Ramblings of a Technophile 2

Surprise, surprise

2005-05-14T13:11:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week my dad upgraded our DSL to the fastest they have available.

SAWWWEEETT... he didn't tell anyone, waiting for one of us to figure it out. Heh.

It's here, it's here, it's here!!!!

2005-05-13T18:06:00.000-04:00

My Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 DVDs finally arrived!! (YES YES YES)

I've been waiting a couple of weeks for these... bulk rate mail, SLOOOWWWW.
I think it's going to be well worth the wait, I haven't really done any coding with it yet, but the interface is looking pretty nice.

Good stuff, really good stuff.

It's things like this...

2005-05-06T14:41:00.000-04:00

...that make you scratch your head.
GMail seems to have resumed normal operating parameters. BUT there has been another update on the interface, so they probably squashed the previously mentioned bug in this update.
Noted in this update:
There's a security feature that blocks external images from being loaded in an email by default, and there's a little link you can click to show all the images in their proper context in the message. So they've finally added a second link which lets you allow images from that sender at all times, instead of on a per message basis, as it has been. Nice.
Google is totally owning the internet right now.

About time I revived this thing...

2005-05-05T13:46:00.000-04:00

Well, apologies to all three of my readers that I haven't been around for a while. Other things have kept me busy.

I noticed this afternoon that thanks to some recent changes to the way the GMail frontend logs you in, their system is messed up again.
It's something in the way it hands you off from the HTTPS login page to the HTTPS 'Inbox'. Basically: It drops the HTTPS, it just throws it into straight HTTP and nothing happens, you have to go up to the address bar, add an 'S' to the 'HTTP' and resubmit the URL, then it works fine.
I had this problem before, and it was fixed by Google, they made some changes/additions lately and the issue has resurfaced. Very interesting.

A screenshot of my desktop...

2005-02-08T14:02:00.000-05:00

I've always liked screenshots... something about them.. I don't know... anyways, I'm going to try to take a screenshot of my desktop everyday, see how this comes out, and how long it lasts. Ha! Anyway, here it is, a glimpse into my computer use habits...(Click for larger image, if you care to.)

That's my school application... and minimized to tray is my media player. (Foobar2000) I'm playing one of my favorite artists, Ian Melrose, one dude and a six string acoustic.. good stuff.
I'll try to take these as spontaneously as possible... so it's not sort of a posed shot.
Anyway, lit class starts soon, so I'm out.

So, this is what Apple R&D does in it's spare time...

2005-02-03T20:23:00.000-05:00

Today I discovered another wonderful invention by the R&D department at Apple computers -- To wit, the 17" PowerBook G4 has a capacitor in it! Translation: You can remove the battery in said PowerBook, unplug it from the wall, and it will still run for about 2 minutes before it turns off... the backlash of this is when that turns off, it turns off I.E. complete crash... not sleep mode. Still nice to know that if I'm sitting around without the battery in and I get up and walk away from the wall without unplugging it, I'll have time to rectify my stupidity without data loss. (Assuming I could even find the $3K to buy one in the first place.)
The best I can tell, the PowerBook G4 was designed as a 15"-centric platform. The inside of a 12" has NO space in it... you couldn't fit a spare toothpick inside that thing. And the 17" seems incredibly roomy from a service standpoint. So, during development Apple realizes that they have plenty of room to throw random perks inside the machine. Behold! The Capacitor! Heh.
So, my boss is really looking dreamy eyed at these machines. And so he's talking up his 15" to me, and I'm really taking the bait... his machine is nice, it's got 1GB of RAM, 80GB HD, 1.25GHZ G4 Processor, etc. And really great features like the "Ambient light sensor" which detects the amount of light in the room. The upshot of this is that if you're in a dark room, it automatically dims the display and turns on the backlit keyboard! The coolest feature for a laptop! Also, great speakers, Harmon Kardons I think... including a subwoofer running along the display hinge. So.. I don't know what's he selling it for... but I'm certainly eyeballing it, I'd like something smaller and lighter than my current Sony PCG-K23 behemoth, which, don't get me wrong, I love, it has one of the best displays I've ever seen, and it is a pretty fast machine... but it's a pain to lug around. So yeah, who knows.

This has been a while in coming...

2005-02-03T13:49:00.000-05:00

But I think I've done something blog-worthy! I finally finished work on v0.1 of Conversion, my program to let me convert(in theory) measurements to any other equivalent measurement. I've played with the idea for a while, and I really buckled down and coded last night and some this morning... I had a working product after.. probably 2 hours of coding. 1 hour last night.. but it got to be almost 11 and dad made me go to bed. So I finished it this morning. This first incarnation only converts Celsius to Fahrenheit, but v0.2 is already in the works, and should be finished this evening after work. I'll start by adding Fahrenheit to Celsius, then move to linear measurement... feet to inches, miles to kilometers, etc. Anything to spare thinking. Actually, anything to have a good reason to code! So, I like it so far.
Almost forgot... I wrote the program in Visual C# .NET, a programming language I'm becoming very attached to.

Reading various Microsoft blogs...

2005-02-03T13:27:00.000-05:00

I've been doing some reading over at http://blogs.msdn.com/, and I came across this post on 'Heather's "Marketing at Microsoft" blog' (Subtitled: "Marketing, Careers, Recruiting, Microsoft and other bright shiny objects that caught my attention." heh)
While actually about watching for employment opportunities... I found her commentary on the whole "SuperBowl thing" amusing, for some reason...

A link on another MSDN blog took me here: http://schneier.com/crypto-gram-0205.html#5
Turns out %80 of the time you can fool any of the standard fingerprint readers out there using the stuff they make gummi bears out of... incredible. There goes that method for security.

"Gummy fingers can even fool sensors being watched by guards. Simply form the clear gelatin finger over your own. This lets you hide it as you press your own finger onto the sensor. After it lets you in, eat the evidence."

Wow, nice.

What's up with Wikipedia?

2005-01-23T14:41:00.000-05:00

Wikipedia.org, probably my favorite internet resource has seemed really slow lately. I don't know if they're having higher than anticipated traffic or if some of their servers are down or what. But it's been incredibly slow every time I've been in the last couple of weeks. Hmmm.

Today was fun...

