I'm so tired of mysteriously ending up time after time on lame black hole lists and the resulting and dreaded "554: denied by gorbs" error messages.

I had a good laugh today in learning that XP SP2's refusal to install ActiveX controls from an unknown publisher only affects computers with IE security settings other than "low". In other words, if you need to install an Active X control that is unsigned or from an unknown publisher (like Microsoft's own Ikonic Menu Control, or Vodium's Webcast Control), just change your IE security settings to low, install the control, then revert the security back to "medium" or "default". And to everyone crying about IE's built-in pop-up blocking, they can simply disable it, also plain as day in the privacy settings (Tools, Internet Options...).

Found the 'COUNTRY Cache', 'Prickly Cache', and 'Pinus Beldar' caches today.

Went to the Nevada State Fair last night with free tickets from KOZZ. Becky got some new reels for her viewmaster, very exciting. We found the following caches today:

FST: Shoes For Industry
Desert Outcropping
FST: In The Next World, You're On Your Own
FST: Dear Friends
Silver Saddle #1
FST: Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers
FST: Fighting Clowns
Getting Hitched

Finished reading the Book of Nehemiah tonight. Seemed to take forever to get through it, despite it's relative shortness.

Found the "FST: Everything You Know Is Wrong" and "FST: The Bride Of Firesign" caches tonight, right before getting a haircut. Read Matthew Reilly's "The Mine" eBook tonight. Interesting story, and I learned a little something about Teotihuacan, to boot. This is pretty wild: two cars for the price of one!

I think that all the people complaining about the new XP2 Windows Firewall 'breaking' applications need to step back and listen to themselves. Introducing any firewall breaks applications - that's what they're designed to do, for heaven's sake - limit traffic! If your application needs certain ports open, then just open them, or 'create an exception' - what's the big deal? The entire industry should be applauding the fact that millions of PC users are now behind a firewall, instead of criticizing the new firewall for doing what it's designed to do. I even read an eWeek article today (8/23/2004 edition, pg. 11), where a guy was complaining that the new XP pop-up blocker was interfering with Outlook Web Access. Well, duh, it uses pop-ups. What did he expect? Just allow pop-ups from that site, and it's no longer a problem. People complain too much.

Found the "FST: Boom Dot Bust" cache during lunch. I read Matthew Reilly's "Altitude Rush" tonight in eBook format.

Guess who's now officially going to GnomeDex 4? Me!

Been listening to some good albums this week, including "Enchantment" by Charlotte Church, "Synchronicity" by The Police, "Wild and Peaceful" by Kool and the Gang, "The French Album" by Celine Dion, "Melt" by Rascal Flatts, "The Offbeat of Avenues" by The Manhattan Transfer, and "Fly" by Sarah Brightman.

Finished "Tombstone Courage" by J. A. Jance today on audiobook. Found the following caches tonight:

FST: Not Insane
FST: Waiting For The Electrician. . .
FST: I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus
FST: The Tale Of The Giant Rat Of Sumatra

As it turns out, your entire DNA genetic code could fit onto one CD-ROM. This alleged fact doesn't seem to jive with Jurassic Park's explanation of how much information is contained in DNA. Hmmmm.

Watched "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Mickey Rooney) last night on DVD. Very strange film. I had no idea that Audrey Hepburn and Katherine Hepburn weren't related.

Geocaching: hit the 300 caches found mark yesterday with the veteran's multicache. Found 4 more today: 'the O'Reilly Factor', 'Mt. Rose View', 'The First Wright (brother that is!)', and 'SUPER BOWL PICK Cache'.

Spent all of our spare change today at the Hidden Valley Annual Community Garage Sale. Good stuff, except for a 'The String Cheese Incident' cassette that I bought (for 50 cents) which turned out to be warped and thus won't play.   =(

Finished parts VII and VIII of Hover Car Racer (and hence the whole book - finally), late last night, just hours before the free online version gets taken off the web for good (slated for some time today). Becky and I were sick last night and today (Becky was puking, and I had an upset stomach and a monster headache), and now we're all very tired, especially Misti who had to stay up most of the night with Becky. Watched "Elmopalooza!" tonight on VHS. Jared, unscathed by whatever Becky and I got, now has two bottom teeth, and weighs a hefty 22 lbs., and is only 6.25 inches shorter than Becky. Found a really cool checksum program yesterday called "HashCalc", which generates not only MD5 checksums (like my previous favorite program, MD5sums), but also CRC32, SHA-1, and SHA-2 (256, 384, and 512) checksums, as well as some other miscellaneous types. It's great, and it's free! Gotta love it. Found the 'Mix Pix' microcache and the '"Lest We Forget" a Tribute to Veterans' multicache today during lunch and after work. I was dismayed to see that Geocaching.com removed the old watch list (http://www.geocaching.com/my/watchlist.asp) from the site in favor of the new watch list (http://www.geocaching.com/my/watchlist.aspx). The old one was better, in my opinion.

