Brian's Blog

Just a Pinch of Autisim

2008-08-26T12:49:00.001-05:00

I have this crazy innate ability to be completely oblivious to my surroundings. I can go into the fridge to throw away an empty egg carton, and completely disregard the empty milk jug right beside it. That's just a small example compared to what I did this morning.

I went out this morning for a short jog. It was cool outside, the perfect morning for a run. I felt good and I was moving pretty fast. Just under halfway into my run, I turned onto one of the streets in my subdivision. I was minding my own business while all wrapped up in my own world. It wasn't until I saw the SWAT truck and the 20+ SWAT officers that I realized I had jogged right through a police road block. Yes. Seriously.

I turned to look behind me expecting a few officers and maybe even a K-9 unit to be hot on my heels. There was no-one. I decided to keep going. I ran right past the SWAT van were a number of SWAT guys all decked out in helmets, bullet proof vests, guns, and bigger guns were having a meeting. I threw them a quick "head nod" and continued on.

It wasn't until I got to the opposite end of the blockade that I received any form of reprimanding for what I just did. "Don't run back this way!" the lady police officer standing at the last road block told me.

I managed to get out "I don't plan on it. Sorry." in between breaths and kept on running.

"Run Forest, Run!"

2008-08-21T17:34:00.002-05:00

I go out for jogs here and there. I usually get a wild hair up the butt and run pretty consistently for 3 weeks. Then the laziness sets in and I stop running for about 9 months. This cycle repeats itself and right now I'm on my 4th iteration of it. I've always wanted to be more disciplined and keep myself running on a more consistent basis, so this year I thought I'd do something different.

A friend of mine planted a seed in my brain about an upcoming half marathon she was going to run. She asked if anyone else wanted to join her. I dismissed it quickly, but the idea remained in my head. I started thinking about it obsessively for a week or two. Finally, I got online and registered for the race.

I figure if I'm monetarily committed (it cost me $53 to sign up) I'll be more disciplined and train on a regular basis.

Mistake?

So now I'm 3 weeks into my training. I run three times during the week (Tue, Wed, Thurs). Tuesday and Thursday are short, Wednesday is a little longer. Then I run really far on Saturday. My last Saturday run was 9 miles. I'm doing well, I've been keeping up with it, and yesterday I even ran in the rain. I'm committed... Until today.

The wear and tear was creeping up on me. I could feel my legs hurting more and more as I got deeper into my training. Today, my knee that had an ACL replaced in my high school years (and has never bothered me since), is the size of a grapefruit. Along with that, my calf on that same leg hurts to the touch.

I have 10 miles to run on Saturday, and 3 to run tonight. I think I'll have to skip the 3 tonight and try to make the 10 on Saturday. If I'm still sore Saturday, I may run the 10 on Sunday. Hopefully this all passes, and I'll be able to run my half marathon in September.

Hopefully this isn't the beginning of my 9 months of laziness.

Beer Darts?

2008-07-07T16:30:00.002-05:00

We drove out to my cousins house for the 4th of July weekend. She hosted a nice BarBQ Saturday night. We got to meet a lot of her friends, eat some good food, drink some beers, and chit chat. It was an all round good time.

What made the night even better? Beer Darts.

Beer Darts has to be the most idiotic game ever conceived, but I was hooked from the get go. Imagine two chairs set up about 50 paces apart facing each other; Four chairs if four people are playing, two on each side. You place an unopened beer can next to your chair on the ground and you're handed two darts. Your object is to throw your darts into the players beer can across from you. If you hit the can, they have to drink the beer down to the hole the dart made. The trick is to hit the can at the very bottom.

At the end, empty cans are counted and the person/team with the most empties loses, or wins depending on how you look at it.

I'm pretty sure we single handedly raised Anheuser-Busch's stock because of all the beer consumed that night. It didn't help that I was sitting across from the Beer Darts "ice man". He was popping beers right and left. I must of chugged.... well I don't even want to think about it.

If this sounds interesting here are some "official" rules. http://www.beerdarts.net/

Euler Project

2008-07-04T07:22:00.003-05:00

Lets say you wanted to calculate the sum of every even number in the Fibonacci sequence under 4 million. I believe this bit of code (c#) would do that. Why would you want to? I don't know.


double gr = (1 + Math.Sqrt(5))/2;
double sum = 0;
double fib = 0;
double c = 0;

while (fib < 4000000)
{
   sum += fib;
   c+=3;
   fib = Math.Round((((Math.Pow(gr,c))/Math.Sqrt(5)) + (1/2)), 0);
}
Console.WriteLine("Sum = {0}", sum);

Dusting Off the 'Ole Blog

2008-07-02T23:07:00.003-05:00

I've got this crazy idea to revive this stupid blog. I'm not sure why... I know all of you reading this were on the edge of your seats for over a year just waiting for the next post. Well, now you can finally relax.

Since my last update, a lot has happened. This post will be a cliff notes version of my past year.

My roomate/girlfriend went from Fiancee to Wife.
My wife got a new job as a nanny.
I got a new job as a geek.
We bought a house.

Now you're up to speed. If you'd like to send me a late wedding gift, leave a comment and I'll help you work out the details.

Sunday Drive

2007-03-19T09:19:00.000-05:00

We were driving out to a local paint store to possibly find matches for the colors that are already on our walls, and or, find some new colors for our office. We were about one block from our destination when, BLAM!, we slammed into a lady who decided to run a red light.

The accident happened in this intersection. We were driving west on Gravois, and the lady who ran the red light was coming out of the Shnucks parking lot heading north on Valcour. We were in the left lane, and there was a van just behind us in the right lane.

All of the witnesses said the lady first stopped at her red, then proceeded to drive through it into traffic. The lady seemed to be "not all there". She wouldn't respond to questions, and just seemed weird. Of course this was after she just got t-boned in the middle of an intersection.

So our light was green. It was green for a while, we were in fact driving up to the green light. Then we notice this car in the middle of the intersection, right in front of us. My Fiancé was driving, and she immediately slammed on the brakes. It wasn't enough though, and we still hit the rear left quarter panel of her car and sent her a little sideways in the process. We immediately stopped during the collision. Since we were already slowing down, our impact wasn't that great.

Her car kept going. She wasn't on the brake at all and continued thought the intersection at almost full speed. This is when the van that was behind us and to the right of us slammed into her at full speed. The van hit the front left quarter panel of her car. At the time, van was in the process of passing us so was probably going twice as fast as we were. The forward momentum of the van carried the ladies car into the traffic light pole and pinned her there.