2005-01-17T17:28:00.000-05:00

I went and got lunch with my cousin and grandmother (and a couple of my brothers)... then went back to my grandma's house and helped her with her computer, she was having some trouble with AVG and also some spyware that had gotten on her machine. I set her up with the new version of AVG and did a full cleanup of the other stuff.
I started playing around with her monitor.. it was an ancient CRT, I'm guessing it was maybe 13". It shorts out perodically and just fuzzes all up... this can be remedied by banging on the top of the monitor (I opened it up to try to find the short, and then it was messed up. heh heh. oops). Reminds me of the dashboard of some of our old cars, in relation to the radio. And also the short in the monitor (Or was it the speakers?) of our old Compaq computer.
So, we went out to the local branch of our national electronics store and got her a new LCD, just a cheap 15" but certainly an upgrade. So yeah... I guess that does it for today. I also did a lot of schoolwork. Fun! I've been watching a lot of videos on Channel9 lately about Visual Studio 2005, and I'm quite excited about it. I wish I had the ~US$800 to get a copy. But hey, the Express Edition Betas are pretty good, and they're alright for me, and most importantly free. I need to buckle down and do some coding but I need an inspiration. Hmm... :)

A definite difference in computer performance

2005-01-11T18:40:00.000-05:00

With Microsoft AntiSpyware I mean... I've noticed a definite lag since I've installed it. The tray icon and background scan alone use over 15 megs of ram. Not cool. Scan comparisons later.

Ok, a couple of noticeable differences right off the bat...

2005-01-11T17:51:00.000-05:00

OK, I've installed it, a few things I've noticed:
1) The GUI is certainly unlike any other anti-malware program I've ever used.
Check out the screenshot:
(You'll wanna click it, compression was not nice at all to that one.)

2) In true Microsoft form, in slows down my computer more than any other product I've used of the same type. This machine is relatively fast, but it slows to a nearly unusable state when the scan is running. Not so with Spybot Search & Destroy, or even Lavasoft's Adaware.

Later I'm going to install on a virtual machine, set up an infection intentionally, and compare these products on detection and removal.
Check back later.

Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware (Beta)

2005-01-11T17:45:00.000-05:00

Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) I'm downloading it now. More updates when I see what it can/can't do.

How to backup create backup discs, in 4000 easy steps.

2005-01-10T19:18:00.000-05:00

I just finished creating the "Vaio Recovery Discs" for our new Sony. That was an adventure.
The problem is that the thing is so darn picky. It will only accept CD-R and DVD-R media, no RW. So, being the innoccent kid I am and not knowing any better, I send my dad to get Some DVD-RWs, OK, that's done.. run the backup wizard. Sorry, can't use RW media.
Great, so I go get some DVD-R the next night, sorry, you also need a CD-R, for the bootable disk, so ONE MORE TRIP! I went one more time this evening, and finally, the backup is complete.
So, in the process I've acquired a five pack of DVD+RW, an eight pack of DVD-R, and I got a ten pack of CD-R, the the rest of the CD-Rs I'm going to use for my own devices. (I paid for them.)

One other complaint about this whole process... if you run the recovery software at all even if you just open it and then hit cancel right away, it MAKES you restart, no option. Just "Your computer must be restarted. Press OK to continue." Why in the world should I have to restart just because I ran an application, I didn't even do anything with it. This really annoyed me when I accidentally opened it once. Anyway, sounds more like the behavior of a virus or the like then any useful software to me.

OK, that's today's fair share of complaints. More tommorrow! Never fear! For I am using Windows!
Oh, that reminds me, my dad told me unless it is absolutely neccessary he will never ever buy another peice of Microsoft software. WOOO HOO!! My open source evangelism is paying off. My dad wants to switch to Linux, and my mom is using Firefox and Thunderbird. I'm feeling quite proud of myself. If I had any, I'd give myself a Mountain Dew right now.

OK, here it is.. a little look into my life...

2005-01-10T15:49:00.000-05:00

Hey, I saw this on someone else's blog the other day, and I thought it was pretty cool, kinda tells people things about you I guess,
Anyway, the idea is go to your location bar in your favorite browser.(Firefox for me :) ) Press 'a', what's the first URL? Write it down, now backspace, hit 'b', write it down. Repeat through the alphabet. This isn't the best it could be for me, I just cleared out my history the other day. But take what you can get. So, without further ado, a small look into my browsing habits.

arstechnica.com - Tech News

blogger.com - The publishing website for this page!

channel9.msdn.com - MSDN Channel9, videos from inside MS dev, done by Scoble.

dogpile.com - Search engine

engadget.com - Gadget news

flashplayer.com - Fun flash movies and games.. actually visited because I was trying to block it..

gmail.com - Uhh, self explanatory (By the way, leave a comment if you want an invitation, I've got some extras laying around.)

hackaday.com - Hardware hacks, new ones every day, great site.

img.photobucket.com/[more URL here]/ It was a picture I have hosted in my account, which I don't care to share with the world :)

johhny.ihackstuff.com - Internet hacker basically.. mostly interesting fun things you can do with Google :)

k-otik.com - Exploit and patch list.

login.yahoo.com (trying to figure where this came from...) - Duh

mapquest.com - Where does he live again??

netlingo.com - Required reading for anyone online.

o-none, except some site i accidentally got redirected to when going to yahoo the other day..

photobucket.com - My image hosting site, I recommend it, pretty fast, free. Cool.

q-none

r-none

security-forums.com - My homepage.. they're moving right now.

translation.paralink.com - Online translator.. oh what fun.

ultravnc.sourceforge.net - I was looking into using this on my home network, so when someone has PICNIC problem I don't have to get off my lazy rear end and go to the other end of the house. But it was contributing to the deliquent behavior of one of our machines, so that idea got scratched.

versiontracker.com - Version Tracker! Let's hear it! Great site.

webstat.net - Page view statistics for this page. Nice free counter.

xanga.com/rejectedrejoicer - A friend of mine, she's very cool. (And today's her birthday! Happy Birthday RejectedRejoicer!)

yahoo.com - Nuff Said

z-none - Haha, I knew there wouldn't be anything here..

Ok, so your turn... copy cat me, put this on your blog... have fun.

I'll probably post more later.

Crazy week...

2005-01-09T13:06:00.000-05:00

It's been an entire week... I can hardly believe it... I was going to say I've been too busy to blog, but is that possible? Well, if it's possible, then that's my explanation.
A whole lot of stuff has happened this week. I've been working like crazy on computers, both PCs and Macs, on Wednesday I worked for an 1:30 on a PC, went to MCSS for 5 hours, and then worked on another PC for 1:30, came home, and set up our new Sony desktop. And that's pretty much been the tune of the whole week. Except Friday.. Friday was nice and slow.
OK, back to the new PC! My mom and dad went and picked up our new Sony during lunch break on Wednesday! WOO HOO!! It's very nice.. and pretty... and fast. I like it. Favorite feature? Gotta be either the 19" XBrite flat panel monitor, either that or the TV tuner card. Yeah, good stuff.
OK, all I can think about right now is food, but I may be back later. Bye for now!

Computer problems are a dime a dozen...

