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.

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.

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.

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 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).