So,
I’ve been bitten by the golf bug. Unfortunately, my score is still usually higher than my IQ 
I never intended to let the site go dead. I just did a massive spam user account sweet, so if I accidentally got yours, I apologize.
I’ve got some projects I’ve been working on that I hope to update y’all on when they’re complete. One of them will most likely result in me needing to go to Vegas later this week.
Well, minor updates. I’m a new uncle. My sister had a beautiful baby girl named Baily Mae, and my birthday is next week.
I won’t make a promise that I probably won’t keep, but if I get around to integrating my smugmug with wordpress, then I’ll post pictures/galleries of Baily
I’ll be doing something this Saturday, the 20th, weather permitting. If you have my cell/email and want to go, let me know and I’ll give you the details that I have.
-B
Happy Holidays everyone.
It’s been roughly a month now since I signed up for the NewsDemon usenet service and I must say that it has been a very good experience. The speed was exactly what I expected and retention seems to be very good. I have found a few articles that were missing, but they were also missing from NewsHosting (my previous favorite provider) so I can’t fault NewsDemon for that. I did have a somewhat rocky start with the free trial month, where there was a typo in my username they sent to me in email, but their online technical support (live chat) got me up and running immediately and were very courteous. I came away from that experience feeling as if I really mattered as a customer, and ultimately, that’s what really matters when dealing with a company. I really have nothing negative to say. A+ to NewsDemon.com. As a bonus, they also offer a free download of NewsRover. I haven’t downloaded this as I already have a nntp client that I’m very happy with, but I think it goes a long way it saying how much they care about their customers usenet experience.
Usenet is one of the older, and in my opinion, still one of the most useful information sources on the Internet.
I find that the newsgroups often contain more relevant and more technical information that I can find in web forums and find myself using Google Groups at work to search for obscure technical errors and their fixes.
That being said, I have been a subscriber to NewsHosting for quite a while. I don’t really have anything bad to say about NewsHosting. They have been super reliable, and I have no problem using 100% of my 8mb bandwidth while only using 4 connections to the server. They are certainly among the least expensive of the servers out there, and I haven’t had any issues with articles not being found, even those slightly older than their advertised retention rate. The only reason I am looking to switch is because they don’t offer SSL encrypted connections, and other providers now do.
I tried looking at UsenetServer but am pretty disappointed in the experience I have had so far. They have a few neat gimmicks but their core service has been unreliable for me. They offer up to 20 connections, but I don’t really care about the number of connections .. If I can max out my bandwidth with 4 connections, why should I care that I can use 20? The biggest issue I ran across is their server load. For two days in a row now, I haven’t been able to connect when I wanted to, and had to wait for their load-balancing to kick in properly. This morning, that took over 30 minutes. I say bummer for them, because I am going to look elsewhere. I think it’s unacceptable! UsenetServer’s web page is also really unprofessional. I’ve seen better navigation from pages designed by 5th graders, serisouly. They have A LOT of links that don’t allow you to get back to the home page. Information is hard to find, and it looks like someone spent about 10 minutes in a free WYSIWYG web designer. Their reliability seems to pretty much reflect the amount of effort they have put into their web page….
So next on the list is NewsDemon [http://www.NewsDemon.com]. They offer SSL, which I think is great, and are giving bloggers a 1 month free trial. I hope to take advantage of this to test out their services, and SSL is key. SSL is currently the ONLY reason I’m looking to switch away from NewsHosting. The NewsDemon web page looks very professional and is easy to navigate. Hopefully, like UsenetServer, this is an indication of the quality of their service. I will be able to post a follow up if and/or when I get my free month trial account.
I had a problem with my headphone volume being too low in Vista. From what I’ve read on the internet, a lot of other people have had the same problem. On a train, or a plane, you just couldn’t hear any dialog. Well, I found the fix to the problem!
To boost (well, somewhat anyways) the volume in vista, go to the sound options in control panel. Then turn on the sound enhancements, and change the quality settings to DVD or better. The default is to CD, and for whatever reason, the combination of the audio enhancements and quality settings made it so that you could at least hear dialog while riding on a train or plane, if the mixer is set at 100% (which you couldn’t before)
So, the death count of people that I consider friends or family is up to four this year. How sad. I’ve had 3 friends (Alex, Daniel, and Nate) and one uncle (Uncle Nikos) die this year. RIP to all my beloved.
Now for the rest of you, go out and BUY A HELMET. I don’t want to loose anyone else this year…I think it would be too much 
Sorry to my friends who do legitimate comments, but I have turned on the option that you must be a registered user to leave a comment — too many bots are trying to post spam comments..:(
Sad fact
If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq Theater of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000.