2005-01-02T20:22:00.000-05:00

Another customer called earlier, she's bringing her machine in on Tuesday.

Worse, I caused a computer problem! *Gasp!* For my Dad. *GASP!! NO!!* I downloaded and installed EyeRelief because the very high resolution of his display (1680x1050) can get to him. He didn't really like the program(And I don't blame him..) because it made all of his icons really big and blurry.
So, just like that, uninstall that one.. well, maybe. It left his system looking all out of porportion, with no way to change it, I reinstalled the app, still no change... GRR!!!
I played around on the internet with a couple of different utilities to no avail.
Then the obvious answer hit me between the eyes... system restore!! Thank you Microsoft, Thank you! That is deffinitely one of the best features of their (newer) operating systems... (It worked by the way, no more goofy big looking icons and out of shape task bars...)
No more randomly downloaded freeware for me for a while... (Thanks all the same Chris.. but it did more hurt then help. You may want to warn your readers of this problem, if you read this.)

I've become like one of Pavlov's dogs... anytime I do computer work now, like serious hard, my head hurts work, I crave a Mountain Dew in a big way... I suppose this is because just about the only time I get them is at work. Ah well... if you have some Mountain Dew, and you live nearby, share? Thanks!
I guess I'm done for now...

Alot happens in 48-72 hours...

2005-01-02T11:28:00.000-05:00

A whole lot of stuff has happened since I was last here... I'll try to give you a brief run down of it all.
Well, in what's been the biggest news of the last week-- the death toll in the terrible earthquakes and tsunamis has reached aprox. 130,000.
Another interesting news item-- A Wisconsin teenager became the first person known to survive rabies without a vaccination. Very lucky young lady.

Around here... I went out to work on a customers computer Friday, NEVER TO RETURN, BWAHAHAA, sorry, that just floated into my mind when I typed that. No, actually, Norton AntiVirus 2005 was giving them pain, and still is really. It would not install on their Windows XP machine. No matter what I did, it always failed on activation, something about needing Admin privileges to create some registry values. I created a fresh account with admin privileges, no go. Tried safe mode with the default admin account, no go, you can't install in safe mode. I even tried talking to it nicely, still no go. I ended up installing Avast! Home Edition and offering to buy NAV 2005 from them. Brilliant product design Symantec, BRILLIANT!
Another beef with Symantec that this brought to my mind... no free phone tech support! $29.95 per incident! That's incredible! And in this case, their online tech support was of no use. Typical.

Yesterday evening (Saturday) my mom started up Netscape (I'm trying to get them to switch to Firefox/Thunderbird... but nooo, they won't kick that Netscape habit.) and it popped up with an error in prefs.js, perfect. Prefs.js carries most preferences for Netscape, our browser was screwed. It was in line 139 of prefs.js on Netscape 7.1, something to do with an incorrectly closed arg or something, it was the line that points to our profiles folder, so it looked like all our email and prefs were lost.
I created a new email account, and copied the inbox, outbox, sent, drafts, etc. folders over from the old account folder. (The folders were still there, but the accounts were gone in the mail client.) It worked great, all the email was back, I shut down Netscape, repeated the process with another account, restarted Netscape, and BANG! Same error message all over again! AUGGGHHH! :) So, upgrade time, Netscape is on 7.2 anyway... I downloaded and installed the newest version, then repeated my little recovery process, it works!! All of our email was back. I exported my Firefox bookmarks and imported them to Netscape, we didn't lose any bookmarks, because I had just installed Firefox a few days ago, and I had imported the Netscape bookmarks then. (See how great Firefox is!)
Speaking of Firefox... I found my new favorite extension today. Minimize to Tray works with both Firefox and Thunderbird, it allows you to, pretty obviously, minimize your browser or mail client window to the tray. It sips resources, I've noticed no change in system performance.
I'm sure I've got other news to cover, but lunch is almost ready, and I'm feeling distracted. I'll probably be back in about an hour with more stuff, this should keep all my readers occupied till then. (Yes all three of you..)

Happy New Year

2005-01-01T13:46:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year everyone! And.. well, I can't really think of anything else to write, and I have some important stuff to write, so maybe I'll be back here later.

Apple replaces homepage with Tsunami support info!

2004-12-29T17:58:00.000-05:00

Apple Way to go guys! I'm impressed [Found Via Scoble]

Random gadgets on my desk...

2004-12-29T09:34:00.000-05:00

I took a few pictures last night of random things on my desk... (Click the pics for bigger images!)

A hands-free headset my brother gave me for Christmas...

My electric shaver:

A wireless card, it's only 802.11b, so I only use it when somebody else's wireless card is out of commission. (Which seems to be quite often, hmm.)

My keys: (I'm crazy, I know...)

Mind Poison...

2004-12-28T17:52:00.000-05:00

We went into the local video store the other day, hoping we'd luck out and find something family friendly that we hadn't seen a bazillion times. (Ha!!) Hollywood doesn't make that kind of movie anymore, we walked along the entire perimeter of that store (New Releases) and only found 1-2 items that weren't 'PG-13' or 'R' and nothing even mildly appealing and worth seeing... pathetic!
Anyway, as to the title of this post, when someone mentioned the video store, I kind of foresaw our luck by muttering "Mind Poison", alluding to the content of said store...
When we left, my dad mentioned the complete lack of viewable content, and I said "See, mind poison!"
What a shame...
This is kinda cut short cause of constraints on my internet access time... sorry... maybe more later.

The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami

2004-12-28T15:23:00.000-05:00

The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami This is being maintained by a "blogger co-operative" of sorts, many different bloggers, mainly in Sri Lanka and India I believe. All talking about the catastrophes in that area. I wish them well.

Anyone else notice this?

2004-12-27T20:19:00.000-05:00

I have my stats taken care of by webstat.net, they have a pretty decent free counter. Anyway, I was going through my referers. (See below.) And I came across this one: Not Your Business! Huh?
It also showed up in the referer list on other sites that I maintain. Any insight? I may email the company and ask...
I'll let you guys know of any result.

Going over the stats from my website...

2004-12-27T20:08:00.000-05:00

Here's the breakdown by OS: (This may not add up to exactly 100%, I rounded in most cases.)

Windows XP- 81%
Mac- 6%
WinME- 5%
Win2000- 4%
Win98- 1%
Linux- 0.85%
WinNT- 0.2%
Unknown- 1.5%
I was really surprised to see Mac beat out all besides XP, and ME behind that... interesting stats for sure...

