It snowed today. First "real" snowfall that I can remember this winter here in Lincoln. Oh, it has snowed, but most of the time it either didn't last very long - or it happened at night when I was already at home and not paying attention to the weather. {grin}

For you Sims fans - I was pointed to a program to help you Sims kids grow up called SimTeen, part of the SimLifeCycle "project". I haven't had a chance to test it, yet so be forewarned.

Darts tomorrow night, comics symposium Friday and Saturday, and maybe a visit with Crystal Saturday. Don't expect to much in the way of updates the next couple of days - I'm a gonna be a busy guy!

Got this joke on the langalist that I just had to share:

You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say, "I'm fantastic in bed." That's Direct Marketing.

You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says, "He's fantastic in bed." That's Advertising.

You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and get her telephone number. The next day you call and say, "Hi, I'm fantastic in bed." That's Telemarketing.

You're at a party and see a gorgeous girl. You get up and straighten your tie; you walk up to her and pour her a drink. You open the door for her, pick up her bag after she drops it, offer her a ride, and then say, "By the way, I'm fantastic in bed." That's Public Relations.

You're at a party and see a gorgeous girl. She walks up to you and says, "I hear you're fantastic in bed." That's Brand Recognition.

Just for all you doubters out there, I cooked supper tonight. That's right - I cooked. And it wasn't one of those open it - pour it - heat it types of things either. This was an actual meal that involved preparation! Not only that - but I wasn't blindly following a recipe! Look out Iron Chefs - here comes the Aluminum Chef!

Got a message from Buster of The Leroy Fix wondering how he could get on the web page. Well, Buster, here's that plug you asked for. They got a neat sound - you should check it out. I'm bad at describing music - especially stuff like theirs that defies any type of narrow definition. Just check it out for some great rock jams! Tell 'em Scott from Emerald Fusion sent ya.

I was reading a report on something else, and they mentioned two unofficial add-ons for Baldur's Gate. Well - here they are: Dark Side of the Sword Coast for BG1 and The Darkest Day for BG2

Monster linkage for you today... Hang on!

• How to see through walls - Transparent concrete. Let me rephrase that - concrete you can look through. Interesting! {via slashdot}
  
• Trimming TV Time - "Controversial Digital Time Machine can squeeze more commercials into television programming." Great. More commerical, less actual programming. {via slashdot}
  
• Pure CSS Popups - This one's for the geeks. How do rollover menus with no javascript. {via Web4Lib}
  
• Searchin' for the Surfer's Saint - Will the Pope choose a saint for Internet use? Maybe...
  
• Turning Macs on Thievery - How a techie was able to get his sister's stolen computer back, using remote access and some nifty scripts.
  
• 007 Dis(Gold)members Austin Powers - "MGM and Danjaq, the British company that controls the Bond film license, have obtained a cease-and-desist order against New Line Cinema that prohibits New Line from calling the latest installment of Mike Myers' shagadelic spy series Austin Powers in Goldmember. "
  
• A couple of professional wrestling related sites: indybookings, World Wrestling Allstars, and the Wrestling Information Archive
  
• How I Managed To Can the Spam - A rather unique way of getting rid of junk email. {via daypop}
  
• Legodeath - A "museum of horrors" built with Legos. {via daypop}
  
• Whitehouse.org - Not whitehouse.gov or whitehouse.com! A politcal satire site in teh vein of the Onion. {from Jason @ Theme of Absence}
  
• I took the Care Bear test and found out I'm ....
  
  See what Care Bear you are. {via daypop}
  
• Role Playing Character Mortuary - "The Character Mortuary is the final resting place for characters who died — tragically or otherwise — in roleplaying games. It provides a place for the character to be put to rest while letting the world know about his, her, or (in some cases) its great deeds." I should put a couple of characters in there, especially the ones that died on the first night I played them... {from Alex}
  
• The SPAM-ku archive - Poetry, haiku to be exact, praising the canned meat. {from Ana}
  
• College roommate war stories - Some interesting stories for you college kids out there. {from Ana}

So Jason, his brother and I are hitting the local comic shop's sale to pick up some "cheap comics". They closed their Omaha store and were selling a bunch of that store's stock at 50 cents an issue. I come out of the store with close to 50 dollars worth of "cheap comics". That's over 80 individual comics, people. In one shot. I'm an addict! Not only that, but I picked up a bunch of new ones as well. At least it doesn't match my all time high. One day I purchased over $100 dollars worth of comics through quarter, fifty cent, and dollar boxes. Oh, well - just doing my part to help the economy.

