JohnArmitage.net - OldSite

Moving on up!

John — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 08:55:01 GMT

So I’m ditching my home grown blogging software in favor of………… DasBlog.

I looked at a couple of other options. I really wanted to go with Community Server, since it’s roots were in .TEXT, and I really liked that piece of software. But I downloaded Community Server, and it just didn’t do it for me. Don’t know what it was, it just didn’t feel right. I also looked at DotNetNuke, but it seemed like a bit much for what I wanted.

Anyway, new site, same old address. If you visit with a web browser, you won’t see anything different. If you aggregate me, then you’ll want to reset your RSS feed too http://www.johnarmitage.net/word/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss

Hopefully this will be pretty painless, and you’ll keep reading. Also, I’m hoping to post a little more often in 2006.

What else have I been doing?

John — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 22:23:17 GMT

Eating.
These are good.

It’s been quiet around here…

John — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 22:17:58 GMT

Not that I don’t usually go on long hiatuses with my blogging. But this time it’s for a good reason. I’m on vacation. I haven’t written any code in a few weeks, and it’s starting to feel a bit weird. Anyway, here is a short video of what my weeks have basically consisted of. It’s a 7 meg file, so don’t try to watch it unless you have broadband. Be sure to watch until the end. That’s where the money shot is.

Get the file

The CIA Needs Your Help!

John — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 16:31:22 GMT

Please, oh please, if I am the person that provides you with the “family and friend” tech support plan, don’t call me saying your computer is acting funny….and it seemed to happen after you got that email from the CIA…or FBI… or whoever it was.

In this day and age DO NOT open an email attachment if you weren’t expecting it.

The FBI and CIA aren’t trying to contact you. Even if they were, it probably wouldn’t be by email. They would probably be fast roping onto your roof from black helicopters or something.

Geezer

John — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 21:39:22 GMT

Completed one more trip around the sun today.
Don’t feel any different. Just busy.
November 17th
At work we rolled out the new system that we have been working on for about four years now. Four looooong years. There has been a lot of learning, a lot of second guessing, and a lot of reevaluating in those four years. At the end of it all, I think we delivered a pretty good product. The overall project was to get all of our legacy systems off of the big iron, and ported over to some intranet applications. This was the last big one. Whew. The roll out went pretty smoothly too. Sure there were some bugs and subsequent patches. But all in all it was relatively smooth. Speaking of bugs and patches, I better quit running on here and get back to it.

Oh, the real reason that I wanted to post was this. Basically it’s talking about some new reality show. Yeah, yeah, yeah…another damn reality show. This one sounds kind of interesting though. Basically they try to convince this group of people that they are going to send them into space. Then they immerse them in a training program. Then send them through a fake blast off. Sounds pretty crazy.

Happy Birthday Marines

John — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:15:09 GMT

You can find Birthday Messages from the current Commandant of the Marine Corps, and General Lejeune's Birthday Message, and some motivating music over here.

Free SPOT Watch

John — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 17:21:18 GMT

Microsoft is giving away free SPOT watches.
Right now. Call right now! 866-676-8487
What’s the catch? Oh, you have to have a first generation SPOT watch and currently have a MSN Direct subscription. Me? I have a second generation Fossil Square. I still tried though, but was shut down. Here’s the deal. If you are like me and have that second generation Fossil, and you have been experiencing any data reset problem, then call. Call right now! They hooked me up with a new watch. Not the newest version, but a replacement of my current watch. I was going to write something along the lines of my first year watch review after the beginning of the year, but I guess I’ll do it now.

