…and stuff

We returned from a jovial weekend at the In-Laws yesterday. Fun in the pool, warm bellies at a good Indian restaurant, and relaxation in front of the big-screen TV were enjoyed by much of the clan. Gray had a ball with all the attention and new people to show him around the place.

The next stop on our summer vacation tour will be Louisville in July, then a week at the beach in August.

We are trying to get all the traveling in before the next kiddo pops out. Still no news on the gender.

Oh, have you seen Revenge of the Sith? What did you think?

I have seen it twice now, and have definitely decided it is the best of all 6 films. My favorite line, spoken by Padme Amidala:

“So this is how liberty dies…with thunderous applause”.

New Pics

I just slapped up two new photo galleries for ya.

One gallery is of nice hi-res images from my Olympus digicam, while the other gallery is a low-fi set of pics from my cell phone camera.

Both galleries are from the April and June months of this fine year (that would be 2005 for those of you counting). They do cover two sets of grandparents visitng Gray for his birthday and a whole lot more.

I went to Barley’s with a bunch of folks from work tonight. It was fun, and you shoulda been there. 😛

Whooey

It’s been a very busy couple of weeks around here. Work has been full-on, both the day job and the moonlighting. I just posted a rough draft of the new web site for NCMAMA, the North Carolina Mountain Acoustic Music Association. I am glad to be working with these fine folks again, and am excited to be a part of the preservation of the mountain music and culture.

I have a rough draft of a site for a fine guitar player up too. Check out PaulPieper.com. So far it’s not much more than a Photoshop layout, but I am currently working on XHTML-izing and CSS-ifying it. There will be CD’s for sale, a dynamic calendar, and more once all is said and done.

Other than that, we are excited about finding out what sex our next prodigy will be in a couple of weeks. I need to buy the domain name and get the site for him/her started ASAP 🙂

Da Da Da.

The Stick

The “stick” is a kind of weird chain letter whereby some other blogger passes this list of questions on to you to answer.

I got The Stick from Thommy Browne. Here goes:

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
I want to be “The Cruel Shoes” by Steve Martin.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
If a fictional character counts as one in a movie, then yes, Padme Amidala would be the one.

Last book you bought is:
I bought “TCP/IP Primer Plus” by Heather Osterloh in the bargain bin at Books-A-Million.

Last book you read is:
I re-read “The Hitchikers Guide To The Galaxy” in preparation for the movie coming out. I never saw the movie because I didn’t want to be let down.

What are you currently reading?
All I have time to read these days are magazines. I get several free subscriptions to trade publications such as Federal Computer Week and Goverment Computing News that I read in the bathroom.

5 books I would take to a deserted island
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, the prequal to that, and the one right after it.

Now I pass The Stick to Jacksonian.

Revenge of the Sith

At Last

Ok, all I can say was I was utterly and completely blown away. This movie far surpassed my expectations, and brought tears to my eyes twice. I plan on seeing it at least two more times during the next week. It was immense, epic, and a completely satisfying end to what many felt had turned into a lame excuse to generate money on poor acting. Even my buddy Chris said it was a good flick, and he’s not even into Star Wars.

Man o man. At this point, I would venture to say it was the best of all 6 episodes.

Changes

I changed this site around a bit. Just continually playing around when I can. Reload the page for a new pic up top. Have fun.

Coffee Shoppin’

I have been enjoying the activity of sitting in coffee shops after work lately. Working downtown allows me to do this now, and just to sit here and surf the web using free wireless internet access from my laptop is relaxing.

Currently I am sitting here enjoying a frosty, hand-squeezed lemonade. Unfortunately, Bjork is being pumped through the audio system here, so I am seriously considering the placement of my iPod in my ears. Bjork scares me for some reason. She reminds me of a freakish troll that haunted my dreams as a toddler.

On another note, I shaved my goatee the other day because I had not seen my chin in over five years. I think I will put it back in hiding as soon as possible. I look really weird (and young), and the dorkwads at work have called me everything from a pinhead to an 8th-grader. Ah well…at least I have the option of growing facial hair. The AF d00ds are not allowed, and well, the AF d00dettes still haven’t figured out how anyway.

This weekend will be a big one: Gray’s 2nd birthday occurs, and both sets of parents are coming in town. We may see a brother and/or sister or two as well. You can be sure I will take a lot of pictures.

