Does the fun ever start ?

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Released

Mozilla Firefox 1.5: "The final release of Mozilla Firefox 1.5 is now available for download from GetFirefox.com for most major operating systems or from the mirrors. Users of the release candidates should receive the update soon."

Worst fortune cookie fortune EVER!

"Don't behave with cold manners"

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame - New members

New York, New York, November 28, 2005 - The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation today announced its 2006 Inductees.

The following artists will be inducted at the Twenty-First Annual Induction Ceremony, which will be held Monday, March 13th 2006 in New York at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel:

Black Sabbath (Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne and Bill Ward)
Sex Pistols (Paul Cook, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock, Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious)
Lynyrd Skynyrd (Bob Burns, Allen Collins, Steve Gaines, Ed King, Billy Powell, Artimus Pyle, Gary Rossington, Ronnie Van Zant, Leon Wilkeson)
Miles Davis
Blondie (Clem Burke, Jimmy Destri, Nigel Harrison, Debbie Harry, Frank Infante, Chris Stein, Gary Valentine)

Monday, November 28, 2005

9 Boxes of Books and videos

Here are the nine boxes of books and videos that I took to Half-Price Books. They have been packed and unpacked and loaded and unloaded many times. We made sure to sift through them and get rid of the ones that mice had chewed on. There were probably 120 books and 25 VHS videos. I went to Half-Price Books with this whole pile of stuff. The employee checked my ID and entered that info in the computer and asked to be sure that I had time to wait until their offer. He then helped me unload the books and bring them into the store. He said I could wait on the couch. He called my name about 30-35 minutes later that 'The Offer' was ready. I walked up there with a big smile on my face and he said "We can offer you $20.25". I almost fell over. The way I saw it, my choices were limited to:

Take the money
Load the books back into the boxes, load them back into the truck and then give them to Goodwill
Load the books back into the boxes, load them back into the truck and try to sell them at our garage sale
Load the books back into the boxes, load them back into the truck and try to sell them on eBay.

Notice that all of the solutions except the first one include the phrase "Load the books back into the boxes, load them back into the truck and...". I took the money.

(Can you guess why I didn't link to Half-Price Books ?)

Wireless USB Optical Desktop

Clean up the look on your desk with the Kensington Wireless Optical Desktop. It's a complete wireless desktop with multimedia keyboard and optical mouse finished in a two-tone silver finish to complement today's PCs. This wireless desktop has a slim profile and two-tone silver/black color scheme. The keyboard has 19 hot keys for quick Internet access and multimedia control. The mouse featrues DiamondEye optical technology for precise tracking and USB and PS2 connection works with any PC.

What's in the Box
Keyboard, wireless optical mouse, RF receiver with PS/2 and USB connectivity

Product Description:
USB and PS2 Compatible / Works with Windows 98 or later for PC / Contains 1 Wireless Optical Mouse and 1 Wireless Keyboard Kensington 5-year product warranty and toll-free technical support Comes in Brown Box.

6.5 hours into our garage cleanup...

HOW TO: Getting Started with RSS

HOW TO: Getting Started with RSS at PaulStamatiou.com

This is a very good article about what RSS is and how to make it work for you.

Sunday, November 27, 2005

How about a $139 laptop ?

AlphaSmart 3000 IR Features and Specifications:

3 AA Batteries (runs 700 hours on these)
AlphaWord Plus, Beamer, Keywords and Calculator SmartApplets
Built-in Infrared Capabilities
User's Guide"

4.5 hours into our garage cleanup...

Fall is here...

This morning, I saw this bird's nest in one of the trees in the front yard. Please click on the photo to view the full size version, this size doesn't really do the photo justice.

