iGotNoTime

WOW!

2006-01-24T06:53:00.000-05:00

I only thought that I felt dumb, now I feel like an idiot. No excuse for me at all on this one. If you're bored look closely at the link I spelled my own name wrong!
www.igotnotime.com/blog

Wrong link

2006-01-22T06:59:00.000-05:00

I feel dumb I posted the wrong link. My new blog address is www.ignotnotime.com/blog and I hope to see you all there, even if it isn't blogger.

Why am I changing? I feel limited with Blogger. You know sometimes I want to share a free illegal movie or mp3 and I just can't do that with blogger. LOL

Changing and delaying

2006-01-21T05:37:00.000-05:00

Well I am off to the Air Force museum in a couple hours and I am sure we will hundreds of great photos. I bought about 30 AA batteries for the trip. They were cheaper than the CR-V3 batteries I wanted. I am done buying CR-V3 until I can find a good high power Lithium-Ion Rechargable battery to go with. When I find it I will buy several, I mistakingly thought that all CR-V3 batteries were rechargable. Costly ($36) mistake.

Anyway, I am bored with Blogger, so I am installing WordPress on my server and will post to both blogs, but gradually the one on my website will be by primary. So you can stick around here if you like but I will be moving on eventually and only be updating this blog once in a while.

Obviously nothing is on there quite yet, but if you would like to bookmark my website for future reading, the link is www.igotnotime.com. For those few who refuse to read anything other than Blogger, I feel for you and bid you farewell. To those who know me and follow my ramblings good things are coming. I intend to use the blog on my own website for hosting torrent files that I seed. So if anyone is looking for Tom Yum Goong.....55555

Wooo hoo another week!

2006-01-20T07:38:00.000-05:00

It's been so long since I have worked a full 40 hour week doing physical labor, I didn't think I would make it! Two weeks now are done, and you know... The last two nights have not been so bad. My back doesn't hurt the way it did the first week, and I am finally feeling energetic at work again!

I feel like I am 16 years old again. I really didn't think I would make it through the initial break in period. I did, it was miserable but it was worth it. Now I actually enjoy going to work again. If only I could get used to this sleep schedule working nights and all. I am just grateful there is no madatory overtime right now. Just a few more weeks and I will be ready for that. Speaking of sleep schedules, I am due for a shower and bed.

More for the HTPC

2006-01-19T07:16:00.000-05:00

I have learned a bit more with the little time I had for reading in between work and sleep. The TiVo features will work with my video card. It does not require a seperate DVR (Digital Video Recorder) unit! So that is great news, using the computer for a feature that is native to computers. For those who not familiar TiVO DVR units are basically lower powered computers running Linux with a HTPC frontend. Kinda nifty to know that.

Anyway on with the other news I figured out. The IR remote I have will not simply work with a plugin. The plugin existing is for a device that appears to be designed in someone's garage. It is an infrared transmitter and reciever unit that is USB powered. It plugs into the computer and after being configured will accept remote commands, and when the remote tells the HTPC frontend to change the satellite channel it then will re-transmit the signal for the satellite reciever. The Bad news is the device costs extra money, not much only about $50 but it will will need to be bought before the case.

I have decided that the case can and will wait untill it is all running perfectly and configured on my main computer, once it is flawless, I will then set it in it's own case and as a single display PC.

More HTPC Front End Screenshots

2006-01-18T07:18:00.000-05:00

This is the start-up screen for the default skin on the Xlobby front end. Sorry about the MSN junk scattered at the top, right after I hit the PRNT SCR button, they disappeared. Again I really despise this ugly skin and am going to try making one of my own. Since I am a boring person I will probably blog about it too.

Below is the weather option, it is localized. The snow did come today. :(

On the weather screen I click Current and I got all the current weather conditions pop up in the window just as you see below.

There are also 3 or 4 different weather maps available. I clicked the secondone, the doppler radar. Worked perfect after I set my location.

Playing some MP3's from a Thai CD. It does display Thai font, something that the Intervideo front end could not do!

More tomorrow after I learn how to use this thing. 'Till next time, take care everyone.

Home Theater Front End

2006-01-17T07:03:00.000-05:00

The software that HTPC's run are called front ends. The first front end I tried playing with was from Intervideo and was just called Home Theater. It came bundled with an infrared remote control and a USB IR reciever. I really disliked the software, so decided to try another front end. I am hoping I can use a plugin so the remote control will work with the new front end. It is a very nice remote with incredible range and sensitivity.

So the front end I decided to use is called Xlobby, it is very advanced or more advanced than most would need for a HTPC anyway. I will show a few screenshots of it in action. Keep in mind that these images are being viewed on a 43" 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio DVI monitor/television. Too the images shown in this blog post are using the Burlwood skin, I will be making a custom skin to fit our mood very soon if I can get most of the settings configured the way I would like to use the system.

This is the front end while playing streaming music from the net. Any net source will work perfectly on it. I have tested 6 Thai radio stations from WMA, Real, and Shoutcast sources. Very nice with the 1,000 watt sound system!

I have not yet tested or even read on the TiVo system yet, but it is very cool to see that I will soon have my TiVo features back again. I really miss pausing live TV.

The music player technically needs some sort of engine to run in the background and I think it can be set as a service so you do not have it cluttering up your taskbar if you use a dual monitor system. Either way it works very well, and shows the album covers as the files from each respective album is played.

I have not read about this feature yet either. It looks like it can control my television and satellite channels with the front end interface, meaning the front end would not be used solely for playing media from my computer hard drives alone.

Making it even more cool it will control X-10 devices meaning it can control any power outlet or light switch right from the computer, or in the case of a HTPC -- right from the television remote control. It also has timers that can be controlled by the computer. More cool things I know nothing about yet. I have alot of reading to do on these systems and how to install. I will let you all know what they run. So far excluding the television, any home built computer will do. This is running on a barebones kit ordered online, and case that was ordered online. Running WinBorg (a downloaded pirated copy of XP), Winamp and XLobby. The latter two being free.

I do not run this full-time yet. My television is usually on thye satellite source, not the HTPC source. But when I want to watch movies, karaoke or listen to net music, so far I am using this system flawlessly. I just need more time to learn how to setup the other stuff yet.

More cool features and the default skin will be tomorrow's blog.

Starting a HTPC System

2006-01-16T06:45:00.000-05:00

The first step is always the dreaming. Lucky for me the wife let me buy the new display for the living room right away. I shopped around for a couple days and finally went with a 43 inch plasma from Samsung. Also a 1,000 watt 7:1 Dolby surround sound system came with it. It has DVI ports, and about 6 sets of composite RCA plugs, and a custom stand it all sits on. So I browsed around and finally found the computer case to that I would like to use and one that according to the case dimensions would fit in the AV slot I have under the new television.

The one I found to go with it is on the right. It has space for 2 hard drives (probably will use 2 400GB drives?), and one DVD-RW. I will use a Dremil tool and cut a hole (now I am a modder?) for the flash media card reader since there is no spot for it after the drives are put in place. I will use no lighting at all and will spend the extra $20 for the multi-ball bearing fans to make sure it runs silent. Also before any parts go in I will line it in a cotton padding to ensure it is silent.

It will be running a micro-ATX motherboard and a 2.6Ghz CPU, with only 256mb of RAM. It will only be used for playing media files, burning DVD's and browsing the web. It does not need too much power for this type of workload. In fact, I am sure it would run perfectly with half the CPU power and that much RAM, so I am really being generous.

It is about 17 inches wide when laying down, and only 3.5 inches high when laying under the satellite reciever. It will appear to be just a simple piece of stereo equipment. That is the goal anyway, just to fit in and look like the boxes that would be around any other television. But there is so much more to this unit, what it will do and how much it will be used. Especially when you compare it to the average PC. More on that tomorrow. Here are a couple more pics.

Not your average PC

2006-01-15T11:20:00.000-05:00

Computers these days are no longer the way they used to be. They come in all sorts of colors, designs, LED's, neon lights, strobe lights and crazy designs of cases. They are no longer the beige suitcase looking box they used to be. Just check out some of the modded PC's at ZapWizard to see just how freaky they can get with a bit of imagination.

They simply are not confined to the same old look we have all grown used to seeing through the past two decades, times change and so do the styles we are afforded. After looking at the Tandy computer to right most of us are grateful that we have other options these days, because back then we didn't have them.

So what does a HTPC look like? There are actually dozens of choices in cases at about the same price as what you would pay for a decent mid or full tower case. The styles of course cary dramatically. But the most popular choice for HTPC is a case that would fit in with the HIFI equipment you already own. Beneath or beside most any television in most any living room there is a VCR, DVD player, Amplifier, surround sound system (or sound system of some sort). So most people seek out a case that comes close to matching the color and size sceme of what they currently own. I took the liberty of posting some pictures of the most popular cases below.

As you look at these images keep in mind that these cases are made to sit under your DVD player or VCR, not on your desktop. These after all are not used as desktop PC's. We are no longer limiting ourselves to the desk. The couch is far more comfortable now.

Want to be on top of technology?

2006-01-14T10:15:00.000-05:00

I would not go as far as saying I am on top, but it is to me the most interestin reading. I have children, a tri-lingual home, and many times a difficult time coming to an agreement on what to do for entertainment. The wife wants to watch the news or educational channels on the satellite. One boy wants to play video games on the computer or X-box. The other boy wants to listen to his music. One girl wants to watch an American teen love story. Me and the other girl want to watch a Thai movie.

Ohhh parenting!

Technology is saving us in many ways from family fueds. As a side note we do still do entertaining things such as sitting and drawing, taking pictures, reading, playing music or playing cards, television and computers are not our life. But when we sit to relax with whatever we want to relax with we need some options.

Basically my desktop computer is slowly merging into a Home Theater Personal Computer or HTPC. So my next few blogs are going to be about that merger and how it is coming about.

You may not be up on terms such as HTPC,VoIP, WMC, DLNA, Bluetooth and WiFi. Or maybe you know the terms but don't know how they relate to enjoying a Friday night with the family. Stick around a few more days and I will show you exactly how they all are intertwined and how our little household uses a computer for more than just computing.

For a sneak peak of the general concept you can check out the link below. Believe me the world is going this way in just a few years, so get ahead of the game at a lower price by doing it yourself.

Intel Viiv Technology

Innovations of 2005

2006-01-13T07:06:00.000-05:00

WHAT WILL THEY THINK OF NEXT?

In the above article they consider the best innovative products of 2005. Some are funny, crazy, sensible and some just outright idiotic. But all are innovative none the less.

A few of my favorites were...

JAPANESE scientists have developed a food additive called Kissei. Aimed at elderly people, it converts food to an easy-to-swallow jelly without changing its flavour or colour. - My future is looking bright, no teeth in old age, no problem! I can still have my wife's springrolls and I can still eat Pad Thai everyday!

SUNTORY Aqua Vitae whisky is a new concept in pure malt whisky - it has been infused with healthy anti-oxidants similar to those found in red wine. A single bottle of the new whisky has 200mg of polyphenols, an antioxidant that binds oxygen-containing molecules in the body to prevent cell damage. Aqua Vitae is already available in the Far East. - A healthy whisky!! Dad quick dad check that out! LOL

THE UK-made Green's Gluten-Free Discovery Beer allows people with wheat intolerances, for whom beer was previously off limits, to enjoy a pint for the first time. - Beer no longer discriminates! Power to the guzzlers. Can I get another please?

A GENDER-TESTING kit for parents who cannot wait for the birth of their child to discover its sex. The Baby Gender Mentor Home DNA Gender testing kit, already launched in Canada and the US, claims to provide results as early as five weeks after conception. All it requires is a few drops of blood and the makers say that it is 99 per cent accurate. - Wow! Isn't that just the cat's meow? That is soooooo cool!

A NEW type of bandage that uses super-strong duct tape. Made by 3M in the US, Nexcare Duct Tape Latex-Free Bandages look and feel like ordinary duct tape but provide a heavy-duty protection for minor cuts and scrapes, much greater than that found in regular adhesive bandages. - Now I don't feel like such a redneck having put duct tape on severe wounds in the past.

Waking up like being drunk...

2006-01-12T08:48:00.000-05:00

In a study they now say that just waking up has similar effects as being drunk! Nobody who commented on this study dared to mention the driving to work aspects. I wonder why that is?

Study: Waking up like being drunk... | Ant's Quality Foraged Links (AQFL)

You know speaking of driving there are a few things that are really annoying I can think of. I hate sitting through green lights because the stupid person has a cellphone and can not think to drive and talk at the same time. I don't mind cellphone's, everyone has one. I just think that if the police where I live would more strongly enforce the rules on using handsfree headsets it would make driving more enjoyable.

The smokers... I don't care who smokes it has no effect on me except when it is an ignorant 21 year mother of three with all the windows rolled up, car full of smoke, and kids can be seen coughing in the backseat, then she is swerving all over the road trying to get her window rolled down to through out the butt and pollute the streets more. Have some consideration for your coughing asthmatic children who you are poisoning!

Lastly the people who are trying to eat while they drive. For goodness sake people! Some of you drive like you are preparing a chef salad. If it is too hard to eat a taco while you are driving pull over before you kill someone. People die everyday in car accidents at speeds below 30 miles per hour. Try french fries, you may be surprised at how easily you can handle those one handed.

Rant complete.

