Here's a good mailserver open relay tester. Earthlink maintains their own 'gorbs'-type list, called "Correct Connect". Lame.

More on "Nevada Geocaching Day": The Nevada Tourism Commission's press release, and the official Governor's Proclamation!

Did you hear about the Cooper's Hill cheese rolling injuries in Gloucestershire recently? Hilarious.

Sure a lot of the Tooso.I virus going around today. quickSub 0.3.5 just came out yesterday.

Found the "PicMe! PicMe!" and "Caesar's Salad" caches today, but couldn't locate the 'Avian Reign, Northgate' cache. Hmmmm. Had a wonderful dinner at KFC following the caching and bottle cap collecting festivities. Mmmmm.

Becky's bottle cap collection grew by leaps and bounds after our trip to Frenchman Lake yesterday. Here is her current inventory, as of today:

Bawls Guarana
IBC Root Beer (4)
Crush Light Orange (4)
Stewart's Orange n' Cream (4)
Newcastle Brown Ale (2)
Smirnoff Ice
Smirnoff Ice Triple Black (2)
Sierra Nevada (2)
Michelob
O'Doul's
Budweiser (9)
Bud Light
Tecate (2)
Corona Extra (4)
Zapata
Miller Genuine Draft
Coors Original
Coors Light (2)
Widmer Brothers
Icehouse
============================
Total = 45

If anyone wishes to trade, let her know.   =)

We visited Frenchman Lake in California today, and found a couple of caches to boot:

Frenchman's Booty
SHM #238
A Low Spot

We shopped a little at Thursday night at the Kohl's department store on Pyramid Highway, but nothing struck our fancy. The Albertsons in Spanish Springs, on the other hand, had some new candy bars that I couldn't pass up: Limited Edition Almond Joy Dark Chocolate! Chocolate!, and the Limited Edition Hershey's Double Chocolate bar. Mmmmm, delectable.

I tried the new McDonald's Fruit & Walnut Salad today for lunch. They give you a cool sturdy green fork along with it. Excellent, and quite satisfying.

Foreign pronounciation test: Say the words "Filet Mignon" out loud. Did it sound like "Flamin' Yawn" instead of "Fee-lay Mean-yon"? Good times, good times.   =)

An interesting geocaching tidbit in the news recently: the Nevada Appeal and the Lahontan Valley News both reported on the Fallon Rally last Saturday, but in the article they mentioned that May 21, 2005 was proclaimed as "Nevada Geocache Day" by Governor Kenny Guinn. Cool, but there is no mention of that particular proclamation at the State's website...

Our 'clowncast' last night features 'the fam' recorded live in Victorian Square in Sparks, in the shadow of the famous Silver Club casino. Feel free to revel in the clownish hilarity, here:

Show #: 10  
Length: 5 minutes, 44 seconds
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Size: 2.63 MB

I tried some new Natural Grape Fruit₂O flavored water beverage today - very light, subtle, and delicious. Mmmmm. Interesting: the Agonic Line. Uncool: Bank of America loses data to identity theft ring.

Two things I've been predicting for awhile now: nuclear batteries, and MP3 (podcast) viruses. One has come true, and the other is just a matter of time.

Mentioned in the podcast:

Voyager has left the Solar System (took 28 years!)

A couple of interesting news items today: Ken Jennings gets his own TV show, and the appearance of the Trojan.Pgpcoder virus which encrypts many of the data files on your computer (thus locking you out of them) and demands a ransom from you in exchange for the password. Clever. I also noticed today that installing Netscape 8 hoses XML document tree viewing in Internet Explorer. Lame. Netscape 8 still feels like a beta.   =(

Here are some recent photos of the kiddos:







Jared loves to bounce. Aren't they cute?   =)

Our 'cachecast' yesterday features another story from Becky, as well as some caching news and an analysis of Misti's laugh, once again recorded in the car. Feel free to give it a listen:

Show #: 9  
Length: 12 minutes, 53 seconds
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Size: 5.90 MB

As mentioned in the podcast, we went back and finally found the other two caches we couldn't find earlier:

Jon Ate Twelve (FTF!)
Central, Nebraska

Both were fairly ingenious hides. Kudos to Keith Harvey (RenoHiker) on the placement of both of them. I finally surpassed the 6,600 mark on Seti@home over the weekend.

