Pot Luck #4: Catching Up

Well I am starting to get/make free time for things I need/want to do. So let me fill you in on what has been going on in my life.

Light at the end of the Tunnel:
The last couple weeks have been rough on me. Between work and school I feel like I've been living in a bubble away from the rest of the world. Fortunately I really turned the corner on both this past week. Several of my things have tested out aok and even though I still have a little bit to go my spirits are high. In fact with all the overtime I've been banking I shouold be able to take my vacation with Rita without having to use any vacation time. Extra time off for me, w00t!

London:
So Rita and I are finally getting ready to take our trip to London. We bought our tickets the day before the second wave of "bombings" took place. That hasn't convinced me not to go, yet. But I did post a poll at The New Wisdom asking, "Would you go to London now?" Stop by and make a vote. I don't think you have to register to do that.

Cars:
Damnit! Ryan went out and got a new Jeep long cab this past week (which is very sweet. It actually has leg room!) and then I find out today that Jeff went out and bought a new Chevy Colorado pickup! I just plunked down $700 on my car for new tires and other maintenance things, and since she is paid off my car is quite the bargain (not to mention she still runs real good for 76,000 miles). But I want a new car too :( Oh well guess I'll just have to wait until after I get a house.

James Doohan:
I was saddened to hear of James Doohan's passing. He was always one of my favorite characters in Star Trek. Not to mention he was a linguist that helped develop the Vulcan and Klingon languages, was a soldier that landed on Juno beach on D-Day (and was shot SIX times by a machine gun!), and had his last kid at 80! The best thing? He never cheesed out and did Priceline commercials.

iPod, iProblems:
I had bought one of the black and white screen 20GB iPods back in Febuary and loved it. I tried to explain the joy of the iPod to Rita who didn't believe me, until our honeymoon. She swiped my iPod from me and listened to it for the whole 12 hours to and from Hawaii! Shortly after that we both got promotions and raises so I splurged and got myself a new iPod Photo with a color screen and 30GB of space. I then gave Rita my old one (before you get snippy, Rita didn't want the color one, she just wanted the black and white model so there.) Well Rita went on to fall in love with her iPod and uses it everyday. I, on the other hand, got a lemon. The iPod Photo I got must have been defective because eveytime I tried to upload music to it the thing would crap out. It got so bad last month that I stopped trying to connect it at all! So today I went to the Apple store and explained my problem. Net result? A brand spankin' new iPod Photo that is downloading my 10GB of music like a champ right now. I must say I was very pleased with Apple's Genius Bar and their service to me. That alone is worth getting the iPod over other brands of music players (not to mention it is oh so sexy.)

A Call for Happy Thoughts:
Lastly, without getting into too much detail (as it is not my place), I want to ask you to take a minute and send a warm thought out to Ryan and his family. They have had a bit of a rough time this past two months and could use some positive mojo sent their way.

Disclaimer: It was too horking late at night to try and proof read. I'm sorry but you'll have to put up with my many mistakes.

The Crunch

Well here it is. I have a big deadline at work on Friday and a final in my Database class on Tuesday. I've been coding like the ninja monkeys of yore at work and spent the bulk of this weekend studying for my class. Why is it all my deadlines have to fall in the same week? This happened last year too. Why is that? Are deadlines social creatures that simply want to be around one another? Or does God/Allah/Elvis simply have it out for me?

The worst part is that my class isn't over on Tuesday. It ends the following week with group presentations on our databases that we made. Yeah I know it is going to be a cheesy little demo thing, but it is still another week of hard coding (as opposed to a great Tenacious D* song that I won't mention here as I am trying to cut back on my cussin'. Lets see how long that lasts.) That and I'll probably get another metric ton of smurf at work that will continue my ninja coding monkey pace to make the next release.

The even worst part (OK, I lied just then) is that I haven't been able to do anything other than think loving thoughts towards NN.net I can't wait until I get past this class so I can go crazy on the website.