Dead to the world

2006-01-11T21:04:00.000-05:00

It sure feels like that. I go to work, work all night, come home take the kids to school shower and sleep. When I wake up I help the kids with homework, play a game of cards and go to work to do it all again. No time for anything, I guess we'll see what the weekend will bring.

Fun with music

2006-01-09T19:14:00.000-05:00

We have a lot of fun with music, the whole family and even back at dad's farm we play around most of time we are there with music. Dad's got a few six strings, a twelve string a mandolin, a couple keyboards and just tons of fun. Mary has a saxophone, Daniel has a guitar and trumpet, Jolen? has a guitar and wants drums. I have a multi-track recorder some microphones, a guitar and now a keyboard.

I wouldn't say anyone is too good, but everyone does love to make noise. The keyboard I have is kinda cool I think, maybe just because it is new though. It is Midi capable with a USB port on the back, and Midi songs can be loaded into it from the computer.

After a song is loaded into it, you can playback at whatever tempo you like to learn how to play it. It also has a recorder built in, but just for Midi so they call it a sequencer. I found software for it, and it is very complex and very expensive. I do not have $600 for it, so I downloaded it. It is stupid to pay that kind of money so that my kids can play with something. If I had a studio and tried using a studio for profit I would certainly pay for it as it is the best. But just for the kids play with? Kinda dumb. More about the software soon.

Burning a DVD

2006-01-08T20:09:00.000-05:00

So what do I use to burn DVD's? I was browsing around some torrents and reading everyone complain about this one file that nobody could burn because it was a funky codec used. One smart guy replied that they should use the same software he used, because it could convert nearly any video file into a dvd ready image for burning. It worked with xvid, divx, wmv, mpg, avi, quicktime and even the real media file codecs!

It was called DVDSanta. I was astounded and just had to try it, so I got it. It is great! I can convert any file I have yet put into it and it does it very well. After the image is created you can burn with another program or just press Burn To DVD.

Completely flawless and worth every dime of the $30 they charge. Ohh and for the people who just need the subtitles on the movie it will support the .srt files too! Great program and I think everyone who burns should try it. I start my first day at the new job tonight so I am done posting for today.

Burning again and again

2006-01-07T22:59:00.000-05:00

I got some cash back from a store I frequent (Best Buy), and I decided to use it...
I go into the store just walking around looking for something interesting, and I found a sale! 30 packs of DVD-R's from Fuji were on sale for $8.99. I loaded up.

I bought 7 of these packs, totaling 210 blank DVD-R's, so now I have a huge list of things to do. Most of my friends online know I have HUGE amounts of hard drive space and all of it is filled with media. So for the past few days I decided since I have the blank media I will now reclaim some of my space.

I have been burning DVD's and deleting the files as I go for several days now. So far I have made about 10 Thai movies onto DVD and 5 or 6 American movies. But the thing is it takes so much time and CPU to do it. To convert the movie to a DVD ready image takes about 1.5 times the video's length. So a 2 hour movie takes about 3 hours to prepare and another 30 minutes to burn and that is at 8x. I did get back about 10GB so far. I only have another 800-900GB to go now.

I think I will just set the thing to do one movie during the night and one movie during the day. So in about 10 months I might have my space all back. I just need to buy another 400-500 DVD's.

What do I use to burn? Tomorrow.

Any tips from the pros?

2006-01-05T16:10:00.000-05:00

Finally I got a job! Now the fun part is seeing if I can keep up with the internet. I am active on 2-3 forums, try to keep up a website, and try to keep up blogging. I wonder if I could do all three still while putting in 40+ hours per week at a job. Out of those three, I always seem to be more lax on the blog.

I am certain that I will be much more tired, and it may be harder for me to keep up on the ever changing internet while working full time. So what I want is some idea on how not to let my blog fall behind. The forums I visit I will never fall behind on. My website is always behind and just a work in progress that I put 3-4 hours per week into. The last thing is my blog. I don't care much for writing my blog for the entire week on a Saturday night when I am bored. So if any real bloggers could give me a tip or two I am eager to listen.

What is life?

2006-01-04T09:52:00.000-05:00

Life is not one damn thing after another, life is the same damn thing over and over.
Edna St. Vincent Millay

How so very true. I mentioned a while back on Trangam's blog that I used to watch the news. I was almost a news junkie then went for one year with no television, no radio and no newspaper. Not as a test, I just didn't want to pay the bills and we used the internet to get our movies and such. What happened?

Well I turned the satellite back on after a very long time without it and turned on Fox news to see what I had missed. Just 2 days ago they had a breaking story! What was it? Terry Schaivo the untold story. I am angry and change the channel to MSNBC they too had a breaking story. The runaway bride, is she married yet?

This is the news?
I missed the news for so long only to find out that it did nothing for me. The time the television was off? Well I spent alot more time with the kids 3 out of 4 are now on the honor roll. We have a huge lot of great summer photos. I was able to start doing a blog. I got alot more of the household chores done, making the wife much happier. So what did I lose out on? Nothing.

I am sure the pope dying was covered for several days erradicating all the lost lives due to negligence, drunk driving, gun accidents, starvation, gang violence, drug dealers, abuse and tragic fires. Somehow these are never covered, the real people are never covered. We still have a daily count on soldiers lost in Iraq, but nobody will do will a story on how many women were raped the night before. Someone is making the call as to what is the news, but it sadly has not been the public for well into 50 years now. The news media is all about fear. They try to put fear into the heads of millions, but for those millions who have not gone a year without it, it seems to work.

My big breaking story?
Well try it and see, go a year without news and you will see that you really do not miss out on anything at all except your time when you watch it. Life goes on, and when you start watching the news again you will see how they try to create fear, drama and issues out of nothing at all. They do all this while not actually covering any real news, they take their agenda and their recipe for fear and try to twist that into what we used to know as news. Sounds cynical, and sounds crazy right? Try it you will see I am right.

Everything going on

2006-01-03T22:14:00.000-05:00

So What have I been doing? It has been busy the past few days. The children are finally back in school after a couple weeks of vacation time.

Mary went back to school and she was gone so long that she forgot her locker combination! Back to school means back to homework and music practice again. The confusion in the evenings would drive most crazy. Daniel plays the trumpet and Mary plays the Alto Saxophone so practice time is very loud and there is nothing we can do about it except pray their skills improve and fast. I will post a video of them playing soon when I think about it again.

The girls stole my camera from me a few days ago and took off to their bedroom, that is what most of these pictures on the side are from. They were taking self portraits and posing for them in the most ridiculous poses.

I was very fascinated by the one that they pretend to be asleep in. They may not realize it but they usually do end up sleeping in a similar position almost everynight. I guess they don't know this and that is why they thought it would be such a cute pose. The most interesting thing about the post is one of them had to hold the camera. The LCD display is on the back and does not swivel, so I don't know how they got both faces in the shot, then they were even abale to focus it! I was impressed by it anyway.

One thing the girls are always able to do with the camera that I never can is get pictures of mom. She gets so angry when I take pictures, yet the children she seems to always smile and often pose for. That is so unfair. Oh well, maybe one day she will let me?

They got this picture as she is getting some chicken ready for the soup. On the stove the curry and coconut milk is boiling as she is picking the meat off the bones.

I will get some pictures of the sexy new PC case on the next blog for those who can't wait, they are on my flickr page somewhere, I just don't know where right now. So you are all welcome to go check it out I, I think I tagged it with the word case. More pointless posts are coming soon, see you then.

More exciting fresh starts

2006-01-02T12:42:00.000-05:00

I have been a bit tied up lately with formatting and re-installing everything yet again. One of my hard drives was damaged when putting my case and everything back together and rather than messing with it I decided just to format and start over on the Windows drive since most of my important data was stored on a secondary drive.

Big note to anyone who has had a problem and needed to format their hard drive... Buy a cheap secondary drive to save all your data to then formatting is no big deal. Anyway I will be back on soon, too you may notice a few features missing from my blog since I am not running the webserver quite yet.

Police Track Criminal in Snow

2006-01-01T12:37:00.000-05:00

Oddly Enough News Article | Reuters.com

I just love watching stupid criminals in action!

Feed your blog

2005-12-31T23:30:00.000-05:00

Ok so back to these buttons... How do you get one? It is really very easy. If you do not use Blogger please read the final paragraph. The Blogger users need to follow the following steps first:

Go to your Blogger Dashboard
Choose your blog
Click Settings
Choose SiteFeed
Set it to Publish your SiteFeed
Take note of your feed URL (http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml)

Now that we have it turned on you need to go to 2 different site locations to enter the URL you just copied, and get the HTML code to place into your template file.

Then you simply scroll to the area in your template file and paste those lines of code into it. Simple eh?

If you do not use Blogger, I am sorry there is nothing I can do to help. I am sorry that is not true. Well it is not true I could help, I simply won't. Use Blogger!

Google & Yahoo Buttons

2005-12-30T20:41:00.000-05:00

Perhaps some of you have noticed that together with my RSS feeds I also feature the two buttons to add to Google & Yahoo's personal pages. Why? Well to easily allow people to broswe my latest blog topics right from their homepage. Why would I want my reader's to access my blog away from my photos, comments and advertising? That's easy!

Do any of you bloggers actually think that your blog is set to your reader's homepages? Have you convinced yourself that your readers check your blog daily? Now ask yourself... For those who use Yahoo or Google as their browser's homepage, how many times per day do you suppose they see that page vs. your blog? I am an active net reader and I am very sure that I see my Google start page 10x more than any other page on my browser.

Why not hope to grab their attention right from their homepage when you really don't know if they otherwise would have checked your blog? What if they check your page at 10am and you actually add your post 45 minutes later? Well if your feed were on their homepage, they would see that while checking their e-mail later in their browser. Otherwise, they would just have to check back tomorrow or the next day.

Reasons go on and on, but my blog was supposed to be about those buttons. I guess I will write how to do that tomorrow because iGotNoTime.

Hard drive placement

2005-12-29T19:15:00.000-05:00

Hopefully the last blog and ready to place the order after this public organizing method is completed. So now all my big bays are in use with two hard drive bays out of the four. So for the 3.5" bays...

I have one used by the floppy and media card reader. So how to use the rest. I have 5 internal. So I can put the following in there.

300GB
300GB
300GB
300GB
250GB

The removable drives will hold:

40GB (OS Drive)
160GB (Data Drive)

So the question is now... What do I do with the extra external 3.5" space? Do I find a gadget or gizmo to put in it's place? Or do I buy a fancy new 400GB hard drive for that space? If I buy a hard drive to put in that place I will need to also buy a second IDE controller card as I am currently sitting at 8 drives. I prefer not to go this route, but I can't find any gadget I want to put in there.

I have a media card reader, and I will not use front USB ports. I prefer that wires stay out of sight, I have looked at wires long enough. My dad can attest to that. I already have front sound ports on the case, I don't see fan controllers taking up only a 3.5" drive bay. What I would like to have are audio controls. If anyone knows of any, do reply please. Until then financially a hard drive is a bad choice and one that would make the wife angry. So for now here I sit.

1.5GB of Ram and I have a 256mb Video card with dual output, a 5.1 sound card, two PCI USB cards giving me 12 powered USB 2.0 ports & 4 Firewire ports. I am capable of sharing 1.5 Tera-byte of data and when people see that they always say I can only imagine your computer. HAHA! Yeah if only they could see my computer sitting open for 3 months and wires all over the place going to peripherals and external drives. Finally I am upgrading so it can all go into one sexy case. Now I will have the computer put away like is supposed to be! All for less than $70, it is sooooo overdue.

That computer modding project

2005-12-28T13:59:00.000-05:00

LOL alright so again it's not really modding, just a new setup. So once I get the case that I looked at on yesterday's blog, I will be much happier using my PC since it will have front Mic & Headphone ports since I always switch my headset with my laptop if I am tired of sitting at my desk.

The case does include a power supply and some lighting effects that come stock. As far as drive bays it has 4 5.25" external bays, one will be used by my DVD burner. Leaving me with 3 extra. 2 external 3.5" bays and 5 internal 3.5" bays. I will of course need to get some of the newer things that should go with the case.

For starters since I use digital cameras and removable media I really need a multi-type card reader built into my case. I found a really low profile (non-gay looking) reader. It is a 3.5" floppy drive with a 23-1 card reader. It looks very nice and very stock. Best of all it only uses a single 3.5" bay and does not waste my newly valuable space by taking up an extra slot. Though 3.5" diskettes are all but obsolete these days.

I think it has actually been nearly 5 years since I have even bought a 3.5" disk. Not since the advent of CD-R's anyway. And really haven't the thumbdrives and USB flashdrives really taken over this whole scene and market anyway? I mean why limit yourself 1.44mb when you now can get a 128mb flash media card that is all but bombproof, re-writable and fits in the little extra pocket on your jeans that only a lighter will fit into? I don't smoke so I figured these little thumbdrives are much better to carry around in my baby 5th pocket.

I am getting off track so enough about the flash drives for today and back to my list of things for the case. Having 3 available 5.25" drive bays leaves some extra space for me and since my biggest obsession is storage I will use two of them for hard drive bays. So to get a 3.5" drive to fit into a 5.25" bay I will need adapters. To buy adapters it would only cost a few dollars more to buy these cute lockable cases. I guess the lock would encourage thieves to take the entire computer rather than simply remove my hard drive?

Seriously though Richard gave me a very good idea. He removes his OS/Data drive when he leaves his home. If the worst happens, he loses nothing critical. I think that is a great idea and I will begin doing that as soon as I get these. I ordered 2 of them @ about $9 each. That leaves me with 1 5.25" bay.