And in the browser war:

Netscape Navigator 6 (...7, and Firefox)- 58%
Internet Explorer 6- 40%

Unfortunately, I have no way of separating Netscape 6+ and Firefox. But Gecko based browsers combined are killing IE on my site...
The other browsers had such a small share, I just left them out...
Highest referer: http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/12/24.html (A couple of others from his site were in the top five.)
Favorite referer: Has to be the Yahoo! translator... yes, somebody bothered to translate my site into Chinese! Thank you, whoever that was, I didn't know my site was that worth reading!

Lots of stuff today...

2004-12-27T17:50:00.000-05:00

Let's see, got up this morning and one of my brothers and I used hammers and screwdrivers to get the ice off our porch. :) :) It was fun! But cold...
Then we came in and tried to thaw out a bit, and the rest of my brothers and sisters got us to go sledding with them. (Sledding is kind of a loose way to put it since we don't own a sled...) Anyway, rolling, tumbling, sliding, etc. down a couple of different hills around here was pretty fun. Came home, thawed out again, then took off with my brother to... ok, I'll say it... Best Buy where he bought his camera, cause his battery won't hold a charge. They gave him some number to call and he's getting a replacement shipped here...
While we were there I took a look at USB hubs (external) and also an 8-in-1 memory card reader. (SD etc.) both of which I expected to pick up at 10-20 maybe 30 dollars... wow... 40 bucks each. (Assuming USB 2.0 powered on the hub, 1.1 non-powered can be had for about $15-20, but that just won't do!) A bit dissapointed there, cause it meant I didn't bring home any new gadgets today.
We went "sledding" again this evening (Just got back 15 minutes ago.) and met someone who actually had a sled! They let us take a couple of rides... wheeee!!!!! Yeah, that was a big ton o' fun!
So now I'm on newegg.com looking at prices. (Already found a powered four port powered USB2.0 hub for $15.00... sheesh...)
I think I'm going to go find something very hot to drink... mom's making chili for dinner! Yah! I love you mom! :)
I'm outta here...

Ukraine election win challenged

2004-12-27T14:37:00.000-05:00

Ukraine election win challenged
Ukraine's Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych has refused to concede defeat in the presidential election won by his rival Viktor Yushchenko.
"I will never recognise such a defeat, because the constitution and human rights were violated," he said.

Oh boy, never easy is it? Ask Al Gore, it doesn't work man...

Lots of news since I left off last night...

2004-12-27T08:16:00.000-05:00

Updates on the earthquake:

It's been upgraded from a magnitude 8.9 to a magnitude 9.0! That's a big earthquake...
There have been several after-shocks, which I heard nothing of until late last night, some of them quite large. (7.3 mag, 6.5 mag, etc.) You can see the aftershocks, with time and magnitude, in this graphic:

(Taken from wikipedia article here.)
Sadly, the deathtoll has risen to ~~over 16,000~~, (As I wrote this, the estimate was lifted to over 22,000, with one estimate going as high as 24,000.) with many more missing and homeless.

Matt Drudge was making a good point last night on the radio, how the American cable news networks couldn't seem to care less about what was happening across the globe. That applies to you MSNBC, CNN and FOX! He contrasted their complete lack of coverage with what would have happened had this at all affected the United States as a land mass. They would have been all over it, like, as the saying goes, white on rice.
America is so apathetic...
Worse, the mainstream media seems to have kicked @## on the blogosphere on reporting this one. I'm not sure if it was the holiday, or the relative lack of infrastructure in the areas affected.
I'd say the radio was deffinitely the best way to get news on this... I listened in to the BBC over shortwave, nice to actually hear what's going on for a change...

In other news:
We have a Viktor!

Opposition leader Victor Yushchenko has declared victory in Ukraine's third presidential vote.

Exit polls and some official results released Sunday indicate an easy win over Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

That's the election involving a nasty poisoning and other apparent election fraud, that has hence been re-run, congratulations Mr. Yushchenko.

I suppose I'll bring this to an end, signing off...

More snow. (And ice)

2004-12-26T13:55:00.000-05:00

We got even more snow and ice, it's been snowing or sleeting just about nonstop for the last 11 hours or so. (Since 3:00EST) Crazy, the roads look pretty bad... we'll see if any of this stuff sticks around long.
I'm glad dad has tomorrow off. :)

Guitar strings...

2004-12-26T13:39:00.000-05:00

I got new guitar strings for Christmas, very good guitar strings. Some Elixirs, if you can get Elixirs, make an effort to do so... I use them any time I have the money. :) They're about $12-13 for six here, about double what most cost. But they are worth the difference, both in longevity and tone. I strung those new ones on there last night, and it sounds like a new guitar! It's really incredible. This is the case for two important reasons, 1) It needed some new strings anyway, badly! and 2) My old strings were D'addarios, which are OK, but nothing compared to Elixirs!!
The strings I got were acoustic custom lights. They have surprisingly good tone for being such a light gauge... They're a little easier to play than my usual mediums, but my slides, pull-offs, and hammer-ons don't sound nearly as good. Ah well, it's the usual trade off...
I'd say all-in-all, I'm satisfied with them, but I'll go back up to mediums in a few weeks or months when I get new strings..

TIME Person of the Year 2004: 10 Things We Learned About Blogs

2004-12-26T13:36:00.000-05:00

TIME Person of the Year 2004: 10 Things We Learned About Blogs The title's sufficient methinks, pretty interesting stuff.

Linux Expands Beyond the Office Into the Home

2004-12-26T13:32:00.000-05:00

Linux Expands Beyond the Office Into the Home Reuters finally notices this growing trend...
This fast-growing alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows has taken off in the corporate world. Not only is Linux free and easy to customize, but it is also regarded as safer than Windows because fewer viruses are designed to attack it.

Darn straight it's better...

Mozilla Firefox also got a mention in the article, which was good to see...
All in all, not a very "good-news" article for MS.

"Whole Planet Vibrated", "Earth's rotation disturbed" as result of Asia quake.

2004-12-26T13:02:00.000-05:00

"'All the planet is vibrating' from the quake, said Enzo Boschi, the head of Italy's National Geophysics Institute. Speaking on SKY TG24 TV, Boschi said the quake even disturbed the Earth's rotation."

Wow... that's a big earthquake... Mag 8.9!! Biggest in 40 years, 5th biggest since 1900... wow...

Info for event usslav

2004-12-26T13:00:00.000-05:00

Preliminary Earthquake Report By the US Geological Survey, National Earthquake Information Center.
A great earthquake occurred at 00:58:50 (UTC) on Sunday, December 26, 2004. The magnitude 8.9 event has been located OFF THE WEST COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATRA. (This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.)

