Shreveport to Fort Payne, Al

This is Thursday's route. If we leave the hotel by 8:00 or 9:00, we should be in Fort Payne by 6:00 or 7:00.

Round Rock to Shreveport

This is Wednesday's route. We're leaving the house at 5:00pm and hope to be in Shreveport by midnight.

How you can avoid looking silly

Sorry, too late.

www.TheFATMANWALKING.com

"Walking across America to lose weight and regain my life!"

JB & Sandy !

Their radio show is awful and so is their parking! It seems as though these two are doomed in everything they undertake. They are on the radio quite a bit. Check out Mix 94.7's schedule. You can listen to these two suck the funny out of a room seven hours a day.

Just another reason to be listening to podcasts...

Treo $50 Rebate Check - Recieved

All the literature said to allow '8-10 weeks', but it took just about one month. Now I'm trying to find a 1GB SD card to buy with that money.

Note: This article was originally posted to the TreoVida blog on date listed. It was moved to Does the fun ever start ? on Sunday, October 23, 2005.

Katara D. Johnson

Last Saturday night, when we were downtown to see Jabarvy, we left the Jeep in a parking garage. When we returned to it, the car to the right of the Liberty had the rear window tribute shown to the right.

I searched for her name this week (assuming that I wouldn't be able to find anything because she was so young). I found that she had been a resident of Taylor and star high school athlete and trusted friend and cherished daughter.

She was murdered in her home on the date shown. Here's the article about her death from her hometown newspaper. There's also an article about the first scholarship in her honor being given to a deserving high school athlete.

Her murder remains unsolved.

The beginning of the end of summer

Yesterday, I stopped by WalMart. They had the school supply lists out. This is the thing I dreaded all summer. It meant that my fun would soon come to an end.

Making Moonshine Whiskey

St. George's

Today, we were unable to attend St. George's (left). Last night at dinner, I did drink a St. George's English Ale (right).

Last night - Jabarvy

After dinner last night, we went to Latitude 30 to see Jabarvy. They are a great live band. They're very tight - there's not a musical question that one member can ask that the other members can't answer. Amy's friend and colleague, Jon is one of two guitarists in the band. We've seen them several times and we've spoken to most of them and they're just super nice folks.

Latitude 30 is a cool club. It's between 5th and 6th streets on San Jacinto. We sat about ten feet from stage left on a beautiful black leather sofa. The drinks were reasonable and the bathrooms (and the rest of the club) were very clean (worth pointing out in this neighbborhood).

Last night - Dinner

We went to the Landmark Whole Foods for dinner. They have several salad bars and they charge $6.99 per pound. Amy and I each got a great variety of salad and sat on the rooftop and ate and enjoyed a great view of 6th & Lamar.

My Cheap GPX MW2805 MP3 Player

A couple of days ago, my mp3 player quit working. It fell one too many times, and it only plays one channel (right). The case basically fell apart.

There's no way I can spend that kind of money again, so I picked up a cheap GPX MP3 Player at Fry's for $19.99. I have to return it today and get a replacement, because it won't turn off. It works OK, and I plan to get one for Amy as well. Anyway, here's the feature list.

• 128MB built-in memory for WMA and MP3 playback
• PC and MAC compatible
• LED indicator for play/pause modes
• Auto power off and last song resume features
• Plug & Play - plugs right into your computer's USB port - no installation software required
• Doubles as a back-up for data storage - virtual hardrive
• Electronic volume control
• 4-preset EQ
• Stereo earbud headphones, included
• Battery life approximately 12 hours
• Uses 1-'AAA' size battery (not included)
• USB 2.0/1.1 compatible
• Lanyard with breakaway safety snap included

I Park Like An Idiot

Bumper stickers! Let everyone know that you know you park like an idiot. There's a stern warning on the site to not stick these bumper stickers on other people's cars.

Quote of the Day

Dave Barry: "What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death"

2005 Chevy Tornado

Remember the Chevrolet El Camino? The Ford Ranchero? The Subaru Brat? The Dodge Rampage? The Plymouth Scamp? The Volkswagen Rabbit Truck? The Subaru Baja? (These are all I could think of)

They are all car-based pickup trucks. All but one (the Baja) are no longer available. Well, add another one of those cool vehicles to the list; the 2005 Chevy Tornado (english translation). It's only available in Mexico and I know of no plans to bring it here, but who knows?