With this last extra 5.25" bay I figured I can put a toy into it. The case has a clear side and some acrylic on the front, it is made for ricing with lights, since I have enough space for all my hard drives I see no harm in putting a few LED's into the case. So for $12 I get a light controller and 4 LED's that are multi-colored depending on the mood my computer is in.

I guess the good part is if a thief does come into my house and sees all the pretty colors on the case it would encourage them to steal the case and not search for the hard drives that are removed from it! $12 for a controller that would cost me $50 without the LED's at my local computer shop is a deal after all right? So my 5.25" bays are all taken and used. I have a DVD burner in the top, right under is this fancy light controller, then 2 removable hard drive racks. Just below those I have a 3.5" floppy/ card reader and 1 blank 3.5" bay below it. Below that bay is a 5 bay internal 3.5" hard drive. So there is space for 6 hard drives plus the 2 removable bays. Still some things to sort out.

I guess the point of this blog is more of sorting out what to do than relating what I have done. By the time I am done writing I all of this I will place the order. Strange way of using a shopping cart right?

How many hard drives are needed?

2005-12-27T16:01:00.000-05:00

I guess it is always nice being the person sharing the most files or not even being a file sharer to be the one who has anything at any time. Obviously to say something like this in the USA a person would not feel at risk only if they were not doing anything illegal. 98% of my files do not hold US or international copyrights that could be held up in the court of law for starters, and secondly I do not share anymore.

I ran into a problem a while back and needed more space, so I bought a couple hard drives. Soon enough I no longer had space for more inside my case so I started using USB enclosures for my hard drives. External USB drives are soooooo slow. So I knew I needed a new case, but I already had 4 drives in my case. 3 hard drives (160GB, 250GB & 300GB) plus my DVD burner, so I bought a $7 EIDE controller card on ebay that gave me space for an additional 4 drives. But my case will not allow the proper mounting of any more than 3 hard drives. I have had my case laying open for 3 months. It lays open with 3 drives mounted, the DVD-RW mounted and one 160GB just sitting next to the case on the floor plugged in.

I know I have needed a new case for a very long time, just never could find the one I am looking for at a price I wanted to pay. I finally found it! It has a sexy dragon on the front that has LED's built in to flash and give an animated look to it all. The side panel is a single quick release screw and has a much larger dragon that is bevel cut into the acrylic. It has a sweet shadow effect when the lights are lit up around it. No I am not into modding my computer case, but the case itself will give me all the storage I need for my hard drives to be properly mounted. So the project layout will be the subject of tomorrow's blog as well as this one. Stay tuned to see how it all comes out.

My holiday was fun?

2005-12-25T19:29:00.000-05:00

On my Christmas holiday I actually slept until 1pm, when I got up Vanh was in the bathtub. I was awake about 10 minutes and my cousin called up on Skype in need computer help. His nice Radeon video card was only showing color in 4bits and it looked worse than black and white.

So I went to his house with an XP CD to find that his Bios was so old we could not boot from a USB hard drive. I brought him and his hard drive to my house. On the way we hit the Asian grocery store, went home cooked a quick dinner. I Unplugged all my drives from my computer, put his hard drive into my case then installed XP to it. After that it was 7pm and I took him home.

Then as soon as I got home he called me up on Skype again having problems with installing the hard drive... It is yet to be determined if I need to go back to his house and set his hard drive jumpers.

Just Testing Sound

2005-12-24T13:19:00.000-05:00

Testing to see if I can link a file directly from my desktop computer to my blog.

Accapella Track 1 (Thai MP3 file)

Option 2 - if the first doesn't work try this

Please let me know if you can get it. I think if you simply click it, it will play, and if you right-click you can choose Save As and download to your computer. Please reply so I know if it can be done and let me know if it was option one or two.

Google Firefox Extensions

2005-12-24T12:39:00.000-05:00

Two new extensions are available from Google for Firefox! you can check them out for yourselves here. One is likely not going to be installed by those who know what they are doing online, but it would be great for people like my dad! Google Safe Browsing is the name, it basically is explained as:

Google Safe Browsing is an extension to Firefox that alerts you if a web page that you visit appears to be asking for your personal or financial information under false pretences. This type of attack, known as phishing or spoofing, is becoming more sophisticated, widespread and dangerous. That's why it's important to browse safely with Google Safe Browsing. By combining advanced algorithms with reports about misleading pages from a number of sources, Safe Browsing is often able to automatically warn you when you encounter a page that's trying to trick you into disclosing personal information.

Blah blah the other extension is very cool and especially for bloggers, it is called the Blogger Web Comments and is explained as:

Blogger Web Comments for Firefox is an extension that makes it easy to see what bloggers are saying about a page you're viewing in Firefox and even make your own blog post about it, all without leaving the page you're on.

I have installed both, and I am totally loving this second one. Literally each and every page I go to that has ever been linked to in a blog or blog comments the comments are shown in a small popup that slowly fades in and out in the bottom corner as I am reading the page.

It is great, and probably going to really change the way we find related pages on the internet forever! If this is used we would never need to go back to the search engine again to find other related pages! Google again is at the root of changing the internet forever. Great job Google, I wish I could afford your stock.

The second greatest program ever!

2005-12-23T01:34:00.000-05:00

First I am bored and writing about something a few weeks old. I wanted to write about an opinion on a new webcam I have, but haven't not tried it yet so I don't know.....

For those who follow my blog, you know all about my dad. Well dad (though he is learning much more than he knew a year ago) still needs a lot of help. But he lives out in the country and I live in town, so helping him isn't as easy as it was growing up. When he has computer problems, I am always a phone call away and even at that it usually ends up with me frustrated when I have to say 'No dad right-click... RIGHT!' 3 or 4 times after a left click. Have any of you ever tried giving step by step instructions over the phone to an amateur? We found the solution!

Though much of my frustration with Microsoft, I found that I no longer qualify for their service pack upgrades, so remote assistance on MSN will not work on my end. But I found this great application/service on the web called LogMeIn.

It starts as a trial, and after 2-4 weeks of using the full package you can then either use the basic service or purchase the pro package. By the time my trial ended and it switched me to basic, I found that I had never even utilized the pro features. Then decided I really didn't need them afterall. So what does it do? Well You create an account, then have the owner of the secondary computer also create an account by sending an invitation to them. At that point you can log in on your computer and take complete control. There are limitation options (for specific programs and so on) most cases though if the user needs you to take control of their computer you probably should 100%.

Once you have control, depending on your connection speed, you can operate from the browser window, or click full screen for the view. When you click full screen, you entire monitor will be exactly what they see on their monitor. Your Start button will be replaced by their Start button and your clipboard will be their clipboard. You can even send private messages from their computer to your own. We have used it to configure MSN, webcams, browser settings, desktop files and folders, media players and even screensavers. Yes my dad uses a screensaver.

All in all it is an awesome program and one of the best for showing hands on long distance how to do this or that. I strongly suggest if you ever need to help anyone or even access your own files from another PC you use this, it is after all free. The basic service after the trial is over still allows remote assistance connection features!

Anyway here are some screenshots of what it looks like in action. The first picture is the login screen, the second is the logon process, and the third is dad's computer in action and hard at work at 1am on a Barbie make-over site. I guess the girls were on the computer before he went to bed. Ohh one more thing, I thought it would be kind of dumb to show the full screen shot of his computer, since that would look like any other screenshot, so it is in the browser window mode.

No time for anything

2005-12-20T15:27:00.000-05:00

I don't have any time to be writing anything so I post a single phrase...

Thanks for stopping by.

About My Arrest

2005-12-17T13:01:00.000-05:00

No this isn't really about my arrest it is like a little personality quiz. I will try this because Selba say's it will make me taller and stop my hair from getting more grey. So here we go.

[x] I've consumed alcohol (Not often and when I do not much).
[ ] I've run away from home
[x] I have lied to my parents about where I am (Quite often when I was a teen, many times even stealing their car for a joyride when I was 13 years old.)
[ ] I listen to political music (Is there such a thing?)
[ ] I have collected comic books (I made fun of those kids.)
[x] I shut others out when I'm depressed (Totally me!)
[ ] I watch the news. (I have grown to despise the media and their agendas.)
[ ] I own over 5 rap CDs (Hating Rap Music as an adult with children, used to like it when I was a dumb following kids trying to be as cool as my friends.)
[x] I own an iPod or MP3 (I have very nice toys in my truck I will blog about one day.)
[x] I love Disney Movies (My favourite one is Lion King)
[x] I am a sucker for hair/eyes (Hair is important to me, I could care less about eyes.)
[ ] I curse regularly (I don't curse often. It is a signal that you lack intellect, and have a very narrow vocabulary.)
[x] I paid for that cell phone ring. (Usually I regret it and have deleted the ringtone before my bill comes, then I regret alot more when I have to pay for it.)
[ ] I am a sports fanatic

[ ] I love Spam (Hate spam)
[x] I bake well (I actually bake alot of muffins, once a week or so I help the girls bake a cake, since their mother does not know how to bake.)
[ ] I would wear pajamas to school.
[x] I own something from Abercrombie (I have a hat my girls picked out for me)
[x] I love Martha Stewart (I love the fact that finally a Hollywood star had to serve prisontime for the many crimes they are never charged with!)
[ ] am guilty oF tYpInG lIkE tHiS (Only my screen name.)

[ ] I am sometimes self conscious (Very rarely, if ever at all.)
[x] I like to laugh (I love to but rarely have time for it.)
[ ] I smoke a pack a day. (I despise smoking, it is the very epitome of weakness.)
[ ] I have cough drops when I'm not sick (I own them, but do not use them.)
[ ] I can't swallow pills.
[x] I can swallow about 5 pills at a time no problem.
[ ] I have many scars (I think I have 2 or 3.)
[x] I've been out of this country. (I live an hour from Canada??)
[x] I can't sleep if there is a spider in the room. (I have to kill it first)
[x ] I am really ticklish (Very much so.)
[ ] I've seen a therapist (I have never but my other personalities may have?)
[ ] I love chocolate (For sweets, just a hard candy now and then, nothing as rich as chocolate)
[x] I play video games. (When I was growing up, and now with my boys as competition.)
[ ] I watch cartoons (Never, and not even much as a child, I prefered sit-coms)
[x] Gotten lost in my city (I used to get lost all the time, I live in a small town now and all is good.)
[x] Saw a shooting star (At least once a month I notice one, I guess I am a gazer.)
[x] I had a Surgery (Painful)
[x] Gone out in public in your pajamas (Does a robe count, while getting my newspaper?)
[x] I have Kissed a Stranger (A kiss in the USA is not the sign of a relationship)
[x] Hugged a stranger (It is considered a customary welcoming gesture in the USA.)

[x] Been in a fist fight (Too many.)
[x] Been arrested (With jailtime, I forgot to pay a speeding ticket on time, when i was called back to court I had the date wrong and spent 6 days in jail because of it.)
[x] Pushed all the buttons on an elevator (We did alot of psychotic things with elevators as teens.)
[x] Made out in an elevator (Alone, and nothing intense, but enough that we both blushed when it opened.)
[x] Swore at your parents (Only to make them angry during my 15 months of rebellion)
[ ] Kicked a guy where it hurts (How cruel!)
[x] Been to a casino (Only for drinks, I don't like betting my money - I could lose it.)
[ ] Been skydiving (Would like to try one day, but probably will not have the courage.)
[x] Broken a bone (Too many.)
[ ] Skipped school (Never!)
[ ] Played spin the bottle (Sick game!)
[x] Gotten stitches (Itching, I hated them.)
[ ] Drank a whole gallon of milk in one hour (who the ?)
[ ] Bitten somebody (Not in at least 3 days)
[x] Been to Niagara Falls (4-5 times)
[x] Gotten the chicken pox (When I was a little boy, can't remember it)
[ ] Crashed into a friend's car (People do that?)
[ ] Been to Japan (It's one of my dreams)
[x] Ridden in a taxi (I love cab drivers they always smell and are crazy!)
[x] Shoplifted (Once when I was a very young boy, I got caught and never did it again.)
[x] Been fired (Once, I was 3 minutes late on a report early on a Saturday morning.)
[x] Had feelings for someone who didnt have them back (Those were miserable days.)
[x] Stole something from your job (Coffee without donating my coins because I left change at home. When I was a teen, I took a pair of sunglasses, and guilt drove me crazy because the boss was a friend, and I was paranoid he knew, so badly I eventually quit.)
[ ] Gone on a blind date (Never.)
[x] Lied to a friend (Anything to not hurt their feelings, so yes.)
[x] Had a crush on a teacher (Teacher assistant the 21 year old university student, I swear she was 6' tall, brunette, green eyes, wore short skirts... Maybe I should call her now that I am a big boy? 5555)
[ ] Celebrated Mardi Gras in New Orleans (Never been to New Orleans)
[x] Been married (Of course, I have children.)
[x] Gotten divorced (Yes but I got my daughter out of the whole deal, so I am good. Have not even heard from ex-wife in over a year.)
[ ] Saw someone die (I could never cope with that.)
[ ] Been to Africa (What is there?)
[x] Driven over 400 miles in one day (When we leave the house for vacation usually we are driving 600-800 miles in a single day.
[x] Been to Canada (Too many times.)
[x] Been to Mexico (Scared of getting into trouble and not getting home from there.)
[x] Been on a plane (Of course)
[ ] Thrown up on a bar (Never drink much in public.)
[x] Eaten Sushi (Love it, especially because of the wasabi, yummy...)
[x] Been snowboarding (Was not very good, hurt my ankle)
[x] Been Skiing (So much fun if you do it while drinking, you never get cold)
[ ] Been to a motor cross show (I guess I am not white enough for this)
[ ] Lost a child (I could never even imagine the fear if it were to happen.)
[x] Gone to college (Lots of fun)
[ ] Graduated college (Very close to getting what I want. 2 more classes to finish.)
[x] Done hard drugs (Getting a bit personal, a history I don't often discuss, I have children and do not want them to think it is ok.)
[x] Had someone cheat on you (2 people.)
[x] Smoked a cigarette (Now they are disgusting to me.)
[x] Smoked a cigar (I didn't inhale! Well I did a couple times and it was disgusting.)
[ ] Made out with a member of the same sex (No desire to.)
[ ] Slept with a co-worker (That would lead to big problems in the workplace.)
[ ] Purposely set a part of myself on fire (People do that?!)
[ ] Been in an abusive relationship (Does being forced to eat fermented fish sauce count?)
[x] Laid on your back and watched cloud shapes go by (Every summer.)
[x] Made a snow angel (When I was 8.)
[ ] Had a tea party (Not the traditional type but I am sure some college people know about this type.)
[x] Flown a kite (Every couple years I buy one it seems.)
[x] Built a sand castle (I lived on the beach, sand castles were requirements.)
[x] Gone puddle jumping (Singing in the rain.)
[ ] Played dress up (Only girls do that, but I have helped ;))
[x] Jumped into a pile of leaves (There was a big rock at the bottom my knee found.)
[x] Gone sledding (Every winter)
[x] Cheated while playing a game (All games are fun when cheating.)
[x] Been lonely (For a while, wasn't fun.)
[x] Fallen asleep at work/school (Never got caught at either.)

