Wednesday, December 31, 2003

Barnet/Luke the fish is no more. Jennie at work has Nerds and Willy Wonka's Bottle Caps candy.

Caches found:
"Desert Stars"
"Lowcountry Dash Target #3 (SCPFLC2)"
"Octagon Buildings"
"Railroad Locationless: Depots"
"Fading Ads"

Movies watched:
"Daredevil"
"The Rainmaker"
"A Close Shave" (Wallace & Gromit)
"Goldmember" (Austin Powers)
All three of the "Anne" movie series (Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Return to Avonlea)

SpamBayes works excellently with Outlook 2002, and somewhat excellently with Outlook Express 6. It's a snap to install with Outlook, but requires a bit of fiddling and knowledge to be able to setup the OS version. Both work great, however, as now all of my POP3 and IMAP spam is filtered into separate folders (not clogging up my Inbox). SpamBayes is cool because it's trainable - it learns what you consider to be spam over time and with training from you. Very chic. I would definitely recommend this free spam solution for Outlook users, but I wouldn't advise it for OE users unless you already know what Python, POP3, and Proxies are, and aren't afraid of some fiddling with the DOS prompt, CTRL+C, paths, ports, etc. If you're up for the challenge, go for it - it works great once it's all running!

The OE version isn't as integrated as the Outlook version. In Outlook, you get buttons added to your toolbar which let you classify messages simply by clicking a button. In OE, however, you have to classify messages via a web interface (localhost:8880/review) - you can't do with from within OE. It's not really a problem, just a small inconvenience. A small price to pay, however, for a free, open-source, and wonderful spam solution.

Saturday, December 27, 2003

I'm really getting tired of hunting for illegally-placed caches. A&W Sparkling Vanilla Cream Soda is really quite tasty, but was SHOCKED to find out it contains caffeine. What the heck does it need caffeine for?? Misti got Brad's favorite album for Christmas [Justin Timberlake - "Justified"].

I really think that it's time for geocaching as a sport to evolve. The growing sentiment in many circles that Geocaching.com is not keeping up with the 'evolution', so to speak, has really got me wondering if Geocaching.com will remain the dominant resource for this fledgling sport, or if a linux-type contender won't surface in the next few years to offer the people a viable alternative. Trying to keep cache owners legal and ethical is like trying to plug a leak in a cracked dam with bubblegum.

Hood "Carb Countdown" chocolate dairy beverage is disgusting. I cannot recommend it, despite its claims to 90% less carbs and 33% more protein than chocolate milk AND the fact that it uses Splenda (which I think is cool).

Caches found:
"Chocolat" (private property - no permission obtained)
"Where's the Salt Shaker?" (private property - permission granted)

Caches not found:
"I-80 Flume Cache" (posted 'no trespassing' sign)

I honestly feel that the future of geocaching lies in the virtual and reverse caches, not in physical or micro caches. As more and more people flout the geocaching.com cache placement guidelines and illegally place physical caches on private property (especially commercial property), and more and more people get caught loitering and trespassing on such land, I think some tough choices will have to be made by the geocaching powers that be.

Thursday, December 25, 2003

Caches found:
"A Carson City Multi-Cache"
"TANKS FOR THE MEMORIES"
"Dome Home"
"On the Ponies - Pony Express"

Christmas gifts - got some Chocolate Frogs with collectable cards inside (Daisy Dodderidge - builder of The Leaky Cauldron, and Lord Stoddard Wither - flying horse breeder); new Josh Grobin album "Closer", "Now (That's What I Call Music!) 14" (as seen on TV), LOTR I and II, Austin Powers Goldmember, other movies, slippers, robe, pants, etc.

Songs:
"Where is the love?" - Black Eyed Peas w/ J. Timberlake
"(there's gotta be) More to Life" - Stacie Orrico

Listened to a little KTPL radio, but Monty wasn't in.

Watched "Time Bandits" - wasn't as cool as I remembered it from my childhood.