One perk to living so close to Mexico is that often we see unique vehicles that aren't available here. I saw one of these on the freeway on the way to work yesterday and spent a few minutes trying to figure out what I'd seen.

Active data connection and voice mail

A couple of times in the last week, I got a message that I had a voice mail while actively surfing the net. I wasn't sure what was going on, but now I know (the following text is from the PalmOne website).

palmOne - Products - Treo 600 Smartphone:
3. What happens if I get a voice call while I'm accessing the data features (email, web browsing) on the Treo 600 smartphone?
If there is an active data connection (you are actively sending or receiving data), then all incoming calls go directly to voice mail. Once the voicemail message is left, you will get an alert telling you that you have a message."

This is a real limitation in a Smartphone. Now that I understand, I can work around it. Both times, I had left a person a message and immediately started using wireless Internet to kill time until they called back. I will use more offline browsing. I did see information elsewhere that the same is true for the Treo 650.
Note: This article was originally posted to the TreoVida blog on date listed. It was moved to Does the fun ever start ? on Sunday, October 23, 2005.

Who's Lance ?

Last night, Amy and I went to see the Round Rock Express beat the Nashville Sounds with a group of 15. We got these fans from the Lance Armstrong Foundation. It was hot when we got there, so everyone was enjoying making use of the fans. Two rows in front of us, there was this guy who turned around and asked us about the fans.

Guy: Who's Lance ?
Us: (Stunned silence).
Guy: Hey! I'm not from around here!
Us: Lance Armstrong!

I can only assume that by "I'm not from around here", he meant "I'm not from Earth"

NerdTV

Robert X. Cringely is going to create a video blog and podcast. It launches on September 6.

NerdTV is pretty much as I described it back in 2002: a downloadable video show that features long-form interviews with notable nerds. I was definitely ahead of the curve with that download feature. What has changed about the show is just the episode length, which is now about an hour up from 20 or so minutes, and the bandwidth required, now 183 kilobits-per-second up from 128. Pilot after pilot showed that 20 minutes simply wasn't enough time while an hour feels about right. And the extra bandwidth was always needed for the 320-by-240 video window, only now it is finally cheap enough that I can afford it.

NerdTV is still encoded in MPEG-4 and still uses an applet player, only the applet is now Open Source, not from IBM, and comes with the assistance of mediaframe.org.

7 July 2005 London bombings

7 July 2005 London bombings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "On 7 July 2005 at 08:49 BST (07:49 UTC), during the height of morning rush hour, a series of four explosions struck London's transport system. Three Underground trains were hit in the first wave and a bus an hour later. London ambulance services confirmed that 45 dead and over 1,000 injured."

A Volcano In Austin?

It's True! - News - MSNBC.com

Treo Freeware: U*Blog

This is a very cool little application which makes it easy to post to a blog. I have two blogs that I post to regularlyo. When I launch U*Blog, it displays a list of posts (only those for which U*Blog was used). I can then choose to edit one of those or choose a blog and create a new entry and decide when I want to publish it. I wrote this entry on my Treo and published it. Once I got home, I added the screenshots and clean up the text.

Today is Freeware and is recommended.

Note: This article was originally posted to the TreoVida blog on date listed. It was moved to Does the fun ever start ? on Sunday, October 23, 2005.

Still another redesign...

I'm happy with this one, but it's only been 2 minutes...

O Lowrd

Snapped at the Westlake Barnes & Noble.

Computed Axial Tomography

Yesterday, we went to a cookout at Tim and Renee's house. I shot this picture of one of their cats crawling around the scanner. As soon as I snapped it, Tim said "CAT Scan!".

Hill Country Pasta

Saturday night, we had a nice dinner at Hill Country Pasta. The food and service were fantastic. One thing that really impressed me was this bar made from wine crates.

When Aliens Invade...Remember the Alamo

We just got back from seeing Mr. and Mrs. Smith at the newest Alamo Drafthouse. I took this picture in the lobby with the Treo.