Recently in Old Entries Category

My god. CNN is going to be doing a piece on Googlewhacking(god, it even has it's own site!) right away. This thing has got to be another piece by Scott Herriott. Maybe I should have watched NewsNight with Aaron Brown, which is where Scott's stuff usually originates. I think I have seen about 6 from Scott on NewsNight in the last couple months, and while this is not a major job, it is still good to see stuff from him and see that he is getting his name and work out there. I am sure Scott has made a good living from the various projects he must have in the works.

Oh... it isn't from Scott. It's from some Bruce guy. They are explaining what Googlewhacking is. For those not in the know, to googlewhack is: "Your goal: find that elusive query (two words - no quote marks) with a single, solitary result". There are more rules, but that is the essential gist of the game. I have not tried, for lack of time or patience, but a googlewhack must, for obvious reasons, reported and validated immediately, for a mention on ones web site will invariably make the googlewhack invalid. Check out the site, as it is rather interesting I am told. Sadly I cannot link to an online article about this from CNN as they never seem to post the fun news, only the bad shit. And people wonder why I stopped watching the news.

Well, if any of you want to talk to me, go to Brent's site, and click the chat link. I am watching from outside, of sorts, and if you identify yourself as something I will notice, I will go in there as soon as I can. Brent is working heavily on the code, and it is getting better by the hour. I have seen some chat products, written in ASP, or JavaScript, that take months to fine tune. Brent has had to bring this software along the same in the period of less then a day since it hit the big time. I must say his work is admirable, and there is not a feature request that we have mentioned that has not been accomplished, so I give great thanks and congrats to Brent for his intense and excellent coding. I am going to finish watching the US - Finland Olympic hockey game, so I will talk to you all later.

So, Doc blogged Brent in regards to Blahg, Blahg, Blahg chat software Brent has come up with. I have been using it on his site for awhile, and it is really cool, but it is not something I would use here. It just doesn't have any use on this site. I have tried forums, polls, and other forms of discussion and feedback, and nothing is put to use. So, for now at least, things will remain as is.

Damn. I am desperately trying to bring my sleeping back into acceptable times. The hours are set, with a 6-8 hour sleep each night, but sadly they are sitting somewhere between 2 - 4 AM go to bed and 10 AM - 1 PM wake up. This is not good. I tried to pull an all nighter, which usually works perfectly to get my schedule back into check, but around 4 AM I officially failed at that and fell asleep. So, I guess tonight I go to bed at 11 after DC, and force myself to sleep. MY plan is to eventually get myself into a schedule of bed at 12 and up at 6:30 - 7 `AM. Possibly lofty, but if I am to hold do a job, I must get the sleep in synch with work hours.

Second thing on my mind, Outlook Express problems. Ok, On my home computer, when I have a new message it shows a little OE icon in the system tray. My mother's system does not do this, though she wants it to. I cannot figure how it got turned off, nor how to turn it back on. As well, we still have been entirely unable to get her system to check the MTS server for new messages, like mine checks the Trinic servers every 10 minutes. Like I said, I have no idea how it could have been turned off, never mind how to turn it back on. The OE help pages have nothing on this, only audio notification.

Let's see, two things on my mind. First up, the new Wired article titled Blah, Blah, Blah and Blog. It is a very interesting article, one that does a more fair minded and analytical review of what is a blog and highlights some bloggers, not only the bigwigs, but some smaller bloggers. A two page, I will only say read it for yourself. Much more acceptable then the previously mentioned Dvorak piece that flamed all things blog.

"W32.Yarner.A@mm
Discovered on: February 19, 2002
Last Updated on: February 19, 2002 at 06:19:28 AM PST

W32.Yarner.A@mm is a mass-mailing worm written in the Delphi language. The worm sends itself to emails addresses found in the Microsoft Outlook address book and local files. The worm uses the system configured or hard coded SMTP server to send messages with the subject Trojaner-Info Newsletter followed by the current date. The message body is in German and the attachment name is yawsetup.exe. In addition, the worm may attempt to delete all files on the computer."

Wild: Damage: Distribution:
MediumHigh High

Please take note of what I am highlighting here. Please update definitions for your anti virus.

