Iceberg Lettuce and Coffee Diet

Check out the above link. It's a riot!

Homes for sale by the govenment

The HomeSales.gov web site provides current information about single family homes for sale by the U.S. Federal Government. These previously owned homes are for sale by public auction or other method depending on the property. Anyone can buy a home for sale by the U.S. Government, but you must work with a real estate agent, broker or servicing representative to submit an offer or bid.

Source: J-Walk Blog

Anytime, Anywhere Access to your PC

Tomorrow, WebEx will unveil a new remote access service. We'll see how this compares to LogMeIn.Com, which I mentioned earlier.

Source: Tinyapps
(I get a lot of links from that site. Please check that site often.)

Flickr rocks...

IMG_2769
Originally uploaded by eschulz.

This is a photo of a bridge in Knoxville, TN. I took this during our Christmas trip.

I just joined the free flickr service and uploaded this picture to it. Then I used the Blog picture function in flickr to post directly to my blog. This is the third solution for posting photos to my blog and it certainly seems to be the easiest.

The other advantage is that it links to my photo blog. You can also snag a larger copy there.

Rapidly approaching 1000 unique users...

Tim Cross - Great New Job !

Our friend Tim Cross just got a job as the Defensive Line Coach for Syracuse University. Congratulations, Tim !

Picasa 2 is available

Picasa: Photo management software, free from Google. Find, edit, share photos. Version 2 is available and the feature list has grown dramatically. Check out the feature list.

Travel Links

• Magellan's - America's Leading Source of Travel Supplies
  
• Rick Steves' Europe
  
• One Bag.Com - The Art and Science of Travelling Light
  
• Campmor-Your Quickest Link to the Outdoors
  
• REI - Recreational Equipment, Inc.
  
• Travelsmith
  
• Campmor-Your Quickest Link to the Outdoors
  

Streamload

Company offers 10GB of Net storage, for free. This service is slated tomorrow (2005-01-17) and has some limitations (of course), but may be worthwhile.

Actually, I just signed up for it, so the service is currently available. The 10GB is misleading, because you can only download 100MB per month. If you had used the 10GB, it would take you 100 months (over 8 years) to download the entire contents. There are other subscriptions available which cost from $4.95 to $39.95 per month.

Source: CNET

The Human Clock

Check out The Human Clock - A Photo for Every Minute of the Day.

Source: Boing Boing

Data Lifeguard Tools 11 for Windows

When we used to run MS-DOS, life was easy. To install a larger hard drive, you just hooked the new drive up and partitioned it, then installed it as a second drive. Then all you had to do was copy all of the files over. Then came Windows 95 and that never seemed to work exactly right again. Well, if you buy Western Digital drives, it's even easier. Yesterday, I replaced a 40GB system with a new 160GB. Here's how I did it:

1. Installed Data Lifeguard Tools 11 for Windows
2. Install the 160GB drive as a secondary drive
3. Run the Data Lifeguard drive copy.
4. It prompted me to partition the drive
5. It copied the contents of the drive
6. I removed the 40GB drive
   
7. I installed the 160GB as the only drive

It took a couple of hours, but almost all of that was the actual copy and I didn't even need to be here for that.

Austin Karaoke Studio

Amy and I went out to dinner with a friend last night. The friend and I love to Karaoke. We've been talking about going for a long time. I don't really like The Common Interest anymore, because you can be there for 4 hours and get to sing only 2-3 songs. After dinner, we were driving around and decided to check out Austin Karaoke Studio. This seems like the way to enjoy singing. They have private rooms (of various sizes). We didn't have time to stay last night, but we went in and checked it out. The manager let me sing one song just to get the whole experience. Now, we're planning a party there next week. (They don't serve alcohol, but welcome you to bring your own).

Why not an iPod Shuffle ?

It didn't exist until the day after I ordered the Creative Labs Muvo N200 (512MB). If it had, these advantages of the N200 certainly would have been factors over the Apple Ipod Shuffle (512MB)

• FM Radio
  
• Voice Recorder
  
• Line-In (with MP3 encoder)
  
• 96 x 32 pixel blue EL backlit display
  
• Ability to play WMA files

The Shuffle does have an MSRP of $99 compared to the Muvo N200 at $129 (I ordered mine from eCost for less than $120)

Holiday Money (actual), (so far)

$ 40...Norelco T870 AccuVac Vacuum Trimmer
$ 20...The Very Best Of Chicago: Only The Beginning
$ 40...MH-C204W One Hour NiMH Charger
$ 20...8 POWEREX 2200mAH NiMH Rechargeable Batteries (AA)
$ 4...2 POWEREX 800mAH NiMH Rechargeable Batteries (AAA)
$120...Creative MuVo Micro N200
$ 30...TuneCast II Mobile FM Transmitter
$ 91...Western Digital 160GB Hard Drive
$365...Total ($135 to go...)

The Hipster PDA

The Hipster PDA (Parietal Disgorgement Aid) is a fully extensible system for coordinating incoming and outgoing data for any aspect of your life and work. It scales brilliantly, degrades gracefully, supports optional categories and “beaming,” and is configurable to an unlimited number of options. Best of all, the Hipster PDA fits into your hip pocket and costs practically nothing to purchase and maintain.

43Folders also has an article called Organizing Your Hipster PDA.

note: I first saw this some time ago and thought it was a joke. I am going to try it. Often, I have ideas for the blog and they don't seem to make it here.

First blog entry in a week...

I'm glad that I didn't add 'Blog more regularly' to my list of resolutions.

You make me wanna scream !

Indeed.

Money Wallet

A great looking site that shows you how to make a wallet out of 20 one dollar bills. Check it out.

Source: Boing Boing

Sugar Bowl

Tonight is the last opportunity to see the country's best college football team, Auburn Tigers. They compete against Virginia Tech in the Nokia Sugar Bowl.

USC and Oklahoma will be competing for a meaningless national championship tomorrow in the FedEx Orange Bowl.

Please go to the Bowl Championship Series to try to figure out how this travesty occurred.

Switching to a Mac?

Apple - Switch is a site for the Windows users who are considering a switch to the Apple Mac. I have been a PC user since MS-DOS 1.1 and thought I would never consider a Macintosh, but the 12 inch iBook G4 looks like the perfect notebook PC for me. I don't really see any other manufacturers creating small affordable notebooks for $1000 or less. Dell's most comparable (Inspiron 700M) is over $1600 (although it's often available much cheaper) .

Hello 2005...

Last night we had some friends over and celebrated the end of 2004 and the beginning of 2005. We watched some TV and ate pizza and played Taboo. Overall it was a wonderful evening.

This is a fantastic time to make changes in one's life. I am planning a couple of significant changes which start today. One of the things my wife and I got for Christmas was a one-year membership to the Clay Madsen Recreation Center. Another was a one-year membership to Weight Watchers.

In an unrelated note, I also want to get our garage cleaned out by the end of the year. It's a significant task, because it's not just messy, it's full of crap.

Resolutions:

1. Stick to the Weight Watchers system of eating (it's a little more than just a diet)
2. Exercise daily
3. Work on the garage an average of 15 minutes per day. That's 91.25 hours which should be enough. If I finish this before the end of the year, I will begin work on to the office.

Make Firefox Faster...

If you're a Firefox user with a broadband connection, then head over to Forever Geek and find out how to make firefox faster. It will just take you a couple of minutes and Firefox will download pages faster. It works by allowing multiple connections so it can download more than one file at a time