Becky started a bottle cap collection on Saturday, which horribly enough started with her discovery of a Bawls Guarana bottle cap. Oh, well. Since then, we stopped at the store and got some bottled Stewart's Orange 'n Cream soda and some bottled Orange Crush Light to bolster her collection. Mmmmm.

I accompanied the ward choir yesterday morning on Sally DeFord's arrangement of "I Need Thee Every Hour". Very cool piano part. We even had the Benecke boys playing violin and cello with us as well. Very cool.

Misti made some wonderful beef "Appetizer Spareribs" (Great American Recipes, Group 1, Card 3) last night for dinner. Mmmmm. I tried some Crystal Light Sunrise Classic Orange sugar-free soft drink yesterday. It tastes nearly identical to Sunny Delight California Style. Mmmmm.

Mentioned in the podcast:

Chili Finger Tailgate

Found the following three caches yesterday:

Parkway
Albert Toid
Trail's End #3

but couldn't find "Central, Nebraska" nor "Jon Ate Twelve" - both of which are caches placed by RenoHiker. Hmmm. We also hung out at the DMV for a little while only to find out that we didn't need to. Nice. Speaking of which, they need to turn down the bass on their speakers - it's up so high that you can't understand the lady's voice that announces the numbers, especially outside. There's no excuse for that.

Finished "High Country" by Nevada Barr on abridged cassette audiobook last night. Good book, if a little gruesome in parts. Also found "The Notch" cache last night. Quick and easy one.

The Netscape 8 (final version) browser came out yesterday, and there's already a security patch for it today (8.0.1). Hilarious. Netscape does, however, have a built-in anti-phishing/spyware icon on each tab (trust rating system). Cool.

After playing with Netscape 8 a little, it looks like Firefox on steroids! They've added a lot of things that Firefox is still missing (like a right-click "print" option, and automatic updating/installing). I may just have to ditch Firefox altogether and make the switch over the Netscape 8! Woohoo! On an unrelated note, here is Microsoft's online Malware removal tool (not the one you have to download - this one is run right online). Slick.

Today's podcast features just Becky, telling a story last night in the car. It's short and sweet, so give it a listen:

Show #: 8  
Length: 0 minutes, 52 seconds
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Size: 409 KB

Lots of Sober.Q-related German spam since the weekend. Annoying. There's a good article in Maximum PC (June 2005 edition, pg. 48-49) about the differences between "dual core", "dual chip", and "dual processor" systems. We found the "Cover The Earth" cache last night in Stead. Instead of what? Ha ha.

Apple patches Tiger (Mac OS X, version 10.4.1) yesterday. On a positive note, it's nice to note that Apple offers SHA-1 checksums on their downloads. Symantec uses MD5 checksums, while Alchemy Mindworks uses CRC32 checksums. I wish more vendors would jump on the bandwagon.

I don't know why Gwyneth Paltrow hasn't blogged yet on the new The Huffington Post group blog, but I, for one, am not interested in any of the other people blogging there - where's Gwyneth? Show me the Gwyneth, show me the Gwyneth!

Our 'Soniccast' yesterday was short and podcasted on location at Sonic Drive-In on N McCarran Blvd. Check it out:

Show #: 7  
Length: 3 minutes, 31 seconds
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Size: 1.61 MB

I watched the "Creature from the Black Lagoon" (1954; Richard Carlson, Julia Adams) last night on VHS. Cheesy, but oh-so-scary. We surpassed 64,000 miles (103,000 kilometers) on our car recently. What's with all the terrorism-related stuff over the past week? There was the hand grenade incident, then the student pilot over the White House, then the suspicious France passenger. Things seem to be heating up again...