I like the incremental improvements that Blogger is continually making (in theory, at least), but I wish they'd stop dinking around with my template. We watched "big FAT liar" [sic] (Amanda Bynes, Lee Majors) last night on VHS. Symantec's virus definition update files (both the Intelligent Updater and the Rapid Release) both reached the 8 MB filesize mark today. Interesting to see that Netscape 7.2 was released today. Apparently, Kerry has now learned his pronounciation lesson. Watched "Return to Me" (David Duchovny, Minnie Driver, James Belushi, David Alan Grier, Carroll O'Conner, Bonnie Hunt, Robert Loggia) tonight on VHS.

Found the 'Santa's Desert Cache' and 'Grain Grinder' caches last night after Patrick and Crystal's wedding reception in Genoa at Mormon Station. It was good to see Scott and Tawna's kids again (they're nearly all taller than me, now!)

Jared got his first haircut yesterday:



We ran into Stephanie Laurie on our way home last night at The General Store on Johnson Lane. We celebrated Misti's birthday this weekend, but I'll let her blog about the festivities. We watched the following videos this weekend, also: "The Legend of Johnny Lingo" (the new one, not the old one), and "Atlantis: Milo's Return". Tried the new Chiclets Citrus Samba sugarless gum. Not too bad, although I wasn't exactly expecting so much grapefruit flavor. Played a few rounds of Scattergories with Gene and Ronda, and Ben and Deanne tonight, and then watched "The Prince & Me" (Julia Stiles) on DVD.

Tried the new Crunchy "m-Azing" milk chocolate candy bar with M&M's Minis crunchy chocolate candies. Becky really liked it.

The guy standing on the left in the illustration on page 125 of the "Children's Songbook" looks like Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner, of ST:TNG fame). Bizarre. (As fate would have it, however, the online version of the songbook doesn't include the illustrations. Sorry.)

The spoof on the wisdom of King Solomon in a recent re-run episode of Seinfeld was hilarious. (Episode #123, "The Seven" - about the bicycle and Newman judging who the bike rightfully belongs to during a dispute over ownership between Elaine and Cosmo Kramer. He suggests cutting the bike down the middle, and Elaine says "go ahead", but Kramer doesn't want to see the bike destroyed and offers to let Elaine just have it, so Newman gives it to Kramer as the rightful owner.) Good stuff.

Got an email yesterday from David and Natalie Zacharczyk in the Lone Star State. (Natalie just likes to see her name on the Web, so I figured I'd mention it a few more times to make sure Google grabs it.) Natalie Zacharczyk. Natalie Zacharczyk. Natalie Zacharczyk. (Try saying that three times fast!) NAT-uh-lee Za-HAR-check.   =)

Okay, question for the day: Why is a black person's dandruff white? I also just learned that most African-American women don't shampoo their hair every day.

You know Athens is asking for trouble, starting the Olympics on Friday the 13th. I'm glad one of the Blaster worm authors plead guilty yesterday to his crime. We found "the Fate of Sisyphus" cache after work tonight.

John Kerry can't properly pronounce "Nevada". Ready for another slew of acronyms? Try on "BD-ROM" for size. Of course, then there will be BD-R, BD-RW, BD-RAM, DBD-ROM, DBD-RAM-, DBD-RAM+, etc.

The MD5 checksum for the network installation file for WinXP SP2 (all versions issued Aug 9th and later) is:
59a98f181fe383907e520a391d75b5a7

We watched "American Outlaws" (Timothy Dalton, Ali Larter) on VHS tonight. Good flick, a lot better than the previous horse movie we watched.

