02:18 CST Friday 01/02/2004

Happy New Year and all that rigamarole. I hope you made it. Nothing too much interesting to say.. Expect pictures from Vegas in a week or so, once I get home. Until then, it'll likely be quiet around here, but what else is new?

John got me Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring for Christmas and I've been plodding though it. Very cool, and it seems pretty darn accurate to the novel. Its kind of sad that most of the characters distinctly resemble their movie counterparts, despite it not being associated with the film, just the books. Quite fun though, all you Warcraft nuts out there..

Anyone around Maryland looking for a resident geek-for-hire?

16:09 CST Monday 01/05/2004

Vegas is fantabulous. I'm posting from the UNLV library special collections office. That's not what you figured I'd be up to in Vegas, huh? Well, my brain has been melting pouring over archival documents from YESCO (fluorescent sign company), so I'm taking in a bit of email and UNIX to get back in the swing. Ah, home sweet command line!

Anyway, Kathleen and I are staying at Excalibur, which is amazing in its gaudiness. Yesterday we hiked a bit in Red Rock Canyon with Celeste and got some hopefully awesome pictures. Later on, we hiked the strip and went to the Star Trek Experience. Quite sweet. Tonight we hit Red Square, with the Neon Boneyard tomorrow. Busy busy!

Anyway, having much fun. Enjoy real life, losers!

15:41 CST Thursday 01/08/2004

Vegas was fantastic! Not only was is great, as always, to spend time with Kathleen, Las Vegas was definitely over the top, and quite entertaining. It was loud, bright, crazy and beautiful. I've got loads of pictures to sift through, so it'll be a couple of days before I get them up for your viewing pleasure. Please be patient.

What wasn't cool was the trip back. My flight was about an hour and a half late out of Vegas, but the nice Frontier representatives assured me repeatedly that I would not miss my 40 minute connection in Denver. I found that hard to believe, but they assured me that when there are so many scheduled for the same connection (18 in this case), they hold the second flight so that the connectors can make it. I also found it hard to believe that they would hold an hour flight for another hour and likely more. Well, I was right, and I was treated to a shoddy hotel and airport food in Denver for my trouble. Never again Frontier. Three out of my four flights on this trip were delayed by at least a half hour. Blech..

Pics comin' at ya'.. in a bit..

18:11 CST Saturday 01/10/2004

It was long and arduous, but I finished up the pictures from Las Vegas. The pictures from Las Vegas are up on the main pictures page, while the neon boneyard pictures are under the various uncategorizabes page. Enjoy that!

15:25 CST Wednesday 01/14/2004

Had a fun long weekend. Tim and Nathalie stopped by after their treks out west and enjoyed KC beer and barbecue. We then finished off the evening with a bit of the new Mario Kart.

Speaking of Mario Kart, the new GameCube version is awesome. Two player co-op driving is surprisingly fun. A must-get for all you GameCube owners, and a reason to look at the system if you don't already have one.

Mario Kart was John's purchase, but I got myself Beyond Good & Evil for the PC (also available for the major consoles). Also a ton of fun. Lots of folks have compared it to Zelda: The Wind Waker, but I only find it similar in basic look-and-feel. The game is still fantastic, though. Very fun gameplay and very interesting characters. A good deal of the gameplay is taking pictures, which is certainly odd, but it works very well. It's a very different game, but a very fun game. It does eventfully break down to a bit of combat and button mashing, but it's far enough between that it's still a lot of fun.

John and I are planning to head off to St. Louis to see some folks and enjoy some beer at the Schlafly Winter Beer Festival. That should be tons of fun, and there may well be some more pictures for you afterwards.

Oh, and it's Girl Scout Cookie Day here at work! Yipee!

17:12 CST Friday 01/23/2004

Unfortunately, it looks like we're not going to be making it to St. Louis for the Schlafly deal. No one can cover for John on-call, which is sort of the breaks when you have only three people to work a 24/7 on-call schedule. So, this weekend will likely be pretty low key, but there isn't anything wrong with that.

Upcoming events are exciting enough, though. I'm heading out to east for Valentine's, so that promises to be enjoyable. On February 28th, Guster is coming to KC once again, and we have secured tickets. There are still some available for anyone who would like to join us. :) It looks like we're going to have quite a crowd in for the weekend for that event.

I beat Beyond Good & Evil the other day. It was a bunch of fun, but I thought it was very short. The clerk at Gamestop told me it was a very long game, though.. There are a few extras I missed, but really, I thought it was pretty short and very easy. It was still a lot of fun, and it left room for a sequel, that I look forward to. I've read lots of reviews comparing it to Zelda: The Wind Waker, and though BG&E is a great game, I can't put it up there with Nintendo's masterpiece. I'd still recommend it to all the gamers out there, if you've got a recent console or a very fast Windows machine.

I wanna explode in a karaoke supernova.

17:25 CST Sunday 01/25/2004

Yesterday, on a bit of a whim, John and I decided new couches were necessary for the old apartment. We got a new couch and a futon for a steal, and due to popular request, I am posting pictures here of the couches. Enjoy.

15:32 CST Wednesday 01/28/2004

As most of you are probably painfully aware, there's a new Windows trojan/worm/virus making its rounds in the email world. Lots of folks have been getting emails saying they sent an infected email, but you might notice that you did not in fact send any email to anyone at that time. Even more puzzling is when you see that you've never heard of the email address you supposedly sent an email to. Quite odd, eh? Conniving virus sending email when you're not looking? Not exactly.

Here's the skinny, and also a simplified look at how email works. Most of these viruses (or viri, but more properly, worms) propagate themselves by looking in the infected machine's Outlook address book, and sending emails with fake information in the header portion (all that junk in the top that says when it was sent and by whom and all that yadda yadda). Anyway, the nasty ones spoof all sorts of header information, especially the "From" field. The emails the worm sends will appear to be from someone in the infected computer's address book.

So, when you get virus-laden emails from one of your friends, chances are they're actually from one of your mutual friends. When you get one from somebody you don't know, you're probably only two degrees from them, Kevin Bacon style.

You're now en-knowledged!

13:54 CST Thursday 01/29/2004

I read a great article on Wired about intellectual property and everything a few cartels are doing with the help of our government to control and stifle further development thereof. Looks like an old article, but unfortunately the situation hasn't gotten any better since it was written.

Cheers!

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