The Ramblings of Ken

For all of you Firefox fans out there (if you don't think you are a Firefox fan, YOU ARE!), Mozilla Firefox 1.5 was just released! Get it while its hot! Get it at http://www.mozilla.com/

(Image courtesy of the Mozilla Coporation)

Okay, guys, I have over done it. I don't need an MSN Messenger account for each computer that I am on. I am going back to having ONE MSN Messenger account. You can delete all of them off of your contact lists besides kennypoo <at> gmail.com. That is the one I will be using. If you need to know where I am at and which computer I am using at the time, it will be reflected in the display picture that I am using at the time.

I am on TV guys! Well, at least in Utah, on Comcast viewers' televisions. I am in the Comcast Cares Day commercial. Look for me in a black Comcast Cares Day t-shirt (like everyone else) and a Denver Broncos cap. I don't think this commercial plays anywhere else except for here in Utah, so I won't be that famous.

(Image courtesy of Comcast)

Linux is awesome! It can run on anything that has some kind of a processor in it. I love it! I was way excited when I found out about six months ago that you can install a version of Linux on the WRT54G family of routers!

Well, I am using a version called OpenWRT (http://openwrt.org). OpenWRT opens up your router to a whole new world of possiblities. For example, I was able to turn one of my routers into a wireless card for my computer! I pretty much reversed the functionality! OpenWRT is also what allowed me to have a statistics page on my site. You can install a variety of Linux programs on the router and run them.

The latest version of OpenWRT (Whiterussian RC4) just came out. It now, finally, includes a web interface so that even newbies can run it. It is way easy to use the web interface to change the router's basic settings. However, you have so much more power and control over the router's functions than you do with the firmware that comes installed on it from the factory.

Way to go OpenWRT team!

(Image couresty of Linksys)

Yay! Daemon Tools for Windows XP x64 Edition has been released! The 64-bit computing community is now happy! I've been waiting for this for a long, long time. I can now play my unplayable games on Windows XP x64 Edition!!!

It sure is nice to see this icon in my system tray again... ahhhh... sigh of relief.




Daemon Tools can be obtained at http://www.daemon-tools.cc

Well, guys, I gave in. I got a cell phone. Here is a picture of the phone I currently have. It is an LG VX-3300.

I had a different phone to begin with. The guys at Alert Cellular sold me a crap phone that really sucks. It was an Audiovox CDM-8910. I brought it to work and plugged it in to my computer and it shut off and wouldn't turn back on! I went back and they tried to exchange the phone for the same one, but I wouldn't let them. The reviews on the Audiovox phone are horrible!

The LG VX-3300 is simply a phone. There are no fancy features, no camera, no online capabilities. All I wanted was a phone, and that is what I got.

Now my friends and family are happy because they can get a hold of me when they need to. I suppose it was a good decision. I am really liking my "mobile abilities" so far.

(Image couresty of Verizon Wireless)

Some of you are going to think that I am totally clueless and that I must live on some other planet. I've never played Dance Dance Revolution until last night. I went out and bought it so that I could have the dance pad that comes with it. I recently purchased Karaoke Revolution Party, which supports the dance pad. That's why I bought the game at all.

I hated it at first, but after keeping at it a little until I was able to do some more difficult songs, it turned into great fun! My favorite song to dance to so far is "I Just Wanna Live" by Good Charlotte. I am going to have to practice a lot, though, to get really good at it. Anybody want to have a DDR party???



(Image courtesty of amazon.com)

If you search for "Ken's Ramblings" my site comes up as the very last hit. Here is a better search... I come up as the only result...

Google Search for my site

I finally found a fix to this annoying problem!!! Windows has had a bug in it where the tool tips in the system tray on the taskbar would hide behind the taskbar, like this:




I would get so annoyed by it! I like to put my mouse over the clock and have the date pop up as a tool tip. I also like to be able to put my mouse over any icon in the system tray and see what program it is running there.

This is the fix... The registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\UserPreferencesMask needs to be changed from hex:9e,3e,07,80 to hex:90,32,07,80.

Now my tool tips all come up like they should!

"In the end, it seems the only real winner after a hybrid purchase is the environment."

An in depth analysis of the cost savings (or loss) from purchasing a hybrid vehicle can be found here: Is Hybrid Worth It?

So far it just isn't worth it at all to purchase a hybrid vehicle. The cost savings associated with fuel just does not come out to be what one would expect. The cost of monthly payments on the vehicle outweighs any fuel cost savings. Hybrid just is not worth it at all yet.

