RIAA. Can no one stop this out of control juggernaut of bullshit? I mean really, must they make money on everything remotely related to music? I think they're just angry about the declining CD sales. In either case the ruling sucks. I'm glad I don't run my radio station anymore... after making the necessary calculations I'd be into them for about 32 Large - Yikes. Yet another reason for me to continue to Kazaa my music home.

Technical Note. The web cam is down at work right now. I'm slowly making the transition to OS X and there are no USB drivers for my type of camera. I've looked on the web and there are rumors of soon to be published drivers... Only time will tell if they'll be available any time soon. I can still dual-boot my Mac but I'm spending some time with the UNIX portion of my new OS so I won't see OS 9 for a while. You can always check back to see if I've tackled the shortcomings of Apple's latest animal.

Out of the blue. Janet has come back home. Its been seven years since I last saw her and I can't believe she's back. She's been through a lot but she doesn't sound too worse for the wear. I'm just glad she's back safe. I'm looking forward to seeing her again and having Karen meet someone who's been like a sister to me. This is one person I'm happy to remove from my where are you? page...

Just plain stupid. This is another example of how ass backwards our citizens are. Doesn't anybody work for a living anymore? The Lotto and bogus law suits will be the ruin of this country.

Am I hot or not? Here some insights into the phenomenon that is amihotornot.com. From a technical perspective it illustrates that things can get out of hand quite quickly if you have the "right" kind of content.

Random Link . NetBaby

I love the weekends. I can honestly say that. Two days of refueling my cells and catching up on personal things that need attention. Yes, for those of you have known me for a long time you might ask, "isn't it really a day and a half?" Well, if I were still attending church on a regular basis I guess it would be... Truth is (and the large picture argument might have to wait for later), I am on indefinite hiatus. After spending a lot time wondering why I was an SDA and why I hadn't picked or become something else I began to realize that I needed to figure out what I believed in - I began to challenge my faith and to make hard comparisons to many other types of spiritual alternatives. I haven't come to any conclusions yet but I can say that there are underlying threads that run throughout every organized religion on this planet. Most principles are shared and there are a lot of things that seem to be "universal truth".

I don't like labels and I don't like smug piety. Of course, my mom would tell me that I can expect to reap what I sow in this life, that I should invest in my faith to reap some benefits from it later. Part of this I believe, but I just can't get over the fact that of all the places that should be dealing acceptance in spades, that's where you'll find the most judgemental, self-righteous people on this planet. Go figure.

I guess my final word on this is I believe in spirituality, not religion. To this end I'm not saying that going to church is bad but I question blind faith and I challenge anyone to truly research and understand what it is you place your faith in. "Hand-me-down" faith is never worth the paper its written on; it has to be your own. Besides, I don't need any book or manuscript telling me that its bad to treat people poorly, that's just common sense. Don't you think?

Digital Cable is on its way to our home - Mad props to myself... After belaying another techno wonder I have caved in partly because its become affordable, partly because I can't stand not watching CART. I'm like a heroin addict going cold. Relief is on its way... Now I just gotta figure out how to integrate another console thing into my already "out of control" digital entertainment, multimedia and gaming center. Maybe I need a new digital tuner, hmmm...

Random Link . Geisswerks

Random Link . Becoming Human

Knock on wood - My coolant leak problem seems to be resolved. All I can say is: "finally". I'm just glad it didn't turn out to be the heater core. That would have been painful and expensive. Now I have some spare time to get her prepped for the next track day. Willow Springs, here I come.

Another Friday, another week. Where does the time go? I can't believe another work week has come and gone. Did I make any progress this week? Between project plans and meetings, voice mails and e-mails I still find time to take care of a few things. At least enough to justify my existence around here...

Well, we're making our annual trip to the fair tonight. I'm hoping it won't be hot but I doubt I'll be blessed with a miraculous weather change. In any case, it should be a fun and mindless activity to enjoy. The child in me still enjoys the animals and the sights and sounds of the "carnival atmosphere". Of course, I'm looking forward to the food (can you say funnel cake???) and endless booths of crap you don't need but somehow justify the purchase, cuz its cheap. I'm always a sucker for a new set of Ginzu knives.