[Caution, this story is about to get gross.] I looked around after the collision and saw a big chunk of hair on the lady's passenger side window. It looked as if someone's head had hit the window and part of their scalp was stuck to it. I like to watch gory movies, but when I saw the chunk of hair, I almost vomited. The only thing I could think of was call 911. Before I even knew it, I had dialed 911 and was on the phone with a dispatcher. After I got off the phone, I went out to check on her.

It turns out that chuck of hair wasn't a piece of scalp. The impact had knocked the poor ladies wig off. It was the wig that was stuck to the window.

In the next minute there were fire trucks and an ambulance. In the next 5 minutes, a tow truck. In the next 5 minutes, everything was cleaned up.

The van was driven by an older couple in their 60's, and they had an even older lady in their back seat. She was taken to the hospital, but everyone else was OK. We escaped with the least amount of damages, but the other two cars are defiantly totaled.

BTW: The paint store was closed.

Tales from the Cubicle

2007-02-21T09:44:00.000-06:00

As I sit here in my cubicle, figuring out the ways in which I will slack off today, I'm interrupted by the gib-gabbers on the other side of the cube wall. Apparently one of the ditsier administrative assistants wore in her dog's leash the other day. What?! Yep, she forgot she had it around her neck after walking her dog that morning. Everyone thinks its hysterical and laugher is at an all time high. Me, I'm not so amused. I laughed the first time I heard it, two days ago. This will be the seventh iteration I've been privy to and its not getting any funnier.

Science vs. Faith

2007-02-17T23:24:00.000-06:00

Science vs. Faith rolled up into one brutally honest and easy to understand flow diagram.

Interesting SPAM

2007-02-16T09:03:00.000-06:00

I just got this email (read: spam) today. I posted the good parts below, but here is the basic message. Nadejda, some 26 year old Russian mail order bride, wants me to "mail order" her. Apparently Justin, her previous "mail orderer", stood her up, now she has this visa application and no one in the US to marry. Bummer.

Who falls for these scams?

How are you? My name is Nadejda. I am 26 years old. I live in Russia, city Yoshkar-Ola. I am cheerful woman, and like to do many things as sport, camping, go to the cinema, theatre etc. In a word I like to do all what like all people...

...I wish tell to you history which have pushed me write to you. 8 months ago I have got acquainted with the man from other country by name Justin. During this time we had good relations. We have understood that our relations become serious and we have decided to meet in his country. I wrote the application for reception the visa. I waited reception of the visa approximately half of year....

...I have gone to Moscow to receive the visa. I informed good news to Justin, but he has answered, that does not want our meeting. He played with me....

...I do not know your ideas about my letter, but it would be fine if we could meet and have some weeks or months together. On my trip I want to receive rest from my work and a life in Russia. Also the basic purpose for the future it is search good men for serious attitudes which go to a marriage. I have no children, but I want to have children in the future...

Just in case any of you are interested, here's her email address (zolnadja@bk.ru).

Yes!

2007-02-15T09:49:00.000-06:00

Well, its official. I'm no longer living with my girlfriend... I'm living with my fiancee Yep, I'm "engaged".

I had everything planned out, what I was going to say and how I was going to do it. In the morning I practiced in front of the mirror. I was suave, sophisticated, and clam. When it was game time, I was a stuttering, stammering mess. I barely got the words out. Not that it mattered much because the girlfriend was already balling and probably didn't comprehend any of it. Through the tears of joy, I could hear something resembling a "yes". And then it was done. A huge weight was lifted and I was actually able to relax somewhat for the rest of the night.

It was a long time coming, but its finally done and I couldn't be happier. Now if the girlfriend, er, fiancee has her way... we will be married and have two children within the next month. It should be a fun ride from here on out.

Bread & Milk

2007-02-13T10:29:00.001-06:00

It's just my luck that our weekly grocery shopping day happened to be the day before the big predicted "snow storm". I put that in quotes because it's nothing close to the kind of weather the rest of the country is getting, but some how everyone thinks we're worse off. Anyway, every time the weather guys predict a "snow storm" the stores fill up with the usual crowd of people looking to buy bread and milk just in case they will be confined to thier homes by the two inches of snow and ice we receive. I normally avoid this mess, but this time I totally forgot about the bread/milk people and did our weekly shopping anyway. What a god damn mess. I have no patience for people in a check out lane in the first place. Now, with the weather, everyone seems to be even crazier... Do you really need 4 loves of bread and 3 gallons of milk? If you're going to buy a snow shovel should you be in the self checkout lane whacking everyone else in the head with it as you try and maneuver it over the bar code scanner? Come one people. Get out of my way!

P.S. If your the 33.33333...% of my readers that live in Florida, you can ignore this post since you probably have no idea what I'm talking about... A-Hole!

Can You Say "Vista Bug"?

2007-02-02T13:23:00.000-06:00

I can't wait for the day I can sneak up behind a co-worker and say "delete *.*".

No... Those won't get you any beads. Really, put 'em away now. Please.

2007-01-29T01:11:00.000-06:00

As we prepare for our annual Mardi-Grass parade, I'm forced to reflect on the whole nature of the "parade" itself. Each year there is a parade specifically designed for drunk people, and those who like to spectate drunk people. Each year we are a part of this parade. We ride on a float, which is only a float in the sense that its being pulled by a truck in a parade. It's really nothing more than a flatbed 18 wheeler with make-shift railings to keep every one from falling off and on to the moving pavement below. This "float" is equipped with all the amenities necessary for a successful Mardi-Grass parade. I've taken the time to list those amenities below.

Multiple kegs of beer.
A Johnny-On-The-Spot. (The beer has to go somewhere)

To top it all off, the "float" is "decorated" to match whatever the theme is for that year. Albeit, the decorations are usually "bolted" on the float by drunks the morning of the parade.

At the beginning of the parade each "float" is allotted a couple crates of beads to be distributed to the masses along the parade route. The beads are like crack to the crowds of spectators watching the parade. They can't get enough. They want the beads. They need the beads. We then, provide the beads. A sort of drug dealer parade for the crowd of jonesing addicts.

The fact that this parade is children friendly, there are kids of all ages along the parade route, doesn't detour the overly addicted "bead-whores" from offering up an extra "payment" to secure themselves a larger quantity of beads. These "bead-whores" often let certain body parts go unclothed in an effort to acquire extra beads. Often this happens with young children standing right next to them, or in direct view of said body parts.

Now, this wouldn't be all that bad if the aforementioned "bead-whores" were in fact somewhat attractive, or even had teeth for that matter. The fact that they are ugly and standing next to young impressionable minds is just too much to handle.

