Early Saturday morning I hopped in my truck and drove 250 miles to Bentonville, Arkansas, for another round of hunting for and playing videogames with several of my friends from Digital Press. Icbrkr and his wife once again hosted the festivities. Icbrkr's buddy Grimbal showed up, along with 98Pacecar (from Dallas) and Gapporin (from Joplin). Yes, I know constantly referring to people by their online aliases is geeky.
Due to a mix-up in directions I ended up following Icbrkr's instructions i
Alexey Tolstokozhev, a Russian spammer who was responsible for over 30% of all viagra, cialis, and penis enlargement spam e-mails, was found shot to death in his in his luxury home near Moscow this week. Tolstokozhev reportedly made more than $2 million dollars this year alone, thanks to spam. Vardan Kushnir, another prolific Russian spammer, was assassinated in 2005.
The spam blocker I currently run has a button that reads, "Kill Spam." I had no idea it would work so well.
Link: http:/
As reported by the Associated Press this week, starting in 2009 OnStar will be adding a new feature that allows police departments to halt your car in case you are involved in a police chase. The article also mentions that in 2009, OnStar will be installed in 20 different models (OnStar already has 5 million subscribers). Don't forget that all OnStar units constantly broadcast your location via GPS to the OnStar office. If you have OnStar installed in your vehicle, whether you pay for the servic
Back in January, 2007, the fam and I stopped by Yukon's downtown train museum. Yukon's downtown train museum consists to two train cars permanently parked on a small section of track just off Main Street. In the window of one of the cars there are two permanently affixed signs. One reads "By Appt. Only," the other says "CLOSED." I'm not sure which was posted first. Nobody I know has ever seen inside the train museum, which really isn't the point. It's two stationary train cars that kids can clim
Morgan and I had lunch at Taco Bell on Sunday. The mob that ordered before us consisted of one adult and six kids, ranging in age from one to around seven or eight. To say that the guy lost control of the kids implies that he ever had control in the first place. One kid in particular, a five or six-year-old little girl named Rosa, wanted nothing to do with dad. Instead, she wanted a gumball.
The gumball machine is located next to the front counter where customers order food. It was also dire
Yesterday marked the 42nd annual Czech Festival in Yukon, Oklahoma. I've attended over half of them (essentially every one since 1978) and participated in a few as a kid, but it's possible 2007's festival may have been my last.
After taking a look at my review of last year's Czech Festival, I'd say all the things I complained about last year held true once again this year. Same crowds, same crazy parking, same rude people walking up and standing directly in front of us five minutes before th
There's something about spiders that makes them appear smaller in pictures than appear in real life. Did you ever notice that? Multiple times I've seen spiders and thought, "man, that's really big!" Then you take a picture of it and in the picture it looks really tiny. Maybe there's something about our brains that makes them seem bigger to us than they really are. Is there a scientific reason for this? I was thinking, maybe in real life our brains fill in the gaps between the spider's legs and m
Mason and I had breakfast this weekend at the Waffle House in Yukon. Apparently, the restaurant is currently being rennovated -- most of the tables and booths had been removed, leaving four booths and a few spots at the counter available. Fortunately for us, one of the booths was immediately available, and we were quickly seated.
As Mason and I ate breakfast, more customers began entering the restaurant and, with no booths available, began sitting alongside the wall in chairs while waiting f
This week in Security Guard Training Class, we took a break from our normal studies and spent this week focusing on first aid and CPR training. I've been wanting to tape a CPR class for a long time, ever since Mason was born. It's one of those things that I think is really important, and yet I've never set the time aside to actually do it. I was glad to see CPR training was included as part of the Private Investigator course; in fact, it was probably my final deciding factor in taking the class.
ExtremeTech.com ran an article today titled Five PC Gaming Myths. This article was so poorly thought out, I felt strongly compelled to write a response. With that, below are the five myths along with select quotes from the article, along with my own comments and responses.
Myth #1: PC gaming is way too expensive
In an attempt to debunk this first myth, the author points out that gaming machines can be bought for "under $1,500." I don't know about you, but right off the bat, $1,500 sounds
Yesterday, our new CIO visited Oklahoma City for the first time. All employees were asked to clean up their work areas and dress nicely. I wore a nice pair of khakis, a dress shirt, and my suit jacket that normally only comes out of the closet for weddings and funerals. For those of you who don't know, I work in a basement behind locked doors; dressing up isn't a typically a job requirement.
If I seemed bitter or sarcastic on Monday, I was. Every time anyone of importance visits our branch,
Shortly after getting my first CD player (Christmas morning, 1991), I began purchasing CDs. What good is a CD player without any CDs to play on it, right? Unfortunately, shopping on my fast food income back then forced me to choose price over quality, which is really the only defense I have in admitting that I own any of these stinkers. I'm sure many of you own a CD or a DVD that you purchased "just to have something to play" when you brought your first player home. Somehow I amassed several, mo
Spokane's Oil Filter
I could, and someday might, write a book about my experiences with the band Oil Filter. Until then, allow me to summarize our history.