[x] Watched the sun set (I try to when the sky is clear and my camera is handy.)
[ ] Felt an earthquake (Never.)
[x] Touched a snake (I also ate snake, not the same one though.)
[x] Slept beneath the stars (Many times camping in the woods, sleeping on the sandy beach, laying down in my boat and twice on the hood of my car.)

[x] Been tickled (My uncles tormented me as a child.)
[ ] Been robbed (Never, I would likely be chatged with assualt if it were to happen.)
[x] Been misunderstood (All the time with every word I speak.)
[x] Won a contest (A few spelling contests.)
[x] Ran a red light (Only when I feel a real sense of urgency, maybe once every 3-4 months.)

[ ] Been suspended from school (I was a good student.)
[x] Been in a car accident (Once, but I was not charged.)
[ ] Had braces
[ ] Eaten a whole gallon of ice cream in one night (That's sick!)
[x] Had deja vu (Every few months it will happen, but not much)
[ ] Danced in the moonlight
[x] Hated the way you look (6th grade and I was the shortest, it bothered me for almost 5 months.)
[ ] Pole danced (No but I have seen it. HAHA... Only once though.)
[ ] Been obsessed with post-it notes
[x] Squished barefoot through the mud (While tubing down a river, and it felt gross.)
[x] Been lost (I used to ask for directions, then I bought GPS.)
[x] Been to the opposite side of the country (For a friends wedding.)
[x] Swam in the ocean (I miss it soooooo much!)
[x] Felt like dying (The first month or so after the divorce.)

[x] Cried yourself to sleep (The first month or so after the divorce.)
[x] Played cops and robbers (Yes as boys, eventually it evolved to bb tag til one of us was shot in the eye.)
[x] Recently colored with crayons/colored pencils/markers (My kids have school projects, I am always coloring with them.)
[x] Sung karaoke (Every couple of months or so.)
[x] Paid for a meal with only coins (Meal and gas waiting for paycheck that was messed up.)
[x] Done something you told yourself you wouldn't (Blogging)
[x] Made prank phone calls (A few as kids, never got caught though.)
[x] Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose (Milk and it was disgusting, I tried too hard to keep from laughing and spitting it out, it came out anyway.)
[x] Caught a snowflake on your tongue
[ ] Danced in the rain

[ ] Written a letter to Santa Claus (I was never lied to by my parents.)
[x] Blown bubbles (Not often.)
[x] Made a bonfire on the beach (Probably 10-15 times.)
[x] Crashed a party (Not so much these days LOL.)
[x] Gone rollerskating (Alot as a child, not so much as an adult.)
[x] Had a wish come true (And I drank all 12 cans that the wish provided the money for.)
[ ] Worn pearls
[x] Jumped off a bridge (Into water I think they call it base jumping now.)
[ ] Screamed penis in public
[ ] Screamed vagina in public (We pulled far better pranks than this.)
[ ] Ate dog/cat food
[ ] Kissed a mirror
[x] Sang in the shower (Almost every shower.)
[x] Had a dream that you married someone (Ended up being a nightmare.)
[x] Glued your hand to something
[x] Kissed a fish (Posing for a picture.)
[ ] Worn the opposite sexes clothes
[x] Sat on a roof top (Of my parents resturant for many many hours thinking.)
[x] Screamed at the top of your lungs (Rollercoasters.)
[x] Done a one-handed cartwheel (Atheletic when younger.)
[ ] Talked on the phone for more than 5 hours (Just sad.)
[x] Stayed up all night (Almost weekly.)
[ ] Didn't take a shower for a week (Sick!)
[x] Climbed a tree (Not since I was 10.)
[x] Had a tree house (not since I was 10.)
[x] Are scared to watch scary movies (No I just think they are dumb.)
[x] Worn a really ugly outfit to school just to see what others say (I had a great wardrobe as a teen.)
[x] Played chicken (Stupidest thing I've done, he was braver than me.)
[x] Pushed into a pool/lake with all your clothes on (A few times.)
[ ] Been told you're beautiful by a complete stranger

[x] Been easily amused
[x] Caught a fish then ate it (This is why I catch them?? Of course we eat them!)
[x] Caught a butterfly (My fairy phase when I was 7.)
[x] Laughed so hard you cried (I love those movies.)
[ ] Cried so hard you laughed

[x] Had someone moon/flash at you (An ugly fat girl while driving down the highway.)
[ ] Cheated on a test (Totally against that, it hinders self-development.)
[ ] Have a Britney Spears CD (No but I like n'sync :P.)
[x] Grown a beard (When I am too lazy to shave.)

Making my head burst!

2005-12-16T18:18:00.000-05:00

I was walking in Wal-mart a year ago, standing in the isle with my kids talking, touching clothes, deciding what designs they liked, wife asking if I brought the credit card, people bumping into my kids, into me. I felt very light-headed, pressure was building, feeling stressed, anxiety killing me and sweat starting to drip. Finally, I said 'I am going to the car'. I walked out angered, and feeling very uncomfortable.

I had a similar event happen at a school function of one of my girls. Soon I find myself only wanting to get groceries in the early morning or late night hours. When the gas station is full of people in line paying I will wait to pump my fuel though there is a spot for me to pull up, I only sit. I never noticed these things until last year. Now I am only worried.

I have found the name, it is called demophobia. But I am scared, I always made fun of the people who think they need psycho-therapy for each and every emotion they feel. But the thing that worries me is I have seen these people on television, the one's with extreme cases of this mental disorder, they are shut-ins and refuse contact some even refusing to leave their home but only a few times per year. That scares the hell outta me!

I love the outdoors, I love spending time with my children, and travel. I am paranoid that I may one day become this kind of person. I am reading as much as I can to see what things can worsen the condition. I am hoping it is something that can just be dealt with on my own, I don't think at this point I would even consider medication for something so minor. I am just scared it could get worse.

How's that for open blunt expression of repressed and private emotion and fears? LOL I promise a lighter subject next time.

My Own Personal Google

2005-12-15T15:25:00.000-05:00

Google now offers the same features that made some of the greatest search engines in the past such landmarks in web history. Excite & Lycos primarily were the forerunners in custom user content, and now Google offers it. Of course to get it you must have a Google account, so again go get Gmail.

I didn't think I would like it much when I first seen it, but after a few days in use I am finally again happy with my homepage. I would say it is the cat's meow quite yet. It still lacks many nice features that Excite offered us, such as customizing the color layouts sizing ect... But considering the other features I would call it a fair trade off.

It is very configurable, so much that you can even choose the content you want displayed, even custom content via RSS feeds. For example, I have the latest torrent files from TorrentSpy fed right onto my homepage in case an interesting file comes up. I have two screenshots for you below.

This is adding content. This is how it looks.

Smashed Police Cars

2005-12-14T10:06:00.000-05:00

I never have my camera handy when I need it. At 07:15 this morning taking Mary to school, there was an incredible accident. A jeep, a police cruiser and the finish it off a 3/4 ton suburban SUV plowing into the rear of it all.

The cruiser was totalled without a doubt. The Jeep had some major damage too. The Suburban was dented and it looked like the headlight may have been broken. All too cool!

Dunno about the first guy, the ambulance was leaving, I guess I will know what happened tomorrow in the newspaper. The police car not only had the front passenger side destroyed, but also the right rear quarter panel was very smashed up.

I grabbed the camera but was quite a distance from the scene, about 300 yards (100 metres) away, and the at 07:30 where I live it is still very dark this time of year. So the pics are pretty grainy, and contrast is off. Some excuses could be that the lenses were steaming up since it was about 20 degrees below freezing when I rolled down my window.

A large truck was blocking my view, so I put it in 4x4 and drove over the curb, off the road and into the commercial property to get these few pics, all from the same angle I am sorry. I just couldn't get any closer, the police were keeping people away. They were probably humiliated because the officer driving the police car only could have hit his brakes way too fast & hard. You know the way a teenage girl hits her barkes for a bird flying in front of her car. Don't they learn evasive driving? There was no ice on the roads, the roads were completely dry. Oh well it is an excuse to replace the cruiser with another one of those $50,000 SUV's that the detectives get to drive around in.

Keep the job or pay the heat bill?

2005-12-13T09:28:00.000-05:00

My brother has an upstairs apartment in the downtown business district above a martial arts studio. The building is about 140 years old, all brick and completely up to proper living code. The windows are old and in the winter he has to seal them with plastic because of minor efficiency losses. It is heated by gas, and during winter when he first moved in he paid $150-180 for heat. Eventually it crept up to about $400 due to increases in oil for heat prices. This is per month.

He recently got a letter from the gas company informing him that the costs this year due to the prices will likely be 2-3 times more than the previous year. So this winter his monthly bill for heat will be between $800-1200!!! He began shopping for a house to buy immediately.

Imagine his situation. He makes about $2000 per month between himself and his wife.

$400 for rent
$100 for electric
$120 for water, trash & sewage
$40 for phone
$400 for daycare
$400 for food
$200 for fuel
$200 for heat

Leaving about $50-75 per week in their pocket, usually it goes into auto repairs. By payday he has always borrowed for gas money to get to work. They have a 5 month old daughter and a 6 year old daughter to feed too. Now imagine the heat bill jumping to $800, what shoudl he not pay? His rent and lose the apartment? The daycare, taking away his wife's income? The food, and eat at relative's houses every meal? The fuel and not go to work? Take your choice but one has to be put off.

I feel bad for him, and the landlord would not do anything about the heat source. Good news is he just bought a house, but what of everyone else in this situation? Oil is destroying the very core of this country right now, and nothing can be done.

Financial Terrorism at the hands of congress

2005-12-12T04:13:00.000-05:00

They have taken us hostage, our own elected government leaders have now taken hostage by their new form of terrorism. Financial terrorism, financial attacks that we as citizens can not fight because our protectors have let them in. It is led by our enemies abroad, then hidden under the name of OPEC and proudly supported by the government officials that the citizens have elected.

I told you yesterday I would tell you about their latest scheme. Their excuse for raising the fuel prices this time? They said "..barrel prices are on the rise in expectation of cold weather in the Northeast Region of the USA..". Can you imagine this!? They think that it will be cold in New York come January & February? Thank god for the geniuses. I live in the Northeast and I don't think there has ever been a winter we did not experience temperatures above 0 through the entire winter, we are in fact usually 30 degrees below the freezing point for at least 45-60 solid days.

This will never change and that is why I am so angered by it all. There may be promises, but I'd like someone to name a single congressman or senator who are not in the deep pockets of the oil companies. There's no way you can honestly tell me that they are not offered contributions of free stock if not more. The politicians have as much to gain as the oil companies.

So how much do the oil companies have to gain? They are only raising the prices because their barrel prices have risen you say? Then why have their profit margings increased by 400% through all this turmoil they are going through? Because it is price gouging, and everyone is making a profit except the consumers who can barely afford their real bills like electric, heat, water and groceries.

I will tell you about my brother's apartment and how much these prices are doing to him.

Power over the gas prices

2005-12-11T13:17:00.000-05:00

Fuel was at $3 per gallon through most of the year, and it was blamed on Katrina before the hurricane even hit us they began jacking the prices up. Obviously travel and consumption was at a record low per capita. It was so bad that 8 weeks ago OPEC made an astonishing announcement that they would make certain the barrel prices would drop (and our reserves were opened). Why?

I will not make the claim that the US economy = the world economy. Many say this and I just don't see that level of total reaction on the status of the US markets. I will say that the US economy does have a major impact on the world economy. So much so that OPEC decided to give up profits to increase our consumption!

