I'm so tired of the usual JavaScript error in Blogger (when you log in and enter a blog): Line 88, Char 3, Error: Object doesn't support this property or method, Code 0, URL: http://www.blogger.com/blog_view.pyra?blogID=xxxxxxx&status=null&safeMode=false. Don't get me wrong, I love Blogger, it's just that you would think they'd fix this error which happens ALL THE TIME (and has been for months), and happens on different computers with different OSes. Sucks.

Becky and I watched "Treasure Planet" last night on DVD (free from the library), and she really likes the "I'm Still Here" theme song by John Rzeznik (from the Goo Goo Dolls) and the interactive treasure hunt game in the bonus features section. Netsky.R was released today, and I guess Paul McCartney was in Reno this past week, too.

Here's a great Op/Ed article by Maggie Gallagher on the Pledge of Allegiance controversy, how it's about much more than just two little words, and could even lead to the dissolution of the Declaration of Independence, the establishment of an Supreme Court monarchy, or even the total dissolution of the Supreme Court itself. Very enlightening, and even includes a good brief history on the Knights of Columbus addition to the Pledge. I think it's great that the Supreme Court, itself, has acknowledged in previous rulings that we are religious people, and that this country is founded based upon rights bestowed upon us by a Supreme Being (Zorach v. Clauson, 1952).

The world's first left-handed cell phone is now available. What's the deal with Java applets always saying that they've "inited" (initiated) or "notinited" (not initiated) on the status bar? If it's just a programming thing [to show the status of the init() method], how hard would it be to just translate that init() status into English for end user display? Lazy.

I can't believe that people, especially scammers themselves, still fall for those stupid Nigerian 419 email scams. Crazy.

Bill Gates was in Reno on Saturday. What a coincidence, so was I. Found the "Just for Kids" cache on Saturday, after attending an investing workshop put on by the Nevada Secretary of State's office. Jared scored a new carseat this weekend. I watched "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" too (actually several times over the weekend). And, yes, we had seen it before. It's such a great movie, we really like it.

2 Kings 4 is cool, I think it was the first time that food was multiplied to feed a multitude. (Of course, there was the multiplied oil to pay debts earlier in the same chapter, and the widow's cruse of oil and meal in 1 Kings 17, but not for crowds of people.) Jesus performed this miracle many times in the New Testament, but I think this was the first time it happened in the Old Testament.

The biggest subwoofer in the world is pretty cool. I'm currently enjoying a glass of Minute Maid Premium Heart Wise orange juice containing plant sterols (which reduce cholesterol). The only shaft is that it's pulp free. Personally, I like the 'high pulp' varieties the best. I have nearly finished off my bottle of Alberto VO5 Strawberries and Creme shampoo. It smells nice, mmmm.

Three new computer virii today: Beagle.V, Sober.E, and Netsky.Q. Whatever. I was glad to see that Massachusetts lawmakers agreed to ban gay marriage.

We watched the film "Just Married" last night. There are some funny parts, but it's not a 'must see'.

Yesterday marked the 50 year anniversary of the color television. Interesting.

The Beagle.U virus is out. Also, why did Symantec decide to skip versions P and Q of beagle? They jump from Beagle.O (aka Bagle.Q) to Beagle.R. Weird.

The problem with so many of this week's major social issues (gay marriage, fetus violence, constitutional amendments and states rights, Pledge of Allegiance and separation of church and state, war in Iraq, etc.) is that both sides of each argument are right in many respects - pieces of the truth in all opinions. It becomes a matter of picking the one with the most truth, but none have all the truth - very tricky and convoluted.

Our whole family has had this nasty cold this past week, which has included sinus headaches, coughing, throat tickles, watering nose, congestion, and general malaise. Not fun. I played the piano in church last Sunday (to accompany a singer) while I was majorly sick, and I messed up a little - I'd like to blame it on the fact that I wasn't feeling well. =(

Misti watched the cartoon movie "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" yesterday, but I didn't, although I think we've seen it before.

