Category — FSB

Geez. I haven’t updated my page in quite a while. Things are very hectic at work and by the time I get home, I just too tired to even turn on the computer. Things are still hectic and I’m still too tired when I get home so this entry is coming from work. There isn’t any better time-saver than doing your personal business during work hours. I mean I have to many important things going on to be bothered with doing actual work at work. Ha!

If I have to say so myself (and I will), I’m the ultimate husband for my wife. For Valentine’s Day, I bought tickets to Friday night’s Barry Manilow concert at the Fox Theatre! The next thing you know I will be at JoAnn Fabrics holding her purse while she shops. Oh the pain.

Doesn’t it annoy you when you meet someone and they say “hello” and not use your name? I think people should personalize their greetings to others. Say something like “How ya doing, Mike!” and that will make me happy.

I have a couple of cool links to tell you but they are on my home computer.

My new web host should be ready for me very soon. I signed up with one that costs $99 per year. They offer all the extras I’ve been looking for and much more. I now have up to 50 email boxes for my use at the domain. After I get my site transferred over, I will sign up with Moveable Type or GrayMatter. Both are very slick interfaces, using PHP that make blogging very easy. I’m excited about learning some new things when I get it going.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Happy 2002. Here is the new design. What do you think? Now that I am done fiddling, I have some new content to add very soon.

December’s entries have been archived.

After a great week off, we have to go back to work tomorrow. Our plans to leave town fell through so we stayed around town. I’m happy we did. Sometime it’s nice to stay around the house, sleep in and watch movies. And that’s exactly what we did.

Here are some of the films that we saw during the break:
Ocean’s Eleven - great movie
Lord of the Rings - my vote for Best Film of the Year
Startup.com - yawn
Evolution - very funny
Planet of the Apes - received it as a gift on DVD
Jurassic Park 3 - was better the second time around.
Spy Game - good movie but crowded theater
Moulon Rouge - couldn’t sit through it all, too boring
Harry Potter - excellent
Spy Kids - really cool gadgets

Here is a “Hobbit Name Generator” that may come in handy should you find yourself travelling to Middle Earth.