My watch rocks! It’s one of those tools that you might not miss if you don’t have it. But once you start using it, you feel naked without it. Case in point, with a SPOT watch and MSN Direct, you can hook up your Outlook calendar to your watch. So all of those pesky tasks like remembering that I have a meeting or dr. appt to go to, I can just forget about now. My watch tells me. In the morning when I put on my watch, I scan my appointments and I’m ready for the day. Then it reminds me when the appointment is coming up. It uses the standard Outlook timing, so you can set that yourself. Sometimes I need it to remind me a day in advance. Sometimes I only need five minutes. I also have mine set up so that people on MSN Messenger can send instant messages directly to my watch. It’s also got all your standard SPOT stuff like weather, news, sports, movie times….. all kinds of stuff that I don’t really use too much. The calendar and messaging have proven to be my favorite functions. If you have a phone that does these things, maybe that won’t be too impressive. But if you are me, and don’t have one of those phones, then this watch becomes addictive. The few times I forgot to put it on in the morning, I’ve been practically lost. It’s amazing how your brain shifts out of having to remember appointments when you don’t have to. At least mine does.

Here’s the part that sucks though. Around mid summer my watch started resetting. I would just be sitting there (or standing there, or walking), I would hear a beep, look down and my watch would be reset. What does that mean? I would have to go online to MSN and set up my watch again. It would have forgotten all of my appointments. All summer long it happened. Doing some research online, I found that the first generation watches had a problem with static electricity and resetting. I got to thinking, it seemed like my watch would reset pretty closely to when I had done a lot of activity like walking home after work. I started taking it off when I did that. I also started being conscious of what hand I was using to open this particular door at work that always gave me a static shock (just like in Office Space). Since I’ve done that the resets have subsided a bit, but they still happen from time to time. So, when I called MSN to try and finagle a new watch from them I explained all of this. I didn’t qualify for the upgrade, but they did hook me up with a replacement. We’ll see how it goes. The new one should arrive in a couple of weeks. Anybody want to buy an old SPOT watch?

Yoda Dance

John — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 13:41:36 GMT

UPDATE!!
According to Marq, the Yoda dance clip has been replaced by porn. I'm at work, so I haven't verified this yet. Surf over at your own risk.

------------------------------

UPDATE II
Stop sending me email asking if it is Yoda porn.
I wonder what kind of weird google hits I'll get having posted that phrase on my site. ------------------------------

Revenge of the Sith DVD easter eggs are already rolling in. Witness the Yoda dance.

via marq

NewsGator Disabled?!

John — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 16:24:42 GMT

Sometime last week NewsGator stopped working on my pc. While that’s annoying because it keeps me from easily keeping up with news and some of my friends’ weblog posts, it’s also really inconvenient because I also use it to keep track of some event logs on applications that I maintain.

I did all the usual things you might think of. Reinstall the app. Nothing. Uninstall, then go through the registry wiping out any mention of NewsGator. Install it again. Nothing. So I moved on to searching the web for someone with a similar error. Nothing.

What the hell?!

I don’t know what I was searching for earlier, but it must’ve not been too slick. Because I just now googled for it some more and found this on the NewsGator site. Imagine that! Looking for help on the product’s web page.

So it turns out that under the Outlook…Help…About menu item, there is a list of programs and dll’s that have been disabled. I never even knew that existed. Looks like Word and Excel both have it too. Huh. Learn something new every day.

By the way, NewsGator was listed on that Outlook Disabled Items list. I took it off the list, and it’s working like a charm now.

Microsoft and Yahoo

John — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 15:12:36 GMT

So it looks like Microsoft and Yahoo’s IM clients will finally start playing nicely. That’s great. Now I can remove one of the three IM programs that I seem to have running on my machine most of the time.

The Classics

John — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 13:21:13 GMT

You know that you are starting to get old when you see all of the movies that you watched as a kid start showing up on the American Movie Classics channel.

Falling George

John — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 05:48:17 GMT

Cannot skip posting about Falling Georgie.

The New Guy

John — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 05:46:28 GMT

Once again, not much posting going on. But this time I have a good excuse.

The Zotob Situation Room

John — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 05:08:36 GMT

This is a very interesting read. It’s basically the behind the scenes story of what it was like in the time leading up to, and throughout the Zotob outbreak.

What is in Silly Putty?

John — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 05:38:58 GMT

Silicone oil and boric acid. Did you know that? Want to know more? Like what is in Cheez Whiz, or Spandex, or MSG….. find out all about it here.

