Category — Computers

Like everyone else, I get a huge amount of email. Many of these messages have signature files at the bottom. Most of the time they are simple one or two line paragraphs that include the person’s name and phone number.

Every once in a while I’ll get one with a famous quote or clever saying. These are nice but some senders feel the need to add paragraphs of information including their email address (I know what it is because you just sent me an email), fax number, home address, names of their children and a bunch of useless data.

In the early days of email, signature files (and .plan files) in the Unix environment were unique and fun. Now they are becoming increasingly annoying.

Some emailers with too much time on their hands, create these elaborate signature files with animated GIF files that couldn’t be more irritating. I’m sure these people think they’re being clever but these signature files are about as tacky as pink flamingo or roaming gnome lawn ornaments.

Have you seen the ones with the name in a tacky neon green 72pt script font that’s barely legible but nonetheless extremely gaudy? How about the ones where an image is pasted into the signature box and stretched out of proportion making it blurry and illigible.

My philosophy for email: keep it short and simple. Don’t waste bandwith on stupid signature files that take up more disk space than the message itself. And get to the point with your message too, I won’t sift through a bunch of dribble just to get to your one line of useful information. You’ll be wasting your time emailing me such crap as I won’t read it.

And please no animated GIF’s of hopping bunnies in your SIG file.

For some good examples of annoying signature files, visit The Gallery of Annoying Email Signatures.

With the reinstall of my system, I decided to stop using Yahoo! Instant Messenger and instead use Trillian. It allows you to connect to all the major IM services in one window. If you have friends on AOL, ICQ, MSN or Yahoo! Trillian is an excellent choice.

I also wanted to spruce up my wallpaper files with some new images so naturally I thought of Xanthic. They have some of the coolest wallpaper and icons on the net. They even tell you how they made some of the images so you can create them yourself.

Beef. It’s what’s for dinner. We got a coupon for Mountain Jacks so we’re going there tonight. It’s been years since we’ve dined there. The last time I got irritated because they stopped giving you their portable salad bar on the table for you to serve yourself. Now you have to tell the waiter what you want and they serve you. I didn’t like that so we stopped going.

We’re watching the Trading Spaces weekend marathon on The Learning Channel. Two couples “swap spaces” and redecorate a room. They have $1000 and 48 hours to do it. With the help of a carpenter and a decorator, they really come up with some interesting rooms. The best part comes at the end when you see their reactions to their new room.

I had enough of my slow computer so I formatted the hard drive and reinstalled Windows XP. Now it’s blazingly fast. Just like it should. Yeah, baby.

Did you notice that cars are always tailgating you? Do you wonder why everyone is passing you on the road? It’s because you are a freakin’ slowpoke. Get out of the way and off the road. If the speed limit is ___, then drive that fast. 5 MPH over is an even better idea. If you drive a little faster, I’ll forgive you for not using your blinker - - NOT.

A lot of people I know don’t need this, they create enough on their own. For you others, here’s a BS Generator.

I don’t feel like going in tomorrow, I’ll be “working” from home if you need me.

This image and more at Dribbleglass.com.

In a ranking of all web pages, mine is listed at number 3,492,880. Check it out. 3.4 million is better than nothing.

The demise of newsgroup access through Comcast and the meager 1 GB download limit they offer from a third party steams me. Last week I joined Easynews. They give me 6 GB of downloads for ten bucks a month. Their system is fast and well-organized. The images are indexed for very easy downloading and it includes all the latest decoding software built in. Very nice. Now I can download stuff without having to worry about any limits.

I talked about Blinkenlights before in my weblog but its worth mentioning again. It’s about a building in Germany that has computer-controlled lights where different designs can be displayed from the windows. They’ve vastly improved the system and now you can even play pong via your cellphone right on the freakin’ building. Check the website for something really clever and entertaining. The site is brought to you by the famous Chaos Computer Club.

The Screen Savers listed their first programs they load on a fresh PC.
Leo’s picks:
Ultimate Zip - free unzip program
NoteTabPro - excellent Notepad replacement
Download Accelerator - speed up downloads
AVG Antivirus - free antivirus program
Proxomitron - eliminate popups

Sam Spade is an extremely useful tool to find information about others on the web. It contains a ton of helpful network tools like whois, dns and IP searching.

Thanks Dave for the information on using my VPN account. I got my VPN token some months ago but have never used it from home. A simple install of the connection software, then a click on my token to reveal the passcode and voila, I’m browsing the network at DCX.