It's mildly funny to me that Presbyterians are sometimes called the 'frozen chosen', because I'd always heard that the 'frozen chosen' were LDS missionaries serving in Canada...   =)   Speaking of Canada, apparently Canada wants to annex the Turks and Caicos Islands (currently a British colony) to create another new province - in the Carribbean! Mike and Brad should love that one. Glad to hear that they are back safe and sound from Chicago and that they did a little caching on their trip.

Why would Yahoo put the Pope's message on the Sabbath in the 'Oddly Enough' section? Why is the Pope's statement news to anyone, or odd, or shocking at all? I think he's right on target.

Two interesting human body stories today: eating boogers is good for your immune system, and male circumcision protects against AIDS. Weird, but interesting.

I was glad to see that Presidential candidate John Kerry is against gay marriage, at least in terminology.

I'm also very interested in the 'Atheist vs. Pledge of Allegiance' Supreme Court case [Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow (docket - briefs)]. This guy's argument is so far-fetched that it borders on crazy, and I already know what the outcome is going to be, but it's still hilarious.

Aggressive drivers that wimp out - very annoying. It's one thing to be a slow, timid driver (which is dangerous and annoying at times, but at least it's predictable). It's a different matter when you're pretending to be an aggressive, 'take charge' kind of driver, but then you wimp out, and you're non-courteous at the last second - very unpredictable and very annoying. Then to have the gall to flip the bird. It's a good thing that road rage is so passé. And, for Heaven's sake, use your blinkers! This person this morning in a new, orange Toyota truck tries to cut me off (without signalling), speeds up but then hesitates to change lanes, so he slows way down and nearly misses the on-ramp, I slow down to let him in, and he won't take the lane, just sits there, so I honk for him to go, and he still won't go, so I proceed, then he speeds up really fast and his passenger gives *me* the finger, when it's them who are the idiot drivers! Bizarre. I don't think you deserve the finger when you're trying to be courteous and let someone in, and they're too timid or retarded to proceed - I think they must've been embarrassed by their public blunder, so they felt the unwarranted need to vent their embarrassment. Very odd behavior.

Finally was able to find the "KR1215" benchmark (without a GPSr), based upon some recent advice from 'nvsrvyr', who recently found it also.

Netsky.P is out. Finished reading "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James. Got a free video in the mail from GoRVing.com. I'm interested in the proceedings (and of the outcome, of course) of the 'Larry D. Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, Humboldt County, et al.' Supreme Court case (docket - briefs). I think it's cool that black pastors in Atlanta have banded together to decry gay marriage, stating that same-sex marriage is not a civil right, and should not be even remotely compared to the black civil rights movement of the 1960's.

Found the "Fire Fighter Tribute" cache yesterday near Hirschdale, CA, but were blocked by snow from getting the "Thunder Mountain" cache. Will try again, probably closer to summer - despite a week's worth of 70°F temperatures and sunshine, there was still a foot of snow on the road up there.   =(

Saw Ben, Misti's brother, last night at Gene's house. Got spammed last night by Monty Wolf - 62 emails from watched caches, all with his Rally advertisement. Hmmmm. Was glad to hear that another high-end audiophile company lives in Northern Nevada: Soaring Audio.

We got some Atkinson's Chick-O-Stick candies a few nights ago - mmmm. I grabbed a really cool, weighty Seroquel (quetiapine fumarate) pen from one of the caches we did on Saturday. A doctor or pharmacist must've left it. Passed the 5,700 mark on Seti@home a few days ago. Glenn, the guy that I was racing with for a little while, overtook me some time back, and is now wayyyyyy ahead of me. Oh, well.

On Saturday, we had lunch at Subway, and a couple of guys from the Nevada Civil War Volunteers came in dressed in Confederate uniforms with a guitar and a banjo and sang everyone a song. It was interesting.

Bill Engvall's comedy show last night was pretty hilarious. We went to his performance at John Ascuaga's Nugget last night despite the three of us being sick, as we weren't prepared to simply 'eat' the previously-purchased tickets. Jared was great through the whole show, never cried once. We found out when we got there that they have an "age restriction" (you have to be at least 6 years old at the Celebrity Showroom), but they let us in anyway. Our tickets were supposed to be assigned seating in a booth with two other people, but we were lucky enough to find a tiny 2-seat table on the end of the balcony that suited our needs better (we got there late, well, right as the show was starting, so everyone had already been seated, and I couldn't find our appropriate 'booth' in the dark, and there were no ushers or anything, but it all worked out great). Becca hung out with her Aunt Bonny and grandparents, so she had a fun time, too.