All these 'gas-out' days really never made sense anyway. People would refuse to buy fuel on the first Monday of each month (for example) and they thought those would be huge losses for the petro companies. Why didn't it work? Because they would fill up their tanks on Sunday or Tuesday in order to avoid buying on Monday's. DUH!

Well at $3 per gallon, people finally woke up and just decided to stop leaving their houses, only driving for groceries & work. It finally has hurt them, and gas prices again drop down to about $2 per gallon. Why am I writing about a subject that makes me so angry? Because there was a new announcement, and finally I found a place to vent about it. Barrel prices have shot to over $60 per barrel again and $2.85 per gallon will likely be coming back very soon again. But their reasons are what makes me so angry, like raising the prices before Katrina even hit. You should see what their new excuse is! More tomorrow...

How dumb are Carolinian's??

2005-12-10T12:25:00.000-05:00

The plates on the cars from North Carolina read 'First in Flight'. I remember the first flight, well I don't remember it, but I do know the history being from Ohio. The Wright brothers I wouldn't exactly say invented the airplane, I am sure we could go back in history such as the art of Leonardo da Vinci. But I do know that the Wright brothers built the first fully functional 'flying machine'.

I live only one hour from their hometown where they built this crude airplane out of parts from their local bicycle shop. The land in that area is very flat and further South becomes rolling hills and large mountains. They transported their contraption down to North Carolina in search of the perfect mountain that has enough of a drop that the plane could actually lift off the ground, as they obviously could not gain enough ground speed for take-off due to lack of powerful enough engines.

So though they launched the airplane in North Carolina does that mean that they have earned the right to calle their state the 'First in Flight'? Honda's are built & driven in Ohio too, does that mean that Ohio can brag ourselves as 'Home of Honda'?! I think that claim still belongs to Japan doesn't? So who approves such ridiculous claims to place on each and every plate from North Carolina? Are they really so uneducated they think the Wright brothers were from their state?

17 ways to increase your blog traffic

2005-12-09T13:46:00.000-05:00

I stole this list from a website, The website was featuring a great blogging tool called BlogJet. If you haven't yet tried BlogJet I can't strongly enough encourage you to do so, it is a great program and priced very low. BlogJet even offers a 30 day trial so you can test it out before buying. As far as the list, I can not do these things easily but I am sure that is why my blog is not popular. Anyway I thought it was a great list and these tips are widely recognized as requirements for success in blogging. So here it is...

17 Ways To Drive Traffic to Your Blog

Blog marketing is all about word of mouth. You should make your blog worth talking about, and get your posts quoted on other blogs and web sites. You main asset is content, that is – your posts. All you need to do is to learn how to use word of mouth.

1. Choose your topic. Blog about everything or about various stuff won’t interest readers. Narrow your topic. By trying to interest everybody you’ll interest nobody.

2. Write simple and add some personality to your posts. Awake your readers’ interest in you and earn credibility – the blog is yours after all!

3. Post regularly. Well, everybody knows it but not everybody actually writes regularly. There’s more here: if it’s pain for you to write, by writing regularly, you’ll improve your skills and it will become easier and easier to write.

4. “Tell a friend”. Add to your blog tell-a-friend feature to let readers send your posts by email. This feature won’t drive a lot of traffic, but imagine what happens when one reader tells about your blog ten people…

5. Put your blog’s address everywhere: in your email signature, on discussion boards, on your other web sites, on your business card.

6. Comment posts on other blogs. And don’t forget to put a link to yours. But, of course, don’t spam, and remember that if you have nothing to say, say nothing.

7. Quote other bloggers and ping their posts. It’s easy to do with BlogJet: grab the trackback link from blog, click “Properties” tab and paste it to “Pings”.

8. Link to other blogs. But don’t ask for a link back – most bloggers don’t like it. But because bloggers check their hit stats, they can find out about your blog by looking into referrers. Like every curious person, they want to know what’s your blog about and what it have to do with them.

9. Write articles for other web sites. And put a link to your blog.

10. Submit your blog to directories and blog search engines.

11. Use pay-per-click advertisement. If you have spare money, of course. I’ve tried Google AdWords and discovered that it’s better (for me) to advertise single popular and interesting posts instead of my whole blog.

12. Learn what your readers what and give it to them. What are your most popular posts about? What are your most quoted posts about? Find this out and write on this more.

13. Use catchy titles for posts. Follow my favorite book authors: “All Marketers Are Liars”, “Your Marketing Sucks”, etc. Use “How to…”, “55 Ways…” – these titles often interest readers. For example: “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living”, “17 Ways To Drive Traffic to Your Blog”.

14. Don’t forget about search engine optimization. I don’t encourage you to learn SEO and dig in search engines algorithms, but learn just a few key principles and use them.

15. Do something for other bloggers and blogosphere. Offer your help for free.

16. Actively participate in bloggers community. Join meetings, conferences, exchange emails with other bloggers. Send interesting links to them on the topic of their blogs (again, no spam,
and only if they agree).

17. Focus on the long-term outlook. Don’t expect to get lots of traffic immediately. Get it gradually. Set small goals (for example, “get 500 RSS readers in three months”) and achieve them.

They think I won't?

2005-12-08T11:56:00.000-05:00

I am a photoholic. I can't deny it anymore, I take my camera everywhere and have a huge memory card. Do you know why? Well I figured with a 1GB memory card I can't go wrong. If I shoot 400 pictures I am bound to have at least 1 or 2 that are good! So I get pictures of all types and people in all poses. But I am confused...

What is the deal with my family? Do they really think I won't post the outrageous pictures I get of them? No matter how many pictures I take I am sure to get a few of them with great facial expressions. I could probably make some money from them if I let them delete the images they don't like. I prefer the internet though.

Here is my younger brother Joe, he is taking a self portrait while making a very attractive face.Before I show the other picture I ask does anyone else get spammed by their own parents? Phone calls are one thing, but now that dad has figured out e-mail ohh my god. He browses eBay and every item we have ever discussed in the past is sent to me. So far I have had links to many auctions sent. I got links for wind turbines, mandolins, harmonicas, nylon classical guitars, acoustic electric guitars, acoustic guitar pickups, autoharps, solar panels and on and on. You name it if dad seen it on ebay, I have a link to it in my email inbox. I even threatened to put him in my spam folder. I don't know if he learned what that is yet though.

Ohh yes I write about him all the time, so here is a great image of my dad. This is what it looks like when two of us finally get on MSN at the same time with Video. After a few obnoxious expressions from me, I finally got him to do it back. He didn't know about the PrintScr button evidently. Anyway enough complaining for today, more posted soon!

Deeper into Picassa

2005-12-07T16:35:00.000-05:00

More nice features of Picassa making it easy for people like my Dad are the various means of sharing the images that have been edited. Like any program you have the option to print your image. In addition to printing you can post the edited image to your blog by clicking Blog This, or send it as an instant message through Hello (the image IM from Google/Picassa). Or you can simply e-mail and it works with your Gmail account.

Also you can order prints, I honestly have not done this yet from the company featured. But I know their prices are very competitive with the local Walmart store. They do have some nice features or products such as coffee mugs, mouse pads T-shirts etc.

Another fine reason for people to try out Picassa. Again the editing is nothing that would make anyone happy if you already use Photoshop. But if Photoshop is too complex, it is the perfect solution to get started in image editing digitally. See you next time!

Picassa in Use

2005-12-06T09:46:00.000-05:00

I have already written on Picassa and the ease of use it offers. This blog I will show a few samples of some single click editing features it has. This is why it is so nice, of course if you already are experienced with Photoshop, Paintshop or Fireworks Picassa is not a program you will like. But if you would like to increase your skill and eventually be able to use the above programs, I strongly suggest Picassa as an entry level program to give you a feel for how image editing software works.
We will start with a photo Mary took with one of my digital cameras. The rose here while clearly in focus is not a good image. It is need of some serious color correction, adding some highlights to the water droplets, the surrounding foliage is distracting and the contrast is not correct.

Also the size itself is not proper for the web. The camera took the photo at 5 mega pixels and that is just too large for the web so when all editing is done the last thing we would is resize. Never resize before editing is complete. So we will edit a bit in Picassa first cropping, then auto adjusting brightness/contrast, auto color fix, highlighting by adding a glow effect, then last we will add a soft focus around the outer edges.

You can click the small image to the right to see how it editing looks in Picassa. The final outcome of the rose photo is below and to the right.

For the next sample we have a picture my 8 year old Jolen? Tai took on a clear but cloudy day, it is in need of some serious brightness & contrast help. The color is not right and lastly we will need to soften the edges and resize for the web. The original photo is below and the last image on the page is the outcome after using Picassa.

Are they learning?

2005-12-04T20:17:00.000-05:00

Grade cards came home a few days back. Taking away the X-box, the TV, telephone and groundings followed a few hours later. Sure for the most part everything was fine, Kevin was on the honor roll, Mary was all A's & B's except a C she had in Math class (originally was an F she had worked very hard to recover from in division of fractions), Daniel all D's & C's.

D & C?
That is practically failing! We had a parent-teacher conference to discuss the matter. The teacher basically said in a kind way that Daniel was lazy. He showed test results from the government mandated testing that is required of all students. Daniel did very well on the tests. He was above average in everything but one area - Science. Science is his favorite subject. Of course we were confused.

What really gets me angry about these mandated testings is that seems to be the only goal of the school system. They prime our children for the keywords and key points of the test itself, rather than really teaching the child. For the full first 1.5 grading periods, the only thing Daniel was focusing on was the test itself. The test was done, and they had about 2 weeks to cover all the material they had missed while preparing for these tests.

The material in the science book was developed and published with the intention to cover in full throughout the schoolyear as a whole, not a portion. No wonder the students do poorly right after these tests! The school spends 40% of the year preparing the children for the big tests that they are required to take. That leaves the students and teachers to compress and condense the science lessons into the remaining time. Why not cut the material in the textbooks down by 40% to make room and time for tests? Because they feel the students would fall behind. But aren't they doing that with the system the way it is now?

I only ask... Are they learning?

Adding content to your new page

2005-12-03T20:51:00.000-05:00

Why did I say it was un-secure?

Because all your server settings are displayed. You will first need to go into the htdocs folder and find the file named index.php or index.html. I don't remember if there is one or two, sorry. The file/s will need to be renamed to something you will know but not something obvious. DO NOT rename to admin as that is very obvious. Once the file/s are renamed now when you go to localhost in your browser and press refresh you should see no pages or an error saying that the page is not found. That is a good thing.

Now you need to create an index page. My blog is not about coding so I am not giving details a decent resource can be found here. I will only give one short sample code for you to verify it works. Open a text editor, even Notepad would be fine. Next you copy the text in the left window of this page into Notepad and save the file as index.htm, make sure to then place that file into your htdocs folder.

Now when you type localhost in your web browser you will see the same thing the world can see. You are now serving files on your home computer! For the world to see the files they will need either your domain name (www.yourdomainname.com) or you will have to give them your IP such as http://245.164.157.233:80 now you all see the advantage of domain names? Nobody will ever remember a string of numbers like that, but the domain name can be programmed to automatically look up these numbers. This is how the entire internet works. Did you know that? Did you know that www.Google.com is actually http://63.236.5.128:80 ? Consider yourselves learned.

How to host your own website & server from home

2005-12-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

So how was it wall done you may ask?

Alot of reading and many days of work, all cut down and shrunk into a single blog post. By the way you are all welcome for this.

The first thing you need to do is download a program or set of scripts called xampp. Some very generous and incredible coders over at apachefriends.org have kindly put together a linux package that will work with Windows perfectly. I did this 3x and never had a single error, so don't worry and it does have un-install options. The program you needyou can download by clicking the image below.Xampp is about 26MB zipped when you download it. I think about 70mb when installed. So if you have a 20GB hard drive it will require about 0.3% of your space. Most everyone has at the minimum double that, so don't worry about space. It takes very little resources to run. In fact I am considering running on an old desktop that only has 128mb of RAM, I am sure it would be fine. If you are interested in all it can do check out the website because I am moving on.

Once it is installed, there will be a folder named htdocs this is where your web files will be going, I created a shortcut to the folder and put it on my desktop. After the installation you can see many features and actually browse your computer (only the htdocs folder, your PC is still secure) from the internet by typing the address localhost in your browser address bar where you would normally type www.google.com

Once you are at this point you will need to goto www.whatismyip.com and write down your computer's IP address. You can now browse your computer both by going to localhost or by typing in your IP address followed by the port number. So it would look like this http://201.234.254.188:80, replacing 201.234.254.188 with the IP address you were given for your own computer.

Now we are moving along fast! Domain name... If you have a domain name you need to forward your domain name to your IP address. Each Domain registrant is different so I can't give details, but basically you will look for a forward option and the address you will forward to will be the one with all the numbers that looks like this : http://201.234.254.188:80

After a few hours (giving the internet to update) when you type www.yourdomainname.com your computer should open to that main page we seen before. That is not secure and we can discuss content tomorrow. Don't worry about un-installing, nobody malicious knows you are serving from your home computer already, it will be fine 'till tomorrow. See you then!

A server from my home computer?

2005-12-01T10:57:00.000-05:00

Why would anyone do this?

Honestly I just don't want to pay the extra $5 per month for hosting when I do not have a heavy traffic site. My site is mainly used to post larger articles than what is fitting for a blog in my eyes. Also the /images/ folder I use regularly (almost daily) to upload images for someone to see either in forums, or for those (Richard) who have instant messenger problems and need a preview of screenshots or what have you. Why should I pay extra monthly fees just to share small bits of information with people?

