I finished the 6th Harry Potter book on Friday and must say that I enjoyed it. J.K. Rowling amazes me with her writing ability and vast vocabulary. I think she's an excellent writer. It's been a while since I read one of the previous Harry Potter books, but if I am not mistaken she does a very good job at leaving you wondering a thing or two at the end of each book so that you can't wait until her new book comes out and you can find the answers to your questions. Well, she does that in the 6th book also. I know it's going to be quite some time until the next Harry Potter book comes out, but I am very anxious to see what happens and how it's going to end.

We took the kids to Rancho San Rafael Park yesterday and went down the log ride, amongst other things. Becky was ready to get off after the second time around because it scared her, but Jared could've ridden on it all day, I believe. He had so much fun! Then Jared went on a horse ride for a minute or so but Becky didn't want to - she just watched. The kids played until they were so hungry and tired they could barely function and we all got a little pinker in the cheeks - and arms and legs and pretty much all over. I look like a lobster, but it was fun. And to end the day we came home and had a nice refreshing dip in the pool.

We also found three caches yesterday - which Richard will talk more about - that puts us up to 453 total, I believe. The kids always enjoys swapping out toys and rumaging through the caches. It's funny to watch.

All in all it was great day yesterday. =)

Wow, today is like the worst computer day in recent history. Nothing works today. And, wow, Adobe's DRM (digital rights management) is such a losery piece of dung! Talk about a poor implementation, could they make it any harder to use?

Well, as most Reno people know by now, the Bullrun USA 2005 rally was in town last night (yes, Paris Hilton, Hayden Christensen, and Dennis Rodman were in Reno yesterday!), and I saw some of the fancy racecars on the freeway, but didn't recognize the occupants. Lots of speeding tickets!

We watched "The Man from the Alamo" (1953; Glenn Ford, Julia Adams) last night on VHS. Not bad, for an old western. I finished listening to "Blood Work" by Michael Connelly today on unabridged audiobook. This audio cassette implementation was unique in that it contained a different segment of the story on each of the two stereo channels (left and right), so you can only listen to it with one ear at a time, and you end up going through both sides of each cassette twice, adjusting the balance control back and forth. It made the 10-cassette-long book fit onto only 5 cassettes.

Our 'podcast' from a few days ago features mostly just Richard and Becky shooting the breeze during a recent caching expedition and a walk down by the river, recorded outside in the great outdoors. Listen here:

Show #: 15  
Length: 12 minutes, 35 seconds
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Size: 5.76 MB

I tried Trillian 3.1 Basic yesterday. It's just like Gaim 1.4.0 in functionality, but prettier. There are some minor things I don't like about it, but it's pretty good overall. Windows Vista (the next version of Microsoft Windows) was announced yesterday. Hmmmm. We found the "SHM #256 Red Rock" and "Good ol' Ball Game" caches today, which brings us up to 450 caches found, woohoo!  =)

Come to find out, Firefox 1.0.6 was released on the 19th, just one week after 1.0.5 came out, apparently to address the nine new highly critical security flaws found in the past week. Firefox, despite all your security holes, PLEASE wait at least a month until the next version! (For those that don't know what the problem is, with most other software, you can simply just get the patches or updates and not have to reinstall the whole program. Not so with Firefox - you have to get the whole program again and again and reinstall it. LAME!) Also, upgrading your browser every week is ridiculous. Everyone chided Microsoft for issuing too many patches too close together, and now Firefox is falling into the same loop. Firefox needs to stick to monthly versions, plain and simple - and fix the stinkin' Software Update tool! I don't think anyone feels that Firefox is a secure browser any more. I know people once did, but come on - we're past Firefox's honeymoon stage now.

And another thing, their download numbers have got to be horribly inflated. There's no way that 73 million UNIQUE people have downloaded Firefox just one time. It's more likely that 7.3 million people have each downloaded 10 different versions of it, like I have (I first tried version 0.7 over a year and a half ago, and have dutifully downloaded almost each major release since: 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3, 1.0.4, 1.0.5, 1.0.6). For history's sake, Firefox used to be called Phoenix, then Firebird, and now Firefox.

