A Few New Things

Well, one is not really new, but it's new to you. I've been listening to a few podcasts lately and I thought I'd tell you which ones I like. I won't tell you which ones I don't like, because you should try them for yourselves, but by telling you about the ones I do like I feel like I'm cluing you into things you might otherwise miss. The three I like right now are all techie/geeky stuff. IT Conversations, This Week In Tech, and Wizards of Technology. Before I go into each one, I should explain what the hell podcasting is. It's basically like a radio show that records to mp3 format and then offers the file for download to your iPod, or any mp3 player really. They're usually topic based so you can find the ones that interest you. So far it's 99% free and I'm really enjoying it. IT Conversations is great. I first found it a few months ago when I was looking for some info on Kent Beck. I found IT Conversations which had a seminar he did on developer testing that I found interesting. They have a ton of really good interviews and seminar recordings that are just great to listen to. And they release a few a week, so you've always got content. This Week in Tech, or TWiT (I know) is a bunch of the guys from the old Screen Savers show. They have no content regulations so they get pretty technical and they cover a wide range of topics. The banter and obvious relationships they all have with each other make it fun to listen to. Wizards of Technology. This one is almost falling off my regular listening list, but they still have interesting content. They spend less and less time answering tech questions, which is the point of the show, but they still have a lot of interesting comment on the industry. So on to the new things. I've been messing around with ObjectDock again. It's an application that sets up an icon bar in Windows. It looks a lot like the Mac OS X toolbar. I used to run it and loved it but back then the system I used most was a Sony Viao laptop and it was a bit slow to run that on. I've also been reading RATED F and I'm really enjoying it. I don't want to talk about it too much until I've finished, but I can tell that it's something special. I got a new iPod case a little while ago. I got the Contour iSee-20. This is sized for the 20GB version and it's very slim. It's still a hard case, which I prefer, and the top is almost open so I can plug my Griffin iTrip into it without removing the case. I'm very happy with it thus far. I got it from Audio Outfitters. They're mostly a web based company but they're based in SLC and they're only about two miles from my house. If you can got to the office you can bring you iPod and demo cases and other accessories. Very cool. Now that I sound like I'm either sponsored or doing commercials, I think I'm done for the night. Toby update: He is so very glad to be home. I think he enjoys the excitement of a vacation, but dogs need the routine and he seems very happy to be back in his. we all enjoy the madness cause we know we're gonna to fade away

No Time For Losers

A few things of note. You should take this survey. The world will be better off for it. Also, we're finally back from our trip to Montana. Holy crap, what a drive. Going up wasn't too bad. It was the drive back that routed through Boise to pick up my sister and her son. Missoula to Boise looked to be about six or seven hours but it took us about ten and a half, maybe eleven. Sitting in a van all day really takes it out of you, but I can't figure out why. As for the show, we stopped at Great Falls the first two nights and moved to Missoula for the next four days, or so. The shows there were very good. Toby won Winners Dog and Best of Winners two days. I know you don't know what that means, so here's the short break down. To finish a dog as a Champion of Record, you need 15 points. The only way you can get points is if you are Winners Dog or Winners Bitch. The number of points you get is based on the number of dogs you win over. A win of 3 or more points is called a major win and to finish as a champ you need two majors under different judges. The most you can get in a single win is 5. This might help explain it better. Unfortunately, we've only been to one show with a 3 point major so it's been hard to finish Toby without going to areas with more beagles. We didn't want to go to California or past Colorado. So we went North and found a five day stretch of shows that had 5 point majors every day. We won the second and third day, and we already had 5 points from previous shows so he ended up with 15 pionts and we finished. Toby is now a Champion of Record. We've decided not to keep showing him. After this it gets pricey and political. You really need more money and time than I've ever had in my whole life. So Toby is now retired. He seems to think that means eating steak every night and sleeping twenty hours a day. I think he sleeps that much already. Lazy little hound. We love him and we're very excited and proud of him. 5 point majors are rare and hard to win. That he did so back to back was amazing. Now that we're back I took a little trip down to the King's English Bookstore in Sugarhouse to listen to Todd Nuke'em read from his book RATED F. I have yet to read it so I picked up a copy and had him sign it. I'll give a full review as soon as I'm finished. It looks to be a quick read so it should be soon. I have to take a second to plug the King's English. I love book stores and I love local shops. This is the best of both and it has a lot to offer. They are not too big, nor too small. The staff is friendly and knowledgeable and if they don't have something it's likely they can get it fast. If you simply must partake of some kind of chain store while shopping local, there is a Starbuck's Coffee two doors down. You can have your vanilla latte and your local authors all at once. A few more things. I've been listening to classical music again while I work on homework. I'm quite taken with a string quartet called Bond. They put a modern touch to classical favorites. At times it's a bit too much. Classical with a touch of a modern/electronic sound is good. Electronica with a sample of classical is also good. But an equal mix is not. Most of the tracks are very good and it's only the occasional one that I skip past. On the whole I'm quite taken with them. To bad that all four of them are hideous to look at. Finally, I've been messing with a few new programs. The first is called LogonStudio. It's another Stardock app, so it's pretty good. Basically it changes your Windows XP logon screen to something not lame. I'm liking the free themes I'm finding but I'm looking at creating a few of my own. The other app is OpenOffice. I finally DL'd and installed it. So far I'm actually impressed. It's not the same as MS Office, but it's free. For free the amount of functionality is amazing. I'm hearing good things about the future 2.0 version. I'll be excited to see that develop. Well, that's it. I'm going to be working on some English homework and reading RATED F tonight and tomorrow, but things are no longer insane so I should be posting on schedule. I'm also sifting through pictures to post. Toby status: Champion! My friends are all so cynical, refuse to keep the faith

