing chunk chunk chunk sound. Uhoh, the drive is dead. I guess it was a waste of time to take it home. But then I remembered that you had to set the drive parameters in the BIOS on these old machines, so I went into the BIOS and set them. Saved the settings, and WHAM! It booted! It had DOS 5.0 installed, which is about right for the early 90s. There were several old applications installed, including something called "MAC", which allows you to view ancient black and white porn! There was also APRS, a ham radio packet application, and Crossword Creator, which allows you to create and solve crossword puzzles. A barebones Windows 3.1 install was also present; nothing interesting was installed there. It was worth the fun of plugging this old sucker in and seeing what was on it, though. I'm probably going to hang onto it; working hard drives from the ancient era of 1990 are usually hard to come by! So if you ever see old IDE drives at a flea market or hamfest, pick'em up! You never know what sort of weird stuff may be hanging out on them. }:)

Well, the Hamboree is this weekend. This is basically an amateur radio and computer show, where people come to sell a huge variety of stuff, some of it new, some of it used, some of it ancient. You can sometimes find fascinating things there, like 1930s radios, ancient computers (here's hoping for some old Apple II stuff!), and so on.

I haven't missed a hamfest since 1994 or so; it's become a yearly tradition for me. It's just so much fun to see all the weird stuff for sale, even though many years I've gone home without buying a thing!

Random tidbit: The mini LED keychain flashlight I bought there three years ago still works!

Anyway, a full report after the show!

I came across this hilarious old error message I saved while cleaning out some directories on my work machine:

You know a system is screwed up when a successfully completed operation is considered an error. }:)

Well, I finally got to meet Bada-Bing's cubs! There are three of them, and they are the most adorable spotty-cougar-cubs you've ever seen in your entire life! I'll even offer a money-back guarantee! We seperate cougars from their mother when they are around this age (two weeks) so that they can be socialized to people and become handleable as adults. These three little guys were in this laundry basket, and were squirming around and squeaking a lot! I even took some video of them and posted it, so take a look. You can hear the squeaking really well in part of the video. Click here to see all the photos I took. Note that cougars have spots when they are cubs; the spots vanish when they mature. Other than that, I had a nice morning at sawgrass and helped a bit at the property. We fed whole chickens today; you gotta love how effortlessly the tigers can pull a chicken through a small feedhole...

• Today's photos
• Video of Bada-Bing's cubs (Note: You must have the DivX or XviD codec installed; http://www.divx.com to download for your platform)