The firearms death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000.
That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation’s Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.
Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of Washington D.C.
———–
Taken from: http://www.dysan.net/weird/show/674.html
Most of my readers don’t know him, but for those of you that don’t know, my friend Alex (also known as AlexNumb/CrazyAl) passed away the night of 4/19/morning of 4/20 2007. We used to tease him because he ate our steaks off the grill one night, but he was a great guy. Always willing to help out a friend in need, and loved to have a great time. I could go on and on about his great qualities and it still wouldn’t do him justice; I’ll leave it to that he was human, with human flaws and many human strengths. Our world was a slightly better place to be, because of him and may he rest in peace.
I’ll post pics when I get them from Summer..she’s got some good ones from like, ‘96 and ‘97…
Alex, my next steak is for you buddy. You will be missed.
I just got back from the Windows Mobile Partner Conference. I’m under NDA so I can’t really talk about what’s actually in it. I can however tell you, it’s everything you’d expect from a new release in the same generation of products (Windows Mobile for PocketPC/Smartphone) from Microsoft. In my opinion, there isn’t anything completely mind blowing coming up, but a lot of enhancement that will make the experience far better than it currently is, and that in and of itself make it worth the upgrade if you can.
The show itself was pretty good. Some good schwag too. I really liked the jacket they gave all attendees, there were some good giveaways that I didn’t win anything in, and the food was excellent. A co-worker of mine won Viva Pinata for the Xbox360 but isn’t a gamer, so gave it me. It’s actually a lot of fun.
That’s about it for now. Untill next time
I’ve upgraded the site again..sorry about changing the site more than the content
I’ve been super busy recently, I hope to update the content the site shortly after sorting out the upgrade. I’ll probably switch away from gallery and use flickr…maybe?
So, last friday I purchased a 2003 Toyota 4runner Limited with the 4.7l v8. It’s “Galatic Grey” with grey leather, heated seats, and the 10 speaker stereo, which is pretty decent for a factory system. I love it, it can go over speed bumps no problem and will go off road.
To make room for it, I had to sell my 325i. I actually miss the car already. I posted it on craiglist and it sold within 6 hours. I guess I’m happy for that, but I’m definately going to have to get a new one sometime in the future.
Multiple times in the past few weeks people have either called, or come into my office, or some other form of notification, that they are going to send me an email.
Do this strike anyone else as completely defeating the point of email? Is this a hard concept for people to understand and I’m just missing the difficulty in it? I mean, I’ve sent an email with a link, and called someone to tell them to check their email cause I think they need to see what I have to show them RIGHT NOW. But I’ve never called up Billy Bob and said, “Hey, get ready, I’m going to send you an email.”
Really, I mean, this is just like, “Hey, I’m going to send you a letter, please stand by your mail box in 3-5 days for the post office to deliver it.”
So, last weekend I went shooting with my own gun for the first time. (As in, first time with a gun I’ve owned, not my first time in general). It was a lot of fun! We went to a rock quarry out near Brown’s Camp.
The gun I picked up was a Smith and Wesson Sigma 9mm 
I think it’s a great little pistol, although Kittie didn’t like it much, trigger pull was too hard for her, but it was designed that way (with a 7lb-ft pull) to prevent accidental firing. It’s super easy to field strip and clean (takes about 5 seconds to field strip it, literally). It’s pretty accurate, light weight, and hold 16 + 1 rounds. For those that don’t know what that means, it holds 16 rounds in the clip + 1 in the chamber (in the gun itself)
Those of you have signed up for email notification, well, I finally upgraded my notification plugin to go along with the wordpress upgrade. The emails should look better now 
-b
So, I saw The DaVinci code last night — my review?
Wait for the DVD.
It was boring, I actually fell asleep, which I’ve never done before. At least, not in a movie theater. Tom Hanks was wrong the part of Robert Langdon, I think Harrison Ford would have been much better and he already has experience doing an adventuresome professor type character.
The movie was pretty much true to the book, but it just lacked the passion of the book; was sterile and lackluster. It’s not even a -bad- movie, and if you haven’t read the book, it may be worth it, but the biggest let down is how close it is to the book while some how stripping it of any excitement.
The CSS didn’t translate, so I’m going to have re-design the look of the site. It’s currently at the default look and feel –it won’t stay this way forever. Though, I’ve been so busy and not updating much recently, I hope to have this done within a week or so.
If you get any site errors please let me know, and thanks for bearing with me through the upgrade process!
-Brian