Rose and Isabel

John — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 06:52:21 GMT

It’s been quite a while since I’ve bought a comic book. I have a pretty decent stash of them all stored away. A while ago I stumbled on an article about some of the artists from Pixar making and selling their own comic books. One that looked interesting to me was Rose and Isabel. They didn’t have any around here locally, so I bought it on line right from the artist. That turned out to be a pretty good deal because I got a thank you note and my book signed. The current Rose and Isabel book that is available is book one of two. It basically sets up the story, gives you some background, and starts the main characters on their path. The story seems pretty basic, nothing amazing, but definitely entertaining. The art, like you would expect is awesome. If you like comics, I would recommend it. I’ll be buying book #2.

The Un-Poster

John — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 06:30:54 GMT

You know the blog seems like a great idea and all, but I seem to never find time to post anything. Maybe it’s just the summer time. I don’t know. We had family visiting for the past week, so that took up most of my time there.

While I was out, it looks like Microsoft released Virtual Earth. I see lots of cheering and lots of complaining out there on the internet. Count me under the cheering tally, I guess. I like it. I think it’s interesting. It seems to do pretty well for the stuff I want to use it for. I think the number one feature for me though, is the zooming. It just seems right. That’s how I think a map application should zoom.

I’ve seen a lot of complaining about how Virtual Earth’s maps are out of date and they suck compared to Google Maps. “For a multi-billion dollar company, you would think Microsoft could have bought some newer maps!” To hear some people talk, you would think that Microsoft had it’s own satellites floating in orbit taking all the pictures.

Actually both systems’ have map data that is newer and older than the other. I was looking for some maps for Ft. Stevens and the mouth of the Columbia River. Virtual Earth’s maps had way better resolution. When I look at my house, Virtual Earth has the more recent picture. When I look at some places that I lived in Georgia though, Google’s maps are clearly better.

Now if you were a user of NASA’s Word Wind application, you might notice that two of the different map sources in that application seem to sync up with what you see in Virtual Earth and Google Maps. It looks to me like Virtual Earth is using USGS Digital Ortho, while Google is using Landsat7.

But I’m just guessing.

Back!

John — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 23:56:02 GMT

The site was down for a while. I don't know when it started, but I saw it on Friday and it was working just fine. It ended up being a nasty db issue (and by nasty, I mean my database ip address changed out from under me).
As luck would have it, the site never goes down unless I have something that I want to post. So here it is:

Somebody should stick this guy's mug shot on a shirt with the caption "Got Gold Paint?"

Moving

John — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 06:24:39 GMT

This site is moving to a new server in the next day or two. You might see some outages.

Portland Code Camp

John — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 05:53:39 GMT

I’ll be going to the Portland Code Camp this year. Sounds like a great time. Are you a developer? Want to learn from and with other developers? Check it out.

How have blogs changed things?

John — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 14:22:31 GMT

By now I’m sure everyone has heard about bombings in London. It has been on all the major news sources. What I thought was different, was the amount of blog traffic that this generated. I’m not just talking about people writing about what they saw on t.v., but people directly from the affected area posting news about what is happening. We saw some of this during the attacks on the World Trade Centers and again in the invasion of Iraq. It seems to be a little more out there now though. Within minutes of the first bombing, the blogs lit up. Then, and here’s what I think is kind of crazy, the photo blogs started pumping. It seems like everyone has a phone with some kind of camera in it these days. Right away we started seeing photos from inside the tube, and on the streets near the bus that was bombed. Flickr users went into action right away. Two image pools seemed to be gathering the most momentum. They were “London Terror Attacks” and “London Bomb Blasts”. Two blogs that I kept tabs on were “Metroblogging London” and “londonist”. It seems like the world is getting smaller and smaller every day.

I’m still here

John — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 14:19:23 GMT

A whole month with no posting. I may have lost my two readers. Been busy at work. We’re getting closer and closer to moving our big app into production. It has been three years in the making. It seems kind of weird to be reaching this point. Anyway, I’ll try to post a little more often.
Hello.
Is anybody reading?
Is this thing on?

Vader Guessing Game

John — Fri, 27 May 2005 16:50:02 GMT

Lord Vader knows what you are thinking!