I decided to put my parent's $350 digital camcorder to use and I implemented a webcam feature for my site. It just sits around and never gets put to use, so I will give it some usage! I don't know if it will stay up forever, but it is online for now. If you click on the picture it will take you to a full-featured webcam page.

Mom: When you read this let me know if this is going to be a problem... :)

Check out the cool new statistics page! Just click on the link on the right that says stats. I have a new graphical traffic monitoring system that runs 24/7. Now I can see at what time everyone is visiting and/or using up my bandwidth.

Two NASA scientists are proposing an idea in which a 20-ton vehicle would tow asteroids away from Earth, should one ever be on a path to strike Earth. Do the movies Deep Impact or Armageddon ring a bell?





From the article:

[blockquote]Now, two NASA astronauts have presented a plan for an “asteroid tractor”—an unmanned, 20-ton spacecraft that uses the invisible bond of gravity to gently pull an asteroid into a new, non-threatening orbit.

“You can think of it like a big elastic band between the two pulling them together,” said Edward Lu, who presents the concept for the spacecraft with fellow astronaut Stanley Love in the Nov. 10 issue of the journal Nature.

The tractor would hover above the surface of the asteroid, without touching it, and use gravity as a towline. If the spacecraft maintains a consistent distance between it and the asteroid, and always tows in the same direction, this method won’t disturb the asteroid’s rotation or composition.[/blockquote]

Interesting idea you say? I think it would really work. It might take a long time to actually alter the asteroid's orbit, but it would work...

(Image courtesy of space.com)

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/051109_asteroid_tractor.html

Garbage doesn't belong on a webserver. I finally figured that out. I put an .iso image for a friend in the /images directory on my server so that he could download it. Well, I forgot about it and left it there. Everytime that someone wanted to leave a comment the php scripts would analyze the .iso file in the /images folder and try to figure out what kind of image it was. Well, needless to say, it couldn't figure it out and it took forever to generate the comments page. Sorry about that guys.

Moral of the story: If it doesn't belong on your server, don't put it there!

Wow!!! It really worked!!! I followed http://www.jeffpatch.com/?postid=98 and it worked!!! At first I tried rubbing really hard and I actually caused a noticeable darker spot in the LCD. Hopefully I can get that to go away. But, the stuck pixel is now working exactly as it should!!! Yay!!! For those of you that didn't know, I had a stuck red pixel toward the upper right hand corner of the screen. It is gone now!

The Catholic Church announced today that they reject the idea of "intelligent design." They say that the theory of evolution is perfectly compatible with the teachings in Genesis.

See Evolution in the bible, says Vatican

I'd just like to share some of my thoughts concerning this matter. I believe that evolution is real. It has been shown and proven beyond any reasonable doubt that species do evolve. Genetic mutations do, in fact, occur very randomly in nature. Sometimes these mutations are advantageous to the species and the genetic mutation remains with the species and becomes a prominent dominating characteristic of the species.

However, just because of the fact that I believe in evolution it should not be implied that I think that the human race evolved from any other species. I believe that we are on an entirely different level. We were created in the image of God by Him. God did create the universe and organized it in a perfect manner. There is a Supreme Being who is in control over all of this "chaos."

So... I believe in evolution AND in intelligent design. Can't they co-exist?

It is about time! President Bush visited Brazil for the first time today. He gave the only speech that he will give on his three-nation Latin America trip.

We need to improve our relations with Brazil. We need to be good friends. The Brazilian people are awesome! They have a lot to contribute to the world and to us as citizens of the United States of America. I hope that we can have good relations with them and help each other to become better countries.

(Image courtesy of voanews.com)

Here are some pictures of my new LCD screen along with my computer... enjoy

It is starting to get cold here now. The snow level is also slowly creeping down the mountains. Soon it will be here in the valley floor. Are you guys all ready for winter? I am. I love the winter. I love the snow. I love the sports and various activities that you can only do in the winter time. Sledding, tubing, skiing, snowmobiling, making snow angels, and making snowmen are all things that I miss in the summer time. I am getting excited now! When it gets really freezing cold it can get a little annoying, but it is all a sacrifice that makes it worth it. Bring on the winter! I'm ready!

[url=http://www.skithebeav.com]Ski the Beav![/url]

(Image courtesy of Beaver Mountain)

My apologies to those of you who may have tried to use the "Contact Me" function in the menu on the right. It was not working and I couldn't figure out why. I finally figured it out today. My virus scanner has a port blocking feature which "prevents mass-mailing worms" from sending e-mail. This was blocking communications on port 25, which is required to make a connection to an SMTP server to send e-mail. It is now working correctly. If you want to use the "Contact Me" feature in the menu, feel free to do so.

