Entry... 1/1/2000 12:01am

Wishing you all the best! Thanks for reading. Be safe, have fun, and I'll see you when I get back.

This web site is 100% Y2K Compliant.

Entry... 1/2/2000 6:50pm

I'll bet all those people who bought lots of milk, bottled water and a generator are feeling rather stupid right now. What drives me crazy is that the news people are still trying to hype the danger that "could have been." Whenever they do hear of a little glitch, they jump on it with a gleam in their eye. 17 people were without power after midnight! We told you so! We told you so! Sigh. Jeez.

Entry... 1/3/2000 10:49am

I'm at work this morning. It's really quiet. Apparently there were no major emergencies and at least in the infrastructure part of the world, all is well. What happens in the software side of the world remains to be seen. We may not even see any problems until certain dates and rollover points occur. The first month end cycle is going to be fun. I'm happy that it doesn't affect me. And I just heard that they are releasing the hounds early. I'll be out of here once I finish this entry.

The official peanuts website promises to publish the final daily cartoon on January 4th. There are new Sunday cartoons to come, ending on February 13th. Wild speculation ensues. Superbowl. Will Charlie Brown kick the football? Valentine's day. Will he score with the little red haired girl? We just don't know. The path of parody has been trod before.

As far as New Year's Eve celebrations go, I would have to tip my imaginary hat to the French. Splendid! Unfortunately, they had a little glitch with their massive countdown clock on the Eiffle Tower. At about 7 hours to go it halted and displayed some garbage on the screen. Barbara Walters said something about it once, they showed it once, and then it was seen nor talked about any more. There was nothing about it in French news, but you can see that they didn't have it quite right on the Paris 2000 website. That clock now reports that the year 2000 will occur in -1901 ans 11 mois 28 jours 13 heures 1 mn & 46 secs!

Thank goodness for technology! Now you can play WHo Would You Kill? from the comfort and safety of your own home!

Entry... 1/5/2000 5:00pm

And now there is a website for cereal lovers. Hear their online crunch test. That's right: Wav files of somebody chewing cereal.

The Flummery Digest is chock full of off beat news items.

Take a virtual tour of the Eiffle Tower.

The last Peanuts turned out to be nothing more than a quote from his retirement announcement, with a picture of snoopy looking thoughtful. A pity, that.

Eve's Place is a full online catalogue store of erotic prodcuts. Also of note on this site is an Ask Eve section. Strangely, this section is hard to find, but I gave you a direct link to it.

Looking for a rare or hard to get video? Scorched Earth Productions just may have it in stock.

The Funny Firm has a ton of original humor contained within. A good read on a rainy day. Now we need internet terminals in the bathroom.

I'm heading over to Sutter's for happy hour today. It's bittersweet. My coworker is leaving us for a remarkable opportunity, and sticking me with a lot of work. It'll be hard to fill his shoes. It could be good for me. I have an opportunity to learn a lot of the WAN side of the house, and that only makes me more valuable to prospective employers. Bon voyage and bon chance, sir! I tip my glass to you.

Desk pop can count is up by 2 today, and now stands at: 156.

Entry... 1/10/2000 3:49pm

Busy day at work. The big news is that my immediate supervisor has also given his notice. In 3 short weeks, my department will have been halved. I wonder if they might make it worth my while to stick around. I did talk to my new superior today, and let him know that I was interested in taking on some new responsibilities. I'd love to view this as an opportunity to learn some new things. Sure, get paid more, too. Let's see what happens.

I messed around with the design of my Captain's Log index page today. I plan to make some changes to the logs themselves, but that will have to wait until I have more time. I'd love to hear your comments.

Hey junior spelunkers! Visit this virtual cave!

Desk pop can count is up by 2 this past week. It now is: 158.

Entry... 1/10/2000 7:06pm

Well this is frustrating. I stayed home tonight so that I could do some more work on the Suzy Lyall home page (I already added a new section of her poetry), but Road Runner has killed me. I can barely get out to other ISP's like Global2000 since they do reverse DNS lookups. I am quite surprised that I can actually get to my own home page. I guess this one FTP server is not requiring reverse lookup, where all the other ones I want are. So I'm pissed. I've been on hold for an hour now to Road Runner, and I don't intend to hang up now. It's their long distance 800 number dime anyway.

I wanted to change my splash screen on here, but I don't have the nerve to do it when my link to the outside is so tenacious. I will satisfy my urge to upload the following graphic that I drew today by placing it here.