With the ever-growing appearance of Atom 1.0 feeds, it's time for me to resume hunting around for a more up-to-date XML feed newsreader. Fun. As of tonight, we are proud owners of both the hardback book version and also the cassette audiobook version of J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". Sweet.

UPDATE: I emailed Secunia about the 9 recent Firefox security holes, and they responded that version 1.0.5 fixed these flaws, not version 1.0.6. In other words, 1.0.5 fixed those flaws, and 1.0.6 was released to fix another set of problems (API compatibility problems with extensions and web apps), but not security flaws.

I've always known that dark chocolate is the only true chocolate. I tried playing Conquer, but despite my computer exceeding the minimum hardware and software requirements (albeit just barely), it still wouldn't run. Lame. The new Google Moon tool is fairly cool. (Hint: zoom all the way in!)

I'm glad to see that Network-Tools now has a new beta site up and running (which fixes the recent scripting problems they've been experiencing since switching servers). I installed the new version of Gaim 1.4.0 today. Works much better.

I was sad to hear that Star Trek's Scotty passed away today. We went back and found the "SHM #30 Pine" cache tonight.

We found the following three easy caches yesterday:

Betsy's Rock
SHM #227?
Celestial Money

We swam some more, then ate another one of Misti's wonderful barbequed chicken dinners (using the superb McCormick Grill Mates Honey Mustard Grilling Sauce), then watched "Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen" (2004; Lindsay Lohan, Glenne Headly, Megan Fox) on widescreen DVD last night with Bonny - cute.

Well, it seems that a PHP/Drupal security hole was exploited to hack the SpreadFirefox.com website recently. Inevitable at some point, I suppose.

We watched "Shark Tale" (2004; Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Renée Zellweger, Angelina Jolie, Jack Black, Martin Scorsese) tonight on widescreen DVD - cute. Becky's bottlecap collection is steadily growing, with 66 unique caps, and a total of well over double that number if you count duplicates. Here's a photo of the unique ones:


Click image for larger version (3238x1200, 1.45 MB)
Reno is home to the original Oompa Loompa (Ezzy Dame), it turns out. Cool. We went swimming tonight in the pool, and Jared was absolutely ecstatic. He makes a cute, wet, chubby chicken.  =)

Firefox 1.0.5 was released yesterday due to the fact that ten new security holes were found in 1.0.4. Once again, the 'Software Update' feature in Firefox doesn't find the update, so you have to go to their website and download another whole version and install it. Lame. Speaking of numbers, it was 104*F in Reno yesterday, which set a new record.

Our 'podcast' from this past weekend showcases Jared voicing his opinions, once again recorded in the car. Listen here:

Show #: 14  
Length: 2 minutes, 57 seconds
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Size: 1.35 MB

Speaking of podcasts, I'm trying out some new open-source podcast software called "Podcatcher on a Stick". Looks pretty cool, but I'm having trouble with it recognizing certain podcast feeds.

CDs I'm listening to this week:

"The Dana Owens Album" by Queen Latifah (jazz, not rap)
"Grandes Exitos" by Shakira
"Daybreak" by Bela Fleck
"The David Grisman Rounder Compact Disc" by David Grisman

We found three easy caches yesterday:

GOAL!
Leo Toid
SHM #240

which puts us at 444 caches found now. We then ate a meal at the China Star Super Buffet on Plumb Lane, after shopping for some interesting things at Park Lane Mall. It had been some time since we last spent an appreciable amount of time at Park Lane, and it's quite refreshing to escape the mundane Meadowood scene once-in-a-while.

We were sad to hear about the terrorist bombings in London yesterday morning. Our heartfelt condolences go out to the families of the more than 50 persons killed in these cowardly attacks.

You know, there are really a lot of crappy podcasts out there (sadly, ours is lame, too). Here are some that are actually interesting, well-produced, and profanity-free:

The Word Nerds
KnitCast
SETI Podcast
We Are Marie
KC Weather Podcast
CraftyPod

These may be lesser-known feeds, but provide more family-friendly content than the typical 'Top 10' you see in most of the podcast directories.