Magnitude 8.9
Date-Time Sunday, December 26, 2004 at 00:58:50 (UTC)
= Coordinated Universal Time
Sunday, December 26, 2004 at 6:58:50 AM
= local time at epicenter
Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location 3.298°N, 95.779°E
Depth 10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program
Region OFF THE WEST COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATRA
Distances
250 km (155 miles) SSE of Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia
320 km (200 miles) W of Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia
1260 km (780 miles) SSW of BANGKOK, Thailand
1605 km (1000 miles) NW of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia
Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 9.2 km (5.7 miles); depth fixed by location program
Parameters Nst=157, Nph=157, Dmin=>999 km, Rmss=1.35 sec, Gp= 29°,
M-type=moment magnitude (Mw), Version=9
Source USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
Event ID usslav
Felt Reports At least 2,200 people killed in Sri Lanka, 1,600 in India, 700 in Indonesia, 220 in Thailand, 29 in Malaysia and 2 in Bangladesh by tsunamis. Tsunamis also occurred on the coasts of Maldives, Cocos Island and Somalia. At least 200 people killed, buildings destroyed or damaged in the Banda Aceh area, Sumatra. Felt widely in Sumatra. Also felt in Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand. This is the fifth largest earthquake in the world since 1900 and is the largest since the 1964 Prince William Sound, Alaska earthquake.

Asian Disaster Death Toll Reaches 9,300

2004-12-26T12:53:00.000-05:00

Asian Disaster Death Toll Reaches 9,300
More than 9,300 people across Asia were killed today after one of the most powerful earthquakes on record triggered massive tidal waves that slammed into coastlines in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Thailand and Malaysia.

Tourists, fishermen, hotels, homes and cars were swept away by walls of water unleashed by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake, centred off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where at least 2,200 people were killed by floods and collapsing buildings, officials said.

But the scope of the disaster became apparent only after waves as high as six metres (20 feet) crashed into coastal areas throughout the Indian Ocean and Andaman Sea.

Terrible catastrophe... more updates as events warrant.

H2G2 trailer now available...

2004-12-25T22:16:00.000-05:00

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that is...
I saw the trailer yesterday before National Treasure. (Which was pretty good by the way.) You too can see it here.
Nothing too exciting yet, but I'm hoping the movie will be worthy of the books.
It should be in theaters sometime later this year, DON'T PANIC!

I've been Scobleized by the way...

2004-12-25T11:23:00.000-05:00

He posted this on his main blog yesterday evening:
Anyone out in Eastern North Carolina who has a Toshiba Tablet PC that they'd be willing to show off? This blogger wants a look. Heh. I feel like a dating service.

Cool! Hopefully I'll get feedback from someone in the area...

Well, it's Christmas, and no one wants to blog...

2004-12-25T10:14:00.000-05:00

Just refreshed my news-reader, and there were almost no new blog entries.. oh well. I didn't really feel like reading a lot anyway.
I got some pretty cool stuff for this year... mainly a hands-free headset for our home phones that I can use when on the phone with customers. (In case you weren't aware.. I run a PC repair business out of my home.)
Merry Christmas everyone!

I Demand Change... of myself!

2004-12-23T19:17:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking pretty hard about something, namely, this blog seems to be more and more of a link-blog type site, than an actual blog.
I really need to list more of my own content.. I think the main reasons I don't do this is because:
A) My dad has some serious limits on what I can and can't say about myself. (I can't tell you my name, how old I am, what city I live in, etc.)[NB- I'm not complaining, I'm in no mood to be tracked down by someone off the internet. (Don't laugh, it happens.)]
B) I feel stupid talking about myself all the time, it really gets old.
C) I might talk about my job more, but me talking about all the different issues with a 12" iBook that is being used day-in and day-out by middle or high schooler, would probably bore most of you to near death.
So, I'm at an interesting crossroads, I really enjoy blogging, and excepting that they shut down the internet, I have no plans of giving it up.
(That just gave me some really wierd question/mental image that I feel like putting out there... what's the stone-age equivalent of an RSS or Atom feed?) Which leads me to another question, am I the only one who thinks that Atom feeds work better with the integrated aggregator in Thunderbird than RSS 1.0 or 2.0 feeds do?? I dunno, it just seems like Atom feeds always work on the first shot, where I can have all kinds of interesting issues with an RSS feed. Maybe I'm hallucinating, I'll try to remember to note it any time I have an issue with a feed from now on.
Wow, without even thinking about it, I've managed to fulfill my goal, to wit: blog more, without relying excessively on external content. I kind of just have to shut off my brain and let my fingers do the work.
I need to have posts like this, mainly to reinforce the title of my blog. A couple of three sentence posts a day are hardly "Ramblings".
Pizza's ready, so I'm out for now. Maybe I'll check back in. I think I'm going to try some Mountain Dew Haiku at dinner.

How can I trust Firefox?

2004-12-23T17:49:00.000-05:00

How can I trust Firefox? This guy has started a major flame war in the blogosphere with his pointed questions, particularly concerning signed code.
My question, am I the only one who had none of the errors he encountered during install? Especially the blank dialog box pop-up, I've installed Firefox on dozens of machines and never seen that before. Interesting.
Me? Regardless of signed or un-signed code, I'm stickin' with the 'Fox. Just too darn cool... I.E. tabbed browsing, great pop-up blocker, etc.

Technology News: Security: Double Trojan Targets Smart Phones

2004-12-23T17:45:00.000-05:00

Technology News: Security: Double Trojan Targets Smart Phones A new trojan, targeted at the Symbian OS, and disguised as a popular game, is one of the first widely circulated worms to affect mobile devices.
The Trojan poses as a freeware version of the fight game "Metal Gear Solid," but once activated, it disables antivirus programs and installs a version of the Cabir worm.

That worm then attempts to use the Bluetooth wireless protocol to spread a second Trojan, known as "Sexxxy," to other devices within short-distance wireless range.

Google Press Center: Zeitgeist

2004-12-23T17:26:00.000-05:00

Google Press Center: Zeitgeist Well, the world should be ashamed of itself, the number one search for 2004? "britney spears", you've got to be kidding me... what a world.
Worse, the top company search? SCO! Shame! Shame!
There is some good news though... the top search item in "Popular Computer Goods" is 'Tablet PC', cool!
(Hopefully I'll be getting a demo of one soon, Scoble put my request on his link blog!)

foobar2000 is pretty good...

2004-12-23T11:56:00.000-05:00

I downloaded foobar2000 the last night, and I've been playing around with it. I like it, it's a no-frills, fast as heck, compatible with almost anything media player.

Slashdot | AOL Plans to Offer Free Webmail

2004-12-23T09:49:00.000-05:00

Slashdot | AOL Plans to Offer Free Webmail Wow, it hurt just typing that... why don't you guys go back to selling drink coasters disguised as Internet services... (Or is it internet services disguised as a drink coaster?)
I don't think they'll be able to touch Yahoo!, Gmail and Hotmail.