Mentioned in the Soniccast:

Sonic
Mercer Mayer
Spongebob Squarepants

Our 'piecast/frogcast' last night featured Brad and Emilie and Mike Carpenter, podcasted from Brad's new home in Curti Ranch. Hear us chat about frogs, ostrich, pie, and smelt:

Show #: 6  
Length: 30 minutes, 53 seconds
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Size: 14.15 MB

We ate some marinated chicken breast, grilled Treet, frog legs, and ostrich steaks last night as part of the Carpenter's BBQ party. The frog tasted predictably fishy, while the ostrich didn't taste or have the texture of a bird at all, but was rather more like really red-colored beef with a slight bitter aftertaste.

Mentioned in the piecast:

Cheese truck accident
Wendy's Chili Finger mystery partially solved
PostSecret
Smelt
Marie Calendar's Chocolate Satin Pie
Newfoundland
Clark County
Pee-wee's Playhouse
Bagels on the street

We found two caches today:

Multitude of Muggle Mobiles
ELC's Lending Library

Apparently, Blogger and Blogger Mobile have implemented captchas during the registration process and during the post publishing process. Lame - I hate captchas.

Microsoft has made quite the stir today with the announcement of "OneCare" - a subscription-based all-inclusive computer protection suite. Sounds good, but who wants to be locked into yet another subscription service?

Well, I finally solved the "554 denied by gorbs" mystery: Verio Inc. If you send an email to someone and have it bounce back as blocked with an error message of "554 denied by gorbs", then you've tried to send to someone that hosts with Verio Hosting (directly) or another company that outsources their hosting to Verio (like SBC Webhosting and Pacific Bell Internet Services), and they have blocked your IP address (or more likely your ISP's entire netblock!) to "help" reduce spam.

What's goofy about it is that they're apparently maintaining their own list, not referencing any of the other wider-known DNSBL/RBLs. They're also apparently only basing their decisions upon whether or not your mail server is an open relay (and not on mismatched reverse DNS entries) - how antiquated! There are already other databases tracking open mail relays, so I'm not sure why they went to all the trouble of reinventing the wheel...

Today is Friday the 13th - nice. Last night I watched National Geographic's "The Quest for Noah's Flood" (2001) on VHS, but the documentary was surprisingly poorly named, considering the fact that they actually weren't looking for anything to do with Noah at all...

Becky and I played a new boardgame last night, "Adventures in Neopia". Interesting and fun game with many subgames, just like the website. We tied. I really thought I was going to like KC Masterpiece Honey Teriyaki barbecue sauce, but it's actually a bit yucky.

Another cell phone virus was detected in the wild yesterday (the 'Commwarrior' virus). Fun. I upgraded to Firefox 1.0.4 this morning. Did you? I also upgraded to Gaim 1.3.0 yesterday. Not much difference from what I can tell.

We watched "Hyperspace with Sam Neill" (2001) on VHS last night. An interesting show with very cool visual effects. I also tried some new Minute Maid Light Mango Tropical fruit drink last night. Mmmm, exceedingly tasty.

Our podcast today is short and was recorded in the car while driving. Feel free to give it a listen, if you dare:

Show #: 5  
Length: 4 minutes, 8 seconds
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Size: 1.90 MB

Mentioned in the podcast:

Firefox 1.0.4 released today
Milk prevents diabetes

My, how the face of browser security has changed recently. A quick glance at eWeek's browser security page shows that nearly all of the recent security flaws have been found in Mozilla/Firefox and Apple products. There's an excellent article today on Firefox being the first browser to suffer a zero-day exploit. Ouch.

Apple's iTunes has another security vulnerability, just discovered today. In good news, however, hearty congratulations are in order for Symantec on being the first antivirus company to detect the new Mydoom.BQ virus. Also in good news, there are no critical updates for Windows XP this month!