Left work early Friday, I was ill and I just couldn't get my head into work. It took me all of 30 minutes here at home to surpass the amount I did at work Friday. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come.

No links today - even though I've got a bunch sitting in the mail. No reason other than I'm tired and have to get some sleep tonight. Later!

Note 1: Maxis has pulled their patch for Hot Date. Apparently it caused new problems along with fixing the old.

Note 2: My sister Crystal called me tonight. She bought a house here in Lincoln. This means both my sisters will be living here in town. Ultra-cool!

Note 3: Darts tonight - bad. Day - crappy. Coming home - good, very very good.

Remind me to tell you guys about being in the "zone" some time.

Talk about a wasted afternoon. I spent the entire morning meeting over at Bellevue for the NLA meeting. Normally I would just write the whole day off and go home whenever the meeting is out of town. Today was different. I have been playing email tag with a student to help him figure out why he can't get into our online resources for about a month. He won't give me his phone number so he has to call me, I can't call him. We set up Thursday morning as the time for me be here. Anyway - I'm sitting the office all afternoon. No phone call. I could have gone home to finish typing up Monday's hand out, or finish revising the tips for the new faculty document, or even take a nap. ERF!

Good news Sims fans - Maxis has released a patch for Sims: Hot Date. Go there and pick it up. I know I will.

Shake your link thang, shake your link thang, yah yah!:

• Spyware, In a Galaxy Near You & Where Are These Pop-Ups Coming From? - If you use Audio Galaxy, you probably want to read this. More spyware is being passed around, this own seems really suspicious. {"Where Are ..." article via /usr/bin/girl}
  
• Distributed's New Word: Please - "The legal nightmare for David McOwen ended last week with a minor fine, probation, and a lesson learned: Ask before you install software on somebody else’s computer." Something he did for the good of humanity got him punished. Think about it before you help an old lady cross the street.
  
• Exactly What Is AOL Up To? - "In January, the company launched a lawsuit against Microsoft, announced that two executives would soon be spending more time with their families, seriously downgraded its financial outlook for 2002, boosted access charges for its most uncommitted users, and was rumored to be in talks to purchase Red Hat, a Linux distributor." Makes you wonder what's up for the real evil empire, America Online Time Warner.
  
• Buy DVDs and games abroad - and break the law - Buying mod chips for your Playstation just became a bit more shadier practice, even if you did want to play legal copies of foreign movies or games.
  
• FTC proposes hotline to thwart telemarketers - I read about this in the newspaper and thought YES! Sign me up, baby! {via/usr/bin/girl}
  
• WizardWorld.com - This is a page I should not have shown Jason. Take Wizard, the comic book magazine, and place it online along with the ability to input your collection and have it tell you its worth.

More blogs that I should probably read more often: What's New, Pussycat, The Obscure Store and Reading Room, bluishorange, dollarshort.org, Opine Bovine, Boing Boing, and Ain't Too Proud to Blog

New thing on the left hand side - recent referrers for EmeraldFusion. Let me know what you think. {code courtesy of Sean Nolan}

What's new with me... mmm let me see..

Julie & I finally got in to see Lord of the Rings on Monday. To quote Jason, "It was long". Julie hadn't read the books, so she didn't know when the potentially scary parts were going to be. I guess Peter Jackson was able to pull off the emotion judging from the way she gripped my arm during the film.

Last night I accomplished something that must make me a true geek. I finished copying all of my and Julie's cds onto the hard drive. Any practical reason? Nope. Am I going to share them with you? Probably not. Just thought I'd brag a bit.

Too tell the truth, I haven't been feeling very well lately - so that means I'd rather just play games that try and be coherent and type up an entry. I'm feeling a bit guilty about it though. Besides - the links back log is just a little too much so I need to post. {grin} Oh and a note to my friends who are submitting sites - I'll get them up here, as soon I cut through the backlog. My email program was a bit screwed up, but its fixed now.

Links to think about:

• Earth at Night - A really cool picture. {from Ginger}
  
• Neighbour returned Witnesses' cold call - Someone got tired of being visited by the Jehovah's Witnesses - so she went to visit them! {via daypop}
  
• I Know where Bruce Lee Lives - Mix your own crazy kung fu tracks. High speed internet connection suggested {via daypop}
  
• Yoga Finds New Twists in the U.S. - This article is for Julie, it talks about how the practice of yoga in the us is changing.
  
• Who needs Napster when you have Google? - I tried this method with limited success. Your milage may vary. {via wibbler}
  
• Abandonware: Dead Games Live On - Have a favorite computer game that you can't find anywhere? This article talks about the games that are no longer commercially available. The article mentions The Underdogs site which looks like a cool resource for finding some of those "golden oldies".
  