So my message to you: If you're older than 25, missing teeth, and have a "boyfriend" who is either in jail or on probation... keep 'em tucked away. Better yet, stay your ass in the trailer. The future leaders of this country don't need to see that, and quite frankly, neither do I. On the other hand, if you're a somewhat attractive pre-twenty-five-year-old (post-eighteen-year-old) I'm willing to make an exception.

Turn Around!

2007-01-25T15:00:00.000-06:00

I was halfway to work the other morning when I realized I had left my ipod on the kitchen counter. More than 10 miles into my 19 mile drive, I turned around and went back and got it without even flinching. This got me thinking... Would I have done the same if I had forgotten... say.. my wallet, ID, cell phone, or pants? The answer, hell no. Especially not after being more than 10 miles into my trip. Why then for my ipod? Well... I have my priorities.

It could have something to do with the fact I work in a cubicle surrounded by loud and obnoxious morons and my ipod is the only thing that can provide me with a proper amount of "peace and quiet". Or maybe its just the large collection of Beyonce and Fergie I have loaded on it. I'll let you decide...

"How come every time you come around my London London bridge wanna go down?"

Type...Type...Type

2007-01-22T17:01:00.000-06:00

I was just marveling at the speed of which I can type the following line of code:


Set cn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")

I can literally just lay my hands on the keyboard that line of text will appear on the screen. Being that I'm a classic ASP web developer, I must have typed that line of code at least 20 times a day for the last 5+ years. Remarkably I've never woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat screaming those lines of code. However, give me another 6 years of this and maybe that will change.

That reminds me... When I was a system admin, it was this little jewel that got typed at least 100 times a day (or some variant of it):


ipconfig /all

Yep, it still rolls off the fingertips with the same blazing speed and accuracy as it did 5+ years ago.

The Kids Today

2006-11-09T12:42:00.000-06:00

Back in the day I used "borrow" software like crazy. My collection at any one time was well in to the hundreds of GB and this was when 1GB hard drives were considered huge.

The other day when my VCR (yes, I said VCR) failed to record one of my TV shows, I set off to find its digital replacement. Today with all the p2p software available, I found the show I was looking for in less than a minute, had it downloaded in less than an hour, and watched it in just another hour. The turnover from search to viewing all occurred in a single night. Remarkable.

Let me shed some light on how long that would have taken just 10 years ago.

First off, there were no p2p programs. We had FTP. Anytime someone wanted to "share" something they had to find a publicly accessible FTP server and upload it for others to download. Groups of users would dedicate themselves just to the task of finding public FTP servers (pub scanners). They would scan ranges of IP addresses for open FTP ports. From that list the would try logging in and see if public write access was allowed (either purposely or accidentally). Once they had their lists compiled, they would share these lists with another group of users, the distributors.

The distributors would browse the list of ftp servers and find the one with the most bandwidth. They would then start uploading "content". Once the content was uploaded, they would post the path to the FTP server on their own forum. The distributors weren't responsible for creating the "content", that was yet another group, the release group.

The release group was responsible for creating the copy of the original content. A lot of times this meant breaking any copy protections, or "ripping" the original to reduce the size for easier download.

Finding the content to download was much more difficult. Leechers (people who only download) were considered scum. If you wanted to download, you had to participate in some way. Once your participation was noticed, you would be granted access to the forum that contained the locations of all the uploaded "content".

If you wanted something specific, you had to monitor the forums for new FTP servers with fresh content, log on to the FTP server, and manually search through the uploaded content. This could become very tedious as it could be days before what you were looking for showed up anywhere. Once it did, it would normally disappear in minutes.

The lifespan of a public FTP server with fresh "content" was very short. It didn't take long for even an incompetent system admin to notice the increased bandwidth to their server and quickly find out why, shutting the whole thing down. Finding what you wanted meant staying on top of the game 24x7. Downloading everything then trading later was the way acquire specific "content".

Today you can configure your free bit torrent client to read rss feeds and automatically download whatever you want. I swear, these kids today have it easy.

Want Some Netflix?

2006-09-21T16:25:00.000-05:00

Help yourself to a free scoop of Netflix. Go on, you know you want to!

Take me out to the ball game…

2006-09-08T09:51:00.000-05:00

On Monday, my girlfriend, her parents and I left town headed for Kansas City. Her dad had acquired tickets to two games of the Royals vs. Yankees series. Her dad works in the Cardinals club house, so he knows all of the ball players. A couple months ago, the Royals were in town, and with them Mark Grudzielanek, a former Cardinal. Her dad expressed interest in seeing the Yankees series in KC, and so Mark hooked him up.

So there we were in KC for the baseball games. The day after our first game, we were eating lunch at George Brett’s restaurant in the plaza. It was a nice day, and we were just hanging out enjoying our meal. Out of nowhere, my girlfriends mom gets this “oh my gosh” look on her face and freezes. Then blurts out, “Oh my gosh, its Mark!” With that, her dad gets up and bolts out the door of the restaurant to catch him. The only thing was, the restaurant had a weird “art deco” design, and the front door was a little nondescript. He missed the door completely and started to frantically pace the bar area looking for the exit. A quick “deer in headlights” glance back at us, whom by the way were laughing uncontrollably, got him pointed in the right direction. Out the door he went to thank Mark for the tickets. Luckily the lunch rush was over, and there weren’t many people in the restaurant. I can only imagine Mark’s reaction to an old man chasing him down the street with a mushroom swiss burger hanging out of his mouth.

All in all, we had a nice trip. The weather was nice, the seats were very nice, and the Yankees and Royals split the two games we were at. What else can you ask for?

Fw: Fw: Fw: I Don't Care!

2006-09-01T08:45:00.000-05:00

I have an email offender in my address book. Everyday I can count on getting at least two or three useless "joke" emails. Fortunately, Gmail allows me to create some pretty sophisticated filters to channel these emails automatically into a junk folder. I rarely have any make it into my inbox anymore, but when they do, it's just that much more annoying.

My dilemma is this. How do I politely tell the offender to cut it out, with out looking like an anti-social snob?

I Hate Walmart

2006-07-27T22:47:00.000-05:00

I hate Walmart. I hate the people that shop there. I hate the people that work there. I hate the people that slowly walk down the center of the parking lot lanes totally oblivious the the traffic pile-up behind them.... I could go on and on but that's not really my point.

Even with my obvious dislike of Walmart, I still buy stuff there. You really have no choice; they have the lowest prices, especially when it comes to tires. When shopping for the best deal on tires, you will always end up at Walmart. This brings me to my point. Walmart tire service sucks butt.

