Dawn goes to Sweethome
Well, it is a fun weekend of partying coming up. Dawn left for Sweethome this morning and I just know that somewhere out there is a party with my name on it. Matt's bachelor party should be soon (maybe this Saturday). I don't know if he knows about it, but I'm sure someone does. 
OK, so actually, I'll probably be working most if not all of this weekend. I'm sure there will be a few hours taken up with some recreational activities with Joe (maybe Tribes2???). But, other than that, I have an installation that is finally nearing completion and some of our other products are due for resets (new expiration dates).
I also need to start going over the pictures that Dawn has scanned from Mom's pictures. I think we are probably nearing 1000 of them or so. I'll try to get some part of them up in the next week. I'm guessing that they are going to oink up alot of space quickly so I haven't really figured out how I'm going to do that. But I know that I want the ability for people in the family to be able to make comments on them and what not. So I might have to either limit access to certain IP addresses (that'd eliminate a big chunk of the rest of the net) or work on the ability to do passwords. Hmmm... If you have ideas let me know.
National Mustard Day
It is (was) national Mustard Day. Apparently a very peaceful event that takes place in Wisconsin. In honor of it, I was going to put a pic of the mustard in my fridge up here, but I decided not to. 
On the upside, I believe the Middle Child's day is coming up (although it is either celebrated on the 10th, the 12th or the 14th). So, somehow I'll try to work this into something cool, or not who knows.
Well, spent a good portion of the day testing the crud out of some stuff I wrote (Databank) and a few hours playing games with Joe, so now I'm going to bed (cause it is late!!!). Good night.
The AIM Worm
I've gotten the AOL Instant Messenger Worm on my computer. This is a vicious little worm that is easily identified by the hundreds of new links and icons you suddenly have on your computer. All of them for free AOL access (at least the first month or so). Unfortunately, it isn't correctly identified by any version of McAfee or Norton Anti-Virus. The only thing to do is to avoid all AOL products and websites completely.
Ok, so the reality of the situation is that it is my fault for upgrading Instant Messenger one day. Once it was complete, there was: - An icon on my desktop
- A link in my favorities in IE 5
- A link in my Links bar in IE
- An icon added to my Start menu
- There is one in Netscape too, but it was probably there all along
Those are just the ones that I've found. I wonder what AIM nerds think about when they dream this stuff up. Do they get bonuses based on how many weird places they can stick that stupid icon? On top of that now AIM comes up with a little dialog just like ICQ. I think I'm going to have to switch to one of the all-in-one jobs that I'm seeing more of.
I checked out Trillian not to long ago and it left much to be desired. Lots (and I mean lots) of the features for ICQ were either missing or partially implimented. Nothing personal, but at the time it needed lots of work.
Jabber continues to show up on the nerd radar (wish I had a good link for that one). There was an article in Wired or something not too long ago. I still haven't downloaded it and tried it out, but they did receive investment money as recently as May, which if you know anything about the economy was about when things sucked bad.
Anyway, I'm rambling which means it is bedtime. Night.
Last minute thought
Um, I'm going to modify the collage when you first log in here and set it up so that it rotates based on refresh (or something, haven't really decided yet). But I'm sure I'll get 5 or 6 out of it so if you didn't see yourself in there enough, just know that there are more coming.
Another last minute thought. Tomorrow (Wednesday the 8th) is Sneak Some Zucchini onto Your Neighbor's Porch Day - just so you know. I might have to try that, except most of my neighbors have dogs (that are bigger-ish).
Adaptec/Roxio Sucks
Oh, the good part about having your own website is that you can sit on a small soapbox and bitch about crappy software if you want. Adaptec/Roxio's EZ-CD Creator software sucks, especially in Win2k. I used to think that they were just trying to create something to start some strange IPO with (since it was the way of the world not long ago). Now I'm thinking they were just trying to keep what tech support people they could. I'd bet it was like a hard-ship tour and you got a bunch of extra pay and special counseling if you went to Roxio when they seperated.
So some of you out there might want to know what happens. Well, in Win2k (with version 5.01) everytime I load a CD it takes forever. If I didn't know better (and I don't) I would say that they are intercepting every single call to the CD-ROM drive. And, if they don't like it for some reason they screw with it and screw it up. This results in huge delays reading data from the drive, occasional errors that make no sense (parameter is invalid), and general system instability (I'm currently looking at my Windows explorer that has taken off into never never land while trying to look at a CD). I suggest Nero, while they don't have a DirectCD capabilities, I can't say as that has ever been all that important to me. What they do have is stable good software. A friend of mine has used DirectCD alot (back in Win98 days), but I think she has moved on to Win2k and has little need for it now. Basically, if you are thinking of software for your CD-RW don't get Adaptec/Roxio - it sucks.
Finally, an FYI on the use of Jabber. I didn't like it, mostly due to interface issues. However, their API is open source and is being used by a bunch of other IM clients so I think it still warrants a look.