What Pre-1985 Video Game Character Are You?

John — Fri, 27 May 2005 15:25:52 GMT

I am a Light Cycle.

I drive fast, I turn fast, I do everything fast. I even breakfast. I tend to confuse people with my sudden changes of heart. Sometimes I even confuse myself, which tends to cause problems. What Video Game Character Are You?

via chris

Star Wars

John — Sat, 21 May 2005 03:44:02 GMT

Has anybody not seen the movie yet?
I went to the midnight show on opening night (morning). It was a good movie. I’d say it’s the best of the first three, and maybe second best of all of the star wars flicks. I think it had some of the same problems as Attack of the Clones though. One thing is that you see the Jedi fighting and kicking ass, and then suddenly the movie has to start winding down and they just all die really quick. Overall the last third of the movie just flew by. Short scene after short scene of trying to wrap the movie up. Still it was good. I’ll probably see it again this weekend sometime.

Nerd At Heart

John — Sat, 14 May 2005 08:11:58 GMT

How do I know that I’m still a nerd at heart? My wife and son are out of town visiting my in-laws. It’s one o’clock on Saturday morning, and what am I doing (besides posting to my web log)? The Matrix is playing on the dvd player, I have a glass of jack daniels and I’m reading a book about DirectX 9 and typing away on my laptop. I wonder if I will ever grow out of this.

Long Time Coming

John — Wed, 11 May 2005 05:38:15 GMT

So it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted on here. Busy with family, work, and all the normal things that life throws at you. Here are the highlights that may be expanded on sometime in future posts:

The New Guy – A few months and another ultrasound later and I can officially confirm that the new guy is in fact a guy. Also, the estimated due date is September 21st. This could make things interesting considering that Riley’s birthday is September 23rd.

Crystal Enterprise - This has been consuming most of my work time lately. You know I complain about it a lot, but it is a decent tool. The place where it is really lacking, as far as I’m concerned, is in its documentation. Sometimes it seems like they are purposely leaving some info out of it making it so you have to call them for help or hire a consultant. I don’t know. Call me crazy.

Woodstock NET – Neighborhood Emergency Team. More on this later.

Managed DirectX – Bought a book. Started reading. One small project and haven’t had anymore time to work on it.

And just to end this post right, here’s a funny link for you: http://www.putfile.com/media.php?n=voltron20

Programs That Suck

John — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 08:22:05 GMT

If you are a Windows developer, and you write a program that isn’t a true Windows administration tool that will ONLY RUN under an admin account, then you suck. Granted I’m saying that I suck, because I have written programs like this. Of course the only difference is that what I wrote were little utilities that I use day-to-day….not commercial software that people have to buy, or buy a service and then have to use your program. Who does this you ask? Quicken sucks. But you can hack it, and I still use it. I just signed up with audible. It looks like their download manager is the same way. Just great! Just freaking wonderful. I hate running as an administrator.

The New Guy

John — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 17:41:43 GMT

So it’s looking like at the end of September or early October we’ll be getting a new roommate.

World Wind

John — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 08:15:05 GMT

Check out NASA’s World Wind application. Get a nice map of the world that allows you to zoom into your favorite places. It looks like it’s written at least partly in .NET. I know the system requirements are the .NET framework, and the latest version of DirectX (which allows for managed code to access the goodness that is DirectX)

The Shredder

John — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 07:27:40 GMT

Suddenly my pansy ass paper shredder that has trouble dealing with a staple looks even punier. Check out this industrial strength shredder.

Banging Head Against The Wall

John — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 08:54:15 GMT

I started playing the Crimson Room tonight. Made it quite a ways through before I had to go look up some help. What the hell? I followed the exact same steps as the walk thru that I found. When I go to the web site on the piece of paper though, I get a set of numbers and they don’t unlock the safe…… Damn’t. These games shouldn’t be played at one in the morning.

Open Source

John — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 07:59:54 GMT

Open source projects in C#. via mike.