The MPAA goes after more Bittorrent sites...

2004-12-23T08:59:00.000-05:00

As we learned early this week, the MPAA is going after servers that support Bittorent file sharing, allegedly because they cost the motion picture industry tons of money because they distribute illegal copies of movies.
Well, they're at it again, another Bittorrent site bit the dust today.

[Via Slashdot]

Combination SD-USB storage...

2004-12-23T08:54:00.000-05:00

Taiwanese manufacturer Digimaster has produced an SD card with built-in USB connector, allowing you to bypass the card reader. (And, ironically, the usefulness of 90% of all SD gadgets, since they tend to have covers over the storage slot.)
It's really not very pretty, here's a pic:

See how obtrusive the USB connector is??
"Got any useful innovations?" "Go fish."

[Via Engadget]

Am I stupid?

2004-12-23T08:45:00.000-05:00

I just spent a few minutes trying to get a picture up on Flickr, without a whole lot of luck. OK, for one thing, no uploading from URLs, grr, that's a feature every picture storage service should have. (I'm assuming that because I couldn't find it, it wasn't there, which I guess is rather naive of me, but I'll call this a safe bet.)
Second, once it's uploaded, how the heck do I link to it? I can't find this option, and I'm beginning to doubt it's existence.
This site doesn't seem very straight forward or intuitive to me...

I'm sticking with Photobucket for now, thanks all the same.

Scoble, if you're reading this...

2004-12-23T08:26:00.000-05:00

Hey Mr Scoble, you seem to have more *ahem* connections than I do. (Not to mention considerably more hits on your blog. :)
Anyway, I'm interested in a demo of a tablet PC, but I'm in Eastern North Carolina.
If you could put the word out, I'd appreciate it.
I'd really like to see the Portege M200 or M205, but any tablet would be cool.

I was going to email you, but I just read this post on your blog, and I'm registered with PubSub... so here it is...

Anyone interested in sharing their hardware can just comment on this post, or drop me an email at SFDCfan@NOSPAMgmail.com
Thanks. I look forward to hearing from you.

_It's a Wonderful Life_ in 30 seconds with bunnies.

2004-12-22T13:20:00.000-05:00

_It's a Wonderful Life_ in 30 seconds with bunnies. "It's a Wonderful Life" in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies... hilarious.

Incremental Blogger: Entering random strings.... with a pen

2004-12-22T13:15:00.000-05:00

Incremental Blogger: Entering random strings.... with a pen this guy's talking about using a pen (I.E. tablet PC) versus using a keyboard. He covers all sorts of interesting stuff about pen input, as well as the MS interface for doing so. (Found via Scoble)
Edit: I tried to use the actual title of the post, but it comes up as a broken html tag... so I had to edit a bit..

Well, it actually feels like Christmas break now...

2004-12-22T13:05:00.000-05:00

I don't have to work again until next Wednesday... cool.
Not cool in that I don't earn any money in the interim, but hey, I like the break.

It's my little sister's birthday today... she's so cute, three years old today. :)

Electronic Arts buys a big chunk of Ubisoft

2004-12-20T17:58:00.000-05:00

Electronic Arts buys a big chunk of Ubisoft Hmm... EA is doing all kinds of interesting things these days. Should be interesting to see where this goes.
If I remember correctly... I read somewhere that an UbiSoft exec characterized the takeover as 'hostile'. Very interesting!

Comments!

2004-12-20T17:21:00.000-05:00

I've been getting some cool comments on some of my posts. Thanks guys! You're posting anonymous.. but I'm pretty sure I know who you are anyway. ;)
I'll keep on posting, you guys keep on commenting, deal?

Well... I made it back alive.

2004-12-20T17:16:00.000-05:00

From work I mean...
It was an interesting experience today, I did Firmware Password Resets on and Re-Imaged something to the tune of 50-65 iBooks in four hours. Wow. It was nice to do something besides order parts for a change.
The snow/ice wasn't too bad, with the exception of turn lanes. (Lack of traffic let the ice lie...)

Oh yeah... snow == ice... great!

2004-12-20T10:38:00.000-05:00

Dad said he had to drive at about 10-15mph the whole way to his office this morning... great.. just great... it's gonna take me a week to get across town to my office... oh well...
It's freezing cold too... the high temp today is about 23F... that's insane for NC.

Scoble's getting beat around...

2004-12-20T10:01:00.000-05:00

Scoble wrote a 'letter to the Boss' detailing his opinions/ideas on what Microsoft should do as far as a new media player goes. He obviously didn't suspect he'd set the entire blogosphere on fire... he's brewed up quite a controversy. Most people just lay into him about posting the "most insulting blog entry of the year" etc. and then unsubscribe. Hmm... I've got to read through everything one more time, but right now, I'd say I deffinitely support Scoble.

Under Fire | Home

2004-12-20T09:59:00.000-05:00

Under Fire | Home Just thought I'd bring this up.... it's my brother's site... I wrote the backbone (Tables, sidebar, banner, etc.) and showed him how to add content... none to shabby IMHO, considering that neither of us had used HTML before.
I've got a more ambitious project now.. I'm writing my own homepage to go here: http://home.earthlink.net/~adollarshort and since it's for my business it needs to look much more professional. We'll see how it goes.

What we're doing this Christmas...

2004-12-20T09:49:00.000-05:00

Let's see...
The 23rd we're going caroling with a couple of my aunts and my cousin. (On my dad's side)

The 25th we're having Christmas lunch at my aunt's. (Dad's side.)

And the 26th is lunch here with my Mom's side of the family.

Think that covers it... more updates as events warrant. :)

Bush to be Time's Person of the Year

2004-12-20T09:29:00.000-05:00

Bush to be Time's Person of the Year I'm probably the last blogger to mention this... but apparently W's been selected! Cool!

Cold? Wet? White? Oh! Snow!

2004-12-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sorry... I'm not used to it living in Eastern North Carolina. :)
Here's the view out my front door this morning:

There's really hardly any out there... I lived in Michigan for a while... people here are cold weather/snow wimps! Anyway... gotta go waste some time.. I'm on Christmas break ya know!

Another archived post...

2004-12-20T08:57:00.000-05:00

Originally posted Saturday, August 8th, 2004

Interesting....

Well, with my computer repair business getting ready to get started.. I have been considering my pricing alot... haven't made any definite decisions yet... but I do know it will be a LOT cheaper than this! These are the prices from Best Buy's Geek Squad, I typed this up in answer to a question about their pricing on the forum I frequent.. anyway... without further ado.. let the price gouging begin!!