National Rice Day
I'm rebuilding a Win2k machine at the moment so I thought I would bring you all good news. Today is National Rice Day. I have no idea what it means or even why they would have it, however, the USA Rice Federation promoted September to National Rice Month. Apparently there is even a National Rice Month foodservice operator promotion contest at NationalRiceMonth.com.
Matt & Lisa's Wedding
Hi, in case you don't already know, Matt & Lisa are getting married this weekend. I'm sure if you didn't get an invitation it was probably just a mailing error. Show up anyway, bring some beer and cheetos (I'm being told there could be a deficit of cheetos). FYI, I still think we should have a bachelor party for Matt the night before. Of course, we would have to take him to the strip club and make him smell like a bunch of strange women. I'm told this is like instant therapy for newly weds. Well, pics will be up here sometime after the wedding and that's about all I know.
Oh yeah, and today is either National Creamsicle Day or Middle Child's Day. Depending on which calendar you look at.
Matt and Lisa are Married
Well, the wedding was quite beautiful. I took about 130 pictures (of which probably 70 or so are actually unique and not too blurry). My batteries on the flash were pretty much dead when we started out. I screwed up and didn't charge them before going. On top of that, I left half my memory at home so I had one 128MB card and I wasn't going back down that driveway just to offload it to the laptop.
Anyway, no flash and I get to try and open up the lens as much as possible to get decent pictures (in less than 1/15 of a second so that I don't blurr them up by moving). The upside of blurry pictures is that if you reduce the size you can clean up alot of it. So, I'll be putting some pics up today (hopefully). We also have some video to go over and I'll try to pull some frames out of that, too. I don't know if I'll get all that today since there is alot of other stuff going on. But, check back soon.
Also, if you took pictures at the wedding and you want to have them up here, let me know and we can even scan them here for you and return them.
Matt & Lisa's Wedding Pics
Yes folks, soon they will be up. I hope. I didn't get any really good shots like the rest of the photographers. I'm a fat lazy man who isn't really all that willing to get up and walk across the pool for most stuff. However, my lovely wife did take the camcorder around and get some good film of Lisa's personal vows to Matt. I have to say that the vows made a huge impression on most people. Even Lisa's mom, who we later caught on tape asking about their sex life. But, I digress.
Jim Linch took a bunch of what are sure to be great pictures. I understand that he will have some wonderful site up in the near future. I'm sure I'll have to steal most of the pictures off of it and make up a little site of my own (heehee, just kidding Jim).
On other news, today is my cousin Angie's 30th birthday. If you are reading this, send her a card or something.
VPN
One other thing. Today we had a little VPN failure that was out of the blue and impossible to track down (OK, so actually I did it in less than an hour). Turns out my hub (that is currently only plugged into the VPN Server and the VPN Gateway machines) decided to go nuts. I couldn't ping from the gateway to the server, but I could from the server to the gateway. The gateway wouldn't let me log into the domain, but the server (which is the PDC) would show the gateway. Previous experience with problems on the VPN were tracked to a DNS issue.
One last thing for tonight (ATHM)
Hi. Ever look at stock prices? Craig pointed out to me today that ATHM (At Home aka Excite@Home) was currently in the toilet. I thought he was joking. At end of trading today (aka 4pm EST) it was 40 cents. That's right folks, FOURTY cents. This from an all time high in the 150 range (before the 2:1 split in June of 99). Woohoo, can't wait for AFN.
Don't get me wrong. My last experience with Charter's tech guys was great. What's-his-name came out and fixed all kinds of stuff. Unfortunately, one of their contractor's screwed it up in the first place. Kinda a bummer. The other thing is I got to enjoy the automated-hell they call a phone system in order to get anyone out here to look at it AND on top of that I had to enjoy several hours without internet access. I'd complain more, but I'm sure someone is on dialup, soooo.
Lemming Mail
OK, I guess it is time for another recap of lemming mail.
What is lemming mail? Lemming mail is mail from people who only know how to forward mail to their entire address book. This is very much like a virus, but without the virus. Lemming mail usually starts off with something like:
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!
or
READ IMMEDIATELY AND PASS ON TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW
If you get an e-mail that says you should pass it on, PLEASE look at Virus Busters (which has more than just virus listings), Symantec's virus listing (some hoaxes are listed there) and/or McAfee's virus listings (again, some hoaxes - mostly those related to deadly viruses that will charge up all your credit cards and make your house catch on fire in the middle of the night and hold you down in the bed only to die - which is also part of a huge government conspiracy). These kinds of things were originally referred to as "IQ tests for idiots" - this of course before all the Politically Correct Enforcement Agents started to surf the net. Now they are politely called scams.
Interesting news
How to get a 5" nail stuck in your skull and talk about it.
That would just have to hurt.