Trip to Seaside

John — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 07:15:27 GMT

We took a long weekend to Seaside recently. Posted some new pictures up on Flickr. No more photosets though. Guess I’ll have to cough up the $40 for a full membership.

-Blank Stare...part II-

John — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 06:27:43 GMT

It’s just a movie night tonight. I wish I had a quarter of this dude’s moves.

-Blank Stare-

John — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 06:20:24 GMT

Somebody sent me this link of a girl flipping through the air and coming down through a basketball hoop. Wow.

More Mapping Action

John — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 06:12:14 GMT

I’ve been playing around with google maps a lot lately. In talking with people about google maps, I found out about a bunch of other mapping services that I hadn’t tried before. The best of which seems to be map24. I really like it. Both it and google just kick yahoo and mapquest’s butt.

All Hail Google

John — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 17:39:30 GMT

Dear God.... the good folks at Google just keep pumping out useful apps. For instance, have you seen the new Google Maps?

See SPOT Hack

John — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 08:12:36 GMT

Have a SPOT watch?
Want to get one?
Wondering what you can do with one?
Check out MSN direct to see all the out of the box functions.
Check out SpotStop.com to see what you can make work with a little elbow grease and technical know how.

Old School

John — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 08:01:17 GMT

Back in the day, when some of us were still cruising around on 1200 baud modems (or less) and AOL was called Quantum Computer Service… well, not many people cared about Quantum Computer Service because the only real dial up service provider worth having was CompuServe (which was eventually bought out by AOL). The cool thing about CompuServe was that they were one of the first to start offering email. One of the even cooler things they did was host a game called British Legends. I remember playing that game for hours on end. Remember back then you could be paying as much as $5 an hour. I usually played late at night though when the rate was something like $1.50 an hour. Anyway, I played that game a lot. Recently my friend Darrell sent me a link to the current version of British Legends. It hasn’t changed much (if at all) since those days. It’s still all text based. It doesn’t seem to have as many players as it did back then, but it’s still pretty fun.
If you have fond memories of playing the text based MUDs, you might want to check out British Legends.
If you do, when you are in the game use the USERS command and see if Ballpeen is online.

Mad Scientists Rock!

John — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 17:19:47 GMT

So this guy built himself and x-ray vision machine that he claims can see through walls AND apparently his own skin. That’s right. He used it on himself.

Chicago Airport Journal

John — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 07:41:07 GMT

Next year I’ll just pay somebody $250 bucks to kick me in the nuts. It would probably be just as painful but be over a lot quicker. I bitched and complained last year about how United Airlines was a joke of an airline and how I wouldn’t fly them again. To my horror, I found that by flying United over the Christmas holidays I would save about $750 for my son, my wife and me to fly to Indiana and back. I swear next year I won’t even look. It’ll probably still be cheaper, but even if it is I don’t want to know about it. So here it is, 10:09pm on Tuesday night. I missed my flight from Chicago to Portland because we spent 20 minutes sitting on the runway in Indianapolis and then another 25 minutes sitting on the runway in Chicago. I’ll be camping out here until 8:00am tomorrow. And it’s snowing. I’m currently crossing every appendage on my body that can be crossed in hopes that I can get out of here tomorrow. I just asked some service desk clerk if she knew of any place in the airport that had wifi access. She looked confused and I should have abandoned my search there. But I tried to explain that I wanted to connect to the internet with my computer. She said that she thought there was some place underground, but she didn’t know how late it was open. I wonder if she found the words I was saying as confusing as I found the words she was saying. Oh well, I’ll go poking around later and see what I can find here. Having not had internet access for the past two weeks, I’m sure I could pass a few hours just looking around.