Wednesday, December 24, 2003

ALL HAIL BRADIGAN, KING OF THE CACHE

Yep, it's official, Brad beat us to 100 caches found. As of yesterday, the official score was Bradigan - 100, Chocolate Blobby - 91. I think we gave him a run on his money, however, because we hit the 100 mark today - only one day behind him (probably not even 24 hours). Very close!   =)

Caches found:
"Time to find something Historic !"
"Observatory Quest"
"How Vane is It"
"Painted Ladies"
"Nevada History Lessons"
"A Gated Community"
"Hot Springs"
"NevCachers Book Trader Cache"
"Railroad Locationless: Steam Locomotives"

I disagree with this article on which color cars get in the most accidents. They claim that silver cars are the safest (which may or may not be true), but they suggest toward the end of the article that white or light-colored cars might be the least likely to get in automobile accidents. In my observance, a majority of cars in accidents are white. Maybe their findings are only applicable to New Zealand drivers, not Western U.S. drivers. To me, white cars are the hardest to see on the road, especially on a sunny day. Darker cars are easier to see (for me).

Finally figured out a WinXP mystery today - the reason that sometimes desktop icons lose their transparency (background color appears behind icon text) is because "lock web items on desktop" is checked. If you uncheck it, they're regain their transparency, depending on what theme is currently applied, that is.

Monday, December 22, 2003

My little daughter never ceases to amaze me. We exchanged gifts early with Heather this year since she can't get time off work to be down for Christmas. One of her presents to Becky was a 48 piece floor puzzle with an ocean scene as the picture. Becky was so excited about it that we had to put it together the next morning. We have put it together a number of times since then and she has gotten better and better at getting sections of it done herself. Last night, she wanted to put it together again so, we opened it and set in on the floor for her. I intentionally kept as busy as I could but would come in and check on her every now and then to encourage her and see how far she had gotten on her own. And, after about an hour and a half she came in yelling, "I did it! I did it!" So, I went and looked and, indeed, she had completed the entire puzzle by herself. We were very proud of her. It amazed me that a two year old could put together a puzzle of that size! She's a smartie!
More caches found:

"Radio K.A.O.S."
"Metamorphosed Buildings"
"Whaling Wall (Wyland)"
"Former Fire Fighter"
"Log a Lion"
"Smash a Penny"

Watched "The Lizzie McGuire Movie" - great soundtrack. Also rewatched several movies from the Library Bus: "A Bug's Life", "Sense and Sensibility", and "Star Trek: Generations".

Also watched "Finding Nemo", and "You've Got Mail", two early Christmas presents from Heather (one for Becca, one for Misti).

Brad's kickin' our butt at Geocaching, all of a sudden - afraid that he's going to hit 100 before we do.

Hillaryous to see that Brad got ripped.   =)

Saturday, December 20, 2003

More caches found:

"Where's My Name ???"
"Yellow Jeep Fever"
"US FLAG"
"Maze and Labyrinth"
"Mailboxes (1 of a kind)"
"The Chair"
"Hippie VW Microbus"
"The Sound of Music"
"No Sharp Corners"
"Out of place Pyramids (SCPFLC3)"
"The World On His Shoulders"
"Murals Across America"

SpamBayes works so well at work with Outlook, that I'd try to set it up at home with Outlook Express - setup is a little more difficult, and functionality isn't as great, but the jury's still out...

Turns out our "local" approver for Geocaching.com lives in Colorado... uh, that's *not* local...

In my informal quest to find a good global coordinate finding application on the web, EarthBrowser (although not a web application - but freely available via earthbrowser.com) is by far the best. Yes, you could try and use the ICBM address locater, and many others, but they're all cumbersome. With EarthBrowser, you can pretty much pinpoint your position (coordinates) by just clicking on the globe. Here are some observations, however, about the product: version 1.7 for Windows crashes sometimes when trying to turn off the webcams. Version 2.0 and 2.01 for Mac OS X doesn't have any proxy settings (like 1.7 for Windows does), and the language selection settings don't work (the 2.0 version is multi-lingual). The program is still excellent, however, and I'm just lucky to be able to test both versions on the differing platforms.

