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computer stuf |
Top of Page Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ My daughter and I went and saw Spy Kids at the local second-run movie house here. Two thumbs up. Clean aside from some inevitable potty humor that seems to be a must for every kids' movie these days. Funny, with a great cast and lots of fun-to-look-at special effects. The two kids themselves were really extraordinary. Believable brother-sister friction, no overacting. I still smile whenever I think about it. And I hear there's a Spy Kids 2 coming out. Neat! |
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mere fluf |
Top of Page Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ Well, after weeks of no entries, I've decided that I should keep updating this page for the time being. It helps me think sometimes, and gives me a handy place to put links to stuf I might need to remember later on. And from time to time, it's nice to be able to spout off about something without anybody yelling back. As for my nice new 1-GHz home computer, I hardly have time to turn it on. And my nifty little HP Jornada pocket PC still languishes with its second broken screen, until I become able to cough up another $200 for another replacement. Let's just say that particular toy wore out its enchantment pretty quickly, compared to the years of low-maintenance dependability I had with Palm III PDAs. Sure, the Jornada has a nice little color screen (when it's not broken), and I really do like the ability to carry genuine Word and Excel documents, and offline copies of websites (like this one, for instance), and my Outlook inbox wherever I go. But if it doesn't actually work (as the Palm did) when I carry it in my pocket, then It Ain't A Pocket PC, know-whutta-mean? In my book, "pocket" does not equal "something I can clip to my belt or carry in an overpriced little leather folder." Ah well... It's only money, right? |
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serious stuf |
Top of Page Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ My brother has ridden motorcycles for a lot of years. He likes sport bikes rather than slow, armchair-like hogs. In the last year he's bought an exotic German racing motorcycle (a Skorpion I think), and an Italian Ducati. He also owns a Honda VFR that's a bit more comfortable for extended riding, while still being fairly nimble. He lives to experience g-force, and loves to "ride the twisties" in the mountains. My brother-in-law builds and races drag bikes. He currently rides a Yamaha FJ1200, mostly because very few other people do. He's that kind of guy. And when I say "builds," I mean that he designs them in AutoCAD, welds the frames together, machines various parts out of billet aluminum, yadda yadda yadda. You get the picture. OK, so what? Well, only that at the advanced age of 40-plus, I let my brother talk me into buying his oldest bike, a 1982 Yamaha Vision 550. This year my brother-in-law finally got the old girl into working order, and the three of us went for a day-long ride through the Adirondacks, and around the east side of Lake Champlain in Vermont. Much twisty-riding was accomplished, though by me it was accomplished at a SIGNIFICANTLY lower rate of speed than either of my two death-seeking brothers. I remained excruciatingly conscious throughout the ride that I didn't really know what I was doing, but I still had fun. I only almost lost it once, near the beginning of the ride. It was quite a day. So today after work I decided to take advantage of one of the (presumably) few remaining warm, sunny days I'll see in upstate New York. I fired up the old Vision (put it in neutral, full choke, half twist of the throttle, stab the starter button while it gurr-rurr-rurr-rurr-pop-pop-POPs into life). Visions in general tend to leak at the exhaust gasket, and mine's no exception. Earplugs are standard issue for this kind of excursion, though while riding, the most noticeable sound is actually the wind being cloven bluntly an inch away from each ear. I made my way from Rochester south down state route 15, then headed east on routes 5 & 20, and then back north on 15A, a circuit of about an hour. Late summer sunset was occasionally a problem, but not excessively so. I made my way past farms and small towns, and yes, you can smell cow manure even at highway speeds through a motorcycle helmet. Just south of Rochester, New York tends towards family farms and little towns settled in the early 1800s. I don't have to go very far to leave the city completely behind. Of course, at my present very rudimentary level of motorcycle expertise, I tend to catch the scenery in very brief glances, since bikes have a regretable tendency to go where the driver is looking. Or is that just me? Hm. Anyway, I watch the road pretty religiously. I alternated between moments where I felt comfortable on the machine, and others where I was achingly aware that only a layer of cowhide and a small plastic shell on my head protected me from scraping my tender anatomy all over the upstate asphalt. (Regarding said shell, I asked my brother how much I should spend for a new helmet. Without batting an eye, he replied "Depends. How much is yer head worth to ya?" Hm. Point taken.) I'm still at the stage where I have to talk to myself as I ride, reminding myself of basic pointers like "push right, go right." It's totally counter-intuitive to someone who's previously only ridden bicycles, that at highway speeds, a motorcycle swerves toward the right when the rider pushes with the right hand. But doesn't that turn the front wheel to the left? Um, well... Maybe a little, but the bike goes right. Trust me on this. It's one of the many things you don't want to get wrong while actually riding. (Actually, as I recall, I DID get it wrong on the written permit test.) It was nice. I'm just beginning to feel a bit comfortable on the bike, but it ain't rocket science. Hey, even circumferentially-enhanced, inebriated old high-school dropouts can ride motorcycles. So I figure I can learn. So far so good, right? |