Now I realize Walmart isn't an oasis of mechanical genius, but for the price I was willing to take a chance. I ordered my tires on-line and had them shipped to my local Walmart. I got the phone call when they came in, and promptly ventured out to "my" Walmart to get them installed.

I didn't stick around to watch the tires get installed. I was at Walmart, I may as well spend $100. God knows, no matter what, you always exit that place minus a c-note at least. So after I had everything checked off the shopping list I dropped back to check the status of my car.

I saw that my car was still on the rack. As I got closer I noticed they had put "ford focus sized tires" on my Explorer. As I was banging on the window to get their attention, they were lowering my car. My Explorer now had a mere 4" of ground clearance.

I started talking to the tech that put the matchbox tires on my car. He said those tires were a valid alternative for my Explorer, and they were the ones I ordered. After arguing he dug through the trash to find the shipping label that came with the tires. Sure enough, they belonged to some other poor schmuck.

After 30 minutes they finally found my tires and in another 45 minutes they installed them. I didn't notice they installed three of them backwards until I got home. I guess its unusual for light truck tires to have a directional tread, so they weren't used to looking for the huge bold text that said "MOUNT THIS SIDE OUT" on the tire's sidewall. They closed for the night, so I had to stop in the next morning to get that fixed.

After two trips to Walmart and a combined total of 3:45 of waiting I finally have new tires, and I've learned a valuable yet glaringly obvious lesson. If you decide to purchase tires from Walmart realize one thing: The techs that will be installing them are as dumb as the tires you are about to have installed improperly.

The Bose Experience

2006-07-12T09:49:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I was "down at the lake". Whenever you're "down at the lake" with a woman, shopping at some point will occur. The number of outlet malls, strip malls, and just plain old malls is too high to count. It’s like liquid crack for the female types. You dangle this many shopping opportunities in front of a woman and they can't resist.

During one of these outings, I came across "The Bose Store". Being an electronics junkie, I couldn't resist. As soon as I entered the store I immediately saw the noise canceling headphones display. I've always wanted a pair for work, and keep reading that Bose has the best ones available. I was dying to try them out.

As soon as I'm about to start the demo, the sales guy walks over to me and asks if I need any help. I just told him I was really interested in the headphones, and he quickly pointed me to another "much better" demo to try out. Ok. I walked over to it, put the head phones on and pressed the "start" button.

Immediately all the background noises of the store disappeared and all I could hear was a Dave Mathews Band concert. I was amazed. A few minutes into the concert I noticed my girlfriend, and the rest of the people in the store, looking at me as if my hair was on fire. What's going on, I wondered. Then the demo told me to lift the head phones off one ear. I did, and was instantly aware of the reason everyone was staring at me. The demo was simulating airplane noise in the store. There was a very loud rumbling going on. Very loud. With the headphones on, there was zero rumbling. With the headphones off, it sounded as if a jet was landing in the parking lot outside.

Being someone who likes to keep a "low profile", this kind of attention is unwanted. I quickly put the headphones down and started looking for the stop button. There wasn't one. I was forced to walk away. The demo continued on for the next 10 minutes, rumbling and all.

If only I had $350, I would have walked out of that store with a pair of those headphones.

New Feed

2006-05-16T15:04:00.000-05:00

I've just signed up to use feedburner. So if any of you are subscribing to my blog, please unsubscribe, then resubscribe with this link.

Thanks!

Butts...

2006-05-16T07:30:00.000-05:00

My neighbors directly above us are very nice people. We talk a lot and generally get along well. Their friends however, are smokers. Which is fine, I couldn't care less. The problem, however, is the fact that they seem uninhibited when it comes to discarding their cigarette butts over the railing of our upstairs neighbor’s balcony. The butts often end up on our patio. The fact they fall on our patio isn't that much of a bother. I sweep it regularly since leaves and other debris continually pile up when the wind blows. The problem is that the butts keep collecting in the grass around our patio.

One or two butts in the grass is fine, but they pile up quick. I could go outside and count 100 butts easy. There must be thousands. They never get picked up by the grounds crew because they are so small. They also seem to avoid destruction from the lawn mowers. Unless someone was to go out on their hands and knees and pick up each individual butt, they will be there to stay and continually multiply.

Why is it so easy for a smoker to toss a cigarette but and not care about what happens to it when it leaves their tobacco stenched fingers? Why are cigarettes butts not considered litter? The next time you’re at a stop light look out your window and notice the pile of butts at the base of the curb your next too. Its ridiculous and it needs to stop.

A Sucker is Born Every Minute

2006-05-03T20:41:00.000-05:00

A while ago, probably close to nine or ten months ago, I was sitting in the office of a former co-worker. We would bs a lot, almost 30% of the day was spent bs'ing. Anyway, during one of those bs sessions, I threw out the comment that I could land in the pond if I jumped off the roof of the building. Immediately that comment was shot down as being completely and utterly ridiculous. "Your out of your mind", they said.

Right outside my coworkers office was somewhat of a spectacular view. He had trees, a pond, geese, egrets, some sort of mutant fish, squirrels, rabbits and ducks. It's one of those views you don't take for granted, knowing you will never score an office similar at another company. The pond is about 15 feet from the side of the building, and the building is three stories tall. I said by running at full steam and leaping off the side of the building, your body would carry far enough to hit the pond. It looked very possible to me, and I was surprised by the disbelief. I made myself a note to try and mathematically solve this problem one day and post the answer. We'll I've got some free time, and guess what... I've also got the answer.

There are a couple critical pieces of data you need to solve a problem like this. Knowing these key pieces should be enough to solve our problem.

1. How tall is the building?
2. How far away is the pond?
3. How fast will the person be running off the top of the building?

I know the building is three stories tall. I'm not about to climb to the roof and drop a tape measure to get an exact measurement, so I'll guess. Being that I work in the building, I'm very familiar with it. By guessing, I'll say the ceilings are about 10' tall. Taking into account the space between the ceiling and the floor above, I'll say each floor is about 12'. Thus, 12 x 3 = 36. For my equations I will assume the building is 36' tall.

Using the un-biased guesses of others, the pond is about 12-15 feet from the side of the building. I'll avoid any doubt and say its 15 feet.

8mph is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of my maximum sprint. It's probably not the fastest I can run, but given the limited space on the roof, probably the most I can squeeze out before going airborne. So we'll set the speed at 8mph.