• Amazon expected to post first-ever profit - It may old news by now, but how many dot-coms from a couple years ago are even around any more?
  
• The unofficial DC Universe International Heroes Site - A web site that focuses on the super heroes from other countries created by DC comics. Interesting to see what Americans create when they create heroes for other cultures.

Here's a little doodad I'm testing:

So we didn't go to the hockey game last night. Julie and I walk out of Applebee's and it was already snowing and getting slick. Oh well. No great loss. Today we went to the Strategic Air and Space Museum. I was very happy as I got to see a Blackbird SR-71 up close and personal! Other than that - not much going on. More later - I've got to go take care of a nasty video game withdrawal now.

Note to self: Self, don't blog when you haven't had any caffine yet. It looks like this morning's entry. Yeah the one right below this one. Grammer is not your strong suit when you aren't even awake. ERF! End note to self.

Darts, last night, was fabulous! Our team beat the top ranked team 9 matches to 4! Now that my friends, was impressive as we were sitting fifth in an eight team league. Yes! To bad I feel ill because the cigarette smoke was thick at W.C.'s last night...

Tonight... Hockey! My first Stars game in long time. A lot of my favorite players have moved on, but there's still nothing like going to a Lincoln Stars game.

Tomorrow for you, today for LINKS!

• Actor's plaque mistakenly honors King's assassin - A plaque honoring James Earl Jones mistakenly honors James Earl Ray. ooops.. {via /usr/bin/girl}
  
• X-Files in it's last season - I don't personally watch the show anymore, but I have many friends who will be saddened by this news. {via slashdot}
  
• Gates makes security top focus - Well its about time Microsoft at least started talking about improving security. Lets see if it actually happens or not. {via slashdot}
  
• Wallace & Gromit back in web animations - "Plasticine heroes Wallace and Gromit are to star in a series of mini-movies on the Internet." You can also read more on the official site. {via slashdot}
  
• Sport Logo Encyclopedia & The Helmet Project - Two web pages dedicated to the graphics used by sport teams.
  
• Philips moves to put 'poison' label on protected audio CDs - This is a good thing! I almost ran out of my office to cheer out load when I read this.

As crummy as yesterday was, I half expected today to be the same way. It was, thankfully quite the opposite. The phone hardly rang, I got stuff done that wasn't started with a "Could you do this today...", and Julie & I ate at the Rolling Wok tonight. I swear, if that place goes out of business I will have to find a new "comfort food". Good stuff, cheap prices - what else could be better?

Links to the left, links to the right...

• The Flash - DC Comics now have an official page for The Flash. It's ... ok, but I prefer Flash, Those Who Ride The Lightning myself.
  
• Unfortunate Valentine's cards - Some truly awful valentines. {from /usr/bin/girl}
  
• Acts of Gord - Read some accounts of the stupidity that this video game store owner has dealt with. I spent way too much time today reading the descriptions of people trying to get away with things. {from /usr/bin/girl}
  
• Good Eats fan page - To quote the page: "Good Eats is a cooking show like no other. Hosted by its creator and writer, Alton Brown, the show combines the likes of the History Channel, Discovery Channel, Bill Nye the Science Guy and a pinch of VH1 all rolled into one great half hour." I agree! I love it!

What a day....

What happens when you've got projects lined up and then you do nothing but climb up an ever growing mountain of "do this right now" phone calls and emails? You get exhausted and cranky! I suffered through an over half hour phone call that I can best describe as a verbal shrapnel grenade - it exploded over the place with pieces of it flying everywhere. Some pieces stuck and some went nowhere. It was also sound and fury signifying nothing... Oh, and to the person who may think I'm talking about their phone call to me this morning - it wasn't you. Your phone call may have rambled, but it had a purpose!

It was one thing after the other all day - I finished answering a question or doing a quick project and two more popped up in its place. No time to work on my long term projects at all. If I start having too many of these days - I'm in real trouble.

The drive home wasn't all the greatest. I followed a Hyundai that sounded like a motor scooter, a person who decided it was more important to find a radio station than it was to stay in her lane, and someone who decided that 20 miles slower than the 45 MPH speed limit would be a fine speed to drive at even though there was clear road ahead... ERF!

At least tonight's ok. Julie & I watched the final DVD of Trigun tonight after waiting quite some time to get it. Neat series - I'd recommend it. and I can blog. Wheee!

must .... resist ... temptation to .... redesign site.....

I've done some minor updates, I hope to do a major link adding session tomorrow. I really should find/create something that will take my links and let me assign categories and then it creates pages automatically for me. Oh well...