Found the following caches yesterday whilst caching around Lake Tahoe:

Girlfriends Cache - Treasure or Trash? (FTF!)
Memorial Point Scenic Overlook
Sand Harbor
Logan Shoals Vista Point
Farewell Tahoe
Lakeview For You
Lucky Baldwin Virtual Cache
Iva-Kay Each-Bay
Carved Doors

While at the lake, we couldn't help but do some wading out into the warm water (Becca loved the water, and Jared loved the sand), as well as stop and have a late lunch at the Stone St. Urban Bar & Grill in Caesar's. It was a great day, and a nice way to spend a day off from work. I saw a few Beagle.AO's flying around out there today. Always nice to see that the virus programmers are hard at work. (Not.)

Installed WinXP SP2 (KB835935) on several computers today. Seems to work great, and I love the built-in firewall, and that you can actually configure things down to the port level (something I couldn't do in the free version of Zone Alarm [only available in Zone Alarm Pro]).

Found the "Coyote's On The Border Cache" and "Elvis!" (who apparently is alive and well and drinking coffee in the Nevada desert) on Saturday, as well as the first two legs of the '"Lest We Forget" a Tribute to Veterans' multicache.

We attended the HAN parade at Victorian on Friday night, and the HAN 'show and shine' at the Hilton on Saturday night. Kind of a let down for us compared to previous years.


We watched "All The Pretty Horses" (Matt Damon, Penelope Cruz) on VHS. Completely lame ending. Oh, well.

Finished reading Part VI of Hover Car Racer today at lunch. Awesome book so far, I love it. Can't wait to see the movie. Was sorry to hear about today's Opera security flaw that it's had all this time, as well as the recent widely-publicized Mozilla security hole. Add to that the fact that Red Hat Linux, Suse Linux, Sun Solaris, and Mac OSX aren't secure, either, and I guess the proverbial grass isn't really greener on the other side. That being said, however, I am anxious to see the new WinXP SP2 update that was starting to be released today. It also sucks that PDA viruses are on the loose.

Finished reading Parts IV and V of Hover Car Racer this morning (there are 8 parts, each part typically consisting of about around 70 pages, comprised of around 15 short chapters). Matthew Reilly, the author, wrote the book in parts, publishing them on the web several weeks apart. It was a goal of mine to try to keep up with him, but I kinda fell short on that. Anyway, he's now done with the book, but I'm only slightly more than halfway done myself. If you want a free copy of the novel, you'd better download the parts before August 20th, however, as it's slated to be taken offline that day. Apparently, it is also being published in the traditional bound book format, as well as a Disney movie in the works, too.

We watched "Ed" (Matt LeBlanc) and "Animal Numbers" yesterday on VHS, both of them featuring a chimp on the front cover.

Finished reading Part III of "Hover Car Racer" this morning. Also finished listening to "King Lear" by William Shakespeare on abridged audiobook (with Emma Thompson as Cordelia). I suppose it might've been a great story if I had actually been able to understand more than 15% of it. Oh, well.

Listened to the following CDs today: "Songbird" by Eva Cassidy, "Shades of Purple" by M2M, [Self Titled] by Bayanga, "Freak of Nature" by Anastacia, and "J. Lo" by Jennifer Lopez.

In case I forget, the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) Act (and changes thereto) can be looked up via several sources, including the Library of Congress' Thomas website, are available in PDF form from the Gov't Printing Office (Pub. L. 105-285), and are also found in the official United States Code (U.S.C. title 42, chapter 106, sections 9901 et seq.). Also, so I don't have to look it up again, the CSBG Act has been amended several times by various Human Services Reauthorization Acts: PL 97-35 (1981), 97-115 (1981), 98-558 (1984), 99-425 (1986), 101-501 (1990), 101-624 (1990), 103-94 (1993), 103-252 (1994), and 105-285 (1998). And for reasons yet unknown to me, there seems to be a dual naming convention for it, "42 USC 9904(c)(1)" equalling "Sect. 675(c)(a)(1) of the CSBG act". Policitians, hmmmph.

Also, the naming convention for Public Law (e.g., PL 98-558) is broken into two simple parts: the first number is the Congress number (the number of the Congress changes each year; i.e., "the 98th Congress"), followed by a hyphen, then the number of the law that year (i.e., the 558th law finalized that year). The official U.S. Code can be found in several places, including at the GPO, Cornell's LII, the House of Representatives' site, and at FindLaw. Also, any section of the U.S. Code can be downloaded in DOC format.

Watched "Seabiscuit" (Tobey Maguire, Jeff Bridges) today on VHS. Found the "Kundalini Cache" and "Falcor's Watering Hole" tonight on a nice warm and breezy evening, then visited a little with family.