We tried the new popcorn shrimp baskets at Dairy Queen yesterday, and they were mostly good, but both Misti and I got a couple of little shrimpies that were gritty with sand or something. The rest were great, though. Didn't care for their coleslaw, however. No one does slaw as good as KFC. It's a fact.

Did a few quick geocaches today, and finally surpassed the 150 mark. We found "Somewhere besides by my house!!!", "Excalibur", and "Ram Tough?". In related news, I was glad to see that a new GPS satellite was put into orbit today. I wonder if our GPSr accuracy will increase with one additional satellite? Probably, which is great news for all geocachers!

The "Witty worm" is probably the scariest computer virus I've ever heard of. Most virii/worms prey upon ignorant users, but this one (which appeared this morning) preys upon savvy users (those that have installed software firewalls, like recent (unpatched) versions of BlackICE), and instead of merely opening a back door or a port, or sending out spam, this one renders the entire computer useless, by randomly corrupting data on the hard drive, causing errors on running machines, and preventing them from rebooting. The entire computer would have to be rebuilt in most cases. Sucks.

Misti watched "A Walk to Remember" (Mandy Moore), I watched "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger" (Jane Seymour), and Becky watched "Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island" recently. I stayed home sick from work today with a nasty sore throat and cough that Jared also has, poor little guy. Logged the "KR1324" benchmark and "Aztec75's Geocoin2" today.

I'm all for people loving their work, but this is ridiculous. Google's new local search is actually kinda cool.

I have a personal hypothesis about global warming. You know how, regarding the return of the 10 lost tribes of Israel, the rocks will be smitten and the ice will melt and the hidden peoples of 'the North' are supposed to return and bring additional scripture with them (according to the prophecies)? Well, I think it's all linked to global warming, El Niño, etc. Thus, I think that instead of scientists trying to combat global warming, we ought to be trying to speed it up a bit. Go hairspray, go ozone! As the polar ice caps melt a bit, and the sea level rises, the desert places of the Earth will fill again with pools of water, etc., etc. - it all seems to be tied to global warming. It'll be interesting to see if that's how it comes about.

Four new variants of Beagle were found this morning (Q, R, S, and T), as well as two new variants of Netsky (N and O). Ho hum - getting old...

Found the "KR1308" benchmark near Louie's Basque Corner, but couldn't find the "AB2417" one supposedly at UNR. Tried the new spinach chicken salad with sweet and sour bacon dressing and garlic croutons at Wendy's. Mmmmm, but OUCH that's a lot of unhealthy salad! I really like the new geocaching.com look (on certain pages, like the "my cache page" section), it looks great!

It's funny to me that Wired runs an article today on how great tinyurl.com is, but I don't think it's as good as "snurl" (snipurl.com) as far as usability is concerned. Many people know that there are a few of these sites around (tinyurl.com, makeashorterlink.com, snipurl.com, etc.), but I've yet to see a comparison between them all.

I find it hilarious that the astronomy community doesn't know what a "planet" is (re: Sedna). Pretty sad, really. Apparently, many astronomers don't even consider Pluto to be a planet. It's also funny to me that NASA would name one of their doomed Mars landers "Beagle", since the public already identifies that moniker with one of the viruses wreaking havoc on the Internet.

I also found the whole "dihydrogen monoxide" (H₂O) threat to be hilarious. I am excited that the new Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban movie will be out on June 4th. I also found it funny last week that for about a week everyone was touting the new 300 GB hard drive, and then what seemed like just a few days later, all of a sudden there was a 400 GB hard drive (.4 terabytes). And now, there is a 500 GB drive available (half a terabyte). At this rate, we'll be seeing some 1 TB drives by August.

Today started out great as the first song I heard on the radio was Duran Duran's "Rio", followed by a remake of Talk Talk's "It's My Life" by No Doubt. Great stuff. Found the "Potatos Penny Cache" today.