All this makes me think that Brooke has the right idea. When she grows up she wants to be rich. I used to laugh at her, but now I think she has the right idea. I think I could deal with being independently wealthy. It would fscking rock to be able to just lounge and work on my website all day and do what Tenacious D sing about in the above-mentioned song.

*FYI - The gif on the left hand side of the Tenacious D site is hysterical.

Fantasy Football Team Update

Ok I have decided to drop most of my previously stated ideas for team names. Frankly I have almost completely decided in favor of "The Johnny Chimpo All Stars." In fact I would have outrightly decided upon that team name if Kevin hadn't sent me this as a possible team logo. I crack up everytime I see that thing.

So it is now between "The Johnny Chimpo All Stars" and "The Fighting Whities" (or a better name if one is suggested.)

Let me know!

Too Long of an Absence

Wow! A week since last posting! I've fallen behind a bit. Well I'd like to say that I have a lot to report but saddly that is not the case. All I have to report is that I have not yet failed my Database class and I haven't got as much done on NN.net as I would have liked. I am getting closer to where I want to be when I launch, but it is going to take me a little longer so hang in there.

Now for today's content. I have two things that I wanted to share with you.

First off I want to share a site I found back when this whole interweb was new. I lost it for awhile but it always was on my mind and I always wished I would find it again. Today I finally did. Ladies and gentlemen I give you Jesus Dance.

Next up I need a little help from my army of faithful spam bots and dead guinea pigs. I joiined my first fantasy football league today at work and I need a name for my team. A name that strikes fear into the hearts of my many adversaries. A name for the ages. Here are the names I have thought of to date. If you like one of them or you have a better one let me know in a comment and who knows, maybe I'll use it. Oh and you will win, um, a mention in my WEB LOG! Isn't that hot!?

• The Johnny Chimpo All Stars


• The Blight Beer Guzzlers


• The Red Headed Step Children (i.e. what I'll be beaten like)


• Jeremy's Jabronies (somebody else has Joe's Jobbers, I don't want to look like I'm copying.)


• The Fighting Whities

Oh I Almost Forgot to Mention...

My first essay is up on The New Wisdom. It is about a trend I have noticed in the press releases lately regarding our reason for being in Iraq. Remember all the other reasons the administration have given us so far have been proven false:

Reasons for invading Iraq:

• They have weapons of mass destruction (no they didn't)


• Saddam had links to al Qaeda (not according to the 9/11 report)


• We are here to help the Iraq people (over 8,000 Iraqi civilians have died since we invaded and they still don't have many basic necessities like running water or safety)


• Its to spread Democracy (Right. I won't hold my breath for Saudi Arabia and Iran to convert over)

Which brings us to my article on TNW today. Check it out.

Too Many Passwords

Lately I have noticed a weird trend as I use my computers at home and work. Each time I go to log into a site or account I am suddenly unable to remember my password. I then close my eyes and mentally go through my list of passwords with what I am doing to try and figure out the one I need. This has been getting especially bad at work where I have over four different passwords and logins that I use daily. Throw on top of this the passwords and logins for this blog, my new site, my main email, my Villanova email, my Amazon account, my iTunes account, ATM pin, cell phone voicemail, online banking... ARGH!

Now the security trend is talking about moving towards "pass phrases" of 32 characters or more!

"Its easy! Just take an expression like, 'This is a dumb idea' replace all the instances of the letter 'i' with '1' and voila you now have your new and improved passphrase, 'Th1s 1s a dumb 1dea' and all you have to do is type it in properly with the only visual cue being this '*******************'. See simple! Oh but the real version has to be longer than that."

Sure. Whatever you say pal. (Don't even ask how many times I had to backspace to get the Passphrase typed in properly.)

I just want to have a little wire that I can connect between my head and computer that will linearly go through all my passwords until the right one is found. Is that so hard? Yeah I know that would be a bad idea with viruses and all. I wouldn't want Windows to catch the flu.

I think I just figured out why so many people use only 1 or 2 passwords for everything. Too bad I can't/won't. [Sigh.]