Okay - I'm lame - about 3 minutes of Googling gave me an answer for my previous question about the "A. L." designation on the sides of buildings. It stands for "Anno Lucis" (the year of light), which is a Masonic calendar reckoning date. It's not refering, apparently, to the creation of the world (Anno Mundi, at 9:00 a.m. on October 23rd, 4004 B.C., as determined by Bishop James Ussher and Dr. John Lightfoot), but is 4 years off - not sure why, however. On second thought, it probably is referring to the Creation, as the 4-year difference can most likely be attributed to calculation margins of error between calendaring systems.

So, Mapquest officially sucks now (they made some recent changes) - you can no longer get a map by coordinates. What were they thinking?

Friday, December 19, 2003

More caches found:

"Flatirons Everywhere!"
"Gramatically Incorrect"
"Arboretum Walkabout"
"Diners Club"
"A Googie View"

I think it's cool that Wal-Mart is now in the music download business (only 88 cents per song!).

Black and white M&M's

Mimi's Cafe

SpamBayes for Outlook Express via Python and POP3 - Jason Brome

Not sure if I've mentioned this before or not, but P.T. Cruisers look like stink bugs (or dung beetles).

I wonder if anyone knows what the "A. L. [year]" stand for on building cornerstones. It's always listed below the "A. D. [year]", which - of course - stands for Anno Domini (the year of our Lord), and cooresponds with the year the building was finished/dedicated, which obviously has a Judeo-Christian reference to the birth of Jesus Christ and cooresponds with the Gregorian calendaring system. The "A. L.", however, is always exactly 4,000 years earlier. What happened in 4000 B.C. that a builders association or a general contractor would acknowledge - the Creation? Here's an example, this one from a stone plaque on the front of the Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Reno:

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

More caches found:

"History is all around..."
"Frozen In Time"
"AV8R"
"For the love of the Game"

New Michele Branch album "hotel paper" - early Christmas gift - I like it - why the two different websites, though (michellebranch.net and michellebranch.com)?

Policies at geocaching.com that I think should be changed:

"virtual caches aren't the basis of the sport" - says who? Finding a virtual cache is just as (or more) rewarding, difficult, and sporty as regular caches. In light of 9/11 and legal issues with regard to private property (not to mention all the public/federal places that are banning geocaching), I think virtual caches are the only way the sport is going to survive. Way too many cache hiders are not asking permission to place their caches, and are subsequently getting in trouble - even here locally.

Lift the moritorium on locationless (reverse) caches - same reasoning as above - these are a great alternative to tramping across private/commercial property with security guards hassling you every step of the way.

Local approvers should be just that - local, not some shmuck from the next state over that has happened to vacation here once upon a time.

Blogmatrix's servers seem to be doing funny things lately - my RSS feed seems to be currently unreachable...   =(   UPDATE: I guess they had a major crash, but it's now working again.

We just sent out our family Christmas newsletters today - look for yours in the mail soon!

Bonny's birthday party recently.

MS Outlook 2002 on an XP system is goofy - when you receive an email message with a Macintosh attachment (like a *.sit file), it doesn't think there's really an attachment (even though it's clearly there). When you try to save the attachment using "file...save attachment as...", the only attachment listed is "none" - although when you click on "none", the reesulting dialog box does know that the *.sit file is the one being saved. Strange - or deliberate on M$'s part? You be the judge.

Ok, here's another weird Outlook 2002 thing: the ALT+letter keyboard shortcut labelling is confusing. When composing a message, a key combination of ALT+s sends the message (there's an underline on the send button). But in the file menu, a ALT+s (well, an 's' after the alt - there needs to be a pause in between) saves the message, whilst ALT+pause+e actually sends it. It's even more confusing because the CTRL+letter combinations also come into play with a CTRL+ENTER to send, and an CTRL+S to save. No wonder people have such a hard time figuring out their computers.