It’s 10:45pm. I have moved to a little less crowded gate. They must have just boarded a plane. People are running up in twos and threes yelling “Is the plane still here?!” From what I’ve gathered, it’s going to San Francisco. I also heard the desk clerk tell somebody “The flight is really empty so just sit wherever you want.” I asked her if I could change my current Chicago-to-Portland ticket and get on this flight to San Francisco and get a flight from S.F. to Portland in the morning. All I got back was a blank stare. I explained that the further west I could get, the happier I would be. Also I explained that I was worried about the snow and it messing up my flight in the morning. The blank stare turned into a puzzled look. She explained that it wasn’t necessary. I told her thanks, and that I really didn’t even know what I wanted. After all, I’m only the consumer in this scenario… or is that hostage? My God I hate United Airlines. Possibly the whole airline industry in general.
Still no wifi.
No electrical outlets either. They have them in the floor, but all the ones I’ve found so far are locked down pretty good. Too bad I don’t have my knife with me. They also have a Hilton Hotel at this airport. I’m trying to decide if I want to go try and get a room or camp out on these benches. The cheapskate in me usually wins in these situations. The situation being, sans wife and kid.

10:55pm
I just saw a pilot (or co-pilot) walk by with a guitar strapped to his back. I don’t know why I think that is so cool.

11:15pm
I managed to pry one of the electrical outlet covers open. No plug in underneath. Crap. It’s time to go searching.

11:40pm
So I finally found “laptop alley” as they call it here. What laptop alley is, is bunch of cubicles stuck under the escalators going from Concorse B to Concorse C. What’s even better about it is the deal you get. You get your own little cubicle and for the low price of $5 for five minutes you can be surfing the internet and sending e-mail. After your initial five minutes are up, it’s only 65 cents per minute. Even better, they were closed. Not that I would cough up that kind of coin just for internet access anyway. I tried to sniff around and find if they had any wireless stuff open, but I couldn’t find anything. Another fun thing to do is find electrical outlets. They seem to be tough to come by here. Then when you do find them, there aren’t any chairs next to them. They are on some pillar in the middle of the gate area. Who the hell designed this place? I can tell you what they weren’t accounting for when they came up with their master plan. Oh well, I have another four hours left on this charge before I need to plug in.

1:30am
I found an empty gate area and decided that it would be a good place to camp out. After a while an older guy named Karl dropped in and claimed a row of chairs. A few minutes later a lady name Karen showed up. She had a ten year old daughter, and a one year old son named John in tow. Some small talk ensued before everyone bedded down for the night. Karl said that he was a rocket scientist. Karin is a grocery store clerk. She’s deathly afraid of falling asleep because she’s just sure that someone will take of with her son. She told me that and 10 minutes later she dozed off. I started to doze off shortly after, but I think I’ll just stay awake. The Eagle Scout and Marine in me don’t want anybody taking off with her son either. The geek in me doesn’t want anyone taking off with my laptop.

2:52
My kingdom for a damn vending machine! Here’s a little known fact. At least it was little known to me. They don’t have any vending machines in concourse C. They don’t have any in concourse B either. I landed in Concourse F, which I noticed did have vending machines (and an arcade). I just tried to walk back to concourse F but it is all roped off. I got to talking to a security guard in concourse B asking about the shortage of vending machines. He said all the shops in the concourse wouldn’t allow that. Yes. All the shops that are currently closed. Bastards. Then he let me in on a secret. He told me to go knock on an employees only door just down the hall. Somebody in there would probably let me get something out of their vending machines in the back. It worked. I sat on a couch in the back of the employee lounge, watched some t.v. and drank a coke.
Later I walked back to the gate encampment on concourse C.

5:00am
My flight’s gate has changed twice over the course of the night. That doesn’t leave me with a good feeling. It snowed quite a bit, but the plows were running all night. Two gadget complaints I have from the long night. I received a fossil abacus as a gift for Christmas. So far I really like it, except for one flaw that I see. The beep sucks. I was thinking about setting my watch alarm to make sure that I woke up in plenty of time for my flight. I tested it out, and it’s just pathetic. No way that thing would wake me up from even the lightest sleep. So I got to looking around the iPod Mini. It has an alarm. Again, it’s really week. You can set it for a beep which it plays from the internal speaker, not the headphones. You can select certain types of songs to play as your alarm, through the headphones. The choices they give you suck though. Purchased songs, recently listened to songs, etc. What the hell is that? Why doesn’t it just let me pick A song? I have a mp3 of reveille. That would have done the trick. Oh well. I didn’t get much sleep through the night anyway.