Becky and I saw one of the most disgusting things ever on Saturday. First I must mention that Becky is potty training which is how the following story came about. We were out geocaching on Saturday and stopped to get gas when Becky announced that she had to go to the bathroom. I promptly got out of the car and took Becky into the gas station. I asked where the bathroom was and the man behind the counter directed me to a Sani-Hut on the side of the building as there were no bathrooms inside. So, I quickly walked with Becky to the Sani-Hut and stepped inside. And as almost all Sani-Hut/Outhouse type bathrooms are - this one was disgusting. However, Becky had to go. So, I lifted the toilet seat and almost lost my breakfast. Someone had sat on the seat to take a dump and had missed the hole. There was a huge crap on the back of the seat that someone had just left there and then closed the lid. YUK!!! Becky just looked at it and made a sound which indicated to me that she was about to lose her breakfast too. So, we shut the lid and walked right out of that "UN-Sani-Hut" and straight back to the car. Richard drove home really fast and Becky made it, luckily. But I'm afraid to say that Becky and I are scarred for life. We permanently have that nasty image etched in our memories. So gross! Next time we'll just find a bush.

Three new Beagle variants over the weekend (N, O, and P). I think it's cool that GPS is mentioned in John Grisham's "The Summons". I was reminded of this by an article about elementary children using GPS to track a balloon they released from their school as part of a science project. We attended Stake Conference yesterday, and ended up sitting way in the back on the stage, next to a very friendly Tongan family. They really liked chubby little Jared.   =)

Found the "Boca Townsite" cache today. It's so hard to find the correct lyrics to The Proclaimers' "500 miles" song. Most sources on the web disagree on the words/syllables in the chorus. I, personally, think they're saying "private actor, private actor, private actor, private actor, dumb duh dul lum, duh dul lum, duh dul la da da". No other sources concur with this, however. Here's the aforementioned twinkie and twinkette:


Here's Jared in a bucket, and Becky with her daddy:

For reasons completely unclear to me, this guy finds that the number lock key being turned on during bootup is intrusive. He says it interferes with typing your password, which doesn't make any sense - in fact, it's just the opposite. It's good practice to use some numbers in your passwords, but how could the 'home', 'up arrow', 'pgdn', 'del' keys, etc. be used in a password? They can't - plus, even if they could be, all those buttons are repeated about 2 cm to the left, so what's the big deal?

Last night we watched "Hollywood Homicide" (Harrison Ford, Dwight Yoakam, Gladys Knight, Lou Diamond Phillips, Smokey Robinson, Robert Wagner, Martin Landau). I also finally finished "The Summons" by John Grisham, on audiotape, as read by Michael Beck. Great book.

If you've been using my RSS 0.91 or RDF 1.0 newsfeeds, please note that they have both been replaced by my new RSS 2.0 feed, which is auto-generated from my Atom feed (which is auto-generated by Blogger) via the excellent free service from 2rss.com. Becky scored a new Baby Einstein video tonight: "World Animals". She likes the monkeys and lions.   =)

Found the "Red Sign" and "Old Yeller" caches today. I also logged some other caches that we actually did in December ("Worldwide Hot Springs", "Fire fighting vehicles", and "The Arena of My Favorite team") but somehow overlooked in logging. We spotted another "PUY" plate (691 PUY) at the intersection of I-80 and Keystone. Mike would be proud. We had some weird luck with some Hostess Twinkies tonight. One of them (still sealed) has a child. Another one's wrapper was popped open, so its end was all crusty hard. Yucka. I'll post a photo of the mother and child twinkette very soon. I wonder if these illegitimate twinkettes happen often, and if so, how? You'd think the sealed wrapper would act as protection. Of course, as Ross Geller found out, nothing is 100%.

You know, it's not every day that the terms "Mike", "Twinkies", and "Ross Geller" all get used in the same paragraph. Fascinating. Was amused that Brad is weary of shoutboxes because of his 'bra' incident. In a bizarre, untimely turn of events, my shoutbox might actually be going away, since the provider is shutting down operations. Fear not, however, as I'm on the prowl for a replacement shoutbox/tagboard. (I wouldn't want anyone to lose sleep over it.)