I got my new Sony at Best Buy, and after the purchase, they run you by one of their 'agents' who tries to sell you anti-virus and anti-malware software. Started talking to the guy, and before we left, he said "Hurry up and turn 18 so we can hire you." I had to resist laughing and saying "Yeah right! I can charge %60 of what you guys do, and put more in my pocket, working on my own."
Anyway, they hand you several things, one of which is a sheet with all of their services and prices.
I typed it out... wow.. this was fun

IN HOME AND IN STORE SERVICES:

In Store

AV install: $29
Anti spyware install: $29
Data migration: $59
Desktop data backup: $89
Diagnosis/Troubleshoot: $59
Internal Card installation: $39
ISP installation: $29 (shouldn't this be "internet connection setup?)
Memory installation: $29
Notebook data backup: $89
Notebook drive installation (CD/DVD or HDD): $59
OS Install: $59
OS service: $59
PC drive install (CD/DVD or HDD): $39
Software install: $29
Spyware removal: $39
System customization/setup: $29
System tune-up: $29
Video card install: $39
Virus removal: $39

In Home

Add computer to network: $129
Additional hardware / software service: $69
Computer setup: $129
Drive install: $159
Internal card install: $159
Memory install: $129
OS Install: $229
Software install: $129
Wireless Networking: $159 for two computers, $50 for each additional
Data transfer (one device to another, up to 1 GB): $229
On site estimate: $129
OS service (Windows only ): $229
Software service: $159
Training basic (basic training on computer use / minor maintenance): $159
Advanced training (More thorough version of above): $229
Virus/spyware removal: $159

Official Services: (Combo packs...)

Setups, Customization and tune-ups
In Store: $29
In Home: $129

Virus removal, networking, security, upgrades, spyware removal, installation
In store: $39
In home: $159

OS installation, computer ressurection, OS repair
In Store: $59
In Home: $229

In Store Only:

Velocity Pack
System customization on new system, sytem tune-up, or Memory installation (hardware extra)
Price: $49

Med-Pack
Protect PC against viri. (This is a correction of the typo on their price sheet... heh heh.) Includes Norton AV with service.
Price: $54

Optimization pack
Optimize your PC according to your usage habits.
Includes Med-Pack plus settings customization according to your preferences.
Price: $69

Some 'archives' here...

2004-12-20T08:42:00.000-05:00

I'm going to post some articles from my old site. So, without further ado...

Originally posted Sunday, October 3rd, 2004.

What I did this weekend, or: How to void your warranty.

OK, Sunday my brother managed to pour a cup of coffee on his laptop. (While it was running no less!) So, "Captain Disassemble" to the rescue, sort of. I charge in the room when he starts yelling "CRAP CRAP CRAP" and dive for the power button, good news, I kill it before it kills itself. More good news, he was smart enough to immediately turn the thing upside down when he got coffee on it, way to only semi-panic! After cleaning what we could get at with the computer in one piece, I realize I'm going to have to take out the keyboard, remove all the keys, clean it, and then put it back in the machine. Fun

I get the keyboard off, and lo and behold, a puddle of coffee on every surface underneath it, oh boy, not good. We started taking apart the computer, trying to get everything clear of the sticky sweet battery acid my bro likes to consume by the gallon. Needless to say, we kept busy with the paper towels for a while, getting everything dry and un-sticky. It turns out that Dell designed this computer with the idea that if you spilled liquid on it, you would have to take apart EVERY thing to get it dry... argh. So, I COMPLETELY took the computer down, we were down to a MOBO (Mother board for the uninitiated) with just a heatsink, fan, processor, and I think the video card was still on there. Anyway, clean it up, dry it off, put it back together, boot it up.

Keyboard, doesn't work, sorta, it works in that you can hit keys, and it does stuff, it doesn't work in that I am 99% sure that what that keyboard currently does was not what Dell had in mind when they built the computer. (I can only say this with such certainty because I have seen the computer working before.. otherwise I probably wouldn't give Dell such good odds.) Also, at this stage, the touchpad likes to think that the right mouse button is constantly being depressed.

Because of the state the keyboard was in, I couldn't even get to a boot menu for diagnostics, so, homemade diagnostics to the rescue. I get out my other brother's 1100 and put his keyboard in the thirsty one, (Amid his loud protests I might add. "OK OK, if I mess it up, I'll buy you a new one, jeez") abracadabra, wave the magic wand, and wow! it works!

(Oh, FYI, these keyboards appear to be hot-swappable, who'd a thunk it?)

So, his keyboard assembly is shot. (It's still up in the air on whether it was the liquid, or if we damaged the cable disassembling the computer...)

So, I know it is a faulty keyboard, I play around with the computer a while, and have fun with a touchpad that thinks it is always right-clicking. Though this problem eventually seems to go away, I think it probably was sticking, or was too wet, or both.

Anyway, enough of this, I call Dell tech support to report a malfunctioning keyboard. "OK, now, take out the battery..." "No, I've already done that, I just need you to ship me a replacement keyboard assembly." (For those who don't know, the tech was trying to get me to do a power drain, to reset the thing, that seems to be their panacea, but knowing that, I tried before calling.)

So, the tech gives me a case ID, and has me sent to returns/repairs, the guy gets all set to ship me a new keyboard assembly, and then asks if I have any more issues with the computer, "Well, the touchpad buttons are a little strange sometimes." "Hmm... I better have you ship that back to us, so we can do a full diagnostics and repair." Cool! Please do! I can't believe they didn't ask me if I had spilled something on it... it would seem to me that would be the first thing they would suspect, especially when both the keyboard and touchpad are shot.

Now, about that incredibly obvious coffee smell... so I take down the computer again.. cleaning everything very thoroughly. (A little bit of water only.. wonderful difference though!)

This is when I find he only thing I didn't get to last time... the touchpad assembly, oops. That thing was built to hold liquids, I am now convinced, I pulled that thing open and about a half a cup of coffee came out on the table, wow.

So, clean the whole thing very thoroughly, and get it back together, all but the keyboard assembly, I take off every single key, and clean the whole thing about three times, then reassemble it.

Finally, the computer is back in one semi coffee scented piece.

Dell instructed me to send back the computer sans hard drive, optical drive, battery and charging unit, all of that goes in a box, and a gutted Inspiron 1100 sits on my brother's desk waiting for the DHL truck tomorrow.

This is going to really mess up his school schedule... oh well, lesson learned about coffee and computer I suppose.

As I alluded (is that the right word here?) to in my title, this almost definitely voided my warranty, I haven't read the Dell warranty recently, nor did I say anything to the tech about my extensive take down of the computer. But I am almost certain Dell would not be happy with what I did. Oh well, get over it guys.