Here's a great article on ROT13 and ROT47 encryption. And, ah, the joys of modular arithmetic: the important thing to remember about the modulus is that the decimal remainder needs to be multiplied by the divisor, not the dividend, to get the actual whole number answer (e.g., 14 % 26 = 14 [fourteen modulo twenty-six equals fourteen] because 26 goes into 14 zero times, with a remainder of 14; or in other words, 14 / 26 = .5384615, which when multiplied by 26 equals 14). Fun stuff.

Two 'extremely critical' Firefox 1.0.3 security holes discovered over the weekend, with accompanying exploits already in circulation. Watch for 1.0.4 to come out soon. Ho hum.

Celebrated Mother's Day at Anna Maria's Italian restaurant in the Silver Club Hotel/Casino in Sparks. Here are some photos from Jennifer and James' recent wedding:




Firefox's default tabbed browsing preferences are completely lame. It took a great article to help me customize tabbed browsing to work intuitively for me.

We attended Jennifer Klebba's wedding today at Harvey's Wedding Chapel up at South Lake Tahoe. The ceremony was very nice, and the reception afterward was great and hilarious. Photos are forthcoming. Enjoyed a Bolthouse Farms Berry Boost fruit smoothie last night. Mmmmm.

We watched "Freaky Friday" (2003; Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, Mark Harmon, Chad Michael Murray) tonight on DVD. Funny flick. We have now finally found over 400 caches, by finding the following seven caches today:

Genoa Town
Do Your Sit Ups
You Light Up My Life
Sage One (our 400th find!)
Stewarts Knotty Tree
" Is Dat SO ! " (sic)
Well, Stick A Round

Today a Netscape 'highly critical' security flaw was discovered. No surprise there: if Firefox and Apple can't nail down security, who would expect Netscape would be any better?

I finished Robert Ludlum's "The Scorpio Illusion" on abridged cassette audiobook yesterday. Not as good as the Bourne series, but not bad. Check out how to destroy the Earth. Very hilarious.

Anyone who still thinks Mac OS X is "secure" is simply ignoring reality. Apple patched 20 security holes today, in addition to April's 8 patches, January's seven patches, two in February, 12 patches in March, the recent iSync patch two weeks ago, and the Tiger networking bug(s) found yesterday. The January, March, and April round of patches included Safari (the Mac internet browser) security patches. Count 'em up, folks: that's at least 51 bugs in the past four months! <ouch />

Tried out Netcraft's Anti-Phishing toolbar today. Interesting idea, and pretty slick, too. Sure lots of the Sober.O worm going around the past couple of days. Tried some Crystal Light with Calcium Tangerine Strawberry flavored drink mix today. Mmmmm.

Just days after it's release, an embarassing networking bug is discovered in Apple's Macintosh 10.4 (Tiger). Interesting idea: Grafedia. Did you hear about the custard finger?

I'm listening to the following CD's this week:

"Number Ones" - BeeGees
(Self-Titled) - Bebel Gilberto
"Rio" - Duran Duran
"50 Number Ones" - George Strait
"Warrior Magician" - Robert Mirabal

Found the following two quick caches yesterday:

Electrifying Diamonds
Tornado Alley

We had Dan and Twyla Harrison over for dinner on Saturday night. Misti and Twyla cooked up some wonderful Barbecued Chicken Breasts (Great American Recipes, Group 11, Card 1), and Tarragon-Grilled Salmon Steaks (Great American Recipes, Group 11, Card 38). Mmmmm.

This past Saturdays's two-part podcast features special guests Dan and Twyla Harrison. Meet the Harrisons!

Show #: 4 (part A)  
Length: 29 minutes, 51 seconds
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Size: 13.60 MB

Show #: 4 (part B)  
Length: 3 minutes, 9 seconds
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Size: 1.44 MB

Mentioned in the podcast:

Gila Monster Saliva
Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise
30th Anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War
Apple Sued over "Tiger"
Sedna (planet X)
First planet outside of solar system (2M1207b)
Byetta
Pundit

This is always fun news: Personal data for 600,000 Time-Warner employees has gone missing. Ouch.