Goodbye Cruel World

Hello 7 day vacation! Well, it's kind of a working vacation. We're heading to Montana to go to a few dog shows. We leave tomorrow and return either Tuesdat night or Wednesday sometime. I'm not sure party because it's a long drive and I'm not sure how much I can take before I just have to pull over and sleep, and partly because we're going to be picking up my little sister on the way back and we need to meet up with her. I dare you to make less sense.

No Excuse

Sorry for the last week of silence. I'm getting ready to head out of town next week and I have so much homework. I have to get a lot of things done a week in advance so I can go on this trip. We're taking Toby to some shows in Montana. It should be a lot of fun. In other news, I've found a new hobby. Cryptography and Cryptanalysis. I really like learning about and cracking codes. I'm just getting into electronic codes, I've been reading up on historical pen & paper encryptions. Things like single substitutions (the daily cryptoquote), to polyalphabetic substitutions (Vigenere ciphers), to transposition ciphers. This one is just for you. AVPR WBO LBH TRG NTBYQ FGNE Toby update: Well, we may be getting another puppy. Toby really enjoys playing with the ones that have stayed here in the past. This one would be ours, not just one we're watching for awhile. Beagles, like all hounds, are pack animals that just cant' stand loneliness. We try to spend as much time with him as possible, but there are days when we're both gone for 8-12 hours at a time. We'll be having her stay with us for a few weeks while we decide if we want her. If we keep her, we're going to name her Serenity. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

So Sleepy. Must...Have...Dew...zzzzzz

Man am I so tired. I'm sitting in Operating Systems class and I'm ready to fall out of my chair. I don't have narcolepsy, that I know of. But how would I know if I did. Especially if at the moment I fall asleep I become another personality? Sorry, I recently re-read Fight Club. Highly recommended. Yesterday was my parents' 30th wedding anniversary. That's encouraging. I hope Heather will be able to put up with me half that long. I know I can wear patience thin, pretty quick. As a matter of fact, I'm surprised my mom never had a stroke or something while I was in high school. I wasn't a bad kid. Not intentionally. Like the time I didn't mean to set the bathroom rug on fire, but did. See, that kind of stuff just happens. Toby update: I don't know what he's doing at the moment, I'm at school. But this leads me to a thought I've had before. Do I need a Toby-cam at the house? They're lined up at the window and peer down into limbo Frightened of jumping, in case they survive

We're all fine here. How are you?

I've not said anything about Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, mainly because not everyone had seen it yet. But now I think most people have. Frankly, I wasn't planning on seeing it until it hit the dollar theater. But, a freak accident with my dad buying tickets for the wrong day happened and I was called in to not let a ticket go to waste. So I went. I really liked it. I really liked EP I when I first saw it, but the more I thought about it the more I felt cheated. II was the same thing. I was VERY disappointed with the whole midichloreans thing. I think we all were. I have no idea what Lucas was smoking that day. Anyway, III was good. I'm glad the SW thing is done now. I've already turned my attention to September 30th for Serenity, and December for The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Holy crap did that look good. Toby status: He's been wanting so spend a lot of time outside. That's great. But he wants me to go outside, too. When I go out he ignores me and wanders the yard. If I go in he comes back in to get me. I'm confused. Television! Teacher, mother... secret lover. Urge to kill... fading... fading... fading - rising! Fading... fading... gone.

