Posts from — January 2002

There was trouble with the site earlier today but everything is fine now. I am distressed with the speed in which the pages load on the @Home servers. Sometimes they can take up to 30 seconds to come up. I fear it may get worse before it gets better when my account is transferred over to the Comcast servers. So I will probably be looking for a new web host, one that has CGI, PHP and all that. I’ve found a couple that have reasonable rates and have a good track record of reliable and fast servers.

I met Pam for dinner at Applebee’s tonight. We both ordered their special “signature” steaks. Both of our dinners were awful. The potatoes I got were so salty I couldn’t even eat one bite and the sauteed vegetables were raw and tasteless. Rather than complaining, we just won’t go there any longer. I suggest you do the same. We should have gone home and George Forman-ed some chicken.

Here is another site worth your while: The Devil’s Tramping Ground. It’s done in flash and this guy implements it in a very unique way. Make sure you turn out the lights when you visit.

Commercial televison is getting really bad. Tonight is the premiere of The Chair with John McEnroe. We couldn’t even stand 10 minutes of it. Don’t waste your time watching. They make it very difficult to earn money and the premise - to keep your heart rate down while being taunted by McEnroe is ridiculous. Of course the public will probably like it. They like The Weakest Link and that’s a really stupid show but now its on every day in the afternoon.

There is an exception to all this bad TV. The show 24 is pretty good. It stars Kiefer Sutherland as a government agent trying to prevent an assasination attempt of a presidential candidate. His wife and daughter have been kidnapped and there is a traitor in his group. The story takes place during the course of one day in real time. Someone brought up the fact that the times it takes to go between places in the story don’t correspond to the actual times it would take in Los Angeles traffic. I suppose the writers are using poetic license to make the story more interesting. I remember when I first commented on the show, I thought it would be a boring story about the characters driving to work in rush hour traffic. This show is anything but boring. Check it out if you can. They usually recap past events to get you up to speed in the beginning of each show.

Scary and interesting: Google has every AOL chat saved and indexed. This means you can type in 2 screen names and a date and read their conversation. Go to this site and check it out. They say its only going to be active for a short while longer. Lawsuits have prompted the Google site’s closure. Wait, the site is closed already and it was all a big hoax. Very funny.

Besides showing you the cheat codes for various games, Cheat Happens lists easter eggs for many movies released on DVD.

I’m still working on my “Rules of Driving” essay.

TechTV has announced their “Best of CES Winners.” Like them, my favorite is the Moxi Media Center. It’s an all-in-one digital cable/satellite receiver, broadband cable modem, DVD player, personal video recorder (like TIVO) and a digital music jukebox. The jukebox can store 100’s of your CD’s on its hard drive or download them from the Internet. Very slick and I must have one. I also must have a Danger PDA/Cellphone. I love gadgets.

Want to pretend you are working late but you really left way early? Use the free service “emailalibi.com” to send a delayed email from your account. Nobody will know. Except me, since I told you about it.

I added a few rants this evening. They have been stewing inside me for a few days.

Site News: the image gallery is finally up. Check out the pictures and tell me what you think. I take images I have on hand and “brand them” with Frontsideback.

The comment system is working again too.

Talking of image galleries, the American Mile Markers site is really worth a visit. This guy travelled across the country taking one picture for every mile he went. It’s a very ambitious and fascinating look into the landscape across America. I love this site!

After a long absence, I have rediscovered Atom Films. The site is now owned by Shockwave.com but the content is good as ever. There are still tons of wonderful short films to watch. From now on, if there isn’t anything on TV worth watching, I’m heading to this site. Shockwave has added some fun games that make the site even better.

I watched Star Wars for the millionth time the other day and always thought that some of the facts may not be correct in the story. For instance, this site explains “Implausibility of the Death Star’s Trash compactor.”

Another week of work is over and I’m glad. It seemed that everyone needed something from the minute I walked in the door. I like all the attention but its hard to keep up sometime. I think I’ll play a couple rounds of Return to Castle Wolfenstein to ease my stress. Is it very nice to go blindly around a castle shooting and killing everything in sight? You betcha.

Like driving, sending email should have rules too. Here is a site that has a list of email etiquette rules. I should send this out to all my users. Then they would know about about Rule 28: don’t forward virus hoaxes.

I’ve found a gallery template and I should have some pictures uploaded sometime this weekend. I also created a few cool, new FSB logo banners. Check them out and let me know what you think when I get them up here.

Arghh, the comment system is down. Not sure what’s going on but I’ll get it fixed soon.

My “Rules of the Road” essay should be complete very soon. I talk about the things you can do to be a better driver. If you read it and pay attention, driving will be a much nicer experience for you. More importantly it will make ME happy. And that’s good.

Tomorrow our group is going down to the auto show for a preview tour before it opens to the public. I’m looking forward to wandering around looking at the displays before the crowds get there. Then the boss invited us to hang out at The Firehouse across the street from the show. It sounds like a good time. The best part is we get to do this during work hours.

Did I just have a vacation? Well, I’m ready for another one. The place is buzzing with activity in preparation for the Detroit Auto Show. The group I work with is directly responsible for the Chrysler part of it. They are going crazy trying to get eveything ready to give presentations to announce several new cars.

Some people are talking about how Chrysler is going down the tubes. After looking at the new Crossfire and also the Pacifica, I doubt it. The Crossfire alone is sure to generate a ton of excitement just like the PT Cruiser did 2 years ago. They also have the new Liberty and a new Ram pickup that are sure to help sales. Their displays at the auto show are always top-notch and often edge out all the competition. They always generate a lot of excitement that helps sell cars. It’s cool to be associated with these people when I go down and look at all the great displays. It also makes the hard work to prepare for it worth the effort.

Stupid but cool: I can now surf the Internet on my Pocket PC while its in the cradle. What use is this you may ask? None as far as I can tell. When I get it to go wireless or even via my cell phone, I’ll let you know.

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men, doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Hey, the Archives are finally working! Now all my weblog entries will be moved to the archive page automatically. This means you won’t miss any of my daily weblog banter. How lucky is that?

I moved last year’s rants to the archive area too. Something is bound to aggravate me so the regular rant page will fill up fast again. Do you have something that bothers you? Send it to me and I’ll post it on the Rant page.

The picture gallery is coming back sometime this weekend.

You know the game 20 questions? There is a site where you think of a TV show and answer yes or no questions. It attempts to guess your show based on your responses. I tried it with a few and it guessed each time. It was a somewhat uncanny; and a lot of fun.

The weekend is finally here. We both plan on doing some heavy-duty sleeping for the next couple of days. We are still in vacation-mode and had trouble all week getting out of bed for work. The new movie Imposter looks good, we may go see it. Another one that interested me is The Royal Tenenbaums with Gene Hackman and Ben Stiller. It looked good when we saw a trailer for it last weekend.

Then again we may just stay home and sleep.

I’m having trouble getting motivated this week. I’m still in vacation-mode. Thankfully the weekend is almost here so I can recover from the last few days at work. Soon we’ll be planning our next vacation. Somewhere warm, I hope.

“Surf the web as it was” at the Wayback Machine. Type in a URL and you can see how various sites looked years ago. I checked out Yahoo and Microsoft. In some ways, I miss the simplicity of the web back then.

I took this Personality Disorder test and the results were a bit scary. I should start therapy right away.