Ok, we have our numbers, now we need the math. I am by no means fluent in math or physics, and right now my education on the subjects is deeply rooted in google. As such, I will not be calculating for drag, so lets pretend I will be jumping in a vacuum.

The first thing we need to do is figure how long it will take me to hit the ground. This value is required to calculate how far my body will travel. The equation below does just that. Note the table denoting what each variable represents.

y = v * t + 0.5 * a * t2

y = Vertical displacement. Basically, how far is the object falling. This will be the inverse of the height of the building (-36ft or -10.97m).
v = initial vertical velocity. Being that I am jumping off the roof, my initial vertical velocity will be 0m/s.
t = Time, or the duration of my flight. This is what we will solve for.
a = Vertical acceleration. On earth, not taking into account drag, everything that falls accelerates at a rate of 9.8m/s/s. Which means for every second of decent in a fall, you will accelerate 9.8 meters per second.

By plugging in our values we get the following.

-10.97m = 0 * t + 0.5 * 9.8m/s/s * t^2
-10.97m = 0.5 * 9.8m/s/s * t^2
-10.97m = 4.9m/s/s * t^2
2.24s^2 = t^2
t = 1.5s

This means I will free fall for 1.5 seconds when jumping off the roof of the building. Thats just enough time for me to crap my pants.

Now that we know the duration of my flight, we can calculate how far I will travel. To do that I'll use the equation below.

x = v * t + 0.5 * ax * t2

x = The distance traveled. This is the value we will solve for.
v = Initial horizontal velocity. Since I will be running 8mph when leaving the roof, this value will be 3.58m/s.
t = Time. We just solved for that. This value equals 1.5s.
a = Horizontal acceleration. I will be running at a constant speed of 8mph, so I will have 0 horizontal acceleration. This value will be 0m/s/s.

Lets plug in the values and solve for x.

x = 3.58m/s * 1.5 + 0.5 * 0m/s/s * 1.5^2
x = 3.58m/s * 1.5
x = 5.37m

According to the math my horizontal displacement will be 5.37 meters, or 17.62 feet. Since we've estimated the pond being 15 feet away, this will put me well into the water upon impact.

I know drag was not taken into account, and if it was it probably would have a considerable effect on the numbers. However, I could also run faster than 8mph, and I could also jump at the end which would add an upward angle to my horizontal velocity carrying me even farther. The bottom line is this: I believe a $500 bet was made stating that I could not make it to the water. I've just proved I can... Pay up!

"...sprung into action..."

2006-04-12T16:26:00.000-05:00

There is nothing like having someone break into your apartment at 7:30 AM to wake you up and get you ready for work.

This morning as I was brushing my teeth, naked, after my shower, I hear what appeared to be someone trying to climb in through our bedroom window. Immediately my heart started pounding and I almost passed out. "Holy #$%@!" I thought to myself. I quickly looked around to find a suitable weapon. The shower curtain rod; too big and flimsy. The bottle of cleanser; probably ineffective. The towel rod; damn it wont come off the wall. Ooo.. Ooo.. the lid to the toilet tank; perfect!

I grabbed it and quickly sprung into action. I rounded the corner like a member of the local swat team with my toilet lid ready to bash someone’s head in. I quickly surveyed the room. No one was in sight. I checked out the window. Everything looked ok. What the hell made that sound?

I walked to the window, still naked, toilet lid in hand. I moved the blinds to see a huge bird laying in the grass. My only guess was the bird passed out when it saw me round the corner, naked, with a toilet lid in hand. Either that, or it hit the window and knocked it self out whilst making the loud noise I heard. I'll go with the former.

Ahh, The Goodness That Is Google Reader

2006-03-24T11:22:00.000-06:00

I use Google Reader simply because one of my good tech buddies highly recommended it to me. He absolutely loves it and won't stop talking about how much he uses it.

Wait... reverse that last part. Here's a little tid-bit from one of our last chats...

Mark: that's because reader sucks
me: Bite your tongue
Mark: I 'might' use reader if they offered a mark all as read option

Mark is absolutely right. However, I like it enough to be able to over look the lacking "mark all as read" option. I like the way reader is set up. I like the way it handles podcasts and photo feeds. I love the new keyboard shortcuts for displaying labels. Its fast, sleek, simple and powerful... Adding a "mark all as read" option would greatly simplify things though.

What if I step away from my news for a weekend? I come back on Monday with a deluge of news begging to be read. Well when you have hundreds and hundreds of articles staring at you, you have to make some sacrifices. I tend to read the important stuff (friends, key news) and mark everything else as read. Unfortunately, for me to do that now, I have to click each item to make it go away. Very time consuming and above all else ANNOYING.

...

Let me just mention one more cool thing that Reader has implemented. They now offer the ability to share a group of feeds, or posts that you subscribe to. For example, on my blog you can now see what my friends are posting. Take a look. You simply select the feeds you want to share inside reader, then google creates a widget for you to add to your website.

Does NewsGator do that Mark?

Schools Suck

2006-02-08T15:33:00.000-06:00

I think schools are going way to far these days, taking liberties that are not theirs for the taking. For instance, these kids, like all other high-school kids, went to a party and drank some beer. The party was off school property, and had nothing to do with any school activity. Some how the school thought it was their right to suspend the students. Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't it the parents job to discipline their children when they are at home?

Ok forget about the kids drinking outside of school and getting suspended. What this school did is just absolutely awful. Suspending a 6 year old for sexual harassment? Crazy! What happend to the days of "if you show me yours, I'll show you mine"?

No More Hammers?

2006-02-01T13:35:00.000-06:00

I just came across this article today. Very amusing if you're a developer, or a spice rack builder.

SmugMug Badge?

2006-01-17T16:54:00.000-06:00

I've always wanted a way to get my recent smugmug images to appear on my blog. Flickr has had this capability for some time now with the Flickr badge.

I've attempted to create my own solution, but with blogger, the tool I'm using to host this blog, I only have access to client side code (ie javascript). Trying to access smugmug from blogger with javascript just won't work. Its blocked because cross site scripting is a security hole.

Enter feed2js. They create javascripts on the server side, where its possible to pull information together from more than one domain. They host these scripts for you, and by filling out a simple form you can place any rss feed from any domain on your blog.

Using the rss feed from my smugmug page, I've created a feed2js script that will display my recent galleries. Now that I have a script on my page, I'm free to do whatever I want. I've added my own script that overrides the one from feed2js and displays the information how I want it to be displayed. The result is what you see to the right under "Recent Galleries". Click an image and you will be taken to that gallery on my smugmug page.

Cool eh?

UPDATE: Image heights are messed up in IE. Working on it. In the mean time get a real browser!

