I tried Kellogg's new Fruit Harvest Peach Strawberry cereal - the peaches felt more like mangos - weird. 5-legged calf!

Well, it turns out that Apple screwed up podcast support in iTunes a little bit. They've annoyingly created a second, proprietary (flawed) spec, so "regular" podcast feeds are now being transformed into secondary "iTunes-friendly" feeds by major podcast directories like Podcastalley. They also strip out links out of XML items. LAME! Here is a article on how to modify your podcast feed to work with iTunes. Our podcast feed is listed in the iTunes Music Store (in the 'Audio Blogs' section), however, so at least we're excited about that...

We finished reading Song of Solomon on Tuesday night, and have now started the long trek that is Isaiah.

We watched Alfred Hitchcock's "To Catch a Thief" (1955; Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis, John Williams) last night on VHS. Was really wishing for captions on this one. Guess I'll have to brush up on my French and then re-watch it.

I've been trying out both iTunes 4.9 and iPodder (Lemon) 2.1, and they both blow. iTunes is incredibly slow but at least it's functional, whilst iPodder just doesn't seem to work at all. LAME!

The new AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 single-core CPU debuted yesterday, and now AMD has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Intel. Sharks!

Why the Supreme Court's Grokster ruling is a victory for P2P (peer-to-peer file sharing networks), despite what you may've heard. Apple's new version of iTunes (4.9) now directly supports podcasts!

I tried out the new Google Earth software - it's pretty slick, but doesn't support GPS coordinates unless you purchase the Pro edition. Lame. And in weird milestones, Alchemy Mindworks' Graphic Workshop Professional has now reached patch #100! Woohoo!

We felt the Truckee, CA earthquake (4.8 on the Richter scale) this morning at 11:45 a.m. during church - did you?

We were sad to hear that Tigger (Paul Winchell) passed away today.  =(

Our podcast Friday night features more automobile banter. Feel free to give it a listen:

Show #: 13  
Length: 7 minutes, 25 seconds
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Size: 3.39 MB

I watched "Red Planet" (2000; Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore) tonight on VHS while Becky got a new, cute haircut.

I also listened to Adam Curry's keynote speech/podcast (Daily Source Code, show #200) that he recorded live at Gnomedex today. Very cool.

All browsers have a new security flaw. Nice. RealPlayer has four more security holes, too. (Does anyone even use RealPlayer anymore?)

Well, I spent last night in Las Vegas at the Stratosphere Casino Hotel & Tower so I could present a session on "RSS and Podcasting for Nonprofits" this morning at the California/Nevada Community Action Partnership (Cal-Neva) conference. My powerpoint slides are available for viewing. This was very timely, in fact, since Microsoft announced this morning that the next version of the Windows operating system (Longhorn) will be centered around RSS technology. (This announcement was made at Gnomedex, to boot!)

As one would suspect, I grabbed a couple of caches while I was there, including my first webcam cache (finally!):

The 4 Corners Cache
IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
Toga Party
LAKE-VEGAS
MM MM Good
Watch that first step...

Gnomedex 5.0 is going on right now, and Chris Pirillo and the gang are making news, of course - I saw Gnomedex listed as a front-page Top Story headline on Google News a few minutes ago!

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

"The Worst of Jefferson Airplane" by Jefferson Airplane
"Tres Cosas" by Juana Molina
"Sensus" by Cristina Branco
"Single White Female" by Chely Wright
"Moby Hotel" by Moby

Well, I tried using iPodder.NET today on two different computers, and well... nothing worked. iPodder.NET on a Win98 machine doesn't seem to do anything more than get stuck trying to download Adam Curry all day long (and you can't delete his feed, either). Weird. On a WinXP machine behind a proxy, iPodder.NET can't get past the proxy, and there are no settings with which to monkey. Also, on XP, iPodder.NET automatically invokes Apple's iTunes, but Apple doesn't make iTunes for Win98... so... iPodder.NET is basically useless for me. Lame. I do like it's support for coralizing links, but that's a moot point since I can't actually seem to download anything...

It appears that some FDIC employees' data was stolen - how comforting. (But it's guaranteed up to $100,000, right?) In more bad news, it appears that the Cosmos 1 solar sail craft didn't make it out of the Earth's atmosphere.   =(

We found two more caches yesterday: "Where the enemy of the 3 Billy Goats Gruff lives!" and "Cookies Fortunate View", both nice, quick, and easy ones.