Now this is interesting... I clicked on my first banner - I know, I know. Why would I? Well, I was curious about my high school reunion and classmates.com seemed to be benign enough. Well, one thing led to another and soon I found myself looking up my SDA Alma Mater. Why? I mean, I never really had that good of a time there, but I guess after spending 8 years there I did have "some" fond memories. In either case, I'd like to think that over time we all become older and wiser right? Well, we'll see what becomes of it. I'm not holding my breath but it would be nice to see what some of my old "friends" have done with their lives.

Random Link . This is a Magazine

Random Link . MetaSpy

Random Link . The Internet Archive

We've become Godparents. What do you know about that? In the midst of our own plans our friends Keoni and Kimmie have found out that they're expecting their first. Now it kind of feels like Karen and I are falling behind in this whole kid game... Oh well, the way things are going I know that our children will have plenty of "cousins" to play with and plenty of Aunts and Uncles that will be there for them. Its something to look forward to.

On another note - my new mother, sister and niece are traveling to Europe. I can't help but be excited for them as well as worried about the trip. I know that they will have a great time, especially Brittany. This will mark her first international trip and she's really excited about it, in a way I'm jealous. I've never been to Europe and for now that is one of the conditions I have pre-empting our having children. Someday soon I hope - time is running out...

Random Link . eRideShare

Unbelievable. When does the voice in your head go quiet? Is it while you flirt with disaster or just after the romp in the hay? Are these stories a result of bad parenting, the media, or just plain stupidity? Maybe its a "hodge podge" of all three...

My brain is fried, Now I know why I'm beginning to forget things - aside from age of course.

I have seen the future and it has my name written all over it... Who knows what my kids will have in terms of technology?

Time to kill. Well its a Friday night - officially. I'm here at work counting the minutes down until I get to do... more work. How lucky am I? I know that maintenance is a quarterly thing, and I know if gets rotated among my team members, but damn - it still sucks! There's just something wrong about "the man" owning your time after hours. Okay, enough of the whiny bitching, at least for now...

So what do I know? Well, for one my friend Kelvin just got ripped off on his iPod purchase. Who would have guessed that Apple would slash the price by $100 and then to add insult to injury, increase the drive size and include a nifty remote and a leather carrying case. I love the company but sometimes it just feels that you're getting it up the butt without so much as an "I love you". Don't even get me started on the Performa fiasco they had before or the countless of other times users have gotten screwed just after buying their hardware. Its stuff like this that lets me sleep at night after a big down load of "warez" from the net. Screw em - they're screwing us. And you can take that to the bank.

On other fronts - I'm enjoying the new car, well as much as I can. After all, it is Karen's car. Its one less thing on my mind. I mean, after you find "the one" you don't want to lose that certain someone in something as stupid as a car wreck. In any case I have made that investment in her safety and the safety of our impending family. Yes, you heard it (more like read it) here first. Barring any physiological set backs or "waffling" on my part we will be having children. Ideal formula? A boy first and a girl next. It might be better the other way around but I think that an older brother protecting a younger sister is far more romantic than an older sister giving her younger brother insight into the world of the opposite sex... I'm sure my son will disagree.

Just think, me as a Dad. Hmmm, sometimes its hard to picture. I mean really, what do I know about child rearing? Of course, that's the beauty of it, right? No limits, no boundaries. The potential of a better you with the best parts of both you and your significant other... Wow, makes me want to have kids now. Well, can't do anything about it for now. We're on a time table. But it'll happen some day and when it does I don't care what they become or what they do but they will train in the Martial Arts... Small price to pay to "live under my roof" I think. =) I think it'll be fun just to say those retarted things that my parents said to me, like the "roof thing". I always wonder who the first person who said that was...

And out of the blue - I miss hanging out with my brother. I wish we weren't busy, I wish we weren't distant. I guess, I just wish things were different.

Excuse the mess. This is a public service announcement...

Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, United States, Orange County, Jeff, Male, 31-35!

Random Link . Anti-Bloggies

Yahoo! Mail has been automatically altering certain key words in users' emails in an attempt to prevent hackers from planting viral payloads. One such loaded word is "evaluate", containing the command "eval", which Yahoo! auto-changes to "review". Thus a letter to a potential employer asking him to "evaluate" an attached resume ends up asking him to "reviewuate" it. I think there should be more of this kind of language in business correspondence. I think the dry, outdated "Sincerely yours" should be replaced by something fresh 'n' funky like "Gesticulate you later". And maybe the dusty salutation "To Whom It May Concern" should henceforth be "Big Ups to The Readinator".