How was the weekend? Mine was fabu! Had a gamers group Christmas get together at our place on Sunday. Julie & I made some decent grub and I think everyone had fun. I know I got some cool stuff (including X-Men and the Special Edition Monty Python & The Holy Grail DVD's) However, the best thing was that Kate & Alex were able to make it from KC-way! I haven't seen them in a while so it was good to see them both alive and kicking.

Saw Crystal run with the Olympic torch Thursday - sort of. Some camera truck decided that it needed to go through the crowd of onlookers. Even after we had been told by one of coordinators that we were fine. And then said camera truck decided to jump in front of the escorting motorcycle and official press vehicle. Nothing like a traffic jam/accident right in front of the Olympic torch... Anyway - because of this yahoo, I ended up playing "Dodge the Dodge" instead of cheering on my sister most of the route. ERF! I sortof got to see the torch get lighted, looking around the crowd that jumped in front of me, and I did see her going on the route further down. The rest of my family had similar experiences. It amazed me that the people closest to her had the hardest time getting to actually see her. Now I know the torch is for everybody - but dang it people - have some courtesy. There's room for all of us on this road. Ok, vent over..

Links for the masses: ( and no, I received no compensation from daypop for these links... It just looks that way today.)

• 'Google effect' reduces need for many domains - Why are domain name sales down? This columnist presents and idea of why. {from daypop}
  
• Which Kevin Smith Female are you and Which Kevin Smith Male are you? - Continuing in the "What X are you" vein - two more tests, this time testing which Kevin Smith movie character you would be most like. I tested to be Brodie from Mallrats BTW. {from daypop}
  
• Biz Stone: Wrong Font - Someone really should have looked at that on paper before putting it up. Adult language {from daypop}
  
• Industorious Clock - Just an interesting way to watch the seconds go by. {from daypop}
  
• No More Popup ads - "Because pop-up ads suck" I haven't tried these yet, but I plan too. {from daypop}
  
• True Color of the Universe revealed - The true color of the universe resembles mint choclate chip ice cream! mmm ice cream..... {from daypop & Alex - darn near simultaneously}
  
• AD & D Stats <=> Real Life - For those who want to play a character very similar to themselves in Dungeons & Dragons. Why? I don't know.. {from daypop}
  
• The Blogger Code - A quick way to resemble how much of a blogger you really are. My code is "B2 d t k+ s+ u- f i o x-- e- l c" (To translate take the code between the quotes and go here for an explanation.) {from daypop}
  
• bluelikethat.com - A really cool design for a blog. {from ooh, a ceiling}
  
• The ailurodrome - The website of one of my coworkers that I happened to stumble upon. (The website - not her. I stumbled upon the website Oh never mind...)

Today is the big day! I'm off to Omaha this afternoon to see Crystal run in the Olympic Torch relay. What else can I say?

Oh BTW, don't forget to go to the 2002 Bloggies site and nominate your favorites! Deadline is the 13th.

Links are few today folks.

• Parasite check - Go to this web page and see if you have any computer "parasites" running on your machine. {from little.yellow.different}
  
• New Oscar poster revealed - I mentioned before that Alex ross was creating the next Academy Awards poster. Go here to look at it. It ain't half bad, folk!
  
• Drivers licence equals National I.D. card - I don't know if I'm for against this, but it is certainly interesting to read. {from slashdot}
  

{currently Blogger is having problems. If the date says one thing and you don't remember seeing this entry then - that's why}

I just need to say it. My sister is now famous. Not only is she the reigning Ms. Wheelchair Nebraska, but she is an Olympic torch runner this year! She's been on two radio programs this week and on two different t.v. news programs. Sis, I hope the fame doesn't go to your head! {grin} The Torch run is tomorrow and I get to see it!

Yesterday was just one of those "great" days. One of those you can't describe what made it so great, but it just was. I found a pretty decent at work web radio station that made me feel really cool, as it was from London. I've linked to it below.. I made progress on a lot of stuff I had put on the back burner. It was just good.

I finally got my article off to Jason at Theme of Absence on Sunday. If you want to read it, just go here. Let me know what you think.

I don't post for a couple days and my backlog of links grows like crazy... Here they are:

• Toon Marooned - Looney Tunes meets Survivor. {from Ana}
  
• Digibles - Digital trading cards. Interesting, but I'd like to see more before I invest in them.
  
• JazzFM - A really cool jazz web radio station. Based out of England it just seems to add that much more to the broadcasts to hear those English accents.
  
• How Bush's shallowness makes him a good war president. - How Junior's peacetime weaknesses make him a better president in these trying days. Interesting take - but it seems like a backhanded compliment to me.
  