Our podcast yesterday features two more silly stories from Becky, as well as brief banter covering the Michael Jackson verdict, Mastercard, farting, and Star Wars Episode III, once again recorded in the car. Listen here:

Show #: 12  
Length: 13 minutes, 23 seconds
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Size: 6.13 MB

Mentioned in the podcast:

GasBGon fart cushion

I tried installing Panda's TruPrevent Personal 2005 on my Win98 machine, but it conflicted with the ZoneAlarm software firewall, so I had to uninstall Panda minutes later. Don't they test these things?

Becky and I found two caches today: "Factory Outlet Store" and "Old KooKoo's Nest", both in Sparks. The factory outlet one was clever.

I was, like millions of others, disturbed to find out that CardSystems in Tucson was hit by virus which divulged 40 million Mastercard numbers to thieves. I'm guessing ours was among them... =(

In better news, Netscape 8.0.2 is now out, and the XML viewing flaw is finally fixed. Additionally, it's official: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are going to get married.   =)

Misti and I went to see "Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" at the theater last night. AWESOME! I'm all about special effects, so, to me, this was the best of all the Star Wars films. I liked this one also in regard to Obi-Wan, because he kicks butt this time (he was a little wimpy in the last one). We ate dinner at Applebee's beforehand, which also was an enjoyable experience. They even scored us some new bottlecaps for Becky's collection! Becky and Jared had fun at grammy's house eating 'fun' foods, including dirt and worms (chocolate pudding with Oreo crust and gummy worms). Becky thought it was too gross, but Jared loved it.

I finally finished listening to "Empire of the Sun" by J. G. Ballard on audiobook two days ago, which proved to be quite an effort considering the two cassettes from the library are wound so tight that the cassette player in our car periodically had trouble playing them. It now seems that there is a critical Adobe Photoshop security flaw. Ah, the fun never ends.

Looks like Brad and Emilie have made a public announcement...   =)

Lots of interesting news recently: It seems that Michael Jackson has managed to get off the hook yet again. Destiny's Child announced that they're breaking up. A semi-Earthlike planet has been discovered 15 lightyears from here. Medical shocker: obese people and smokers age faster (duh). Citigroup lost millions of American customers' social security numbers and financial information, and it's all UPS's fault. I tried the Natural Peach flavored Fruit₂O drink today. Mmmmm. Funny signs:




The photo of the hilarious Shoshone Falls sign was not altered electronically, but rather the actual physical sign was modified (sent to us by Twyla Harrison). Good times.

Well, we're back from our trip to Idaho, arriving back home last night. We stayed with Nerea, Miguel, and Mari for a week, and enjoyed our stay with them a lot. Jared especially liked pulling the tail on their white rat. Wow, it's sure seems sunny up there (more so than here)! We also visited with Scotch & Tonic (Scott and Tawna) and their kids, and Becky and Jared really loved jumping on their trampoline. On the way back, we stopped for a few minutes in McDermitt and I got a wonderful butterscotch shake at the Snack Stop. Mmmmmm.

The canyons and rolling hills north of Jordan Valley, Oregon are very pretty. Congratulations to Jodi and Wayne on the birth of their new little girl, Darci!

Found the following caches yesterday and today in the bright and hot Idaho sun:

Freeway View #1
Rings Through Time
Train Depot
On Top of the Dam

and ate some greasy grub at TacoTime and Arctic Circle. Arctic Circle's halibut and fries aren't bad, actually. Becky's bottlecap collection continues to grow, with new additions of Yoo-hoo Lite, Special Brew, Rock Green Light, Mike's Hard Lemonade, and others culled from the shores of Lake Lowell today.

We also watched "Racing Stripes" (2005; Bruce Greenwood, Hayden Panettiere, M. Emmet Walsh, Mandy Moore, Jeff Foxworthy, Snoop Dogg, David Spade, Steve Harvey, Dustin Hoffman, Whoopi Goldberg) tonight on widescreen DVD. Cute flick.

I was saddened to hear that the Haiti Mission has been evacuated again.