Man Oh Man

You get the short post today. I've got a headache that I think wants to grow up to be a migraine. I'll just say that school was good today. I had an Operating Systems class and a math class. I haven't had a math class since high school so this should be 'fun'. Toby status: He's napping, of course, but it's the where that's amusing. He's on his back with his legs in the air in the middle of a sunbeam on the back lawn. Ah, summer. Ah. The searing kiss of hot lead; how I missed you. I mean, I think I'm dying.

Yesterday

I tried to email a post in yesterday. Blogger has this nifty thing that lets me do that but it almost never works. I was very frustrated with it. Anyway, we did play Clix on the weekend and a good time was had by all. We had about six people. This weekend it's a LAN party. I'm not sure which day or really what's going on, but I haven't LANed for quite some time so I'm really looking forward to this. A little Rise of Nations, some Doom 3 multiplayer, maybe some Unreal or Half-Life 2. Probably some Warcraft 3. So this week, tomorrow in fact, the next track of summer semester begins. I've got a math class and Operating Systems. I'm taking Linux/Unix admin this fall and that sounds like a lot of fun. Maybe then I'll get my web server all running on Linux and Apache like I've been meaning to for the last year. Toby update: Holy crap, does he have a lot of energy today. I played with him for an hour or more this morning and now he's running laps in the back yard. Could he have gotten into my Mt Dew supply? Two by two, hands of blue

Geocaching and HeroClix

Last night we took Toby for a walk in a nearby park. I took the GPSr to do a little Geocaching while we were there. For those of you who don't know, Geocaching is using a GPSr or Global Positioning satellite receiver to find specific locations. Most of the locations are small hidden boxes and containers filled with small toys and such. There's almost always some kind of log for you to sign, proving you were there. The website has a whole FAQ if you want more info. There are, in the Salt Lake Valley, upwards of 1,500 (just an estimate) scattered across parks and the canyons and such. That's a lot. There is about 3,696 in Utah and currently there are 171,379 active caches in 215 countries. So odds are there is at least one near you. Tonight is guy night. No, we're not going out drinking and raising hell. We did that last week. No, this week we're playing HeroClix. This little addiction is a miniatures game that uses superheroes. Marvel and DC as well as a few others. All the stats for a figure are on a dial built into the base of the figure, so there's no stacks of papers or cards to keep track of who can do what. We've been playing it for some time now. I have a decent collection, a few hundred or so. But Ryan has tons. We joke that he has to use a truck to bring them all. And that he'll eventually need back surgery after carrying them all in from the car to the house. Anyway, we play at my house most often. I have a large family room and a few long tables I can set up for all the maps. Plus, we're not far from the mini fridge. I need to show Ryan the frame I finally got for the painting he gave me for Christmas a few years ago. I'll show you. This is my desk with a few of my collectibles above the monitor. The two framed things are a map of Middle Earth and the painting Ryan did. Here's the close up. I hope you all have fantastic weekends. Toby update: He went on two walks yesterday and I played with him in the yard for almost an hour. He's still sleeping it off, at the moment, but he'd better recover, we're going to find some more caches tomorrow. After all, a murder is only an extroverted suicide.

This Time I Mean It

I'm back, for good, I hope. Too bad for you. The last week was full of funerals and wakes and moving furniture and all that kind of stuff. Then I just wanted some time. But I'm over that and I'm ready to blog again. So I've got to write a memoir for English. I was thinking that it takes an ego greater than mine to think that anyone really wants to read your memoirs, then I realized that I blog. So I guess I can write a memoir. I'm thinking of writing about some of my experiences in Europe, seeing ancient places and ruins. I love history and actually seeing some of these ancient wonders I've read about so much is truly awesome. And I mean that as in it fills me with awe. Yeah, I think that's a good place to start. Toby update: I try to walk him every day but things have been crazy the last few weeks. This morning we got up and walked him before H went to work and he went nuts. He loves to get out and smell everything. I'm glad we're falling back into routine so he can get his walks in everyday. You are evil since you cannot be evil