UPDATE: Well my script broke, something changed in feed2js. I've removed it for now.

Building Playlists for Mp3Tunes

2005-12-21T21:24:00.000-06:00

I'm still uploading music to mp3tunes. My sync has been going strong for three days. Well it crashed twice, but that was expected. I've never had a program run that long and not crash.

Since I've been waiting for my music to upload I haven't had a real chance to play with all the features of mp3tunes & oboe. I did however, discover that you can create your own playlists for all of your online content. The only thing you need to do is pull the keys for the mp3s you want to play from your oboecache file located in your home directory. Once you have these keys you can download any song you want without sync'ing.

I used this feature to build a playlist for each album I'm currently uploading. Using the playlist, you are able to listen to your original mp3, and aren't limited to the 128kbs stream the flash player feeds you. I know you can choose to have mp3tunes stream your music via playlist, but that doesn't help if you want to listen to a full album and dont have a playlist set up for it.

To remedy this, I've created a vb script that scans your oboecache file and creates a m3u playlist for each album it contains. You could easily customize it to create playlists based on artist, or genre.

You can find the code here. Use it at your own risk.

Eh, What the Hell

2005-12-19T16:57:00.000-06:00

Against the recommendations of a half dozen bloggers, I signed up for mp3Tunes today. I'm not too keen on paying for a beta service, but I've wanted something like this for a while now, and this one is very affordable.

I'm currently sync'ing my music. At the rate its going, I should have all my music uploaded by the new year. ;)

Lets Bolt!

2005-11-28T15:15:00.000-06:00

Disclaimer: This isn't a story I would normally post on my blog, but a co-worker talked me into it. I tried to censor it as much as possible. Its probably somewhere around a PG-13 right now.

A couple weeks ago my girlfriend and I went out with a bunch of friends to a local bar. Since we live really close to one of the other couples that was going out we offered to drive.

We got to the bar and drank, drank, drank. We had a blast. Well with one exception. A girl that was with us claimed to see one of her ex-boyfriends. They have a colored past, and she quickly started bringing everyone else down. We all started to ignore her, and the fun continued.

At 1:30am the party started breaking up as parts of our group started to head for home. We decided it was also time for us to leave as well. We paid our tab (~$57) and hit the road. On the way home I got a sudden uncontrollable craving for White Castle.

A plan was suddenly put into play. We'll pick up whities, and eat them at the couples house. We had to drop them off any way, so what the hell. It sounds harmless.

We get to their house and pulled into their driveway. Suddenly out of nowhere from the back seat I hear the phrase, "We should go have sex in the same room". What!?! Surly this guy is drunk, and was just kidding around. I let it slide.

We go into their house. My girlfriend, and the other girl head upstairs for some reason, me and the other guy went downstairs to the TV room with the food. This guy likes to show off his toys so we started watching his high-def channels on his plasma TV. Yeah, that's cool. I have one too. I'm not that impressed.

I looked down to grab one of my burgers. I get it out of the box, take a bite, look back up, and what do I see on the TV but some muscle bound Latin dude giving it to a couple blond chicks with very large whoo-has. Now I'm not one to complain about seeing porn, but when I'm watching with another drunk guy I get a little worried. That, plus the comment that came from the back seat earlier, made me a little edgy.

I immediately start looking for my girlfriend. Where the hell is she? Was she being mis-handled by some leather bound freak they have caged up in their closet?

He goes on to say that he has this porn channel because his dad likes to watch it. They tried to cancel it, but his dad got pissed.

I finally hear my girlfriend coming down the steps with the other girl. Whew. Meanwhile the porn is still on the TV. My girlfriend sees the porn and gives me a look that translated to "what the hell is going on". I give her the same look back. She sits next to me and we start to communicate through looks and nudges. We silently decided we both needed to get the hell out of there, and quick. We both didn't like where this was headed.

"Oh crap, look at the time!" GONE.

After we leave I learn that my girlfriend was getting a tour of their porn collection. Apparently they have a collection that will rival most adult video stores. Crazy. Next time I'm not driving anybody to or from a bar.

The Move to Open Source

2005-11-27T12:16:00.000-06:00

For a while now I've wanted to rebuild my Windows PC and load only open source software on it. I have a FreeBSD box already, so I'm somewhat familiar with the open source alternatives.

Thanksgiving week was the perfect time for me to start my project. I have a 9 day weekend, and the apartment to myself. I set off by backing up my data and begin to format and reload.

I wanted to use Windows XP as the OS simply because I'm not the only one that uses this PC and I don't feel like confusing anybody. I will only use open source software as an alternative to popular expensive applications like MS Office, and Photoshop.

Here is a list of the software I would normally install, and its open-source replacement.

Microsoft Office: Open Office
Adobe Photoshop: GIMP
Internet Explorer: Firefox (Firefox is already my default browser)
McAfee Antivirus: ClamWin Antivirus
Visual Studio 2003: #Develop
Notepad: Notepad2
Nero 7 Ultra: Nero 7 Ultra (I have yet to find a suitable replacement)
Winzip: 7zip
Outlook: Gmail & Sunbird(Nothing beats Gmails web interface.)

That's my main list. Of course there are other smaller programs I use for odd jobs, but there is no real point in listing those. These applications will build a suitable home office PC.

So far my experience has been a good one. Every thing I could do before I can do now. There is a little learning curve, as there is with any new software, but I'm a quick study.

There has only been a couple issues that have either pushed me to use a non open source solution, or have made me consider it. 1) ClamWin Antivirus does not offer an on access scan engine. I have seriously considered loading McAfee and dropping ClamWin. Instead, I have scheduled multiple virus scans to kick off at certain times during the day. I will see how this works, and at the first infection I will probably go back to McAfee. 2) There is no open source replacement for Nero. I've looked. I've found some freeware alternatives, but no open source. (If you find one, let me know.)

Here are some links to help you find other open source alternatives for windows.

The Ultimate Cage Match

2005-11-07T15:46:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I got into a nice little scrape with my girlfriend.

Her: Hey baby, come here. I'm gonna spray this on your face.
Me: No, what is it?
Her: It cleans and refreshes your face.
Me: I just got out of the shower, my face is already clean.
Her: Come here, and close your eyes.
Me: No, I don't want...

She then sprays it in my face with out warning. I was standing by the closet door when the attack ensued, so I quickly jumped in and closed the door. The mysterious liquid was now burning my eyes, and giving me a bitter taste in my mouth. My attacker was still pursuing me, determined to "clean my face".

I jumped out of the closet, grabbed the bottle, and chucked it across the room.

