2008 has been a lot of changes for me. I graduated, I started a real job, and moved out of state. Can 2009 bring as exciting changes as 2008? I hope so.

I bought a new computer. And I love it. I still have my laptop as my primary machine, but I got tired of crappy DVR boxes from Comcast and Cox. So I bought a Dell Studio Slim Desktop PC. I have it hooked up to my Samsung PN50A550 (which I also love). Its perfect as a Windows Media Center computer. It has HDMI outputs on the back, and looks really nice in a horizontal positions. (Please no wise-cracks.) I added a Hauppauge TV Tuner Card which works great as well.

Speaking of my laptop, I just realized I never finished the tale of my ordeal. They sent a tech out to my house to install a new motherboard, CPU, and video card. The heat-sink for the video card wasn't even screwed down. So it works a lot better after that work has been done. It still overheats though if I don't have it on my cooling pad. The graphics will start getting corrupted, then programs will start crashing, and then it will blue screen. *sigh*

Anyways, sometime soon I will finish updating the rest of the site to use Smarty more extensively. (I have already started and in the process left some of the site unusable, oops.)

C# is a fun language to play around with.

Goodnight

I have updated the search results pages to be my branding (a part of my site). Also, I have removed the contextual Amazon links.

One of these days I will look into doing the Google AJAX search, but I ran into two problems: 1) The nav bar is too narrow to hold it so I would have to make it wider. 2) I don't feel like figuring out how to style it right now. I really like Google's APIs though. I have been messing with the Google Maps API for quite some time now, its fun to play with.

I wish!

For those who don't know what I am talking about check out John C. Dvorak. I've never used this service. It only works for email service and has nothing to do with my site so why am I talking about it? I don't know.

Anyways, I updated the Anti-Spam page a little bit. Lots of useful tools and information there.

I finally moved the blog from blogger to my own custom software. I love blogger, but it was time to leave. I now have full control over the blog and can do whatever I want to it. Yay!

Now to get the site back to XHTML 1.1 Compliance.

I am thinking about removing the guestbook off of the website. It doesn't add anything I think, and fighting the spam is a full-time job. I dunno.

I'm also thinking about removing the Headline News page. Why not? I dunno.

I'm extremely tired. This weekend I helped my cousins move. We loaded up 2 25 ft trucks with stuff. I got to drive one too. First time I ever drove anything that big. It was fun.

I'm playing with my guestbook. I decided to remove the captcha and instead query IP Addresses against Project Honey Pot. After 2 days, and about 50 spam entries later, I gave up on that idea. Project Honey Pot blocked more than half, but there was just way too many people getting through. So right now, the captcha is back. Whenever I get this stupid blogging software finally done, I'll use it for comments as well. If it becomes a problem, then I will add the captcha there as well.

Well, I'm trying out something new right now. If you see any links like this and then it links to Amazon. I might put in pertinent normal links to Amazon. Anyways, just something I thought I would try out. I might change my mind. I can do that. I still want to move from blogger, but I want to try to keep the permalinks the same.

Peace Out

The other day I mentioned that I would be moving to Drupal. I changed my mind. I can do that. I'm going to do my own blogging software. Partly because it will be more fun and partly because Drupal is way overkill for my needs. I really like Drupal, but I don't want to move my entire site over to it.

One of these days I'm going to move to Drupal. Blogger is great, but it seems that their primary focus is for BlogSpot users, leaving out all of us who FTP to our own server. The downside is that all the permalinks that I have been using won't work anymore.

In other news, I got back from Disneyworld a couple of weeks ago. It was a fun trip, but very hot and humid. I received blisters the size of acorns. Next time, I think I will buy some Crocs and see how well those works out.

The first day we went to the Animal Kingdom. My least favorite ride was Expedition Everest. It was fun, but I got a little sick on it. My favorite ride was Kali River Rapids. When I went to Disneyland when I was about 6 years old we got on something similar and everybody got wet except for my brother. This time around I was the only one to not get wet. You are in a large raft and you go over a geyser in the beginning. This got my brother wet with my parents (who were sitting across from him laughing). However, they didn't realize that we were now on top of the geyser and as we continued along it came up right after we passed it and soaked both my parents. I've never seen someone go from laughing to crying so fast like my mom. She looked like a wet cat.

The next two days we went to Epcot. There we got to go to the World Showcase. Its neat to see all the different countries and buy souvenirs from them. Its probably as close as you can get to the real thing without actually being there. At the American Adventure there we had the Voices of Liberty, an a cappella group dedicate a song to my parents. The main reason for going to Disneyworld was to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. We wanted to see the show American Adventure, but were disappointed as they were refurbishing it at the time. Test Track was my favorite ride there. It goes up to 65 mph on an outdoor track.

Disney-MGM Studios was next on the list. They had some great rides including The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show, and of course the classic Star Tours.

The following day we went to the Magic Kingdom. There we had a lot of fun with Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Splash Mountain. We bought a picture of the Splash Mountain picture to go along with our original one from Disneyland 16 years ago.

Lastly we went to Downtown Disney where the main highlight of the show was Cirque du Soleil - La Nouba.

That about sums it up. It was a fun trip and hopefully I will get to go back again some time.

Well in October my bandwidth was like double of that in September. Barely the 4th of the Month and I am already at 20% of my bandwidth this month. I know why. My wallpaper is all over MySpace and Hi5. It's killing my bandwidth as every time one of these profiles are loaded, it downloads the image from my server.

I can stop it, easy. I don't really want to though, I mean, it's good advertising for my site. I'm monitoring it right now, although it's a daunting task. There are a few sites that I will be blocking the images after I contact the owners. Reason being is that my signature on the wallpapers don't show up. That is against the Terms of Use of this site. In some cases some of these people could download these images to their server, therefore saving my bandwidth.

I have 2 options, cut off hotlinking to everyone, or cut it off to everyone who hotlinks anew past a certain date. We'll see.

That title is two-fold. The site is completely back up, and I will back up the complete site more.

Well, my site was down for a few days. Some portions of the site are still down. I seem to have the worst luck with hosts. Anyways, the MySQL database got trashed. I am waiting to see if I can get the old data off of the old server before I start re-doing it from scratch. Not a nice prospect. Its partly my fault though, I thought I had a backup, and apparently I didn't.

I'm trying to get everything back up as fast as possible.

Wet, Foggy, Green, Love Potion Number 9, and Flock are added for your enjoyment. See them all.