Ok, I asked quite awhile back about blogging tools that can be run off of the host, like Moveable Type, and can import Blogger entries, like Moveable Type. Well, after the party on Saturday I have been asked to consider another requisite, perhaps more important for the host then the importing of Blogger entries. Open Source. My brother wants to be able to look at the source and edit it as he sees fit. He doesn't like the closed source and highly restrictive licensing of MT.

I like MT, I would love to use them, but it seems my brother is dead set against it because of the closed nature. Please, email me. If anyone has experience in changing MT or how hard it is to get things changed in MT, as I said, please email me. I regret nothing will change my brother's mind, and honestly I cannot blame him. It is his server, and his company. I would consider staying with Trinic, but they are worse then Shawn when it comes to, well, anything. *sigh* Ok, that's it. I am really off to bed this time.

I *think* this is what I need to get my USB and PS/2 on board stuff working.

USB-193-116 "ACE" USB MULTI-MEDIA EXTENSION PANEL WITH PS2 (FIT INTO 5.25" CASE BAY) (2XUSB PORT / SOUND CARD PORT / MIC. IN / LINE IN / SPK. OUT / VOL. CONTROL / GAME PORT / PS2 PORT) FOR EASY FRONT ACCESS $38.95

From the description it seems to be a panel that goes on the front, and cable's are included that can plug into the stuff on board. If anyone has one of these, and yes, that is all the Computer Boulevard site shows about it, please contact me so I can make sure I have the right thing as CB is well known for their unfriendly return policy, or I should say their non existent return policy. I just don't understand the sound card thing.

Does this means it can connect to my sound card so all that stuff is on the front, or does a PCI sound card fit into it? As well, the game port?? Gawd, this is annoying. As well, is that a decent price? All I want is to have the PS/2 and USB pins to be in use and have a PS/2 mouse connected and the ability to connect USB devices to my computer. This is almost not worth the trouble I have gone through so far. *sigh* I am going to bed.

Well, 80 cookies baked(and frozen) and not one single web page coded, I am even more bushed. Sadly one thing that I was really hopeful for, that a guy in Winnipeg with a great image of the Winnipeg skyline that I had wanted to use for the Winnipeg Weblogs page would let me use his image emailed me back and told me basically that he couldn't do it for he would make no money.

I guess the fact I was doing a community site, not a for profit site had absolutely no impact. He says that "Typical usage rights for a home page usage are $500 and for inside editorial about $250 to $400 / each depending on the image size." I have not, nor do I plan to email him back, not even out of courtesy. I have limits on how much I will pay, even for such a great piece of photography.

I think that I will send a call out there to anyone who lives in this city, and has access to a decent digital camera, and can take a picture of the cities skyline, please email me. I cannot afford to pay much, if anything, but I will happily credit the helpful soul with a link on every page of the site. I honestly wonder why I am even trying, but I would really like to get this site to have some serious visitors. Hell, I am even considering registering the domain for it.

I already have two for other sections of this site(geekblog and another yet to be paid for) and one more wouldn't be too bad. The only thing would be I would have to make them a network of sites if they all had their own section. I think the Geek's World Network of Sites has a nice ring, doesn't it? Now, to find $40 to pay for outstanding domains before I go about registering any more. GST in April, right?*G*

A big 'Hey!' goes out to the publisher of Cheyenne's World. I have not had much of a chance to read it, but it looks to be a cool blog. I assume from the name that the owner is Cheyenne, and it looks like a mixture of stalking and technology related. Both very admirable interests, I think. I am a huge fan of both CFH and TSS, and it is ironic because tonight's TSS has Chris and Martin as the two hosts. Leo and Patrick are likely both off for the US's President's Day holiday. I will check out this blog, but I expect it may be soon added to my template as a recommended link. Just an aside, though, in case the author reads this, might I ask how you found me? I like to credit those who link to me.

I am going to do a quick link fest now. Here is a pointer to my friend Peter Street's tutorial on using the Windows Command Line. I would love to see one on the Linux Command Line(a possible Geek Tip??), but I think the Linux one has more uses and available options then the Windows one, so it would be a lot longer. I would recommend you read that as a beginning, as any decent Linux command line tutorial will have references to the Windows command line.