Passing Time

Time has been flying by quickly again. Not that it ever really stopped flying by quickly, because we all know that as we approach the dimensional shift, time speeds up anyway. Right?

We had a little yard sale today. By little, I mean our whole street organized a big sale and about 12 families participated up and down the road. Exit polls indicate that we made out the best of the families, breaking the $100 mark by noon.

Today was also Kentucky Derby Day, and I planned on watching it, but then I remembered it was on when Alicia, Gray, and I were at the bookstore. I think this is only the second one I have missed watching on TV since I moved away from Louisville in 1992.

Speaking of Louisville (no, I’m not mentioning basketball), the Louisville Eccentric Observer (LEO) reviewed the Crain re-release. They never reviewed it when it came out in 1991, so it was good to see they had the guts to do it this time, and it was better to see that they liked it.

I’ve been quite busy with home-based work lately, and am currently working on 4 projects. One is for a Washington, DC-based guitar player, another is a remake of the NCMAMA web site, another is for a Waste Management software company in Kentucky, and the last is for something else which I guess I shouldn’t announce until negotiations are finalized.

And to top it all off, I found my toenail and fingernail clippings collection yesterday. I didn’t want to mention it here that I had lost them because I feared I might cause mass-hysteria. But yes, I had thrown them into a tupperware bin that I had stored some knick-knacks in in the basement a few months ago. That was a major oversight on my behalf. In celebration of finding them, I clipped my nails this evening. Pictures soon to follow.

It is Friday

Today I report on several unrelated things. I realized it has been a week since I posted, so here is what has been going on.

New Site

I have almost finished up a new site for the Asheville Real Estate Network. The site makes use of something called IDXSearch, which is a property search tool for MLS listings. In order to use it, you have to frame the page from the IDX web site in your site.

I don’t need to mention the plethora of reasons that frames are a horrible thing to do to a web site, but nevertheless, this was the only solution offered. I was more disturbed to see that the IDX tool doesn’t work very well in non-IE browsers, and offers no capability to customize the interface. It just goes to show that there are still programmers stuck in 1998.

More Crain Reviews

Using Google and the referrer logs for crainspeed.com, I have located a few more reviews online of the Speed re-release. I posted links to them on the front page of Crain site. I continue to be amazed at the response to the CD, 14 years after it was originally released.

Cool Artwork

Even though I am married to a talented, trained artist, I have never been much of an art aficionado. However, a few styles of art have always caught my eye, including the style used in vintage magic posters.

Today I ran across a site about the illustrations of Arthur Radebaugh, whose work you will likely recognize if you have ever looked through old Life magazines. Something about the organized, structured style I like. It is reminiscent of the Soviet-style propaganda posters from the USSR era.

Oh Yeah

Oh yeah…Alicia is pregnant again.

PC Tips – Being Free

Here is a collection of free software utilities you can use to keep your Windows PC running in peak performance.

I compiled this list after doing a lot of research testing among various applications and computers. In my opinion, the ‘biggies’ such as Norton and McAfee are bloated resource hogs that don’t perform as well as they should. You can expect to fork over at least $30 a year for them, as they force you to renew your subscription after 12 months.

Why use these tools when there are free alternatives that run faster, do a better job, and take up fewer resources?

Antivirus

I recommend the free version of AVG Antivirus, which is fast, thorough, and free. I liked it so much I paid for a copy of the enhanced version for my main PC just to support the company. That doesn’t mean the free version lacks anything important, because it is indeed full-featured.

Spyware

The old faithful, Spybot Search and Destroy does an excellent job of finding spyware, and keeping spyware from finding you. It is important to run the updater weekly to make sure you are protected from all the latest threats.

Windows Optimization

To replace the tools that Norton System Works offers, I suggest you download and install Easy Cleaner, which does everything Nortons does but without the resource hogging. From cleaning up your registry to clearing out old temporary files, Easy Cleaner is fast, small, and powerful.

Firewall

Only recently did I learn about Kerio Personal Firewall, but since I have installed it on three machines and used it for a couple of weeks, I have been thoroughly impressed. One suggestion: when installing it, choose the ‘basic’ interface and not ‘advanced’. That is, unless you are a savvy computer geek.

Other System Protection

Another cool tool to keep things from getting broken in Windows is WinPatrol. This tool puts a little black dog named Scotty in your system tray. Scotty will bark at you when something weird is going on, such as an application trying to change your hosts file. Scotty monitors your system files and protects them from spyware, trojans, and the like.

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