The water restrictions around our area are getting worse. Not only can’t we water on odd days, on our even days we can’t water between 6 - 9 am/pm. I think its working though. The water pressure was almost normal this morning. Our backyard - “the hayfield” is so desperately in need of water that I’m afraid I may never get the grass back there green again. Still I shouldn’t complain. People in a nearby town were without water for 6 days.

The Detroit News had an article today about the water problems. Of all the communities in the area, ours and a few others were labeled “severe shortage areas.” It’s the damn over-developing the builders are doing. They are out of control. I think they should be made to stop building, let the infrastructure catch up and then CAREFULLY start building again. Greedy bastards.

I haven’t had this much fun since I my first connection to the web on CIS, Compuserve Information Service back in 1979. I’m updating my website while sitting on the couch using my laptop.

Last Sunday I purchased a Linksys wireless router to add to my home network. Now we have a wireless (secure) connection all over the property.

I have my iPAQ also connected to the wireless network and I’m chatting with my brother in Texas via Yahoo! Instant Messenger. Hang on, I’m drooling all over the place. This is really cool stuff. (Getting a tissue)

My next mission will be to get the iPAQ on my home network where you can see it in My Network Places. Then I can pull files from the unit and maybe even send files on the iPAQ to my printer.

With all these new devices coming into my home network, I’m thinking of giving them all names. Some of the ideas I have for a naming convention are: superheroes, the planets and cats. Anyone have any other ideas?

Sorry again about the lack of updates. We are a bit hectic around here with the passing of Pam’s father. Now that things are returning to “normal”, I’m hoping to update much more often. I have a few good ideas for the site and a ton of updates to the rants, quotes and egram pages. I also wanted to post images of the past FSB versions. I think it will be fun to see how the page has developed over the years.

This weblog is only 1 year old (this week) but I’ve had a page up for about 3 years. I’ve learned a ton about web design and still have about 10 tons yet to learn. Maybe the next version will be some cool Flash MX thing….Nah.

The Klez virus is easily the worst email-based virus to date. It does everything the typical Outlook Express-exploiting virus does, it looks like a almost normal email, you run the cloaked attachment then it emails everyone in your address book with more viruses, but it does one extra thing: it randomly changes the From field to anyone in the address book. - from Wired

As Frank-n-Furter said, “It’s getting really hard to have a good time anymore.”

You know that Mitsubshi commercial with the women doing that weird dance in the front seat? I really liked the song playing. With fast Google search, I found the song was called “Can’t Live Without You” by Dirty Vegas. Go to their site to see a unique way of listening to the song yourself.

I submitted this photo to the Mirror Project web site. It’s a cool place where you can upload your favorite photos. There’s just one catch; all photos must be a reflection of you in a mirror. It’s a neat premise that produces some really neat photographs.

I ran the photo through a filter in Photoshop Elements to stylize it a little. What do you think?

This makes me think. Instead of having a usual boring image gallery on my site, I will think of a theme. Anyone have any ideas for me? Let me know, click on comments below and type in your ideas.

In preparation for the new image gallery and the bulletin board system, I got an increase in my storage space on my webhost’s server. For only $17/year I now have 75 MB of space instead of 30 MB.

No I’m not going to say anything about getting ditched at lunch today. It’s not a very bright idea to piss off your IT guy. Didn’t you request one of those new, slim Dell LS notebook computers? Gee, sorry we’re all out of them. Darn it. Got a computer virus that destroyed all your files? Hmmm, I can’t imagine how you would have gotten something like that. Sorry that I couldn’t help you with it. Have a nice day.

The Wild Tangent people were in the office today. While they were waiting for their meeting, I bust into the room to talk with them. I noticed some cool graphics on one of their laptops and went in to ask them about it. They introduced themselves and showed me the coolest game I’ve seen in a long time - SpaceRocks 2. It’s an updated version of their original game which is an updated version (very updated) of Asteroids. I spent more time in front of the TV mindlessly playing Atari’s Asteroids than any other game ever.

I’m anxious to get a copy of the new game when it goes on sale. I got their card, maybe I will mooch a copy of my two new friends from Wild Tangent.

Dell Dimension 8200 Computer System- $2900
Comcast High-Speed Broadband Connection- $42
Microsoft Windows XP Professional- $198
MS Internet Explorer XP- Free
Hacking into friends system via Yahoo! Instant Messenger- PRICELESS