Entry... 1/10/2000 10:21pm

Well, I finally got through to technical support, but there was no joy. Somehow Road Runner has messed up their DNS entries, and their reverse lookup and I can't get it fixed. So I am unable to get my email, nor FTP to the site that I wanted to work on. I can, for some odd reason, get here. So I figured that I would write this status and toss a couple of links on here for now. Maybe tomorrow it will get better. I doubt it, but we can always hope. Do you folks think this is just some wacky coincidence? The day that AOL merges with Time Warner (and Road Runner) my service goes tits up? I think not!

I'll be fairly busy at work tomorrow. I was asked today to attend a Director level meeting, so that I would be on hand to provide technical support if they need it, and drive the internet demo. Could be interesting.

I found another online guitar resource that was pretty cool at Guitar Notes. This next site offers tons of rules for just about any card game. I found the rules for Pedro there, and now I want to play it again. This last link I had found a few weeks agom but forgot to add it to the log, but today it is sort of appropriate! As an alternative to broadband cable modems, how much do you know about ISDN and DSL?

Entry... 1/12/2000 11:05am

You may have noticed yet another big change on my home page. I guess the only thing constant in this world is change. I went back and redid some other menus and did some cleanup. If you notice something broken, let me know! Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the new look.

NYPD Blue is back! I watched the first show of the season last night. It was pretty good. Because of all the interruptions with the baseball playoffs, the holidays, and that new series that ABC wanted to try out, they delayed the start of the show. The nice thing now is that the show will be on every Tuesday night solid for the entire season. No more breaks.

In the "no big surprise" category, my DNS mappings at home are still hosed. So I can't update many of the home pages that I administrate, nor can I receive any mail. I can't even telnet into my mail account to see if I have anything. If you sent me mail, and you are waiting for a reply, I apologize. I hope this is temporary, but as of this morning when I checked, it's a no go.

Entry... 1/13/2000 12:57pm

Wait... wha? Huh? What's this stuff on the ground? SNOW? Aieeeee! Days like this remind me how much I hate winter. Someday I will move away from here, and leave this sort of weather far behind. I'm still trying to get a handle which of my evenings activities will be cancelled.

I was reading in today's Metroland about a "new" local artist named Ellen Cross. I say "new" because she has been in this area for 3 years now, but is just starting to be heard on the local scene. She plays at Mother Earth's a lot, but has no gigs booked right now. I checked out her website, and downloaded some of her Mp3's. Nice work.

Speaking of music, we finally had band practice last night. First time for that in a good month. It was nice to get back into it. From out of nowhere, we just started jamming on different songs, and before you knew it, we had worked through 12 or so tunes. Now I get to learn the words to "Hey Joe" and "Knocking on Heaven's Door." I'm excited though, since we added some dance songs like "Tequila," and "Good Lovin's" as well.

I had a sort of an impromptu meeting with the guy who looks to be my new boss, if you follow the corporate line. He was supposed to ask me about my desktop strategies (blah blah blah) but spent most of the time telling me how great and on the ball his department was at rolling out solutions. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Oh well. I'm just waiting for the severance package to hit the streets.

The internet being the sort of place it is, I found myself pricing truck tractors. You know, Peterbuilts and Macks. Semi's. Heavy duty OTR haulers. Perhaps my wanderlust got the best of me. I wrote a poem recently, and perhaps it was somehow inspired by dreams of getting out there, hauling swinging beef from Ypsilante to San Diego. I called it On the Road.

Desk pop can count: 160! I wonder if I'll make 200 before I get fired? My "boss" to be saw the cans, and told me that one of his buddies collected nothing but Mountain Dew cans. So maybe he understands.

Entry... 1/17/2000 10:55am

BRRR. Albany was featured on the national news this morning, since we are enjoying a balmy 50 degrees below zero wind chill. They expect this weather to continue for much of this week. The up side to this is that it's too cold to snow, and we didn't get the 2 inches that were forecasted for today. I am supposed to go tubing this coming Friday. I hope that it warms up a little. Even 16 degrees will feel like summertime. The good news today is that my home computer is back on track. I got a very short email from Road Runner tech support verifying that there was a DNS problem, and that it was taken care of. Short and sweet, and slow as all get out.

It's busy here at work today. Our DHCP server decided to take the weekend off, so many computers didn't have IP addresses when folks got to work this morning. The biggest problem today is circuit breakers going off all over the building. People are bringing in those little personal space heaters and plugging them in. Pop! Zzzt! Wear a sweater. I dinna have da power tah give ya!