I wish I had taken shots of the take down in progress, but I only got pics of it after we had finished, anyway, here it is spread around on our dining room table.
(Click the pictures for larger images.)

1- Keyboard assembly.

2- Metal piece, was under keyboard, over the fan/heatsink assembly.

3- Hard Drive

4- Memory chips

5- Optical Drive

6- Wireless PCMCIA card. (Don't ask me why this is in the pic...)

7- Main body that was left in one piece, see close up for description of components.

8- Battery.

9- Covers from underside of computer, left is modem compartment, right is memory.

10- LCD + top of rest of case, I wish I had taken a picture with this assembly open, this is the LCD closed on the top half of the rest of the case that is not on no. 7, including the touchpad.

Note that in this pic you can also see some of our candlesticks, our drinks, and some of my tools, and some parts to a board game my brother was simultaneously playing with.

Also note that the plastic container near the center of the pic is where we kept screws and the like we had removed, the pieces of paper are to remind us were stuff came from!

Closeup of main assembly:

1- Speakers, not sure why I labeled these...

2- Optical drive bay.

Note that between two and three you can see the processor, not sure why this wasn't numbered.

3- Hard drive bay, note that under this is the PCMCIA slot

4- Video card, I took this metal piece off, but it went back on before the photos apparently.

5- Heatsink/fan assembly

6- Battery bay.

There are other things I could've labeled here, the various ports on the sides and back, apologies if I didn't label something you were wondering about!

Changed my poster name...

2004-12-19T20:16:00.000-05:00

I was identifying myself as 'adollarshort' when i signed my posts, I've changed it to 'The_Rambler', seems to fit better, and is less dated to my old site...
Listening to BBC7 'Listen Again' stream of a Brother Cadfael mystery. Seems pretty interesting, and the quality of the production is up to the usual BBC par. (I.E.- very good.)

Well, I'm out of here for now, may be back later this evening, but I wouldn't put money on it.

Closed up shop at my old site...

2004-12-19T20:13:00.000-05:00

I just wrapped things up with my old home page. Now it's just my past blog entries and a note directing visitors to this site.
Once that is completely taken down, my business will have a homepage! (Finally!)

Listening to CyberLine!

2004-12-18T22:54:00.000-05:00

I'm listening to Mick Williams Cyber-Line! Love that show... listen to it every night I can...
Unfortunately, the local station is playing football... glad there's online streams!

Little excitement this evening...

2004-12-18T22:51:00.000-05:00

Wow, had a close call this evening...
I uninstalled a couple of games, and when I'd finished, I pulled up my "My Documents" folder, it was basically blank! With the exception of "My Music", "My Pictures" and a few others of the like, EVERYTHING was gone...and my last backup was two months old.
I immediately reached into my mental bag of software and came up with Servant Salamander 2.5, thank God for shareware! It worked pretty well... I recovered about a hundred megs of stuff, mostly documents... and suffered only a few losses... a couple of .SXWs and .PDFs were corrupted, but otherwise.. everything is 100%.
I'm really glad I didn't lose any pictures or audio.. those usually suffer the worst when it comes to data recovery.
Lesson learned almost the very hard way: Backup, backup, backup again!

Bess is stupid...

2004-12-18T17:05:00.000-05:00

I'm at our local library right now, been browsing the net on these publicly available computers. I'm going to ask how to file a complaint if I think a site has been blocked unfairly. Gmail is blocked by Bess(Published by Secure Computing), albiet as "free email", however you can still use both Yahoo! and Hotmail... I'd call those free... anyway.. I've got other things to do, more on Bess to follow...

Multi-tasking!

2004-12-16T14:55:00.000-05:00

Right now I am eating an oatmeal cream pie, drinking a Mountain Dew, ordering a hard drive for an iBook and, obviously, blogging. Technically it's my break (Thus the cream pie and Mountain Dew...) but I'm still working away on this stack of computers...
Well, the cream pie is gone, so that leaves both of my hands open to order stuff.. leaving me no excuse to slack off... oh well, it's been fun. :)

Testing 1...2...3... :)

2004-12-16T13:41:00.000-05:00

I'm writing this blog entry using an iBook connected to the wireless network here at work. The catch? According to the customer, this iBook doesn't have a functioning Airport card... computer users are a strange group....

I'm addicted to Scoble!

2004-12-16T11:21:00.000-05:00

Robert Scoble, Microsoft Geek Blogger, Channel9 interviewer, camera man, etc.
He turned me on to the Toshiba Portege M200 (Top of my Christmas list, haha!) Great guy! He manages to get the good inside scoop on Microsoft without sounding very biased... he can actually look at it from the semi-inside and not have everything he writes and says be completely colored to Microsoft's will... very cool.

I gotta set up a hit counter on this page. I'll be back later.

Quotables...

2004-12-16T11:09:00.000-05:00

Some (I think) funny quotes I've heard/read recently:
". . . you know frankly, going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. You just leave a lot of useless noisy baggage behind." - Jed Babbin on Hardball

"Go to bed already, it's 10 'til 12, today is tired of you and tommorrow doesn't want to see you this early." - Me, to my younger brother.

"Like cream filling through a twinkie." - Mick Williams of CyberLine describing how a scramjet works.

Possible break-in attempt on doc's server...

2004-12-15T16:10:00.000-05:00

I'm at work and the doc next door apparently has had someone trying to break into his server for the last 48 hours or so... the boss went over with the phone number of his ISP (He's on the other coast!) and his IP address.. heh heh.. went this "hacker" saw that IP address with an xserve on the end... did he reckon on it being next door to a bunch of computer guys? More updates as warranted...

OK, it's me, the Blog nomad...

2004-12-15T09:54:00.000-05:00

I've decided to, for the moment, grace this blogging service with my presence.
There's now only one reason why I would not stick with this service forever... the interface seems unbelieveably laggy... I can't stand slow interfaces.. that is one thing that MSN has over both Earthlink and Blogger.
Why did I choose Blogger?
1) I like the posting interface, it's just really s..l...o...w...
2) It has RSS capabilities. (Ixnay on the eedfay with Earthlink.)
3) I can do anything I want with the CSS.. haha! Sweet!
4) Well, ok, it was one of the only respectable blogging services left.. am I too picky?

You can see some of my previous work, most recently here: http://spaces.msn.com/members/adollarshort
And right before, and parrallel to that, here: http://home.earthlink.net/~adollarshort

You may be wondering why this crazy run around... well... I'll tell you... I really don't know... I'm just not satisfied with Trellix(Earthlink) so I went to MSN Spaces(Beta still BTW.) and wasn't happy with that either. So, I moved again, and here I am.. for now anyway...!