The second is one to The Register's article that republishes the statement on progress in the Windows vs.. Lindows lawsuit by Microsoft. I am currently looking for the referenced article on The Register that said Microsoft was *gasp* right in it's suit over semantics. I think the whole thing is ridiculous, and that Lindows will win because of the fact that Microsoft cannot, or should not, be able to selectively choose which trademark infringements to go after. The only reason they are going after Lindows is because they know it can kick their asses across all of the markets that Windows is a hit in.

Lastly, also from The Register, the remaining states who are continuing with a suit against Microsoft, the states that did not sell out to the Redmond giant, have asked for the one thing that it seems Microsoft will never willingly, or unwillingly release, the Windows Source Code. The biggest mystery of the computing world. The states say they need to see this to ensure Microsoft is telling the truth abut how intertwined IE is in Windows, and other problems that are up in the air and doubted about the claims on both sides. I doubt Microsoft will ever release it, and would rather be held in contempt of court, but I will be sure to keep an eye on this story.

Hey. Today was odd. I was woken up too damned early, to a knock at my door, and proceeded to spend several hours doing tech help, apparently for free, to several of the tenants in the building. This was a problem because the problem was small, and I had to go to my mother's this morning to make some calls, do my laundry and a few other things, or so I thought. So I went, and after much convincing that just because something is called a virus does not mean it is a virus, nor does it mean your computer is going to blow up or die. I installed trial versions of McAfee VirusScan, and recommended that both people go out and buy a copy for the $30 or so that Future Shop wants. This put me at 1 PM or so. Yeah.

I was very tempted to just go back to sleep having done my good deed for the day, but I still had to figure out laundry and stuff. So I came back home, went to the computer and quickly figured out my plans for the afternoon, and went to over there. What I had planned was go there, do my laundry, grab lunch I had brought with, show my mother how to copy a CD, and have a shower. That all change, and none to my liking, let me tell you. I ended up doing some cleaning in her bathroom, then laundry, then did the vacuuming while my lunch cooked, then ate, then switched my laundry over, then ate, then finished vacuuming, then went to get my laundry out of the drier, then move the brother printer out of the parallel slot and put the cannon printer in, then waited for my mom to finish her Literati™ game to finish so I could show her how to copy a CD, all for not because by the time the game was done my mother had made plans to go for a ride with my father. Doh! So, I am home. I did not get half the stuff I wanted to get done, and I feel like it is midnight and I am beat. I still want to get some site stuff done. Damn. I am off to make myself sleepy...er.

I am almost 100% sure the gay advertising guy's partner in Sweet November is the same person who plays Lex Luthor on Smallville. Hmmm. Michael Rosenbaum plays Lex on Smallville. Ding, ding ding ding ding!!!! We have a Winner. "Michael Rosenbaum .... Brandon". Oddly it was the voice that gave it away, as he looks much different as a guy with hair, never mind a gay guy, occasionally a cross dresser. Sweet November is still a good movie, even seeing it the second time.

Sadly I know how it will end, and that totally ruins the whole movie. Charlize Theron is still quite beautiful, but it makes the whole movie somehow less romantic when the ending is no surprise. Oh, and Lauren Graham, from another WB hit show, Gilmore Girls, is in this, playing Nelson's girlfriend in the beginning, Angelica. A close up of her, even though she was in slightly less then I am used to seeing her in, is what gave that away. The pained look was the dead give away.

It seems like Windows Product Activation, one of the many reasons not to use Windows XP, has been so thoroughly cracked so as to prove to the world that there is not doubt it is meant to treat the legitimate user like a crook, and limit them beyond reason, not stop the crackers There have been illegal copies of XP out and available for free download since the day the CD went Gold to the OEM's. Now, after the many other ways of cracking have been seen, there is a freely available Key Generator(also known as a KeyGen) that outputs fully valid Product Keys for XP.