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Top of Page Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ Today I got the following email about a nifty new virus called NIMDA (as in "ADMIN", duh): Due to the release yesterday of the NIMDA virus into the wild we are seeing widespread Internet outages and router failures. Some customers are experiencing an increase in alerts as a result of this virus and the resulting congestion on the Internet. We expect these problems to continue throughout the week until admins and users equip themselves with the appropriate patches and anti-virus software. We strongly suggest all of our customers update their systems with the latest security patches and anti-virus software to combat this virus. I updated our antivirus files immediately and made everybody reboot to pick up the update. This one looks about as nasty as anything yet seen. Isn't this fun? |
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Top of Page Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ So I want to change my email signature in Word. So I click Tools, and go to click Options. Only there ain't no steenkin' Options. Doesn't exist any more. HUH??? (I believe it was Tom Syroid who explained once that "WTF" stands for "Well, That's Funny!" Works for me.) So, being the PC guru that I am, I decided to uninstall and reinstall Word. Went fine, took five minutes. Click Tools... no Options. AAARRRRGGGHHH!!! OK, so reaching deeper into my bag of tricks, I decide to completely uninstall and reinstall the entire Office 2000 suite. Badda-bing, badda-boom... Click Tools... no Options. <RANT> Let me take a moment here to remark parenthetically upon Microsoft's vast and all-consuming arrogance. Evidently they have decided that to "uninstall" MS Office, it isn't actually appropriate to remove all the files and registry settings, returning the system to a condition resembling that which it possessed before Office was installed. Oh, no. That would be intuitive. OK, granted, nobody would ever actually WANT to uninstall MS Office, would they? (Bitter laughter.) And even if they did, they would obviously want to reinstall it EXACTLY the way it was before, wouldn't they? (Bitter laughter some more.) So it's much better that Microsoft decided to keep all those neat registry settings and stuf, to save us the trouble of reconfiguring everything after a reinstallation (which would never actually happen anyway). </RANT> The bottom line here is that when things mysteriously vanish from toolbars or menus, the way to get them back is to click Tools, Customize, and then find the category of item you want to add, and drag the item to its appropriate place. From which heaven only knows how it vanished in the first place. So now I know something else that I never wanted to know about MS Office. Now my life is complete. |
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Top of Page Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ This bulletin just handed me: Trend Micro has made available a handy-dandy special-purpose NIMDA wiper-outer. Go there and find out more, or simply download it from me here. This thing is mighty virulent. And just to lighten the mood a bit, the following *JOKE* virus warning was emailed to me last week by one of our engineers. Maybe you've seen it already, but it made me chuckle.
Sorry to bother you all with this, but this virus simply scares me to death and I thought all of you should know about it ASAP! If you receive an email entitled "HOLYCOW", delete it immediately. Do not open it. Apparently this one is pretty nasty. It will not only erase everything on your hard drive, but it will also delete anything on disks within 20 feet of your computer. It demagnetizes the stripes on ALL of your credit cards. It reprograms your ATM access code, screws up the tracking on your VCR and uses subspace field harmonics to scratch any CD's you attempt to play. It will program your phone auto dial to call only 900 numbers. This virus will mix antifreeze into your fish tank. It will drink ALL your beer. FOR GOD'S SAKE, ARE YOU LISTENING!?!?!? It will leave dirty underwear on the coffee table when you are expecting company. It will replace your shampoo with Nair and your Nair with Rogaine, all the while dating your current boy/girlfriend behind your back and billing their hotel rendezvous to your Visa card. It will cause you to run with scissors and throw things in a way that is only fun until someone loses an eye. It will rewrite your backup files, changing all your active verbs to passive tense and incorporating undetectable misspellings that grossly change the interpretations of key sentences. If the "HOLYCOW" message is opened in a Windows 95/98 environment, it will leave the toilet seat up and leave your hair dryer plugged in dangerously close to a full bathtub. It will not only remove the forbidden tags from your mattresses and pillows; it will also refill your skim milk with whole milk. **WARN AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN !!** And if you don't send this to 5000 people in 20 seconds, you will flatulate so hard that your right leg will spasm and shoot straight out in front of you, sending sparks that will ignite the person nearest you. Send this to everyone... In case you are a blonde, this is a joke. LATER... I just renewed my domain name registration. Well, actually I let it lapse, because Domain Zero wanted $24.95 to renew it. So it lapsed on 9/18, and after a few days the search engines had it marked as available again. So I searched Google for "domain name registration" and picked Active-Domain, which let me register an unused domain name for $9.95 per year. I picked two years. Active-Domain offers some nice features for free, though I'll admit I didn't especially shop around, and only noticed these after I had registered. I get free things like unlimited email addresses (including a "catch-all" account), domain redirections, unlimited sub-domains (like mail or www), and parking on their name server. So when the new registration percolates through some DNS servers, I should be able to get into the web-based account manager and point the domain name back to my website, regrettably still at GeoCities, since it's free. Free is Good. Free is Frequently Not Great. But free is Probably Good Enough For Now. |
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Top of Page Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ No entry. |
