August 2004 Archives

I finally got all the Canon utilities for my camera put back on my PC. I have resized and uploaded about 40 pics to my PictureTrail site. Check them out here, or see all my pics by choosing the Photo Album link on the left.

Last weekend, Jakki and I had a great trip up to Eureka Springs. We stayed at the New Orleans Hotel, which was very nice except for the large number of stairs and the distinct lack of elevators. Given that the plenitude of stairs and lack of elevators are status quo in Eureka Springs, it was forgivable and mildly aerobic. The Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge was also very cool. Photos will be forthcoming once I get the Canon stuff re-loaded on my poor computer.

In the mean time, enjoy some links:

First off is a link from my mother to a Flash animation entitled Cows With Guns (pops). It's hilarious and it appears to have been created by a deranged Swede (aren't they all?).

Next up is one from my friend Carrie. It's hosted on iFilms, so you have to endure a few ads before you get to the main content, but it's worth it. It's sort of a mix of comic book super heroes and Fast Times At Ridgemont High (pops).

Finally, one of my own, simply called Pie Hole (pops). It's kind of a cross between Rockapella and something Les Claypool would do.

Since I have upgraded to 3.0D of my blog software, you may have noticed that unless you had a TypeKey ID, your comments weren't displayed until I approved them. This was to keep blog spam (people posting unrelated comments with commercial links) under control. Jay Allen has just released a beta of MT-Blacklist that filters this spam out, and I have installed it. This means that if you post comments, and they don't trip any of the Bayesian filters, they should instantly appear on the blog. All without signing up for a TypeKey ID. The final version of MT-Blacklist is slated to be included in the next major release of Movable Type (3.1). So enjoy!

Today, in an effort to diagnose my recent video problems, I separated the RAID1 pair on my computer in order to install a fresh copy of XP and see if the OS was the problem. This meant I left a copy of my old disk on the spare drive. The fresh install didn't fix my video probs, so I was going to put my old disk back into service. So I rebooted and logged into the HighPoint RAID utility and started re-mirroring the drives. Of course I forgot to switch the master and slave jumpers on the drives so I actually ended up remirroring with the source being my new fresh copy of XP. MAJOR BUMMER!

I lost a lot, fortunately not any source code or business documents, but all my email spanning several years is gone, along with anything I've done on my local machine (like house plans, old taxes, etc.) So for the rest of the week I will be picking up the pieces and trying to move on. I feel like somebody died. It's kind of strange to think that 5+ years of communications with friends and crazy ideas I've had are now just a bunch of irretrevable ones and zeros. I guess I finally understand what the Buddhists say about "impermanance".

Of course, my mother sent me some interesting links that I was going to put up here yesterday-- but those too, alas, are gone.

In other news, Jakki and I are going up to Eureka Springs this weekend. Clyde is busy with his kids, so we are just going to kick around a bit and enjoy a weekend out of town.

Okay, okay. It's been awhile since I've posted anything up on my blog. Mostly I've been working on my latest project for Textron, and the last week of July, I was out in Providence, RI. Also, I've been busy deleting the ever more-copious amounts of comment spam on this blog. Man, I sure hope Jay Allen finishes his new version of Blacklist that is compatible with my version of MovableType. In the meantime, here are some random stuff I have found perusing around the web:

Utilikilts commercials: The makers of the Utilikilt (I want one, and the security to wear it in public) have asked their customers to come up with fake commercials for their product. The results are hilarious and right here (pops).

Sisters On The Fly: My mother has recently caught the fly fishing bug from my dad, and she wants to join a fishing club called Sisters On The Fly. Check them out here (pops), and be sure to see the Photo Gallery, these women have turned some vintage trailers into works of art!.

Last weekend, we had sort of a party at my house. I smoked up some beef brisket and a few pork tenderloins. This time I also did baked beans on the smoker, and they were awesome. If you want to try it on your smoker (what? you don't have one yet? well, get one!), the recipie I followed is here. In attendance were Clay the roommate, his mother Carolyn in from Mena, AR., my girlfriend Jakki, Bayly and Emily, and Tina (who cuts our hair) and her husband Josh and their 1 year-old, Madeline. The cats also made several appearances.