According to Bob Thompson on Friday "A couple of notes. First, there are two programs mentioned in the article, one a 700 KB executable and the other a 20 KB zipfile. The one you want is the latter, which generates valid XP keys. The larger executable patches your current XP installation to activate it without contacting Microsoft. The problem with that one is that the next time Microsoft issues a service pack or patch, it may invalidate what you've done. The smaller zipfile, on the other hand, simply generates valid XP keys, which you can then enter during Setup and later activate in the normal fashion with Microsoft. Second, be very careful if you do find and download the key generator. There are already reports of versions infected with a virus. I let the keygen program run overnight on my den system, which is a slow Duron running Windows 2000. It generated 31 keys in just over eight hours. From what I'm reading on various sites, anything between 10% and 25% of those keys will be valid, so I should have between three and eight usable keys."

According to The Register "A cracking system for Windows Product Activation publicised this week may present Microsoft's anti-piracy system with its most serious problem yet. It takes the form of a key generator which appears to produce valid activation keys for Microsoft products, and if this really is the case, it is difficult to see how Microsoft can differentiate between keys issued with legal product, and keys generated by the keymaker."

Like I said. WPA and Microsoft's usage of it only hinders the really, honest customer. A cracker or other user willing to break the law to use Windows will not be in anyway hindered by this, and if anything this makes it easier then the previous uses. This makes a new key for each user, for each install. Before, Microsoft could know whether a key was real by simply recording every key they release. Now they obviously have no idea what keys are out there, or whether they are real or fake.

On the topic of money, employment and all that stuff, I heard back from the person who wanted me to do a site for a customer, which i found out is an auto dealership. I emailed them back and said if they want a sample page I would need to know who they are, and what kind of cars they sell. If they sell Chevy's, it would really be bad form if I did a flash animation with a Ford, wouldn't it? the person also mentioned that they have contacted one other place for this, so I have begun to get into doubtful mode. I don't want to get my hopes up, because if I do, and count on this, then they say the other place got it, I will be both mad and disappointed.

I may look into getting Flash on here to see what I can do with it. Until I get it I don't want to go out and contact anyone about it. I have a few ideas on what I can do, from what the person said she wanted, and might try to work on that tomorrow. The thing is I am not sure how much to do now, because there are too many hidden variables. I understand why the secrecy and hesitancy, because they pry don't want the contract to be stolen from under them. Hopefully I will know more by mid week.

Well, today is a party. We have the girl's birthday party out on Pembina at the Golf Max place. My father will be in heaven. I doubt he will leave on time, and will instead pry do some practicing afterwards. These are the times I hate being broke like I am, because I can't get them a gift. Oh, there will be a gift from me to each of the girl's, but it will be bought by either my mother or sister. Hopefully by Cody's birthday I can actually afford to buy him one out of my own money.

Can I say Wow? Thanks. I knew you wouldn't mind. I say Wow because I have been reading just a week's worth of posts to the PayPal Warning page's wall of shame. I got here in a round about way. First, I read about the horror story on Evhead, that is quite suspicious that he got hit with a blocked account as soon as he tried to withdraw a sizeable amount of money. The funniest thing is that PayPal had their IPO today, garnering something in the neighbourhood of $70 million for the company.

Evan linked earlier in the week to PayPalSucks.com, which had the owners own story, and linked, round about, to PayPalWarning.com. Their wall of shame is the first link in this post. I have spent only 45 minutes reading the site, and wow there are some people who have had some really bad experiences with that company. I am now thinking twice about keeping an account with them. It seems, from what I have read, that they must have some code in their database that blocks any site that tries to take out anything significant.

I know this is awful accusatory, and maybe get me sued, but I am voicing an opinion based on what I see, and the very obvious inability of them to communicate with anyone, including those within their own company. I would say that it looks like they should be quite rich just from the money they have gained by simply swindling accounts and abusing the info they have closing accounts with nice quantities of money. I mean is there any word as to what happens to that money?

I know of many accounts that have been closed with a thousand or more in the account. If only 5% of those tens of millions of accounts have that much, and even half those get closed and not solved, that means a whole lot of money. no wonder they have remained in business this long. Maybe they will reimburse some of those customers for being ripped off without cause.