I first saw Oil Filter play live while visiting Spokane, Washington on a work trip back in 1995. The marquee outside the small club read, "FOUR BANDS, THREE DOLLARS" -- how could I resist? Of the four bands that played that night, it was Oil Filter who stuck with me. Their sound was unlike anything I had ever heard before, and I loved it
Sunday was our famlly's first official visit to the Great State Fair of Oklahoma. While this year's Fair commercials constantly remind us that this is Oklahoma's 100th Birthday, I wouldn't have known it simply by attending. I didn't see a banner, sign, or even a birthday cake marking the event. But, I CAN tell you that this is the 100th anniversary of the Fair paying homeless people minimum wage to work there. Even before we reached the gate we met the hippie who charges you $5 to park, the youn
As a kid I was, and to a certain extent still am, fascinated by movie special effects. Back then, the only thing neater to me than seeing a spaceship zoom across a movie screen was discovering exactly HOW those effects were achieved. Back in the late 70s and early 80s, it seems like every blockbuster movie that hit theaters was accompanied by a television special explaining how the special effects were achieved. I guess more people were interested in special effects back then. I can remember wat
Yesterday while at work, Susan called me to relay that "the school called, Mason's sick and you need to go pick him up." The clock on my computer read 2:42pm; I usually leave at 3pm. It took me five or ten minutes to pack everything up, walk out to my car and hit the road. I got to Mason's school about 3:15pm or so and walked in to the office. "I'm here to pick up my kid who is so deathly ill that he cannot stay here another fifteen minutes until school is over," I announced. Mason, who looked p
Today, for the first time, I am updating my blog while using Ubuntu. 3/4 of you are probably saying, "what took you so long?" while the rest of you are wondering what Ubuntu is. Ubuntu is a graphical, Linux-based operating system. It's also completely free -- and not only is it free, but it comes with a complete suite of free utilities and applications, such as Gimp (similar to Photoshop), OpenOffice (similar to Microsoft Office) and of course an Internet browswer and e-mail software.
While
Now that I'm picking Mason up from school every day at 3:30pm, he and I have two and a half hours every day together before Susan and Morgan get home from work/school. Figuring out what to do with that time has been an interesting process. Our first week, we wasted the time. After school we'd rush home, he'd jump on either the Wii or the Xbox, and I'd jump on the computer. The second week, we decided to start going places. We went to a couple of different parks, on a few motorcycle and golf kart
NEW YORK - The NFL is looking into claims a New England Patriots employee was videotaping signals by Jets coaches on New York’s sideline during the season opener. The investigation was first reported by ESPN.com, which said that NFL security confiscated a video camera and tape from a Patriots employee during New England’s 38-14 victory Sunday. The employee was accused of aiming his camera at the Jets’ defensive coaches, who were sending signals out to the players, sources told the Web site. “The
For as long as there have been personal computers, personal computer owners have been making illegal copies of software, and software companies have been trying to deter them from doing so. Throughout the past three decades, there have been four major categories of copy protection. Three of those include asking people nicely not to copy your software, software-based protection (something within the program or on the media itself that physically prevents the user from making copies), and hardware
What began as loose dinner plans blossomed into a reunion of sorts. Last night at Sophabella's Susan and I had dinner with Andy and his wife Lea, Jeff and his wife Heather, and Scott and his girlfriend Dana. To give you an idea of the history sitting around that table, I met Andy when I was 4 years old, Scott when I was 6, and Jeff when I was 12. That means I've known all of them at least 20 years, and Andy for 30.
The last time the four of us were in the same room was at Andy's bachelor par
Today I'm releasing my program eCoder Ring to the world. Although the current release is still branded as a beta, I have fixed all the bugs I can find and am now releasing it into the wild for the world to play with. Any final bugs caught will be fixed and rolled into a 1.0 release.
eCoder Ring is a digital version of the old plastic decoder rings that used to come in cereal boxes, with many new features added to actually make your secret, encoded messages secure. Using a key file that you s
I am currently working on a FAQ about writing a book and self-publishing that book through Lulu.com. If you have any questions about any aspect of writing a book, please post them here or e-mail them to me so I can add them into what I've already compiled.
Not that long ago I was raving about how great it was to have a McDonald's just outside our neighborhood, and how great the service was. The location is very convenient; if I go west coming out of my neighborhood in the morning, the McDonald's on Mustang Road is right between my neighborhood and the interstate. With a 24 Hour drive-thru, it's one of the few places I can grab breakfast on the way to work at 5:30am.
Unfortunately, things seem to be going downhill. I would say my order has been
What do you get the guy who has everything? This is a problem my father and I run into buying gifts for each other every year. While neither of us are rolling in cash, we both have a tendency to buy the things we want, leaving few gift ideas for each other when holidays roll around. The end result is, we often end up buying each other really unique gifts. For my birthday this year, dad bought me a YourBell. One thing I can definitely say is ... I definitely didn't have one already!
The YourB
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