How good could it really be?

Well how good does it have to be really? I mean it works and that was the goal right? I simply forward my domain name* to my home IP address and the port I configured on my router, run the software, and I have a server with all the main features plus some right there on my personal computer. What else can be asked for? It works.

Why is it good?

In my FTP client I have nearly 80 websites saved. I am using FTP more than I use my browser it seems. That means I am doing 'non-fun' things more than browsing & reading. Why would I want to use FTP more than I have to? It is just a way to make things easier for me personally.

How is it easier?

Well say I have a screenshot image I want to share with Richard named screenshot.png.... Now all I do when I want to share it is paste the picture into my 'web' folder on my desktop, and send the link www.igotnotime.com/screenshot.png to anyone I want. When they click it, the picture is loaded in their browser directly from my desktop computer, just as if they were to click the link to any other image on the web such as http://www.google.com/images/logo_sm.gif. This is why, because it makes thing easier.

The disadvantage?

I can only support 70 visitors at the same time, not 2,000 like I could hosting elsewhere. I don't get 2,000 per day let alone at the same time. This is just my personal page afterall, not a corporate site. The other disadvantage is file transfer is limited to my broadband connection speed. So if my cable company only allows me to upload at 40k, that is the fastest a user could download an mp3 from me. If two people are trying to get a file from me at the same time they would share the speed and both be downloading at 20k and so. On the paid server I had before most files came down at about 200k and it didn't matter how many people were attempting to access it, it would remain a stable 200k. Again though, not a corporate site, so it doesn't bother me.

How was it all done?
Find out in the next blog that is published.

*Domain names are now down to less than $10 USD per year!

What is happening?

2005-11-30T12:57:00.000-05:00

So many days, so much going on. Short version, I am busy and I got no time. Longer version? Well I decided my website is not high enough traffic to host online and pay monthly fees to do so, therefore decided to host on my desktop.

First I spent the day downloading my entire site contents to my desktop, then another day finding solutions for hosting locally. I found it, then spent yet another day editing my router ports so it would actually work, and when it worked in test mode I set it the domain name to go live. 3 hours later it worked just as the manual described.

Those who are technically beyond the majority it is great. I have GD image libraries, MySql, Apache, FTP access (with ratios options) everything is all there and set up except the mail configuration. I use Gmail so I don't really care about using the mail option, what would I use anyway? igotnotime@igotnotime.com just doesn't sound right does it?

For those who don't understand the last paragraph (this is you dad) basically it works! when you type www.igotnotime.com it actually directly accesses my desktop computer. The temporary content on the pages (or lack of) is only laid out for 1024x768 screen resolutions. I personally use 1600x1200 because I have a 21" monitor and it looks horrible, but 70% of my traffic is 1024x768 so most should see the layout looking decent.

The advantages? The disadvantages? I wrote them all out but don't like the look of novels so it is saved as a draft blog to be published tomorrow. Stop back to see them, and then I will show how exactly I did this. It is very cool, and much easier than it all sounds.

Pictures the easy way?

2005-11-24T01:10:00.000-05:00

Of course this too comes from Google, so those drinking the Googleberry flavored haterade need not read.

My parents, always seem to be the target of my humor when it comes to computers, and with digital imagery it is still the same. I installed Photoshop for them about 2 years ago and it sat never being opened since the day my (then 11 year old) daughter Mary showed them how to use their scanner. About 7 months back I even tried to get them to use Fireworks, again with similar results.

Now they are borrowing my digital cameras alot more and even looking to buy a nice $500 one of their own. I had to find a program simple enough for them to use, and sure enough I found it in the big Google toy box. Not only did I find the image editing software but a great way to collaborate and show them the before and after of the editing results.

The key features are of course the easy sharing options, the fact that editing never directly impacts the high quality originals, and of course the easy (many times single click) editing tools. The red-eye fixes actually seem to be even better than what I can get out of the high dollar software packages!

If anyone is looking for an awesome set of tools for editing images, but Photoshop is too complex, I can not think of anything more simple than the combination of these two software tools. Not to mention they are free, and very powerful for the price. The two programs being used are Picassa2 & Hello. I will post more on this along with some samples of the features very soon. It seems the promise to do it tomorrow always ends up being 2-3 days later, so all I can say is soon.

The end of the killing finally

2005-11-21T13:14:00.000-05:00

So which is right and which is wrong?
Does it matter?
Have you figured out my opinion on the matter?

I consider the history of the religions. Have Buddhists ever been a violent group? I think not. What about the history fo the other? Shall we consider the time period calle dthe dark ages and the so called holy wars? What about recent history? Pakistan, 9/11, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Bosnia and one and on the list goes. The muslims have always resorted to murder to further their cause against the infidels have they not?

Try searching Google for the terms "muslim murder" note the results 6,370,000 pages, now replace the word with muslim with Buddhist, 1,340,000 pages. Most of the results on Buddhists at the top are explanations of why murder is not accepted. Guess what is at the top of the muslim search? The News is.

I guess everyone has to make their own mind up as to what is right or wrong. What the sad part is when the Thai government finally did as His Majesty the King asked and started using a softer hand instead of Prime Minister Thaksin's 'Iron Fisted' approach, then is when these muslim murderers started letting the blood flow by killing not only the soldiers but the women, children, monks and teachers who were completely innocent. In a rational person's mind that goes to show the very core of what their values represent and what they will do to achieve their goals.

The thieves called Thailand

2005-11-20T12:56:00.000-05:00

From the muslim point of view this is all Thailand is, thieves. They have robbed their land, their rights to jobs, and even stolen their ability to practice their religion and social rights as humans.

Here muslim's have lived in a land that was beautiful and they were content just being muslim. The one hundred years ago the government cam and took over their land and began laying down new rules of who they need to respect as leaders.

Now they are discriminated against when it comes to school, work, and even socially as they walk down the street they looked upon as second-class citizens. They are ridiculed and made fun of by the public. They do not get the same amount of protection or rights as the Buddhist citizens. They feel they are even targetted by the government for mistreatment.

The Tak Bai incident? Here the muslims feel that their friends were being held without cause unjustly and were simply protesting it, taking a stand, and the government responded by piling the protestors into the trucks with the intent to suufocate them on the long ride to the holding facility. They succeeded, there were 70+ muslims killed by the soldiers that day.

Obviously protesting in public displays were not working, so they resort to killing anyone who stood by the government either directly or indirectly. Monks, teachers, children, adults and definately the soldiers were now clearly the people that had to lose their lives to get the attention to their situation. Once the muslims begin getting captured it is time to begin calling for some extra help from Malaysia, Pakistan, Iran and any other muslim countries that can convinced to come offer some assistance in the fight.

Will it end? Yes when the government pulls their people out of their land, and when they relinquish the land back to the original owners.

The government is tired

2005-11-19T10:28:00.000-05:00

Here Thailand has taken over a few provinces and improved the lives of the people in them. How they they have any feelings of resentment? They have even formed an organization to fight the government.

They are muslim, but they still get healthcare when needed. They still have police protection shoudl problems occur locally. They are still given the chance to make some money and provide for their families. Yet they wish to fight back and resist for some unknown reason?

Day by day the problems begin getting worse. They start getting violent and attack police officers and soldiers. Eventually they start attacking those who support the national government. Now they attack a military base killing soldiers and stealing over one hundred guns from the base. The guilty people who did this are arrested and in jail, yet they protest their capture, and want them released immediately. Back up arrives, the law breakers are taken away. Some die by accident on the way to their holding cell.

Now they are killing teachers, monks, police officers, soldiers and anyone who does not think like they think. Now they are trying to get like minded radicals to come help their lost cause. Why all the killing?

They seen how Pakistan got free land by the same methods of murderous acts and that is what they want. They want the Kingdom of Thailand to hand over this land to them for free. Why do they want these provinces? Because it belonged to them a long time ago. Well in reality England belonged to Rome a long time ago, but what would the reaction be if little tiny Italy began bombing London? It would be an outrage and not accepted anywhere by anyone. Yet they are doing this exactly in Thailand. Most states would call this treason. No matter what the government will offer them it will never be good enough. Sure the 3 Southern-most provinces could be signed over to them, but in 30 years what would stop them from trying to attain the the next 3 provinces? Why wouldn't they go for Grungthep in 40 years?

If the government gives in to this wouldn't it just empower radicals internationally? It would certainly empower them in Thailand. Maybe even causing more bloodshed. Asking politely for peace simply will not work with these people. What is the answer? Allow the criminals to murder our teachers, monk and soldiers hoping for peace? His Majesty the King asked for a softer hand, now they have stooped to beheadings. Softhandedness just does not seem to be helping the situation.

This is the stand of the Thai government.

Why is Thailand a topic?

2005-11-17T11:46:00.000-05:00

Death toll tops 1,000 in Thailand's restive south
Family of nine massacred by rebels
Thai villagers shot dead in raid
Militants kill 9 in ambush
Thais ban mobiles in terror drive

Why is Thailand an issue?
Do the above links not show something is wrong?

Before I show both arguments, here is basically a run down of what has happened. The government of Siam a century ago took over some provinces in the South of what is now Thailand. These provinces were primarily Muslim. But the government while taking them has also provided for them as they have the rest of their provinces.

As the national care programs have evolved all provinces recieved equal treatment in the freedom to practice their religion, rights to health care, military assurance of protection, civil (police) protection and education of the youth. Of course there will always be the rebels and people who dislike the government, but there has never really been any major issues when compared to Cambodia, Burma, Laos, India or Vietnam. The citizens have always gone with the flow, used the government resources and services made available to them and paid their taxes.

Recently with the fad of radicalism among muslim's however, it has become bloody. The Tak Bai incidents acted as gasoline on a small fire. There was a group of young muslim men who were protesting the incarceration of their friends in a local prison. Their friends had been arrested and being held for trial on charges for a military base attack where weapons were stolen. The protest got out of hand and His Majesty's Royal Army was dispatched to get control of the situation. Various riot control tactics , such as tear gas, were used to subdue the group. The protestors were cuffed or bound and placed into the back of a large truck to transport them to a holding facility.

The protestors were put into the back of the truck and they overloaded the truck. I think the exact number dead ended up being 78 people, by the time the 2 hour ride was over. Since then there has been nothing but bloodshed. Some say the Tak Bai incident was intentional murder by the government and some say it was an accident and a sad case of negligence or even poor judgement. What do I say? See ifyou can figure that out.

What is my computer for?

2005-11-14T11:33:00.000-05:00

The reason I finally decided to just go with Linux is because after a careful consideration of what exactly I use my computer for, XP just was not really what I needed. But there will always a be a loss. There will always be something you use in Windows that you can not have on another system. This was always my excuse for not getting a Mac!

Well the things I would lose that I really couldn't live without were as follows:

BlogJet
FeedDemon
WS_FTP Pro
Macromedia Dreamweaver, Fireworks and FlashMX
Skype
Teamspeak
MSN
Navicat (SQL remote database administration)
Limewire
Multiple Languages i.e. Thai

Well these were almost all taken care of! BlogJet unfortunately there is no comparison in Linux, so I just use the Dashboard provided through my browser. I was frustrated, but soon realized this is probably how most people blog anyway.

FeedDemon for my RSS feeds, there really is nothing like it in Linux so for now I just use the RSS reader built into Firefox. Macromedia I just do not use that often and Gimp has replaced Fireworks, Photoshop & Paint Shop Pro. I am starting to like Gimp more than all 3 of them now after finally getting somewhat used to it.

MSN was relaced by another program that allows me to keep my contacts and my MSN account. So my contacts don't even know that I switched anything yet. There is a Linux version of Skype, Teamspeak & Limewire so they are identical. Also I have learned now that the Linux FTP client is much faster than WS_FTP, so I am pleased in this aspect. Navicat that was nice, but it is not missed because in Linux a program is included in the core install package that does the exact same thing.

Multiple languages, now that one impressed the hell outta me! I clicked add keyboard language and it gave me HUGE list of options. I checked English USA, Thai, and Lao. The image below is my Toolbar at the bottom, Launch replacing the word Start, and if you notice the flag, I simply click the flag with my mouse to cycle through the language used. Instant messenger, Limewire and Skype are all running too.

Exciting isn't it? LOL Anyway, back to the Thai Southern insurgency tomorrow. Sorry for delaying it.

Who would want Linux?

2005-11-13T18:09:00.000-05:00

Why in the world would anyone choose Linux? Windows XP is by far Microsoft's most advanced operating system, all the multimedia and networking options a person could want. Too it is the most reliable system Microsoft has ever come up with! XP can be turned on and run for many months at a time before a reboot is ever needed. Finally the end of errors, right?

I bought an HP computer about 3 years ago, and the same day I purchased it I bought the XP Pro upgrade. I setup the computer right out of the box and before even getting online I installed the XP Pro. I was happy for many many months. Eventually I added 1GB of RAM, and upgraded the hard drive. A few more months pass and I added a very nice video card. After 3 more months of all these upgrades going so nicely, my onboard sound card blew and I had distortion, so I replaced the motherboard. This is where problems began.

The system booted fine and everything was ok, until my hard drive was beyond repair due to fragmented files, so I decided to format and start over. While doing this, I found out the hard way that my OEM factory default XP restore disks would no longer work on my system. I called HP & MS both, they both told me and I quote "Can't you just download or borrow a XP disc to make the install work?", I was sooo angry. I said I should not have to do something illegal, I legally own this stuff.