There appears to be some doubt that the Basque ETA randomly bombed the train yesterday in Madrid, Spain. "ETA" stands for 'Euskadi Ta Azkatasuna' (Basque for 'Basque country freedom'). Apparently, they have denied responsibility for the attack. Don, what are your thoughts on this?

Well, it's probably no surprise to those that know us that we're opposed to gay marriage. Religiously, we believe it's wrong. As such, I don't want my children to be taught in school that it's a viable alternative, since we don't consider it to be. Personally, I applaud President Bush for his efforts behind the proposed 'Protection of Marriage' amendment. Of course, this brings up the normal 'separation of church and state' issues that every one has been arguing about since 1776, and also the possible precedent argument for future social/moral issues (states' rights vs. federal rights), but I still think it's a good thing. I'm glad the California Supreme Court and the Massachusetts Legislature both have thus far voted to uphold the traditional definition of marriage between a man and a woman. I also think it's funny (and slightly ironic from a Utah historical perspective) that the proposed Constitutional amendments also added the language "between one man and one woman", since already there are groups arguing why threesomes can't marry. This whole gay marriage/civil unions issue seems like it should be really easy to solve on the surface but in reality is so complex because of all the various nuances that are tied to it.

Ya learn something new every day - Geocaching.com has an event cache calendar - had never seen it before yesterday. Also didn't know about cacheintrashout.org, either, before yesterday.

It seems like everyone I know has recently been chastised by their dentist for brushing too hard, using whitening (i.e., abrasive) toothpastes, and thus wearing down their gums and causing tooth/root sensitivity. I never really thought you could brush your teeth too much, too often, too hard, etc. It's not like I'm trying to grind them off or anything, I just want them to be clean, and yes, I already use a soft bristle toothbrush. I then am introduced to the notion that a small plaque build-up may actually protect your teeth from sugars (and thus cavities). I'm thus left with the only logical conclusion: I shouldn't brush, only floss and use a fluoride rinse. Yeah, we'll see how that turns out in 6 months... I'm sure the dental hygienist (and everyone around me) will love that.

Netsky.L and .M have been found, although apparently they were not generated by the same author as previous versions. Looks like we have a copycat virus crook.

Seems like Dean Edwards has tried to do the impossible by making IE6 more (CSS) standards-compliant. Sucks that his site got slashdotted, though. I tried his hack on my work site, but it didn't seem to work (at least the way I thought it would - assuming that Firefox is more standards-compliant that IE, I had hoped that this hack would make IE act more like the Mozilla-based browsers). But, alas, 'twas not so. =(

I like the term that Globelogger has coined: "Google's Atom Bomb". I guess the Zimbabwean virus hoax is still making rounds via email. I know that it was sighted back in July 2002, and is still apparently making the rounds in the 'dark matter' of the 'net.

I'm glad to see that "y'all" is a valid entry in the dictionary.

Attack of the Basques! Good read: an interesting article on why Google may be the most dangerous site on the Web. I think it's hilarious that they chose someone named "Turtle" (Gerard Latortue) ('la tortue' is French for 'tortoise') to make some swift changes in Haiti's government. Edinburgh's catacombs were an interesting discovery for me. There's a new book out that theorizes about gods and universes, although not, perhaps, using those terms. Good stuff. Watched bits and pieces of the 35th NAACP Image Awards tonight. Interesting. Jared got some new portraits taken today:


Two more quirks with SharpReader: the filter bar isn't persistent (view it, then close, then reopen, and it's gone - I want it to stay, I use it all the time!), and the buttons are buggy in Win98 (buttons get red-X'ed out sometimes - doesn't happen in XP, however). Odd. Here's a cool chart on how news travels on the 'net. Even though it's a joke, I do think that the Internet needs better public relations, as well as traditional (print) news sources also needing to start reporting on more positive items, not just the criminal, sensationalistic stories. I'm sorry, but Chris Rock is not that funny. EarthBrowser 2.0.1 is now available for Windows - woohoo! I like this program. Tried some Jennie-O Turkey Franks tonight, very tasty. Here's how to make a Starship Enterprise out of a floppy disc.  =)

I think it's awesome (literally) that this guy earned all 120 Boy Scout merit badges. This apparently has only ever been done a handful of times in the history of scouting.