These are just suggestions, of course.

Today is going to be a long day. I can just feel it - Sigh.

The commenting feature was nice eye-candy but I've found that its slowing the loading of the blog page... As much as it pains me (just because I put some work into it), its history for now. Maybe at a later date if enetation gets its act together I will bring it back. For now, my focus is on the content not the gadgets. If you'd like to vocalize some feedback you'll have to e-mail me again...

On November 16, 1974, a self-decoding message was sent from Arecibo Observatory towards the M13 globular cluster. On August 21, 2001, their response arrived.

Random Link . UltraMan

Random Link . ROFL

Just say it. Can't someone close to Mr. Jackson just vocalize what has been in the back of our minds for the last decade... "Michael, its the music. It just sucks".

Random Link . Food

Random Link . Hurts so good

My favorite alien movies are being combined into a feature film in the near future. While this scenario has been available in video game form for a while I'm sure it will be better "eye candy" on the big screen. As for which species would win in a fight, Alien or Predator? We'll just have to wait and see...

X-Box Games I hate. Being at home this weekend gave me an opportunity to head over to my local BlockBuster and take advantage of their 7-Day game rental deal. X-Box games are pricy and before I buy anything I want to make sure I like the game (this is of course before I chip my X-Box and can make ISO copies of the games - but that's another story). I came home with four games (Gun Valkrye, Hunter: The Reckoning, Genma Onimusha, Silent Hill 2) but didn't like any of them. I know it may be a partial fault of mine - I don't like third person style games except for fighting games. Still, you'd think with such an awkward controller setup they'd try and compensate for the shortcomings...

Random Link . Reference Desk

Random Link . Your Dictionary

When scams attack. The other day I receieved the message below. This is now the fifth time that someone has wanted to give me this much money. The story changes but the details always remain the same. Does Africa have this much money lying around..?

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Ekoo Joseph
3/5 Rider Haggard
Close, Jo, Borg
South Africa

Re: Transfer of $126,000.000.00 USD

Dear sir,

We want to transfer, to an overseas account, ($126,000.000.00 USD) One hundred and twenty six million United States Dollars from a Prime Bank in Africa, I want to ask you to quietly look for a reliable and honest person who will be capable and fit to provide either an existing bank account or to set up a new Bank account immediately to receive this money...

Teaching an old dog new tricks. I just got my hands on the new version of Dreamweaver MX. Dreamweaver has been my favorite tool for web content creation and while its not perfect it suits me just fine. I must say that the new version is a big step towards improving and updating many of its features. I will be spending the next couple of days testing all of the new features and seeing if there's things I can implement. As a side note - I got my hands on a Flash book and training CD... This will mark my fourth attempt at tackling the animation software of choice. Hopefully I'll be able to make sense of it this time around... I'm not holding my breath.

Here's my plug for today. I found the premise interesting, but I probably won't be in attendance... In case you're interested in putting faces to names in your area you can find other like-minded bloggers here. Besides, "area wise", there seems to be more interesting people in L.A.

We are now proud owners of a Volvo V70 XC AWD. After a very long drive to Kearny Mesa Volvo and a pleasant session of negotiation Karen was able to drive home in her new car. We couldn't be happier at the way everything worked out and we got a great deal on the car - well worth the time and effort. If anyone is interested, I would recommend the sales staff at Kearny and suggest you give them a chance to help you out. We're now looking forward to some bike trips, miscellaneous trips to our local hardware stores and of course our favorite vacation spot - Mammoth. Bike rack first and then snowboard racks later... Is it snowing yet..?

Slowly but surely. I finally decided to spend some time and build the core infrastructure for Karen's corner of this project. The basic building blocks are up and now I have to teach her a little about XHTML and Dreamweaver. With any luck I can throw in some Photoshop too. As with her, her part of our homestead will be a little warmer and little more on the creative side. At this point, you can consider Karen's site .7 beta code. Check back for further updates...

Knight Rider in trouble... - Where was K.I.T.T?

