Posts from — January 2002

Pam and I have declared a Snow Day for ourselves. We both called in sick to avoid the terrible, slow drive to work. Also we have a lot of things to do while we’re off like sleeping, eating, watching videos and then taking a nap. The last time I called in sick to work was last year with a big snow storm. This may become my yearly ritual. Thanks to Dave and Gary for handling my users for me. I have them so spoiled that when I’m off, they can be quite a handful.

I’ve been switched over to the new Comcast servers. Everything went as I expected but my email isn’t working. I tried finding help online at Comcast’s lame website and checked the newsgroups for any information but I couldn’t find anything. So I called Comcast and got through right away. They said it was an issue with @Home and I would have to call them. When I called @Home I was put on hold and I finally hung up on them after waiting for over 30 minutes. I’ll wait until tomorrow and call from work. I believe that I just need a password reset. How hard can that be?

One good thing is my webpage is working for now. I would still like to change over to another web host.

Note to Dave. When are you going to get your webpage going? We need input, Stephanie.

Goodbye cruel world. This may be the last entry for a while. Comcast is switching me over to their server from @Home tonight. Things should go smoothly but if you don’t hear from me, you’ll know that something didn’t work out.

I did find a web host for only $4/month but I may opt for a little better one. This one only allows 40MB of storage and only 5 email addresses but no PHP support. Another one, for around $100/year has so much more. One nice thing about the switch is I can use Moveable Type or GreyMatter. They are both blogging tools, using Perl script, that most of the cool webloggers use.

Useful: a currency converter that uses real-time exchange rates.

Another play on the stick figure karate stuff. This one lets you control one of the guys.

Factoids from the LockerGnome newsletter:
It is impossible to lick your elbow. A crocodile can’t stick it’s tongue out. A shrimp’s heart is in their head. People say “Bless you” when you sneeze because when you sneeze, your heart stops for a millisecond. In a study of 200,000 ostriches over a period of 80 years, no one reported a single case where an ostrich buried its head in the sand (or attempted to do so - apart from Bones). It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky. A pregnant goldfish is called a twit. More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call. Rats and horses can’t vomit. The “sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick” is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language. If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die. If you keep your eyes open by force, they can pop out.

Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over million descendants. Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times. If the government has no knowledge of aliens, then why does Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations, implemented on July 16, 1969, make it illegal for U.S. citizens to have any contact with extraterrestrials or their vehicles? In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere. The cigarette lighter was invented before the match. Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married. A duck’s quack doesn’t echo, and no one knows why. 23% of all photocopier faults worldwide are caused by people sitting on them and photocopying their posterior. In the course of an average lifetime you will, while sleeping, eat 70 assorted insects and 10 spiders. Most lipstick contains fish scales. Cat’s urine glows under a black- light. Like fingerprints, everyone’s tongue print is different. Over 75% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow.

The RadioCentral guys were in the office yesterday. They were selling their idea to the marketing guys with the hope DCX may help sponsor their service. There are lots of radio stations out on the Internet but I liked this interface. Bookmark the shortcut on your desktop and listen to a variety of music anytime.

Everyone gets a bunch of crazy signs and jokes in their email. I’ll bet a lot of them come from Web Forwards. If you missed any, chances are good you will find them here.

Here is a good site. Read the text carefully.

You can still be an idiot if you’re famous.

I’m on notice with @Home. They are moving my account to the new Comcast servers next Tuesday. I don’t plan on using any of their stupid software to configure my system correctly to run on the new network. I will just keep my settings they way they are, reboot the day after I’ve been migrated and everything should be fine. Right? Maybe not. In their note, they say I may experience “service interruptions” while they make adjustments to the new network. Geez. I know several people that have moved already and they complain of constant interruptions. I just hope they have it ironed out before they get to me.

Yee Ha! I got a wireless card for my iPAQ and laptop at work. Now I can connect to the network anywhere in my area.

Like Star Wars? Here is a fun site called Star Wars Asciimation. They have the films in ascii format. This guy really put a lot of work into it.

Frontsideback has gained a bit of notoriety. DaimlerChrysler has added FSB to their list of blocked sites. I don’t know why the did this but now it is impossible to view my site from work. Did someone complain? Was it perhaps the vice president of the company wondering why FSB was his home page after I did a Windows 2000 upgrade to his computer? Did someone love the site and visited it so much they had to block it to get that person back to work? Were the lame webmasters who run the DCX websites jealous of my mastery of HTML? So jealous they shut me down so they wouldn’t look so bad. I’ll begin my investigation.

There are only four more months before the lease expires on the Durango. Please don’t let it break down anymore before then. Brakes, batteries, tires. When will it end? Then the lease company, National City Bank keeps calling me to discuss my “end of term options” for the Durango. They want me to buy the car off of them instead of just turning it in. They figured the residual price (how much the car is worth at the end of the term) too high and want me to pay that amount to them so they come out ahead. I don’t think so. Since they won’t let me turn it in early, I’ll just keep it until the very last day of the lease if necessary. Losers.

I had 2 people cut me off the road today. I was driving along minding my own business, honest. Guess what, neither used their blinkers. It makes me want to get them out of their car and SLAP them.

We had plans to go to the Monster Truck races at the Silverdome featuring the “Raminator.” We didn’t make it. We had plans to go to the Plymouth Ice Sculpture contest. We passed on that too. We were going to see A Beautiful Mind Friday night at the movies. We decided not to go. What did we do all weekend? Nothing. Well sort of.

We did go see The Royal Tenenbaums this afternoon. It was an offbeat movie that we both could have lived without seeing. It had a lot of funny moments but not enough to make it a great movie. It was just OK. Gene Hackman (who won a Golden Globe award just moments ago for his role as Royal Tenenbaum) was great. So was Angelica Houston. The best part of the movie came at the very end with the inscription of the gravestone. I won’t give it away but I laughed out loud when I saw it.

I’m going to get one of these. I need a new PDA case; one that will hold the iPAQ and the CF sleeve.

I downloaded Pocket TV Listings for my Pocket PC. After you customize it, PTVL goes to TV Guide’s website, downloads the TV schedule for the week and syncs it to your Pocket PC. Click on any show and a brief description will pop-up. You can also set an alarm to remind you of an upcoming show. The reminder is placed on your Pocket PC calendar. It’s apps like these that make my iPAQ useful and cool.

Blockbuster had a good deal this past weekend. You could rent 3 movies or 2 games for $9.99. Apparently everyone else thought it was a good idea too. When we got to the store on Friday, there was a line of about 50 people and the shelves were ravaged. We left empty-handed.

Going to Blockbuster used to be a fun experience. Now you fight crowds, get aggravated because the movie you want is out, pay high prices and wait in long lines while the slob at the register argues that the DID rewind the last movie they returned. What I would like to see is the Pay per view channels update their movies a little more. When you scan the listings, you see 5 channels of the same movie. Why not have DIFFERENT movies on EACH channel for a bigger variety. Synchronize your showings with the recent movie-to-video releases and we will NEVER have to fight with Blockbuster again. What do you think?

From Jeffery: “When I’m driving, if you’re in front of me you’re an idiot and if you’re behind me you’re a loser.”