IBM has slowed light down to 1/300th of its speed using materials that are commonly available. This could be the breakthrough that allows computers to run using optical technology rather than electroncs. An optical based computer could run much faster and use far less power than the energy hogging CPUs that we have today. This is exciting news to me!

From the article at ZDNet:

[blockquote]The chip, called a photonic silicon waveguide, is a piece of silicon dotted with arrays of tiny holes. Scattered systematically by the holes, light shown on the chip slows down to 1/300th of its ordinary speed of 186,000 miles per second. In a computer system, slower light pulses could carry data rapidly, but in an orderly fashion. The light can be further slowed by applying an electric field to the waveguide.[/blockquote]

Could we see the first optical computers within the next five years?

Once in a while I will listen to Coast to Coast AM late at night. I find a lot of things discussed on the program to be quite interesting, especially when it does not have to do with aliens, ghosts, and the paranormal, which, unfortunately, is not all that often.

Last Wednesday evening Jerome Corsi and Craig Smith, authors of "Black Gold Stranglehold" were on the program. They talk about the conditions of the world's oil supply. I've always felt that there was some kind of conspiracy going on in the world with respect to oil. In the program the tell how the earth has been proven to produce oil in a natural cycle. They say that we aren't rapidly using up some finite supply of oil that will be depleted in 10, 20, 50, or even 100 years.

From the book's description:

[blockquote]Experts estimate that Americans consume more than 25 percent of the world's oil but have control over less than 3 percent of its proven oil supply. This unbalanced pattern of consumption makes it possible for foreign governments, corrupt political leaders, terrorist organizations, and oil conglomerates to hold the economy and the citizens of the United States in a virtual stranglehold. There is no greater proof of this than the direct relationship between skyrocketing gas prices and the explosion of wealth among those who control the world's supply of oil.

In Black Gold Stranglehold, Jerome Corsi and Craig Smith expose the fraudulent science that has made America so vulnerable: the belief that oil is a fossil fuel and that it is a finite resource. This book reveals the conclusions reached by Dr. Thomas Gold, a professor at Cornell University, in his seminal book The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels (Copernicus Books, 1998) and accepted by many in the scientific community that oil is not a product of fossils and prehistoric forests but rather the bio-product of a continuing biochemical reaction below the earth's surface that is brought to attainable depths by the centrifugal forces of the earth's rotation.

Jerome Corsi explores the international and domestic politics of oil production and consumption, including the wealth and power of major oil conglomerates, the manipulation of world economies by oil-producing nations and rogue terrorist regimes, and the shortsightedness of those who endorse expensive conservation efforts while rejecting the use of the oil reserves currently controlled by the U.S. government.

As an expert in tangible assets, Craig Smith provides an understanding of the history of America's dangerous dissociation of the dollar with precious—and truly scarce—metals such as gold and the devastation that would be inflicted on the U.S. economy if Middle Eastern countries are able to follow through with current plans to make the euro the standard currency for oil instead of U.S. dollars.

Black Gold Stranglehold is a thoughtful work that is certain to dramatically change the debate on oil consumption, oil dependence, and oil availability.[/blockquote]

It is time that the US freed itself from dependency on foreign oil. It is time that we use our own resources in our own country. There is an abundance of oil in this country in places like Alaska, the Gulf Coast, and others. We need to take advantage of this and get out of the trap that the middle eastern countries and oil companies have set for us.

(Image courtesy of Amazon.com)

Over this last weekend we had a LAN party in my basement. It was a total blast and I absolutely loved it. However, after it was all over I was too lazy to setup my computer upstairs where it belongs again. I simply took all of the components up there and threw them down somewhere near the computer. I then plugged in the power cord and network cord to the computer and turned it on. So, basically it is serving this website, it is a terminal server, and it is a streaming music server for me to listen to my music at work. Hmmm... maybe when the new LCD comes it will have to become a normal desktop computer again.

I'm looking at a steal of a deal on a 19 inch LCD on newegg.com. I am having a hard time deciding on whether or not I really should buy it. I am leaning toward buying it because LCDs are so convenient when moving your computer around and taking it places. They also save on valuable desk space. Hmmm... unless someone has a good argument on why I should not buy it, I think I will.

This is the one I am thinking of buying: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=24-168-005

EDIT: Too late. I did it. I bought the thing. Another impulse purchase that I could have lived without.... oh well... it will be nice to have.