The new USB Swiss Army Knife is hilarious. If Microsoft wants to hand out free copies of Office, I'll provide a couple of mailing addresses.   =)   I found it interesting that George Michael's going to release all his new songs on the Internet, for free, instead of cutting albums. It was also hilarious to note the passage of the 'Cheeseburger Bill' in the U.S. (blocking lawsuits against fast food joints by people that blame them for their personal rotundity).

I'm curious now about the proposed merger of Atom and RSS. Exciting stuff. I think it's funny that some girl was named Diot Coke back in 1379 A.D. No more recess for you, kid. We tried the new Pizza Hut "4-for-all" pizza over the weekend. It was okay, but not earth-shattering.

As you've probably read, over the past few months we've been trying some of the 'healthy' butter/margarine alternatives on the market. What most of these have in common is their slipperier-than-water texture (probably because of containing no trans fatty acids), which is interesting (and sometimes frustrating). 'Country Crock Light', 'Benecol Light', and 'Take Control Light' all taste surprisingly good, but there is one clear loser out there: 'Smart Balance'. The texture is all wrong - it's rock solid, and has separated into two distinct parts in our container, a light-colored outer ring, and a dark inner core. Very disturbing. It's too solid to spread on bread, so it's only practical use is being melted to pour over popcorn. I cannot recommend Smart Balance. We've also dabbled a bit with some Mori-Nu Silken Tofu smoothies, and they're actually not too bad. Who knew that 'health' drinks could be so tasty?!

Baby Jared had his 4 month doctor visit today and had to get shots. Poor baby. But he did very well. He has grown so much since he was born. When he was born, his head was 13-3/4 inches around, he was 19-3/4 inches long, and he was 7 lb 4 oz. He is now 17 lb 7 oz, 27 inches long, and his head is 44 cm around. Big boy!! We love him!

We purchased a very large Chinese fan for Heather's birthday at WARC's Pier 1 Imports Associate Store. Heather's cake was so tall that it eventually fell over into a gigantic blob mess. Tasted good, though.

Watched "Bruce Almighty" (Jim Carrey, Morgan Freeman, Jennifer Aniston) Saturday evening.

Been reading a little over the past couple of days about Tim Berners-Lee's "Notation 3" (an RDF language for the Semantic Web). Does anyone know if his project still current, or has it been replaced (or superceded) by something else? If you know, please leave me a shout with the info. Thanks.

I've had a cold for the past few days, the same one that everyone else in our little family had last week. I'm almost over it now, though.

The Sober.D and Netsky.K virii/worms emerged today. Don't be fooled by fake Microsoft Update messages. Microsoft doesn't send out updates via email, period. (If they did, more people would probably be current on their updates [since apparently most people open any ol' attachment sent to them], huh?!!)

It's funny to me that so many Swen.A-infected emails are still going around. It was discovered (and cured) nearly 6 months ago (18 Sep 2003), so who's still infected? This should've disappeared a long time ago.

I was glad to hear that the lady that found her baby six years after someone stole her (but made it look like she was killed in a fire), was able to get her child back - finally!

Watched "The Tuxedo" (Jackie Chan, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jason Isaacs). Before watching the outtakes and bloopers, I had no idea that JLH had such a hard time not laughing. She's a hoot!

Misti dug around in some boxes and found my cool "Nell Gwynn's House" metallic picture.

We absolutely love the new 80's radio station in town (97.3 FM) - so glad that the crappy rap stuff that was previously there went away. I'm listening to "Jump" by Van Halen at this very moment.   =)

Found three more caches today: "I Spy... The Last Straw", "Bushville", and "Foul Ball". It was such a gorgeous day today, temperature was 69°F! A far cry from the blizzard we had a few days ago.