Hmmm. The deceased resident lived in suite 206. I know this because the police are going to everyone's door in the building, asking if anyone knew him. I simply explained that I know one person in this building, the owner. I don't talk to anyone, nor do I party with anyone. I am a geek. If people do not have tech stuff to discuss, well, I just have nothing to say. I don't mean to sound antisocial, I just am not a social person. Computers are my life. People are too unpredictable. Too opinionated. They have too many flaws in their programming I guess. Yeah, I don't mean to sound like such a geek, and all this will make me ultimately undesirable to a decent woman, and explains a whole lot, but it is me.

Speaking of web design, and I apologize for the language in the above post, but is it professional for a web designer/graphic artist comb to pull their code form a well run site simply because they aren't getting their way? This question is in result of a site I frequent, ask-it-here.com, has been put, essentially, out of service. the front page currently reads:

That feels better, doesn't it?

AIH will be back, sooner rather than later. We're just temporarily down.

Anyone needing to ask anything can simply email

god: bigfoot01@aol.com

Dilbert: farmanimal@aol.com

And there is a yahoo group that everyone is congregating in until we have AIH back up, the link is AIH Yahoo Group

The database is intact, all amails are saved, all questions and answers are still there, everything is like it was when we went down.

Well, another day wasted. We received a hard drive in the mail, and spent most of the day installing and downloading and fiddling. I did have a chance to mess with things, and while I'm advancing along quite nicely, it's still not working yet. I again want to thank everyone offering help, financial, emotional, and computational. It's so refreshing to have that kind of support.

Finally, I suggest anyone not getting their questions answered should go to www.brain-fuse.com, as it is now back up. If you were a member previously, you have to still sign up again, and I'm sure Gossy doesn't mind some stress testing of his database server. Thanks and goodnight!

That is a fair bit nicer then what was up a couple of days ago, which was bluntly put "We've Been Screwed!". The story goes that after a major power struggle, and mail reading for the in site Amail service, the person who designed the site, along with her 'partner'(no idea of if that is sexual or business), took the site code, leaving the database, and has obtained a lawyer, who has given what I feel is a bunch of very bad advice, including shutting the site down.

I am not going to get into the politics involved here, but I will say that the professionalism here is really in doubt. I have not designed many sites, and there are some sites I have been associated with that I don't speaks to the owner of, but I still host the site. The person is the former Graphic Designer of this site, Dave. His resume is still hosted on this site, but he and I have not spoken in months. This, I think, is professionalism. There is only reason I would pull code from someone's site which I designed. This would be for non payment. Apparently the designer offered to do it free, and then wanted 50% of the site's value, when sold.

The owners Dilbert and god, Dilbert's son who I find to be a great guy and really helpful, have never wanted nor intended to sell the site, so this was not a big deal. Now, a short time later, things have gone quite badly, and I really hope that they can get the site back up. In the meantime, please do check out the Yahoo group, which is where the group has gathered to converse, and unfortunately argue a great deal, while we all wait for the site to come back up.

The debate: To CSS or not to CSS??? I CSS and also use Tables. I use Tables for text control, like the white or red on black on links. I find CSS is really cool for this. I do not, though, think CSS is good for anything else. I have tried many times using different layouts, to replace my tables with CSS, and I gave up. This is the most common reason for dropping CSS. by CSS I mean the web site language, not Cross Site Scripting, a dubious at best confusion propagated by The Register mistakenly.

Now for opinion CSS is a good language, for my purposes, which is to control how text shows up right. I hate the <div> tag. I have been known to go through my pages using Dream weaver and changing any div into a p. I just hate it. It is impossible to work with, and is too greedy. I have designed through the Frames fad, and many other short term 'big story''s in tech. Tables has worked since the first browsers, and with the percentages will make everything look great on all screen resolutions. So, do I CSS? Yes. Do I use it extensively, or even widely? No. I never will.

CSS is good for small bits, but is useless over any great amount of design. Oh, and one more reason I hate CSS, because when I was trying to use the justify option on the p tag(CSS looked like p text-align: justify;) it would take everything, not only regular p tags like I wanted. When I added p.left, p.right. p.center to the mix my code came out like shit, and all things would be one justification or another, with no pattern nor rhyme nor reason for it deciding the appearance, leading to some of the horrendous code that loaded like molasses in January, as my mother would say. When it comes to coding, if it doesn't work without a hassle, it isn't used. I don't have time to fuck around with code that doesn't work like the standards sheet says it should.