That probably wasn't the best course of action in hind sight, but it worked in a pinch. Now the problem was the trail of liquid spewing from the wake of the bottle as it traveled across our bedroom. I looked down and noticed the nozzle of the bottle was still in my attackers hand. I looked back up and saw our liquid soaked bed, dresser, carpet, and wall. Uh oh.

Me: Who's gonna clean up this mess?

Sony's DRM Rootkit Removal Software is Evil?

2005-11-04T15:28:00.000-06:00

Yet more interesting news on the whole Sony DRM rootkit. Looks like their uninstaller is not up to par. Go figure.

At least the gaming community has put it to good use.

My DVD is in the Mail

2005-11-03T13:06:00.000-06:00

I finally broke down and signed up for netflix today. I have a couple friends using it and they all seem to like it. Apparently it only takes 3 days for you to send back your old DVD and receive the new one. That's pretty fast considering what has to take place in between.

I just joined and have yet to receive any movies, and I'm already impressed with their service. My favorite feature so far is their recommendations page. The first time you access this page they ask you to rate some popular movies, ask you what your favorite genres are, and then determine which movies you will like. It's super accurate. They have recommended all of my favorite movies. What's more, this list is available via rss.

Each recommended movie is rated using a 5 star system based on how well they think you would like it. Its very helpful when looking up some more obscure titles.

They also allow you create logins for your family members, and determine what kind of movies they will be able to add to your queue.

I think this service will end up being one of those "how did I live without it" type things. I can't wait to get my first movie, which by the way, is already in the mail.

Sony is Going to Try and Clean Up Their Mess

2005-11-02T16:33:00.000-06:00

In my last post I mentioned the fact that Sony is using rootkits to protect their cds from being copied. Now they realized what they did was wrong and are offering software to clean up the mess, well at least "unhide" it anyway.

Um, yeah. I'd clean it up manually before I would ever trust any of their software to do the job.

Rootkits for Copy Protection?

2005-10-31T16:49:00.000-06:00

Check out this article on the Sysinternals blog. Apparently Sony believes it's ok to install "viruses" on your PC to disable you from making too many copies.

They go about it by installing a rootkit that loads and hides a number of processes, and device drivers that prevent you from playing the CD on any media player other than the one that is included on the CD. They do this so your attempt to copy the CD more than three times will be thwarted. Did they go too far on this one? Yes.

I wonder what happens when you try to make that fourth copy? Does the CD eat itself?

Wrong Turn

2005-10-17T17:22:00.000-05:00

Last weekend me and a friend of mine (Scott) decided to mountain bike two sections of the Ozark Trail, and camp in between making a nice two day trip. With all the logistics of where to park the cars, and where to put up the camper meticulously planned out, we set out on Friday night for our two day adventure.

The plan was simple; park one car at the start of section 1, set up the camper in between section 1 & 2, and park another car at the end of section 2. This way we could ride, camp, ride, drive back to get car 1, drive back to get the camper, clean up, and go home. We got down Friday night so we could get camp set up, and have an early start on the riding for Saturday. (Clear as mud? Doesn’t really matter… read on.)

We pull into our camp site and set up camp at about 8:00 PM. It was dark, but we managed to get the camper set up and a nice fire going. After a couple beers, and some jerky, we were lights out by 12. That’s when our neighbors showed up. When I say neighbors, I mean 30 or so hillbillies with a lust for revving engines. Along with 15 4wd trucks, they pulled in about 10 atvs, a dirt bike, and a gasoline powered rc car. All of which they had running till 4:00 AM. Every once and a while the engines would quiet down enough for us to hear their Led Zeppelin blasting in the background.

So 4:00 AM its quiet and we finally get some sleep. At least until 7:00 AM when they get up and start the same thing all over again. By this time the two of us are pretty mad, and we start devising another plan over breakfast. We decide to swap the camper and car 2. So instead of ride, camp, ride, there will be some driving in between.

So right after breakfast, we pack up camp, and move.

We arrive at our new campsite and check out our new potential neighbors. They all look like the type of guy you would find in the gun section of Wal-Mart, scary still, but hardly going to stay up till 4am hooting and hollering. We pick a site and set up.

Now its lunch time, we should be riding by now but we’re hungry. So we eat.

Finally, we get on our way to the trail head and it’s around 2:30 when we start riding. The trail starts out going down hill and for the most part doesn’t stop. There were a couple good climbs, but the majority was all down hill. Scott is breaking in new pedals and was having trouble clipping in and out. This caused him to crash numerous times. Since his confidence was burned, he started riding slower than usual. I was having one of my better rides, and found myself stopping often to let Scott catch up.

We ride to a clearing and decide to stop for a snack. It’s now about 4:15, and we have some where around 3 miles left to ride. It will be no problem to make it out by dark. We chat with some other mountain bikers on the trail, finish our snack, and head off. This will be the last time I see Scott for some hours.

I ride up to the last creek crossing before the end of the trial and wait for Scott to catch up. I wait… 5 minutes pass, 10, 15… Twenty minutes pass, and I finally decide to back track to look for Scott. There’s no way I got that far ahead of him. Something had to of gone wrong.

As I’m riding back I decide to ration off my water since I had very little left. I back track further but still don’t see him any where. I decide to ride all the way back to the clearing where we last stopped. I get there, and no Scott. I have no idea what happened, but I know this: its getting dark. I decide to ride back to the car as quickly as possible so I can get there before dark. Then I will figure out the missing Scott issue. “Maybe we just passed each other some how” is what I think to myself.

I start my ride back and almost immediately my derailleur completely snaps off. I had knocked it on a log earlier in the ride. I guess that had weakened it. Now it was gone, and I could not shift gears. I got off the bike and shortened my chain to see if I could some how rig a single speed. I tried and failed. I couldn’t get the chain to stay on any one gear. Now it was 6:00 PM and I had roughly 3 miles in front of me with no bike.

I pack up and start walking. My plan is to jog the level stuff, hike up the hills, and coast on my bike down the hills. After some time I make it back to the creek crossing. Along the way I kept looking for Scott in case I didn’t see him earlier.

I continue past the creek, and up a hill. The hill itself is all washed out and very rocky. I could barely walk up it much less ride it. Then it struck me. This isn’t the trail. I look at my gps (yes I had one) and I see that I made a wrong turn way before the creek crossing.

Then it was instantly clear to me. Scott was ok and back at the car already. He had passed me when I was waiting at the wrong creek crossing. Now he is the one who is probably looking for me.