Well, I learned something new today regarding decoding binary files from Base64-encoded strings in WinXP: don't use Wordpad for cutting and pasting, it's too smart for it's own good. Why? Because Wordpad supports Unicode and will therefore interpret some of the characters as those of other languages (some of the characters in my Base64 string were being interpreted as Chinese characters). Solution? Use Notepad (which doesn't support Unicode) - it'll keep everything in a Western/Latin font, and thus correctly display the string.

I know it's a month old, but when are all the Mytob.ED viruses going to stop making the rounds?

Finding a good OPML outliner for Windows is like searching for a needle in a haystack. I've tried JOE (a Java-based outliner), but it's, well... Java. I've looked at Buzz (a Python-based outliner), but who wants to install Python, WxPython, Python wrappers, and libxml2 as prerequisites to installing a simple outlining app? I've also looked at Tkoutline (a Tcl/Tk-based outliner), which at least has a nice starpacked program (no installation routine needed). Tkoutline seemed fine at first, but after importing large OPML files generated by other programs (such as RSS readers), it displays the indented nodes, but all the content is blank. Back to square one. In other news, Adobe Reader's Linux flaw is now fixed.

Well, lots of things happened this past weekend. First, we enjoyed Brad and Emilie's BBQ on Friday night, featuring Lisa the Scorpion Girl. The grub was good, new bottlecaps were splendid, and the Laffy Taffy jokes were lame but plentiful. On Saturday, I attended Breanna Mahler's baptism, then we visited Callaghan Park for some rollerskating and rollerbladeing. The last time I rollerskated, I was 60 lbs. lighter and 21 years younger - no small wonder I sucked so bad. Whilst there, we witnessed the site of Brad's unfortunate dragging. On the way back home, we broke down and finally tried In-N-Out Burger, and I got a tasty vanilla shake from their limited menu, and wondered about the lap mats and kid's stickers we also were given whilst gobbling down our yummy burgers and weird fries.

Thirdly, the Deep Impact Comet Tempel 1-smashing probe went off without a hitch. Very cool. On the Fourth, we hit South Lake Tahoe for some excellent food at Stone St. Bar & Grill at Caesars Tahoe Hotel/Casino, then some cold lake water frolicking at the beach (poor Jared was shivering but enjoying the water, just the same), followed by a warm jacuzzi and crystal-clear pool at the nearby hotel. After that, we descended and came back to Reno for the fireworks at Rancho San Rafael park. What a zoo!

Tonight, we swung by Northgate Park for a walk with our new green stroller (our old one got all bent up), and Becca found some more bottlecaps. We played on the playground equipment for as long as we could stand the nearby stinky/poopy dead animal smell, but had to cut our visit short because of it. Yucka.

A few weeks ago (before my recent trip to Vegas), Becky had never heard the name "Las Vegas" before. So when we started talking about it, she ended up calling it something like "Lost Bagels" or "Lost Baggis" - it was very cute. Of course, she later learned that it's a Spanish term for "the fertile valleys", so now she's informed and says it correctly.

Recent news:
Spanish Gay Marriages

U2's Bono gets his trousers back

"This is truly Independence Day for the UCC: We have declared ourselves independent from the teachings of Jesus and the clear teachings of Scripture" [regarding the UCC's vote to accept gay marriage].

The Sasser worm author confesses in court

RIAA is embarrassed as CD sales increase

Russian astrologist sues NASA for altering her horoscope

McDonald's getting trendy new P. Diddy uniforms

Angelina Jolie adopting an African orphan

I'm totally stoked: I actually found an easy-to-use podcatching client yesterday that actually works (all the ones I've tried lately either outright don't work, don't work through a proxy, or won't run on Win98)! It's called RSSRadio, it runs on Win98 (and above), it's simple and intuitive, and it's just plain wonderful! I liked it so much, I even registered it. Life is good now. =)

Sandra Day O'Conner has retired, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner are now married, and MSIE has another security flaw. Hmmmm.