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)
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?
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 got a 1999 Suzuki GSXR600 today. It’s got chamelean paint on the tank and front fairings, which looks a lot better than I thought it would. The rear body work and upper fairing are stock color, because it’s been laid down before, but it’s in awesome condition and I will probably get the paint fixed pretty soon. I got it for a total bargin!
Pictures later, but boy is it sweet!
(and yes, I know my spelling is really bad on this.. I don’t care tonight :> )
Finally! I got around to uploading some pictures… I got shotz from Danny’s birthday at Malones, and Valenirthday snowboarding trip…
Pictures in the gallery
The inventor of low-rise jeans, particularly on hot girls.
That is all.
At what age do you stop being able to make it through the day without wanting to take a nap… I find myself everyday wishing, just as in Kindergarten, that the work day included an afternoon nap time….
Dear McDonald’s,
As I was I sitting in your drive through, waiting longer than your previously advertised 30 seconds for my dinner, I noticed you had upgraded your drink dispenser! This is a great thing, you have finally started listening to your customers and are obviously trying to improve the efficiencies of your service.
As an order comes in, a cup drops out of the little cup holder, on to a conveyor belt and moves to the right spigot from which your drink is dispensed. A system that verges on being robotic.
I also noticed that you have finally acted on my previous letters and have moved your non-English speaking employees OFF of the drive through lane. Excellent! However, it seems your implementation of this improvement have missed the mark. I am sad to inform you, that replacing non-English speaking cashiers with clinically retarded employees, is a lateral movement at best. I find I still have to repeat my order just as much, if not sometimes MORE!.
Take tonight for instance. My ordering experience went something along the lines of:
[me] “A grilled chicken salad with balsamic vinaigrette please”
[retarded cashier on drive through lane] “You want a cesar salad?”
[me] “Yes please, but with balsamic vinaigrette instead of cesar dressing, please”
[retarded cashier on drive through lane] “what kind of salad?”
[me] “A GRILLED CHICKEN salad with BALSAMIC VINAIGRETTE”
[retarded cashier on drive through lane] “What kind of chicken did you want, grilled or crispy?”
[me] “*sighs* grilled.”
[retarded cashier on drive through lane] “And did you want cesar dressing with that?”
[me] “No, balsamic vinaigrette, please”
Now, as much as I hate to suggest that we replace hard working immigrants and mentally challenged people with something else, as some people would say it hurts our economy, I feel I must.. If you could please replace all non-English speaking and mentally handicapped employees with robots similar to your new drink dispensing machines, that would be wonderful. I mean, I already pay for these immigrants and others via my contributions (via taxes) to social security and welfare funds, which they no doubt take advantage of.
Again, please replace anyone that can’t take my simple order the first time around, with a robot.
Thank you for your time,
-Me.
Today is apparently the ‘no fucking way’ day.
As you can see from this BoingBoing article, the Japanese now have a live lobster vending machine that apparently. It costs 100 yen for 1 try (think, arcade claw machine) and apparently 500yen for 6 tries. This is less than $1 and $5 respectively… holy lobster batman!
If you want to know more about crazy Japanese vending machines, check out this site about Japanese vending machines
I got a letter stating that I had fully paid off one of my credit cards yesterday. Woohoo 1 down, 4 to go. I also only owe $2,600 on my car, so I hope I can pay that off before the end of the year. After those two things, I will have -0- consumer (or any other, for that matter) debt! Of course, at that point, I would probably buy a house, however, I don’t view that as consumer debt.
Also, in an odd twist of fate, I was at the bar last week a bum bought me a drink, instead of the other way around. Karma, eh?