So why did I make a wrong turn if I had a gps? Well let’s just say this… pure stupidity on my part. I checked that gps at every intersection but the one I made the wrong turn at. Why? That trail just looked so familiar to me. I had ridden this trail before, but going the opposite direction. I was convinced I was turning the right way, plus I was going really fast.

It’s now 6:30 and under the cover of the trees pretty dark. I can still see clearly enough to coast down some hills. I make it to the right creek crossing, and start running. Thoughts of ditching my bike in the woods and running out started to cross my mind.

6:40 a difference of 10 minutes makes a huge difference. It’s now pitch black on the trail. The moon is out and the skies are clear, but the dense tree cover blocks out almost all of the moonlight. I can barely make out the trail at this point, much less the logs and big rocks that cover it.

I can see a car drive past on a fire road, but there is no way for me to get to it. I decide to stick with the trail and make it to where we parked the car.

My shirt and shorts are both soaked with sweat, and my shoes are also water logged from having to walk through the creeks. The temperature is dropping and it’s starting to get colder. I hardly notice it though because I can only focus on one thing: getting to the car.

My gps tells me there is a little less than .3 miles to the car. Now I can faintly see campfires and lantern lights from the campsite the car is parked at off in the distance. I start to loose the panic that was slowly building up.

I finally make it out and to the trail head where the car was parked. I walk towards the car only to find it not there. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. It’s now after 7:00PM. Scott probably finished around 5:15. He probably went to get help. Crap.

I lean my bike next to a tree where the car was originally parked, so if Scott comes by he will see it and know I’m ok. I start walking over to one of the campsite to ask for some water, and maybe sit next to a fire. Off in the distance I hear a car coming down the road. It sounds like my car; it’s got to be Scott. I stop and wait for it. Whew, it’s my car alright.

The window rolls down and profanities start flowing out. Apparently Scott was driving all over the place looking for me. He drove up and down just about every fire road looking for my dead body. This was his last pass by the trail head before he drove out to get help. I made it just in time.

Needless to say there was no riding the next day.

Tag Your Photos with a GPS

2005-10-04T16:52:00.000-05:00

Since I've been using SmugMug, I've been looking for ways to geo-code my pictures. Why? Because of this cool mapping feature that SmugMug offers. If the EXIF data in your image contains a latitude and Longitude, your images can be placed on one of these maps.

Unless you have an uber-expensive camera that can automatically geo-tag your image, you have to manually enter this information in SmugMugs database.

Enter GPS-Photo Link. This app imports your track log from your gps, and compares it to the times your pictures were taken. It uses this info to automagicly geo-tag your photos. How awesome is that?

All you have to do is carry your gps with you when you shoot photos. Piece of cake! Now if only this application was free.

Microsoft vs. Adobe

2005-10-03T22:14:00.000-05:00

I like what MS is doing with Metro (the "replacement" for acrobat). Many people don't realize, but pdf is an open document specification. Adobe, however, scrambles their document structure so much, its hard for anyone other than Adobe to decode it.

Microsoft's alternative is XML based, and they will provide api's to help developers include support in their applications. Hopefully the PDF, and acrobat will go away forever.

Imagine web browsers that utilize the metro api to render metro documents directly, without having to wait for a third party viewer (ie acrobat) to launch.

Reality Check

2005-10-03T14:07:00.000-05:00

I wouldn't even think about posting negative comments about the company I work for on this blog. Take this Dilbert for instance. That guy is just crazy.

If you're gonna do that kinda thing, get a pseudonym for crying out loud!

SmugMug vs. Flickr

2005-09-29T17:10:00.000-05:00

I've never been a flickr fan simply because I've never liked the interface. However, I do understand the concept and think it's a great one.

After several power outages, my hard drive has been making some really bad noises. As I'm preparing for total melt down, I thought it would be nice to have somewhere to archive my photos. CD's go bad, and you can never fully trust your PC. The only solution for me was to find somewhere to stash them online.

One of those choices was flickr, and the other was SmugMug. I've whittled the list down to just these two services by reading many forums, and blogs. These two seem to be the leaders in photo sharing and storage.

While I've used both, my final decision was to go with SmugMug. I've decided to pay for the standard package which is ~$30 per year. With this you get unlimited uploads, and 4gb of download bandwidth. They seem to be very lenient with the 4gb ceiling by granting you the ability to ask for more when needed.

Along with being a good company with a great reputation, the offer an excellent product. SmugMug offers the user tons of image tweaking tools. Galleries are a snap to set up and are highly customizable. They also offer sub-galleries, a feature missing from flickr.

They already have a solid product, but allow you to customize it further with the wide range of apis available to web-geeks. Some have already developed handy tools to enhance SmugMug.

The only thing missing is the kind of community you can find over at flickr. "Interestingness" is defiantly something I will miss at SmugMug.

So with that said, hop on over and take a look at my boring vacation photos. I almost have them all online. Hopefully the last few will make it up before the "melt down".

P.S. If you want to sign up for SmugMug and save $5, use this code: dAoAc4XlBEnGQ

Sewage Plant to be Powered by Cooking Grease

2005-09-26T09:12:00.000-05:00

I think bio-diesel is going to be one of the finalists in the battle of alternate energy. With that said, I find it cool to see things like this in the news.

Vacation Mosaic

2005-09-22T19:19:00.000-05:00

I found this cool program that will allow you to create mosaics from your collection of images.

The one above is created from all my vacation pictures of which I don't have many. Obviously, if I had more pics, the quality would be a lot better. Click the image for a bigger version.

BTW: If you couldn't tell, this is a picture of the Golden Gate bridge. I took it from a catamaran, sailing in the bay.

When I was a kid we had these things called books.

2005-09-22T11:17:00.000-05:00

It's huge for a library to drop all their printed materials, and opt for digital replacements. I guess it's natural progression, but wow that was quick!

I wonder if they will install a holographic librarian.

Web Developer Must Have

2005-09-21T11:49:00.000-05:00

The link above is for the new IE developer toolbar. This is defiantly something you want to install if you develop user interfaces in html/JavaScript.

The ruler feature is something I've wanted for a long time now.

New Blog, New Outlook on Life

2005-09-20T16:51:00.000-05:00

My last blog was just a spring board for me to get into the whole blogging scene. I didn’t think I was going to enjoy it, but it quickly became a small addiction for me. I loved the ability it gave me to vent some major frustrations. I quickly got carried away with what I was posting and realized I needed a fresh start. So this is it; my first “real” blog.

This blog will be a lot tamer as I find other ways to vent my frustrations. Ways that aren’t directly linked to my name and address.