I’m back.

John — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 07:27:15 GMT

I just got back from a trip to Indiana.
It was fun. It was snowy. It was cold.
I got trapped in the Chicago airport overnight. I wrote a short journal while sitting around not doing much of anything. I’ll post that in a bit.
I just got done updating my main menu. For anyone that cares, I got rid of the link to my personal album (that I wasn’t using) and put up a link to my Flickr pages (that I use pretty often).

Zoo Lights

John — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 07:55:21 GMT

We went to the Zoo Lights last night.

The iPod Chronicles, part II

John — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 07:00:48 GMT

Yep, it was just me.
iTunes has a crapload of audio books.

The iPod Chronicles

John — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 15:59:23 GMT

First off, thanks to the people that emailed me making sure I knew that it was spelled (with correct capitalization) “iPod” not “IPod” or “Ipod”. What in the hell was I thinking?! I am ashamed.
I really do need to get the comments set up so people can point out my inadequacies for everyone to see. But I digress.
So should I write up a big review about what I think of the iPod? What does the dude who hasn’t owned any kind of mobile music device since a walkman tape recorder think of this little gem? So far so good. Getting it set up was a breeze. Getting it synched up with all my music was simple.
I gave it the “bus ride to work” test today. It was great. It makes the bus ride much more enjoyable. Of course I’ve found that if you are listening to music and reading a book, it makes it that much easier to miss your stop.
No I didn’t. But I almost did.
One thing I’ve found that I don’t like so far is the iTunes store. Not the whole store mind you. I haven’t bought anything yet. But I’ve notice a definite lack of audio books. I figured there would be more. I don’t know why I thought that, or if maybe I’m just not looking for them correctly. More later.

Finally….I Shall Be Called Astronaut

John — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 15:44:02 GMT

So Spock got to go out in a fancy Vulcan sized sunglasses case. You however get to go out in a tube of lipstick. Unless you are on the poor side, in which case you get to take your last eternal ride in a watch battery.
Crazy.
You know, I don’t know that I would want to just get shot into orbit. Couldn’t they bust me out of Earth’s gravity and send me hurtling into deep space?

The Long Christmas

John — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 08:12:18 GMT

One nice thing about traveling to visit my in-laws over Christmas is that we usually have Christmas with my family a little early. We just had it tonight as a matter of fact. I got an Ipod. That’s all I can say for now….I’m busy converting a bunch of my .wma files into the Ipod file type….or ITunes file type. Whatever it is.
Actually it’s an IPod Mini.
I’ll let you all know how much I like it after the vacation.

Medal Of Honor

John — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 08:05:26 GMT

So I don’t play too many games anymore. I have a Playstation downstairs that I fire up maybe once a month. Jenn had hinted at giving me an Xbox for Christmas but I told her not too. I know that if I have one around it will just eat up time, and I’m already busy enough.
So most of my game playing has consisted of Unreal Tournament on my laptop. For some reason the game bug bit me this year and I got Half Life 2. It was fun. But not as fun as I had expected. Then the other day I got to talking with a buddy about Wolfenstein. We had played that a few times earlier in the year and it really kicked ass. Then we got to talking about the Medal Of Honor series. I hadn’t played any of these, but looking at the web site it looked really good. Then I saw that they had a trial version of Medal of Honor – Pacific Assault. I downloaded it, played it, and now I can’t wait to buy the full game. The game is just amazing. Besides being really fun, it tugs at some deep feelings I have about the battles that it covers. You get to fight in some of the battles in the pacific during WWII. Being in the Marines, I got to learn about many of these different battles so I find it kind of fun to see the game developers take on them. Also, being a Marine, I always find it fun in a game where you can shoot a guy then run up to him and bash him a couple of times with the butt of your rifle. Anyway, if you like the “shoot-em-up” games you might want to give Pacific Assault a look.

100 Oldest Domain Names

John — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 21:23:34 GMT

Actually, it's not the 100 oldest domain names, but the 100 oldest currently registered domain names. via engadget