I am a Geek. I have come to accept this, even rejoice in it at the appropriate times. The worst thing I have found is a Geek who is limited in what he can do with his favourite piece of geekdom, be it a computer, telescope or text editor. I have come up on this. What do you do if you have two choices, and two requirements, but one, for a time, cancels the other out? Answer, go nuts. See, I like a clear image on my monitor. I really do, but the best I can get at the best 16 bit color resolution, using my current Video card or monitor(I haven't figured out where the bottleneck is yet), is a 800x600 resolution. I currently use 256 color, and hate it desperately.

The second thing I like is to be able to have a large desktop. At school I had it set, always, to 1280x1024. this was too small for me. I would have preferred 1600x1200. At home here, on the limited hardware I have, including the previously mentioned video card(1 MB) and monitor(old, rare 15") I am limited to either the mentioned 800x600 resolution at 16 bit, which is more then half what I want, or 1024x768 at 256 color, at which nothing works graphically, and looks like absolute shit as well.

So, what to do, right? Well, I have not decided. I really liked how clear everything was when I brought it down to 800x600 because Web Trends locally needed a color depth, but I also like, and I do mean like, the 1024x768. I guess this means I have to really hope I make some decent money off that web design thing, so I can go pay for the Dell. *sigh* I need better tech. So many wants, plans and wishes, so little money, time, knowledge to do it in. Pardon me, I need to go weep in the corner.

I got an email the other day, from a local computer company, who had asked me if I would be interested in designing a site for a client of theirs. I replied showing my interest, hesitantly as it is, but they have yet to get back to me, though I emailed them on the 12th. This is not a good thing in my eyes, and worries me greatly. I even spoke to Shawn about him or Rhonda doing some graphics if need be. I was hoping to call them today, but things did not work out.

I will have to call them first thing Monday morning, or maybe try to go out there this weekend, assuming the person who emailed me is working, or even employed by them. I will be severely pissed if this is a trick or con by someone who does not even work there. This is why I plan to ask for a 50% retainer up front. Not that I am distrusting, at least not by nature, but if Shawn does graphics he will want money either way. The problem I have is I am not sure what kind of work it will require, nor what kind of rate to charge.

I will have to see what Shawn will want for graphics, to start with, but as I have never done a professional site, I have no idea what to charge beyond that. How much is the coding on a 'About Us' page worth? What about a front page? Do they was Flash? If so, how do I charge for that? Hourly? Piecemeal? God. I hate this. I am worrying myself and I still have no idea whether or not they want to use my business or who I will use if they want stuff I cannot do.

Ok. Today the Canadian Figure Skating pair that was ripped off by a bad judge at the Olympics got a gold medal given to them, which they will receive sometime next week, it is expected. This is good. Sadly, it is slightly overshadowed by the fact when I went up to get my mail I saw an Ambulance pulled up out front, to the dismay of a Transit driver, but it appears the ambulance may not have needed to rush, as the tenant who needed it is said to be likely dead.

As the Ambulance has been up there for more then 20 minutes, and there seems to be no rush, either it is far better then the young lady said it might be, or it is accurate and there is no need to rush it. Either way, I am happy it is not on the floor I am on, and I know no one in this building. Well, ok, so I know one person, but he is an old, and former, friend. so, should this day be a good one for my country, or a bad one for the building and the tenants? I see it as good overall, though it has been dismal personally.

What? Two days in less then a week?[Actually, it was Monday, so twice in 4 days. Shitty, Ev, Very Shitty Treatement, paid or free] Blogger.com produces a HTTP Error 500-13 - Server too busy Internet Information Services. All this after Blogger Pro. A lot of people were thinking and hoping that the introduction of Blogger Pro would make the whole service better. This means either the service has dropped to the shithole for anyone not paying the $40 a year, or Evan has a lot of highly suspicious and unexplained disruptions. If this one goes without explanation I think I will have to reconsider Blogger. Also, the & bug has still not been fixed. Grrrrr.