So after several weeks of the computer sitting unused and open, I finally downloaded an illegal version of XP Pro called the Borg edition. I have been running that for nearly 12 months, all while legally owning a copy of XP Pro, I was just hoping someone would attempt to prosecute me. The problem with the Borg edition (probably had to do with my install) was I was forced to keep the DVD-R in my drive or the system would freeze.

So I legally own XP, I illegally use a copy of it, and everything is working fine. So why did I format again and decide to go with Linux? Probably an answer tomorrow if I have time.

Missed a day

2005-11-13T00:49:00.000-05:00

Yes, I missed a day blogging. I actually was installing Linux and working for a very long time to get everything the way I was used to with XP.

The installation took about 30 minutes, then downloading the things I needed. It is so hard to use a computer that is empty, one of the reasons I hate formatting and even buying new. I had to spend almost two hours getting the software in. What did I need?

An FTP client
A Database editor
An image editor
Skype
MSN
Firefox
Limewire

Then I had to configure it all. Importing all my browser bookmarks, log into all my pages to set the passwords, configure the desktop backgrounds, animation and styles. I think I got it all set now. It is very comfortable for us die hard XP fans. So why did I switch? I will go into details tomorrow, it is one of those dreaded stories that Microsoft prays nobody will relate.

Southern disComfort

2005-11-11T12:24:00.000-05:00

For those who know me, you already know I am very opinionated. I am maybe even a little (ok very) cynical towards high government positions and stances. There is one heart wrenching story out of Southern Thailand. For white people like me, those who are married & sort of dropped into the Thai culture, it is a relentless never-ending story. To most of America though, it is still untold.

So the next couple blogs I do on this subject will be very well thought out. I knew all along that I had an opinion on the matter, and realized just a few days back that I am really too un-informed to have an opinion on it. I only hear what the Thai media wants me to know.

I have for the past two years had nothing but disgust for the television news media in the USA, the UK and in Europe. Print media too. I truly understand why blogging, though not always the thoughts I would prefer to read, is not like the major media we are used to. They prefer to shock the hell out of us and tomorrows job is always just to shock us more. Blogs are swayed and opinionated, and will always have a ?€?spin?€™ on the content because they are based on people and their thoughts. But really that is not much different than the media on the television is it?

So since I am un-opinionated on the events in Southern Thailand, I will write both sides of the issue. Maybe if I do it well you will not know how I previously felt about the situation. I will expose and speak of the things that the Thai media tries to hide, but I will not be taking a side with the insurgency of the radicals. I just want the fullest description possible to fit on a blog screen. Just a hint as to what is upcoming. Catch you all soon, gotta run now.

www.youwantwhat.com ?

2005-11-10T14:17:00.000-05:00

So dad finally has convinced me to help with his domain name setup and website. I am now CFO of Excite.com, end of story yacht shopping today.

Seriously now, he wants a domain, we buy it, now we need a server. So we find a nice $30 per year server and get a lease on that. We setup the e-mail accounts, upload a content management system, create web forums and start telling family about it. I think he even painted the URL on the back of his horse trailer so that when he took the horses camping and trail riding he would be getting visitors.

Many months pass and there are now 13 registered members at the website. 3 are me, 2 are him, 2 are friends, the rest was family. Ohh and there was one person who signed up within a week of creating it, we can only assume the webhost.

I posted about 4 news articles on the front page, he posted one or two. One was to let everyone know that the hay was being cut in a few weeks, another was to let everyone know that the hay has been cut now.10 months pass and there are about 6 forum threads and the same number of visitors, some who had not been in there since signing up.

Finally a year passes and he does not bother renewing the domain name. But now, one of my girls made a blog for him. He has even posted to it for the first time! I wish you much luck dad, and don’t worry NOBODY on the net can spell, you are not alone. If nothing else maybe the grandkids will help encourage him to use it. He has so much wisdom he could write just about anything on horses and farm machinery, but I think he has a complex about his speeeelling.

Google is Pushing Privacy

2005-11-09T10:44:00.000-05:00

Or so some would say. There are always rivals who will spat out only negative ideas about their competitor’s advances in technology. Too there will always be the paranoid conspiracy theorists who complain about Google helping Big Brother and invasion of privacy, of course this is after they hit their JFK forums, read the latest blogs about where Elvis was last spotted, publish to their website more evidence they found on Rosswell, Instant Message someone on the MENA connection and tighten down the Aluminum foil helmets on their head.

Here is some interesting info I found and I actually seen this on a blog…

Google is announcing as I type a new feedreader - a first generation one, but full text, which I think is the best approach. It's not up yet, but it will be shortly, in their Labs section.

Google also announced its work on determining sex of a person using pattern recognition in photos. This is a first step toward ID'ing faces, then searching by face. Cool.

Yahoo, by the way, also showed some cool photo stuff, a flickrstream that shows tags and images by cluster a long a timeline.

So they are close to face recognition, in the future we may able to search the net for a particular face. Before everyone gets to making a fuss about it, consider what is the difference in going to your public library and finding the same picture in a high school yearbook? It doesn’t matter what logic tells us, the minority and especially their competition will claim it is unethical. It’s sad the way powerful yet innocent technology is hindered.

Wanna know some facts? Right now today, with the proper money anybody can listen to your telephone conversations, see everything you type & everything you read on your computer, know what your favorite television shows (or at least which one’s you watch), watch your car’s every movement, the speed and acceleration/braking levels you use, and even trace your walking steps within 5 feet if you have a mobile phone. Ohh yes and most know that the size of wireless cameras are as small as a dime now.

For less than $5,000 USD you can have 40 video cameras placed where you would like, wire video and microphones through the vehicles, add GPS covert tracking logging system to the vehicles, and have full access and logging of all computer use on any network. You people complain about Google? I personally am more scared of the criminals who have vendettas. Maybe if Google can help them better find their targets people would consider more closely the way they treat one another!

My Parents the Computer Guru's --Part II

2005-11-08T15:49:00.000-05:00

So the 90’s have arrived and so had Tandy. Man were we ready for the old C128 now was just not cutting it when it came to really advanced things like word processing and we all wanted some of those great DOS programs. This was the time when we were really starting to move. Our first installation of Windows, we were well excited and frustrated with the complexity both.

I can’t find an advertisement, but I know the system specs. We were running at a whopping 16Mhz, and had 640k of RAM still shared with video of course. But the cool thing was we now had 256 colors! Whoa, dang near photographic quality huh. Beats the hell outta the old 16 colors we were stuck with all this time.

<<16>>>

A few years later we upgraded to a 66Mhz machine with Windows 95 and a dashing 32MB of RAM. The next couple years we had nothing but sound cards frying and drivers never working and finally when we get to the point we are able to fix things ourselves a couple more years had passed and the parents were alone we all had moved out… This is the 700Mhz point in time, dad decides internet access is a good thing that not only the kids like but now he does too.

Another 2Ghz later dad has decided he is ready for his own domain name. What did he just say??!! He can’t even check his mail on his own, or dicern the difference between a popup advertisement and an instant message. All this and he is not interested in doing a homepage, rather he wants a full blown website with his own dot com name!

How did I get myself into this??? I’ll tell you about his website tomorrow.

My Parents the Computer Guru's --Part I

2005-11-07T14:24:00.000-05:00

We have always had computers since they came out. Growing up dad spent countless thousands to keep us all technologically in step with the times. I was riding in a 1976 Pinto in 1984, but I had a Commodore 64.

I loved my C64, and was always into my manuals on learning the fundamental of Basic. I actually was very good with basic by the time I was 10 years old or so. Creating databases and quizes that would actually base the content on your previous entries and such. But time was short for the C64, there was an upgrade in store. Thanks dad! OMG we are getting a Commodore 128!

A few years pass and we are now up to a Commodore 128 with the speech sythesizer module and three not 2 but 3 5.25” floppy disk drives. Man was I was stylin! 128k of memory (of course shared with video) this was great so much more fun to have. Anyone remember the original versions of the game Test Drive made by Accolade wow. Those were the days.

The Commodore 128 was so advanced that the keyboard gained about 35% of it’s depth. By the way the video out was a composite RCA on the side of the keyboard. The two black plugs on the right were for our joysticks, which also were hot-swapable with Atari! Talk about your multi-system compatibility. It was Plug and Play too! No such thing as drivers in these days. But if your computer was running while you plugged it in, it would crash.

A few more years pass and we are in the 90’s, time for another upgrade. We did it and did it well. We went Tandy baby all the way. More on that another time, I am outta time now.

Ware's my control at?

2005-11-06T16:12:00.000-05:00

So here I was, 4–5 seconds at any website and it would refresh to 2–3 other sites. As soon as it had the sites open, my router would then just stop, and had to be unplugged to reset. So everytime I turned on my browser it would shut down the entire network.

So I was going to Download.com and I got several software apps to fix this serious problem. Keep in mind too that as soon as the page loaded I had hit the stop button to have the few seconds I needed to search, then kill the pop up windows, click the download link, kill the popups, and save the file to my desktop. While it downloads, the browser needs to stay open, so I am constant killing more popups. So the whole process took me about 5–-6 hours!

Anyway, the software I downloaded and used was in the following order:

Ad-Aware
Hijack-This
Microsoft Anti-Spyware
Webroot
Spy-Sweeper
eWidow

Ad-Aware found 37 problems, but didn’t fix my issue, Hijack this found nothing, Microsoft found 12 files that Ad-Aware didn’t properly get rid of, but the problem persisted. Web root found 3 issues, but still the popups were coming. Spy Sweeper did nothing at all, but it looks like it will prevent the unwanted targetting in the future, so it will remain running. The last one did it!

I downloaded eWidow, installed it, got up the next morning after it did everything automatically while I slept. I woke up and have not had a popup since! So eWidow did fix it. But like Ad-Aware it seems good and they update at first, but eventually after getting famous making their money from everyone seeing it work, they will stop updating their definitions, so of course I will not pay money for it. I buy nothing from no-name companies on the net that will require an update. Nobody stays in business long enough to continue updating.

Those few such as Ad-Aware who do stay in business just make me angry the way they use people and get away with it. If I were a paying customer of Ad-Aware and got hit with the same thing I had a couple days ago I would have had a phone call from some sort of law enforcement agency by now telling me to stop calling the company. Real support is such a rare thing on the net. I guess that is why it is considered easy money.

Don't click ANYTHING!!!

2005-11-05T14:01:00.000-05:00

The best thing about your parents getting online is the way they click each and every message that comes on their screen. You tell them not to click anything and once you have them convinced and taught, they then are to scared to accept incoming pictures of your children, or a chat conversation with MSN!!

I have been in this stage for nearly 3 years and still mine have not caught onto it. My 8 year old can differentiate between a pop-up and a real system message, it drives me nuts that my parents can’t, then a couple days ago one of the rarest things happened. So rare that it has only been done one time before and that was 4 years ago…. I infected myself!

I turned on Internet Explorer to test the look of a website, got a pop-up and accidentally clicked it. I immediately felt stupid, but it was too late. It degraded quickly from that point on. First there was a little bit of browser redirecting, then suddenly I had no control at all. It didn’t matter what page I was on, the browser would go to a different page within 5 seconds. Then it got worse, if the pop-ups were permitted to load fully it would reset my router!

So the pop-ups were able to crash my home network now! Now I know if my son gets popup problems he can make my entire network crash. How is this legal?!!! Can’t something be done? Malware, Adware, Spyware, wares my control at? I did fix it. More on that tomorrow.

Back to the questions on Google

2005-11-04T10:53:00.000-05:00

Consider how they work, the Google employees are known for combining a hard work ethic with roller hockey games in the parking lot. Google encourages the employees to have fun with what they do. Because of this fun we have gained many of the tools that we now use. For example as a ‘way to have fun’ they created GoogleTalk, it was so good and so fast that they decided to put into The Lab. The Lab is where Google users get to test beta products. It quickly graduated from the lab and is now just another tool Google offers.

This is how Google works, fun first combined with hard work when you can, rather having fun while working hard can show some serious benefits. Don’t we all wish our boss were more like that? Better yet don’t we all just wish we could work for Google?

The Money

Well of course there is to be money made! It makes the world go ‘round. Google has certainly been seeing their share of it. Their IPO was an amazing $170 per share and it only climbed instantly upon announcement. It costs more to get into Google stock than Ford, IBM & General Motors combined! How and why?

They do of course have an advertising program. It is one of the best pay per click systems out there. They profit well from this. We will do as Google and divide the advertising system (Google Ads) into the two categories that they do. First we have the Adsense program. Being one of the easiest ways for people to make money on the internet, anyone can get an Adsense account and slap a banner on their site. The only catch to the system is who will be advertising on the banner?

Adwords is the program name for the advertisers who use the Google Ads program. Why would someone pay to advertise? Well more traffic, traffic is the key to money on the internet, the more traffic the more money – that simple. But why are more and more companies using Adwords for their advertising program? Because Adwords will only place their advertisements on pages deemed to be in the same category or containing the same keywords they selected to use. So it all comes back to the same question, why Google?

Because their search engine spidering and processing is the best out there. They obviously have created the best search engine with all their hard work and fun along the way, they now see the profits.

More to come on Google, right now I need to go get me some somtam, eggs and rice.

A year and I don't notice it!