Forensic pathologists describe various aspects of mortis, in assisting them when determining signs of death. There is the ever popular rigor mortis (stiffening), livores (cadaveric lividity, or coloration differences as color fades when the blood settles) and the best determination, but not as well known, algor mortis (this is not to be confused with arbor mortis, which is the death of a tree.) Algor mortis deals with the use of body temperature and cooling rates, quite handy in determinig time of death. Do you also find the similarity to the name of a presidential candidate coincidental? I thought so.

Desk pop can count is up by one: 161

Entry... 1/27/2000 4:23pm

Well, hello. Yeah, it has been awhile. What's going on? I can't believe that Jannuary is almost over. Not much....A lot of snow. Yeah. I hate the stuff. Mmmm? Oh, a little over a foot. The temperatures been better, but that wind chill sucks. I started another night of volleyball this week. We drill for a half an hour and work on technique, and play the rest of the time. Got a few gigs lined up with the band, and I'm singing another 2 songs. Yeah, I know. How did that happen? Oh well.

Superbowl weekend. Guess I'll put my money on the Tennessee Titans. I predict that it's going to be another one sided game, with the AFC team dominating. At least, this is my call. About all we can hope for is a semi-decent media blitz. 2 years ago, the commericials were great. Last year, they sucked big time. I am hoping to see the Pet.Com sock puppet. I love that thing.

It appears that my house is going to become a haven for ferrets of the world. My parents are going to Hawaii next week, and we have been charged with the care and well being of a furry weasel named Friday. He's a chubby little ferrety tub of ferret goo, and not much of a problem. We just let him run around on the floor and play with a bowling ball. The latest news is that there are a couple of ferrets up in Saratoga that are in need of a permanent home, and the thoughtless ruffians charged with their care are now sick of caring for them, and will put them to death in lieu of hanging a poster or two (in order to find them a new home). So, compassionate souls that we are, we are taking them in. Actually, this is my brother's deal and he is right to do it. It's a lot of work to care for ferrets! Those little beggars like to make messes. And they have a tendancy to invest badly, so you have to watch your PE ratio around them.

Desk pop can count is up by 7, to 167

LinkFest. Party on, dudes. Visit Wondergirl!, Elle, Nerd of the Week, Your Mother (A recently defunt band from Southern California. This is how road diaries should be written.) and CHUNK, a bicycle league that takes pride in their home built crafts. If you build it, they will ride it.

A long time ago, I posted a page of rules to Shotgun. Now, someone has their own domain dedicated to this sport. It's nicely done and a lot of fun, so get out there and ride!

Entry... 1/31/2000 11:04am

This just in: Kurt Vonnegut, 77, was taken to New York Presbyterian Hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation, Spollen said. An administrator at the hospital confirmed that the author was being treated but declined to comment on his condition. The fire was reported at 7 p.m. in a fourth-floor bedroom in Vonnegut's four-story brownstone on East 48th Street, the cause is not at this time considered suspicious.

Well, I am disappointed that the Titans didn't win the Superbowl yesterday. At least it was a good game, going right to the last second. The officials didn't make too many mistakes, and there wasn't a single challenge. Was it just me or did most of the commercials seem to be for internet companies? If you missed them - don't sweat - they sucked. All I could think to say after viewing most of the advertisements was "I don't get it." Sock Puppet appeared twice, thus the day was not a complete loss.

I played in a benefit in Ballston Spa on Saturday and ended up getting sick. Perhaps it was the combination of standing for 6 hours in a smoke filled room, McDonald's cheeseburgers, and cheap beer that did it. Perhaps I got a 24 hour stomach flu. Whatever the case, I spent Saturday night mostly awake and most of Sunday on my back. I got to feel better this morning - just in time to shovel out the cars and most of the 6 inch snowfall that we got overnight. Looks like my Monday night volleyball league is off. I think every school in the area shut down. But of course, here I am at the office.

This is probably the last entry for January. I can't believe how fast this year is spinning by. Thoughts of the summer are fast coming upon me. My yacht club fee is due now, so I somehow have to get it together and send that check out. I see that bathing suits are already for sale at local stores. So much fun to be had! Today is my manager's last day here. He found greener pastures at another local firm, so today he takes his final bow and exeunts stage left. Two little mice left. I'm one of them.

Today's Links: "I'm Jesus, this is my story, and I'm sticking to it.", JavaScript Gadgets!, An Online John Prine Shrine (Say that 3 times fast!)

Desk pop can count crawls up by 2, to 169