• Camping out for Star Wars II - Considering that Star Wars II won't open until May 16th, this seems a bit extreme. {from /usr.bin/girl}
  
• Learning to love the computer, warts and all - A funny bit from Dave Barry about how his computer helped him watch his warts. Just read it to make sense of it. {from Sara S.}
  
• The Geeks that saved Usenet - A Salon article about the people who helped Google create its massive archive of Usenet postings. {from slashdot}
  
• GoodSleep.com - Find out what kind of sleeper you are. I am an "adaptive Owl".
  
• Virus Writers Here to 'Help' - Are the people who write viruses doing the computing world a service? Some would like to think so. Then again some think the world is flat..
  
• Congressman assails CD copy protection - US Representative Richard Boucher (Democrat, Virginia) goes on record against copy protection 'tracks' on CDs.
  
• Bernard Shifman Is A Moron Spammer - I read this webpage and just about rolled out of my seat. It shows the progession of emails between an alledged spammer and several IT people. Not for everyone, but great for those who understand Internet terminology. {from slashdot} Adult language
  
• DoubleClick drops ads - Famed Internet surfer habit tracker DoubleClick has decided to leave the targeted Internet ad business. I don't know whether to be happy or sad. I don't like ads, but does this mean we will see more freakin' pop-up ads? {from slashdot}
  
• Solid stops light - Solid traps light would be more accurate I think. Imagine being able to trap light into a crystal and being able to release it later!! {from slashdot}
  
• NOAH - Wonder where Vader or 2 Cold Scorpio are wrestling? Look no further than NOAH. The site is in Japanese with some English captions.
  
• SecurityFocus - A site I need to explore further, but it looks like it might be a good place for daily news about computer security.
  
• Vivisimo - A newer search engine, it can combine multiple other places's searches into one list. The only thing that would make it better is if it included Google searches...

I've trying to send my first article to Theme of Absence, but I keep having technical problems. I'll link to it here whenever we get the glitches worked out.

Julie M. from Houston dropped by the other day at work. It's always good to see her as she only comes up here about once every 6 months, if that.

Julie, my wife - not Julie M. from the above sentence, and I went to Billy's tonight. Billy's is one of the few "really-nice" place left here in Lincoln. Most of the upper-scale restaurants in this city have closed up shop.

Welcome to Sir Links-a-lot

• WEHT.Net - What Ever Happened To ... They track the has-beens & those that have been-there-done-that and moved on. {from /usr/bin girl/}
  
• Art and Culture - A fun site combining all types of art and culture. I especially liked going through the film entries.
  
• Famous fonts - Famous Fonts is the first font archive on the web to collect ONLY fonts used in TV shows, movies, publications, and other media and products. {from daypop}
  
• Second Annual Weblong Awards - The Bloggies! Feel free to nominate your favorite weblog, which of course would be this one. {from daypop}
  
• blogdex - blogdex is a system built to harness the power of personal news, amalgamating and organizing personal news content into one navigable source, moving democratic media to the masses. I'm suprised I hadn't stumbled upon this earlier.
  
• alternet.org - An independent alternative source for news. I'm not sure if it real journalism or quacks, but I'm going to watch it for a while and find out.
  
• Comic artist to create poster for next Academy Awards - Alex Ross, famous for his comic book work, is creating the poster for the 74th Acadent Awards. A sign of comics going mainstream? Nyah - but still pretty neat!
  
• Yulelog wins ratings - A television stations showed a picture of a fireplace during Christmas morning - and it won the ratings for that time spot. {from Dreaded Purple Master}
  
• InfoAnarchy - News against attempts to restrict information freedom.
  
• And now some blogs that I'll probably be checking out regularly: Dreaded Purple Master, mybluehouse and bouillabaisse for the soul

Resolutions:
I resolve to find some way to snore less.
I resolve to eat more nutriously balanced meals. (That's not more meals that's more balanced.. oh you get the drift..)
I resolve to hold my weight steady during the year.
I resolve to write my articles on schedule for Theme of Absence
I resolve to continue to love my wife, and continue to not take her for granted.
I resolve to finally get the office at home cleaned up.
I resolve to cut my debt.

Well, here it is 2002. A palindrome for a year. Isn't that supposed to mean something? Oh well. Looked through the stats for the last month and was suprised by the number of hits the Whose Line page got. It was constantly one of the lower interest pages and then BOOM! Number 5 on the most looked at. Weird...

If you've come here looking for the contest I promised - you'll have to wait a couple more days before I can have the details up. So come back around Friday..

The resolutions will be next, but I wanted to make them a seperate entry.