2005-11-03T13:04:00.000-05:00

So I come home, lay my stuff down on my desk and walk into the kitchen. My computer stars beeping, I walk back to see what it is, and it is asking me to pair the device. What is that? So I click it and it shows a wireless headset on my screen. My bluetooth headset is trying to connect to my computer. I have had this thing for a year now and it has never done it before. Ohh my cell phone is off, so it is looking for a connection.

So I click pair, and enter the 4 digits that it uses. Pairing successful it says! Now what? I Google to see if it could possibly be used as a replacement for my speakers. Sure enough it can, and microphone. Wait a minute... So I can put my wired headset away for good?

I followed the instructions from a forum, then turned on Teamspeak to do a test, and it worked! I quickly turn on Skype, MSN & Winamp -- They all work!

So now this headset can not only be used with mobile phones but also as a replacement for the wired headset at my computer. I am just too happy. That is what always frustrated me that nobody had made a wireless USB headset yet. Sure they have wireless headphones, but not with a microphone. So now when I am talking during a staff meeting I can be doing dishes at the same time. I can be laying down on my couch talking to people on Skype. All I can say is it's about time.

The headset I have you can get at Wal-mart for $50 and it has a killer battery life. Since it uses a single AAA battery I get 22-29 hours of talk time and more than 3 weeks of standby time. The headsets that use the rechargable batteries get about 10% of that. The exact model is a Motorola HS805, and as far as I know has the best battery life of them all. Of course you will need a $30 USB bluetooth dongle if your computer does not have USB built in. Ohh and don't worry about the thought of carrying the weight of a battery on your ear, it weighs about the same as all the other bluetooth headsets.

So I am very happy, if you call me on Skype and hear a lawnmower running in the background you will now know why. So what are you waiting for? Go get one and be connected, the easy way!

Why Google?

2005-11-02T13:01:00.000-05:00

The biggest complaint I see and tune my ear to on the internet is the way Google is taking over anything and everything. Even one of my favorite blogs has mentioned this situation in a post here. Though I can see the worry, and maybe even agree with it somewhat when I seen images such as the ones below.

What I don't understand is why people can't realize how it has become this and why it will continue along this path. What has Google done that nobody else has done? Consider what they have given and you soon will realize why they have the power they do.

Google.com - The greatest search engine of all time. The most powerful and accurate search. Why? Because they did not concern themselves with getting paid by people who wanted a higher rank. Too they seen the tricks webmasters were doing such as hiding the word sex in their pages simply by using the same color fonts etc. They put an end to cheating to gain your rank in the results. Therefore we have accuracy.

Answers - Have you ever had a problem or question that you are totally stumped by? You have searched for answers for so long and have found nothing, many times you wish you could just pay a field expert a few dollars to explain it to you? Now we have Google Answers. You have a question you can post your question and set the amount you are willing to pay for it to be answered. When satisfied with the answer, you complete the deal by paying the researcher who answered it. If you are good in a particular field you could make a few extra dollars here. Maybe it is nothing you would ever use, but even if you don't use it, it is quite entertaining to read. It is amazing that people will pay $50 for you to find a phone that has this or that feature and tell them where they can order it!

Maps - One of the most infamous Google features. The mapping program is thought to be the very best by most anyone who uses it. All over the internet you see people asking how they can show the location of their business online using a Google map instead of MapQuest or Yahoo. Very intuitive almost gliding navigation. Images load ultra-fast, just what the public has so longed for.

Print - Incredible resource for students, the web due it's abundance of incorrect information, is often not accepted anymore by teachers for research sources. Google has fixed that, with Print you can read and search only published document that are in printed circulation. Again making the internet more reliable.

Scholar - Along the same lines as print, this is a real source of information, not some idiot typing on a blog.

University Search - Keeping your search only within the site of the specific school you are searching. Have you ever typed 'admissions office' in a search engine??

Groups - This one is a newer feature to the Google family, basically is it a free discussion group. Can't find the group that fits what you would like to discuss? Create one! Great for finding people of like mind, or even for people who have differing opinions and maybe we can come together to learn from each other? Or maybe it is a great place to just argue! LOL

Froogle - Finding the lowest price on anything is made simple by Google. I have personally never used this service but I do know 2 people who swear by it.

These are all the services Google uses it's search tools with. The tools and applications they offer are what has put them beyond number one, and in a zone that nobody can touch them.

Gmail - Ever have to delete e-mail messages because your inbox was too full, or getting there? Not anymore, with Gmail Google offers it's users more than 1GB of storage. Amazing to compare that with Hotmail & MSN's measly 5mb. Wait Gmail now offers 2GB! Ohh hold on, now they are offering 2.6GB and up and up it will continue rising. Eventually Gmail will take over the .... too late.

Picassa - People say this is the best way to share photos online. Personally I know only 3 people that use it, I think it is just as fast to mail the pictures since Gmail, I no longer have to worry about the pictures not fitting in the inboxes of those I send to.

Google Talk - Finally Google has an instant messenger! Same as all the others expcept there are no advertisements. You can send files, messages, and yes even voice communication to other members. I have this and use it, this is my private IM, the one that nobody gets access to my userlist on.

Google Earth - A major deal when it happened, Google bought out a company called Keyhole. Satellite imagery, you can virtually tour the globe, and some places (such as the Iraqi Grand Palace or Grand Canyon) is in very high detail. This program was used by news agencies for thousands of dollars each license and Google bought it, turned it loose on the web as a browsable globe and then released the software open and free to the public. It is very amusing and kinda cool to play with such expensive software on your laptop.

Blogger - The internet as you know if you are reading this is being divided into communities. Blogging communities, are groups of people who tend to write on the same matters and is used by all of us who never had the proper grammar to be a reporter. Google has taken over the internet completely by taking the blogging. All information you put into your blog is catalogged into Google instantly now. Making Google again the most reliable search, especially for current events.

So with all these features, where is the money? After all isn't that what the world is run on? What could possibly be the next step for a company that has done it all? Why has Google done nothing but give give give? They must be on the take somewhere to have their stock at such high untouchable (better than blue chips) amounts, right? Can they be stopped? Would you want to stop them with everything they do for the public?

Maybe I will post the answers to these questions in a few days. Right now I need to go pick up my girl from school.

Can't get enough of the country

2005-11-01T19:54:00.000-05:00

The kids seem so bored the days they do not get to go out to grandpa's farm. It doesn't matter if they are shoveling out the horse stalls in the barn, helping cut the grass, bailing hay or even slaughtering the chicken. This is one of the things we did last weekend at the farm, slaughtering the chicken.

Though initially I don't think Daniel really knew what was going to happen. He seemed to show so much affection for that rooster. I think that one was only alive for about five or six minutes afterhe was holding it. When I seen the children trying to photograph the actual cleaning of the chicken I was a bit upset. Anyway those won't be posted.

The thing that is so fascinating is it really doesn't matter what they are doing when they are at the farm. They are content just throwing a ball back and forth for the entire day. Even though they can do that at home, it just must not be the same to them.

Speaking of Daniel, he was showing off to his brother that he could jump up on his favorite horse bareback and ride with no saddle or reigns. One of the very few moments that I actually was recording video. I always seem to miss these moments, but I was very happy to have caught this one.

Before you ask, yes he did bounce when he hit the ground, and yes it did hurt. He was limping around for about an hour after this ride!

I have tried to think of my own youth and I remember being bored out of mind unless I was at my cousin's house or they were at mine. So I can kinda understand why they find such pleasure with having their 'own special place' to go. The days we created our own clubs, and all gave ourselves new nicknames, not too far in the past. We must have had 50 different clubs because the following day we always forgot either our nicknames or the name of the club itself.

It does scare me when I see them walking around my new $400 digital camera. I don't know how many times I told Tai 'both hands, hold it with both hands' as she's running with it. All this fear because I don't want to replace it, and yet when I am not looking they all are able to grab some of the greatest pictures that I would never have got!

The picture to the right Tai got while walking around the pasture, probably holding the camera in one hand! I have never seen a horse sticking it's tongue out before and holding it there.

Sometimes there are pictures that I take and make sure that I don't share or let the children see. The bottom picture is one of those. I don't want the children to find humor in the death of anything, but this one I just had to take because there are things that made it funny at the moment. One of the most annoying commercials on television in the USA is for an insurance company named Aflac. In these commercials a duck is always quacking the Aflac, as I was walking by the cutting area I just happened to notice the head of the duck sitting and I know it sounds sick, but I couldn't help but think of that annoying commercial.

The only one's who would even comprehend what I meant by it are those who have seen these commercials. For the international viewers, you all can just assume I am a sick person.

Aflack!

Bangkok Post has seen our newest addition...

2005-10-31T22:55:00.000-05:00

This article was written by Tony Waltham of the Bangkok Post on August 10, 2005

A group of writers from around the world have come together to write about their favourite Thailand-related subjects at http://www.thai-blogs.com, writes Richard Barrow of Sriwittayapaknam School. The group is quite varied with both Thais and foreigners. Some of them have regular daily and weekly columns while others blog occasionally as guest writers.Some of the most popular subjects blogged about include teaching in Thailand, superstitions of Thailand, Thai food, tourist attractions in Thailand, Thai life and culture, and do’s and don’ts when visiting Thailand.

Richard also mentions that he also has about 400 Sriwittayapaknam School students now blogging at http://www.srinaiweb.com/diary, where he says they are writing about a variety of subjects from daily life at home and school.The main language is Thai though a number of them are also writing in English. The youngest blogger is 10 years of age and Sriwattayapaknam is the first school in Thailand to have a web site where students are regularly writing blogs.

Another innovation is “radio blogs,” also known as podcasting, where some students record a story or a song. Sriwittayapaknam is the first school in Thailand to do regular radio blogs and the main school web site has RSS feeds that you can subscribe to so as to download the latest podcasts onto MP3 players.

Source- Bangkok Post August 10, 2005

As a long time member, reader, and contributor of the Paknam Web Group's collection of now over 40 websites, I would like to personally say thank you for your article, and the honest portayal of what exactly is done by the group as a whole and especially the students as well as the reasons they are done.

For those who are not yet familiar, please check out the links at the top right of this blog. It will surely be the fastest way you could ever learn anything about the country of Thailand!

VoIP Choices and my choice

2005-10-31T04:12:00.000-05:00

My bills have really taken their toll this past 8 months. So I have been eager to try and consolidate a few and hopefully save some cash. Here is what I have done, and I hope to try a few more options out to see if I can make them a bit lower even soon.

Regular expenses monthly...

Telephone $32
Business line $44
Cable TV $88
Cable Gamer's Extreme Internet $79
Long Distance $24
International calling cards $20

Total about $295 with taxes included each month

I made some phone calls, hit a few websites and went to Best Buy. I had everything changed and set up in about 2 hours time to the configuration that it is currently at. I first went to BestBuy and bought a satellite dish and reciever & a Vonage adapter. When I got home I called the cable company and told them to disconnect the television and I only wanted to keep the internet access. I then installed the satellite dish and activated it. So my kids are happy now.

Next was the telephone. I installed the adapter for Vonage, well plugged it in is all that took, 1 wire to the cordless phones, 1 wire to the power outlet. I went to the Vonage website and opened an account with 2 lines. My local area code was not available yet, so we chose one area code in the same city my wife's brother lives in, the other was somewhere else in Ohio. We also had to add a toll-free telephone number so that local family can call us like a local call. Everything was active and phone was 'online' in about 2 minutes after that, then another 5 minutes to fill in the 911 emergency number location information.

Our number being local to my brother in law is very nice, he and his wife call many times per week at no cost to them just as though we were living a few blocks down the road from them. The toll free number costs only $0.05 per minute with (I think) 500 free minutes per month. The local family doesn't really use it more than 5 or ten minutes per week anyway because they usually call us from their mobile phones anyway because those have free nationwide long distance.

Calling cards are no longer purchased because calls to Thailand & Laos are now cheaper than our former local in state long distance rates. We have yet to spend more than $10 on international calls since we have done this 6 months ago, and we do make international a couple time each week, most of the time the calls are 30-45 minutes each.

The second line did raise the total amount an additional $10 per month, but still cheaper than the telco. All in all our savings have been noticed. For now it has helped alot, and the Vonage service is just awesome in sound quality.We now pay the following.

Cable internet access (standard broadband) $39
Satellite TV $33
Vonage Telephone Service $34
Long Distance (international only) $10

With taxes we now pay about $120 per month and are saving $175 per month.

I have found out that by combining a standard VoIP service such as Free World Dial (FWD) and or Skype we can save more than 75% off the phone costs, by going with multiple providers. I just have not yet determined if it is worth leaving a single all in one provider such as Vonage yet. Seems the work in setting it up plus the multiple bills to pay can get confusing. We'll see, and I'll let you know.

The first of just a few

2005-10-31T03:59:00.000-05:00

I will be moving my website contents (the little that exists) over to this new blog. Why? Because it is free. For the amount of time I have for blogging, or lack of, I should not have to pay a monthly hosting cost. So I am doing it the smarter way. The way that everyone else has already picked up on.

I guess I was just stubborn in letting Google take over the world. The more I think about it though, they already have really. So why fight it? Enjoy the freedom before they start making us work for them, the commies. Well if you think about that I am in reality working for them now right? This is their goal to own all information and now they just got my small contribution and thoughts added to their high tech potluck.

Again, why fight it?

More will be coming soon, and certainly more on my favorite subject of Google.