Found the following caches yesterday and today:

End of the Line
Fire Hawk Out of The Ashes
Coffee can. small prizes. [sic]
IC
Robin Hood is nearby
Play and Pray
Night Caching
Sloan X it
The "Hat"

Watched the following movies recently:

"Madagascar" (2005; Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith)
"Around the World in 80 Days" (2004; Jackie Chan, Ewen Bremner, Cécile De France, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Cleese, Owen Wilson, Kathy Bates)
"Shrek 3-D" (2003)

Becky really enjoyed "Madagascar" on the big screen. Jared, however, was more content climbing over the seats and throwing things.   =)

Sure a lot of the Mytob.DG virus going around today. Woke up this morning with some intestinal discomfort and then ended up ralphing up last night's sandwich. Yucka.

Becky's bottlecap collection grew slightly today, with the following notable additions:

Rainier (?, has rebus on inside - 2)
Barrilitos Tangerine
Pepsi

A 7-year-old browser security flaw has resurfaced in Firefox (and therefore probably Netscape as well). Sad.

I watched "National Treasure" (2004; Nicolas Cage, Jon Voight, Harvey Keitel, Diane Kruger) tonight on fullscreen DVD. Excellent.

We found the 'Avian Reign, Northgate' cache today after Becky's birthday celebration at Idlewild Park. Many thanks to Gene and Ronda's family and my family for attending the event - and further kudos to my mom for joining us in going down the giant gunne sack slide! Photos:







I tried some The Laughing Cow Mini Babybel Light cheese today. Mmmmm. I also tried some Mentos NEWCharge Fresh Charge sugarfree gum. Not horrible, but not my favorite.

Becca found a couple more bottlecaps recently:

Bacardi Silver Low Carb
Crush Grape (4)
Crush Orange (6)
Bud Light
Sierra Nevada

which brings her total cap count up to 71. We finished reading The Proverbs tonight.

Yesterday I learned that you can restore an ".NK2" file (an Outlook 2000 autocomplete file) when your old one stops working - and it has absolutely nothing to do with creating a new profile (despite what all the bulletin boards say): you export the contents of the old .NK2 file into a .CSV file (using Owtlook). Then you edit the .CSV and give the two columns appropriate headings (like 'name' and 'email'), then save as an .XLS file. Then go into Outlook and create a new Contacts folder and then import the contents of the spreadsheet as contacts (but you might have to use mapping to actually get the email address into the correct field or else it won't import correctly). Then send yourself a test message and BCC: everyone in the new contacts folder (one step - select all). That will prompt Outlook to add everyone in the new contacts folder back into the autocomplete file. Voila - you're back in business. Anyone who says you need to create a new profile and yada yada hasn't actually tried it. This method actually works.   =)

Tried some of the new Dark Chocolate M&M's (Star Wars Episode III edition) - so much better than regular milk chocolate! Mmmmmmm!

There were so many of the Mytob.CU virus going around today - whoa! Crazy.

Sure a lot of the Mytob.CZ virus going around today. Good usage of the word 'triumvirate' in this Bagle article.

Found an excellent chart of U.S. declination angles. Good to know. I tried the new Trident Crystal Frost gum - not bad. Did you catch the new reality TV show: "Hell's Kitchen"? Intense.

Becky acquired some new bottlecaps, so add these to her previous list:

Killian's Irish Red
Crush Grape
Rolling Rock
Miller Genuine Draft (2)
Icehouse (2)
Smirnoff Triple Black
Coors
Newcastle Brown Ale (4)
============================
Total = 58 (45 previous + 13 above)

I like to watch "Boundin'" on "The Incredibles" DVD. It's beautiful and colorful and we like it so much. They say Heliotrope so we looked it up. It is a greenish-blue colored gemstone. I think it is very pretty.

Daddy is so nice.

The End.

I tried some Natural Raspberry flavor Fruit₂O last night, and some Frutzzo Pomegranate Cherry juice today. Mmmmm, tasty both.

Watergate's "Deep Throat" revealed himself yesterday: Mark Felt, the FBI's #2 guy - now 91 years old. Wow - the end to a 30-year-old mystery!

Our 'podcast' last night features the "B-b-b-b-reakfast" story from Becky, as well as me botching our cache count yet again, once again recorded in the car. Feel free to listen, here:

Show #: 11  
Length: 4 minutes, 50 seconds
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Size: 2.21 MB