Random Link . Bow Wow!

Random Link . All things typography

Ain't got no res. I've been given some feedback about some of the technicalities on the site. I agree, I can't impose some of my design efforts on everyone and I'm not writing more code to compensate for the lack of desktop real estate. So in an effort to help out my less fortunate audience I am fixing the imposed sizing code for my windows. Hopefully, this will be a good solution. This patch is for Karen and Krystal.

So here we are - post one night of fireworks, two BBQs, one six hour session of classic arcade games, four trips to the super market and a failed attempt at catching "Minority Report". Another 4th of July has come and gone and mark another milestone this year. In case you haven't noticed, we're half way done with another year. One more holiday and we're in the home stretch - Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and then we're two weeks into a new year wondering where the money went... Whew, let me slow down a bit here. Maybe I'm just experiencing the "old people syndrome"... It appears to be directly proportional, the older I get, the more I'm able to relate to this vague but seemingly constant in the universe.

In any case, vacation seems to be good for some things and bad for others, namely catching up on backlogged work. I can already tell that this week is going to be "busy" but manageable. The only good thing is that it will make the week go by faster - at least that's what I'm hoping for...

Random Link . LA Blogs

Random Link . The US Flag

A cup of coffee and a quiet morning. Sometimes the small things in life provide the greatest pleasure. Karen and I enjoyed waking up together and now we're just lounging around, waking up slowly...

We're looking forward to tonight - not only is it the 4th of July but it is my parent's wedding anniversary... We're all spending it together and that's the best part. One of the things I always wanted as a small boy was a large family - now I have one...

I hope that you all have a wonderful holiday - above all be safe.

My office is a ghost town. I, on the other hand, have 3 more hours to go. Violins please... Oh well, its a small price to pay for having Friday off. The upside is I can play games until 7 and then take care of what I need to finish and "blow this popsicle stand".

Last but not least, for all of you out there in cyberland - have a great 4th of July. If there's any time to be thankful for being an American, its tommorow. Enjoy it to its fullest.

Even if it were true... would you ever admit this anyway? The only thing I'm curious about is what they look like - Village People or Calvin Klein commercial? Only time will tell.

Random Link . DVD Coupon Post

Its about freakin time... To me, its easy. Break the law - lose your rights. Any questions? Okay. This here is a step in the right direction.

Random Link . Bill's secret

House of Cards, at least that's what it feels like when I change the code on the server. Sigh. Its almost not worth migrating the code, much less, trying to add new features. Well, it appears that everything is somewhat stable but getting things back to normal was an ordeal. The code seemed to work in theory but when I tried fiddling with in Dreamweaver I got varying results. Needless to say I had to roll up the proverbial sleeves and dive into the code manually. What a pain. It reminded me of my Wordstar 2000 days. Now, to add insult to injury it appears that my commenting host has taken ill and is no longer available... If this keeps up I'll have to remove it and move on.

Thank God this is a short week. I managed to squeak by and get Friday off. I have to remain local and it is considered a luxury around here but I'll take it. After its all said and done (knock on wood) things have remained relatively calm and we've had no major outages or problems. I'm still holding my breath but we're in the home stretch now.

Weekend was short - two of our friends are engaged and we celebrated their announcement on Saturday night. Good food, good eats and good friends, who could ask for more? They're a great couple and Karen and I are happy for them. One year from now will find us in Laguna Canyon at their wedding and reception. And so, as my single friends say, "another one bites the dust". Slowly but surely our group of single friends dwindles in number.

The unfortunate part of our outing on Saturday was that Karen managed to get sick and is still fighting the last bouts of her flu. I stayed home with her on Sunday and made her some breakfast and tried my best to keep her on the couch under the blankets. She was really sick because in spite of her stubborness she managed to stay put for most of the day. After spending a whole bunch of hours with the Cooking Channel we've decided to take cooking classes together.

So I've got a couple of days off... I'm looking forward to seeing my in-laws and extended family on the 4th and spending some quality time with friends over the weekend. I also plan on catching up on some movies. In the distance I can hear the quiet whispers of "Minority Report" and "MIB II". I'm also curious to see how popular Pugs become when the "MIB II" hits the streets. We already enjoy having a Pug sticking out the car window - now If I could just get her to sing...