We have a game of Yahtzee on the computer that Becky really loves to play on occasion. Her favorite part is actually getting a Yahtzee. She gets very excited and jumps around and cheers and stuff. It's very cute. So, we played some Yahtzee last night and Becky actually got three Yahtzees in one game. It was a very exciting and eventful game! However, it was late and time for bed, so we left playing. As we lay in bed, Becky finally fell asleep enough that I thought it was safe to move her over a little. As I was so carefully moving her over, she said, "Yeah! I got a Yahtzee! Woohoo!" She never opened her eyes. She was playing Yahtzee in her sleep. I had to laugh. What a cutie!

Scored quadruple prints for the price of double prints at Wal*Mart, due to the fact that their computerized photo printing system (at 1-hr photo) is all funky. Trying out the new and improved version of the SharpReader XML newsfeed reader (0.9.4.0) since it now offers Atom support and is built upon the .NET framework. Got Stacie Orrico's [self-titled] album last night at Wal*Mart for only $9.72. Sweet.

I'm also beta-testing version 1.7 of NewzCrawler (another XML newsfeed reader). Cool stuff. I like SharpReader's no-nonsense approach to everything. Since it now supports Atom, it might officially be my new favorite, but only time will tell. The performance issue (program startup used to take forever) in the old version is gone, too. Nice. UPDATE: The only beefs I now have with SharpReader is that you can't easily forward a news item on to someone via email (this is very easy to do in the 'nntp//rss' and OE combo, for instance), and the OPML output isn't as descriptive as that of RSSowl, but it's on par with NewzCrawler.

You can read about my CITO event cache, if you wish. You can even RSVP, if you're so inclined.   =)

Found the "KR1155" benchmark. Read NRS 235.130 (Nevada Revised Statute) regarding the official State Tartan. I think it's dumb that MovableType (MT) doesn't encode/escape their ampersands (like this "&" or "&"), because most web developers know that any website built with MT will not validate. For example, poor Rodent Regatta has 599 validation errors, most of which are occuring simply because he's using MT. It's not his fault, it's MT's fault.

Netsky.F and Netsky.G worms appear today. UPDATE: I found a good article that explains why ampersands always cause problems in both HTML and XML. Indeed, I have to fiddle with at least one every time I republish my RSS feed (which is usually daily)!

Mike's curious overhang photos are hilarious. Brad has educated me on the origins of the Quiznos' rat-things:

From:  "Brad Carpenter" <xxxxxx@arrl.net>
To:  "Richard Barnet" <xxxxxx@richardbarnet.com>
Sent:  Tuesday, March 02, 2004 10:10 PM
Subject:  Quizno's commercials

I'm sure you know by now that the Quizno's commercials are based on the ever-popular "We Like the Moon" animations from rathergood.com. These have been around for a while but I'm surprised Quizno's is using them in their ads. Anyway, you can view "We Like the Moon" at the first link. A newer one that I also like is at the second link. Other material on their page is quite questionable, although some is somewhat funny.

http://www.rathergood.com/moon_song/
http://www.rathergood.com/biscuits/

Misti, Becky, and Jared have had colds over the past couple of days. My cold set in last night. I'll probably sound like a duck tomorrow. Becky is funny - we reward her with M&M's every time she successfully goes 'potty' in the toilet (either in her training toilet or in the 'big' toilet, as opposed to in her diapers/Pull-Up's/panties). She gets 1 M&M for every peepee in the toilet, and 3 M&M's for every poopoo. She's getting very good at it, and sure looks forward to it!   =)

Bagle.K, Bagle.L and MyDoom.H were discovered this morning. Here's the real question at hand: what happens when we run out of letters in the alphabet?

SCO is a big loser for suing AutoZone and Daimler Chrysler, just for using Linux (which has always heretofore been a free computer operating system - not anymore).

First California, then New York, and now gay marriages in Oregon. Bet you won't see them in Utah!   =)

So I finally break down and install the customizable Google Toolbar to block pop-ups (I'm very 'anti-popup blocking', in principle, because I've seen so many bad implementations of it [most other freeware popup blockers are proven to actually cause *more* popups!]) and put Google searching one click closer that it has been (it's my homepage, so a click on the home button or an alt+home key combination gets me directly to Google), only to find out that WinXP SP2 is going to upgrade Internet Explorer with built-in pop-up blocking. Interesting. I also read that MSN is now offering their own version of a pop-up blocking toolbar, which is hilarious because wouldn't the SP2 update negate the need for most people to install the MSN Toolbar?