Friday, November 25, 2005

It's Black Friday

I won't be taking part in Black Friday. I'm unwilling to fight the crowds and have to work today. For those of you who are interested, here's the Black Friday entry from Wikipedia:

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the United States, is historically one of the busiest retail shopping days of the year. Many consider it the "official" beginning to the holiday season. The "black" in the name comes from the standard accounting practice of using red ink to denote negative values (losses) and black ink to denote positive values (profits). Black Friday is the day when retailers traditionally get back "in the black" after operating "in the red" for the previous months, often by cutting prices considerably. In addition, most retailers will open very early.
Although Black Friday is typically the busiest shopping day of the year in terms of customer traffic, it is not typically the day with the highest sales volume. That is usually either Christmas Eve or the last Saturday before Christmas.
Because of the large amount of shopping that typically occurs on Black Friday, it has also become Buy Nothing Day.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Everything old is new again

I just went back to the original layout for the blog. Blogger doesn't have that many layout choices and this is the best I've found for displaying the content I want to display. A couple features aren't implemented yet, but they should be in the next few days.

Howto: Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Be careful on the road.
Enjoy spending the day with family.
Root for your team.
Watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving tonight on ABC.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

The good news is...

I paid less than two bucks a gallon yesterday at the HEB at the corner of Greenlawn and Louis Henna in Round Rock.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Another redesign

I have heard from users in the past that this blog looked like crap on Internet Explorer. I'm sorry about that. I didn't realize that that browser was still around. I'm not completely pleased with this new layout, but it looks OK in all browsers, even in OffByOne.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Simon Evening of Giving

Tonight, Amy and I are going to the Simon Evening of Giving with BigMac and his family. This will be our fourth year to attend this fundraiser. It's traditionally been where Amy and I kick off our Christmas shopping. It's a nationwide event, so please find a Simon mall near you that's participating in the Evening of Giving or the Day of Giving and go.

Simon Evening of Giving is the exclusive, after-hours shopping event that kicks off the holiday shopping season. This fund-raising event will include a night of private holiday shopping and family entertainment when the malls opens at after-hours for the supporters of participating charities. Throughout the mall, there will be exclusive store discounts, entertainment, food sampling and more. Last year’s Simon Evening of Giving, was held at 63 Simon Malls across the country, and raised over $2,000,000, for 2,571 national, regional and local charities including Simon Youth Foundation^®.

On Sunday, November 20^th, sixty-two Simon malls will be hosting the traditional Simon Evening of Giving and an additional sixteen Simon malls will be hosting the New! Simon Day of Giving. Simon Day of Giving is a natural extension of the evening event, just held during regular mall open hours – with shopping, festive holiday entertainment, door prizes, silent auctions, food sampling and of course – More Shopping!

For charities and not-for-profit organizations interested in participating or receiving more information about Simon Evening of Giving or Simon Day of Giving, please contact your local participation Simon mall.

Would you like cash back ?

Yesterday, Amy and I went to Souper Salads for lunch, Payment is required before you go through the line. I was using my debit card and the cashier (who will henceforth be referred to as cashier) said "Do you want cash back ? Like two or three dollars ?" I assumed that the reason he chose those amounts was to show that I could get any amount (not limited to $20 increments like most ATM's). I thought about it and decided that since I had no cash, that I would go ahead and get some. So, I asked for twenty. The cashier said "Oh no! I can't give you that much. I can only give you two or three dollars at the most. It's limited to half the amount of the bill". The lunch was right under $16, so I could have asked for almost $8. Amy later explained that it was so I would have a small amount of cash to leave as a tip.

On the way out, I went to the Men's room. I was just walking in and saw the same cashier washing his hands (there was a sign that employees must do so). He asked me how I was doing and I replied "Fine". I wasn't yet at the urinal, so I didn't mind answering. I was at the urinal when he asked, "Are you finding everything on the buffet OK ?" I said, "YES!" Thank goodness there wasn't a more substantial customer survey involved.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Iron Bowl 2005

If you're in Austin, come watch the game with the Auburn Alumni at the sports bar inside Showplace Lanes Austin. The game starts at 2:30. We went to see Auburn whoop Georgia there last week and were among 40 Auburn fans. It was awesome. Today should be every bit as exciting.

Cool Site: Lifehacker

Here's some cool articles or posts that I've found on Lifehacker in the past 4 months. This site alway has great stuff. They describe their site this way:

Computers make us more productive. Yeah, right. Lifehacker recommends the downloads, web sites and shortcuts that actually save time. Don't live to geek; geek to live.

My Silktide Sitescore

I have added the following image near the bottom of the right side of the screen. It will constantly be updated with my current score. Just for reference, today my rating is a 7.9.

Click on it and see the ratings!