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

Lots of wooden nickel stuff going on lately:
Charlie's Angels - 'wooden nickel' line
Found a wooden nickel at the 'Mardi Gras' cache from http://www.wooden-nickel.com/
A bit of history on wooden nickels, at http://www.wooden-nickel.net/history/
"Rusty's Revenge (don't take any wooden nickels)" cache

Caches:
"About that Garden (Botanical that is)"
"Water Towers, Plain Jane or Picturesque"

Interesting to note the debate in the banking industry about ATMs switching to the Windows OS. To 'XP' or 'XPE'? That is the question.

Sony is giving away free 'Spiderman 2' Blogger templates. Pretty slick.

A hilarious article on Wired.com, called "Are You Too Stupid to Surf?"

Trying out SpamBayes at work (an open-source Bayesian spam filter) with Outlook 2002. Good experiment.

Monday, December 15, 2003

MSNBC got ripped a good one today for their horrible CSS implementation on the 'css-discuss' listserv. Ouch.

Caches:
"The Barber Pole"
"Ponderosa Ranch Relic"
"The King's Beach"
"Just What the Doctor Ordered"
"Take Me Out To The Ball Park"
Now tied (at least on paper) with Bradigan at 62 caches found (although I know he's found a few more that he hasn't logged yet)

Movie:
"Maid in Manhattan"

Turns out I've known how to convert decimal to sexagesimal, but didn't know that's what I was doing (such as converting coordinates from DecDeg to DegMinSec).

Christmas program at church

Christmas party at Brad and Emilie's

Friday, December 12, 2003

Found both the "Higher Learning" and the "Inspiration point cache".

Found the "Funky Flat Stash"

Georgia-Pacific makes a really cool restroom towel dispenser, the "enMotion": it's self-dispensing, fully automatic, and has built-in motion detection. I had the pleasure of using one in Carson City on Butti Wy.

Found the "Spanish Springs View" physical part of the multi-cache finally...

Mac OS X (10.3 - Panther)'s voice clock is wacked. In 24-hr (military) time mode, it incorrectly announces the top of the hours as "It's fourteen hours" (instead of 'fourteen hundred hours). It does, however, do other times right (like "It's 14:15"). Weird.

Cool websites upon which I've recently stumbled:
BMLwalker
Computer Cops
Coordinate Systems Overview
WindowMetrics
Viruses of the Mind
Virtual Magnifying Glass 2.0
quickSub
Listamatic
HTML is not an acronym
What is a meme?

I thought it was cool that the world's 8th worst spammer was caught recently.

Heard about the first lesbian divorce in the news. Added an RSS feed to my blog - check it out (if you know what it's for). Heather made me an Original Rockford Red Heel Sock Monkey Doll. At work, we've unofficially determined that OfficeUpdate only works on about 82% of computers that it should work on. Hmmmm.   =(

Saturday, December 06, 2003

The website for "the cluetrain manifesto" really sucks - they promise you the entire text of the book, but they're missing a chapter, and some of the chapter titles are wrong, and the book image is missing on one page. Lame.

Jared the House Elf - Ward Christmas Party

Borgward Museum - Geocaching.com wouldn't approve it as a virtual cache - dorks

'emerods' - 1 Samuel 5, 6 - gross
1 Samuel 2:32 = the 'sea anemone' verse
I Kings is actually III Kings - weird

movies:
"The Hulk"
"The Lion King (special edition)"
part of "Pirates of the Carribean"

stupid rotating billboards that are always broken - whose dumb idea was that?

Caches:
- "Mardi Gras"
- "Key to Reno"
- "Where Kermit Met Piggy"
- map of caches we've found so far

TB:
- "Reno Geocoin Traveller"

green lights at Hilton = trying to copy the Silver Legacy?
nasty cold for last few days
Misti has made some wonderful meals lately - just wanted to mention it, including some nice broiled Whiting. Mmmmm.