I read this article on XML news feeds a few days ago, but forgot to mention it. Basically, just a plug for XML news feeds (RSS, RDF, etc.).

My new favorite Josh Groban song is "You Raise Me Up" (song number 12 on one of the versions of his "Closer" album - there are apparently two different versions of the same album, one with 13 songs, one with 14).

It snowed eleven inches last night in South Reno. We recently watched "What a Girl Wants" - great fun film. I can't believe that "Baby Doc" Duvalier wants to return to Haiti. The Beagle.I, Beagle.J, and MyDoom.G worms appeared today.

Found the "Souvenir Penny Cache" and "KR1154" benchmark today, but couldn't find the "KR1215" benchmark (again). Met recently with Christi Cakiroglu, Marcus Liem, and Nate Grossman from Keep Truckee Meadows Beautiful, to plan a CITO event cache.

I can't say I'm terribly impressed with the "Original Praline" from The Praline Connection in New Orleans. Too sugary. I think it's cool that the McDonald's menu will be more balanced next year (i.e., healthy).

I bought a pack of men's cotton socks the other day and had to laugh when I read on the bag, "Resealable". Why would you need your socks in a resealable bag? You buy the socks, bring them home, open them, wash them, and wear them. When do you stick them back in the bag and seal them up? I just don't get why that is supposed to be a bonus feature for buying socks. Strange.

What's the deal with that hideous Quiznos' commercial with the billybob-teethed mice with the funky eyes? Seeing rats and food together is supposed to make us hungry? Yucka.

Tried some Blue Bunny Health Smart sugar-free (sweetened with Splenda), fat-free ice cream bars (Fudge & Vanilla, and Chocolate Fudge flavors). Mmmm.

Henry James is excessively fond of using sentences that are, in my estimation, too long, and, perhaps, a tad overly complicated - riddled with commas, not unlike this sentence, in fact. Here's a quote (please note it's a single sentence) from chapter thirteen (page 50 in the Dover Thrift Edition, unabridged) of "The Turn of The Screw" (an excellent ghost story of which I'm nearing completion):

"They had a delightful endless appetite for passages in my own history, to which I had again and again treated them; they were in possession of everything that had ever happened to me, had had, with every circumstance the story of my smallest adventures and of those of my brothers and sisters and of the cat and the dog at home, as well as many particulars of the eccentric nature of my father, of the furniture and arrangement of our house, and of the conversation of the old women of our village."

I feel Henry James would've made a fine computer programmer - his thoughts often seem to be structured like nested statements in functions.

Tried some Lightlife Smart Bacon - meatless, low fat, cholesterol-free, soy-based 'bacon' strips. I honestly expected these to be utterly nasty, but they're actually not too bad. I initially overcooked them, since they don't really cook like bacon does, so they were a tad crispy, but the second round should be better. They kind of reminded me of those "Beggin' Strips" for dogs, though...

Tried some "AquaDrops" brand hydrating mints. There are currently two flavors, Mint and Citrus. I don't like the mint flavor, they're a little too minty for me. (Go figure.) I fixed our gas 'fireplace' this weekend. It's one of those 'fake' fireplaces with the ceramic logs that rarely heats up anything further than 6" away. Anyway, it's a bit quirky, but it works now, and it actually does get fairly hot, even about 3' away. Gone is the propane smell that leaked into the room even when it was shut off, and now ever-present is a large pilot light instead.

Missed the Hillary Duff concert in town on Saturday. New virii over the weekend: Beagle.C, Beagle.D, Beagle.E, Beagle.F, Beagle.G, Beagle.H, and Netsky.D and Netsky.E. Fun stuff!   =)

It's funny working in the IT department for a nonprofit company, as you sometimes get exposed to conflicting acronyms, such as "OCS". To a nonprofit company, OCS stands for Office of Community Services (part of the U.S. Federal Government's Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Childrens and Families), but to an IT guy, OCS stands for Open Content Syndication (an XML format for newsfeed subscriptions).