This weekend has been eventful. We celebrated Jared's birthday (accompanied by some wonderful strawberry cake, lots of cool toys, and some Halloweenish family members!), I watched a little Farscape, we had some wonderful fish and clam chowder at Skippers, as well as some wonderful Popeyes chicken and biscuits, along with cajun rice, and a wonderful coleslaw that's comparible to that offered by Skippers and KFC - yummy!

We took the kids to the 'Trunk or Treat' at the church, and they raked in lots of candy, and visited Kathryn Albertson and Ann Morrison parks and had a wonderful, picturesque walk. (There were hundreds of families there taking portraits, bizarre!!) We also watched "Herbie: Fully Loaded" (2005; Lindsay Lohan, Michael Keaton, Matt Dillon) on DVD. Fun stuff.

There have been some pretty catchy songs on the radio lately, including stuff by Aqualung and Ben Harper, as well as by people whose first names all start with the letter "J":

James Blunt
"You're Beautiful"

Jack Johnson
"Good People"

Joe Satriani
"Always With Me, Always With You"

It was recently discovered that Skype contains a major security flaw. Nice. We enjoyed some tasty grub at Zip's Drive-In a couple of nights ago. Very good, mmmmm.

Q: How old is email?
A: Email is 34 years old!   =)

Even though Google was slammed and sued for Google Print (scanning books and making them searchable), three other groups are doing the same thing: MSN Book Search, Open Library, and the Open Content Alliance (OCA, which includes other industry heavyweights like Yahoo and HP). While they're starting with old books, they haven't dismissed the possibility of scanning copyrighted works. Hmmmm.

Speaking of Google, they're definitely taking on the world, with the recent news about Google Base, Google Wallet, and Google Purchase. Google Base is a competitor to eBay and Craig's List, while Google Wallet and/or Google Purchase are competitors with PayPal. A little competition never hurt, right?

Lots of varied things have happened recently. First and foremost, Becky and I enjoyed an Owyhee Idaho Spud candy bar on Saturday (not to rub it in, Brad - sorry), but Misti did not enjoy it. She doesn't like the "guk" in the middle. Becky, upon hearing this, promptly replied that she does like the guk in the middle. Cute.

I finally got rid of the mystery "Linux IGD" gateway connection in my network connections folder. I've read several messageboards with people similarly afflicted, but none have mentioned the real problem with it: constant traffic. It would've been okay if the connection had just been there, silently not hurting anything, but there was a constant flow of data being transmitted (around 40 kbps) in the background. Very annoying.

Anyway, you'll only ever see this problem with this combination of factors: WinXP, Windows Media Connect update, and an ActionTec DSL router. Near as I can tell, the Media Connect update enables the Universal Plug 'N Play (UPNP) service in Windows XP. The Qwest-provided ActionTec DSL router/modem runs Linux internally and supports UPNP. Thus, when the two are connected, Windows XP will detect the router, and the UPNP service will automatically configure the router as an Internet gateway device, thus adding another connection in your Network Connections folder. The stinker, of course, is that it won't let you disable the connection (like any other normal connection would), so it logically raises a few eyebrows with it's seemingly spyware-like characteristics (can't disable it; constant flow of traffic).

Anyway, I got rid of it by disabling the UPNP and SSDP Discovery services and also by removing the Windows Media Connect update, as detailed on these sites:

http://snurl.com/iyue
http://snurl.com/iyug
http://snurl.com/iyuh
http://snurl.com/iyum
http://snurl.com/iyuo
http://snurl.com/iyup

(Perhaps this information will help someone else.) Last Friday, I enjoyed listening to a little Karla Bonoff and Velvet Underground on CD at work.

Misti scored some new Nike Air Monarch III shoes at JCPenney's recent "sweet sale" - 40% off!

While at the mall, we dined at the food court. I, knowing that Mike and Brad like Panda Express for their fortune cookies, decided to grab some Chinese food. I got shafted, however: no fortune cookie. =(

Becky, averting the whole lack of fortune fiasco, wisely chose Mcdonalds instead. Smart girl.

We attended the ward Elder's Quorum social Saturday afternoon, and enjoyed a little homemade root beer floats and volleyball in the Bodily's back yard. (An event I like to call the "Bodily function" - ha!) Becky enjoys sitting on my shoulders and spiking the ball over the net.

I finished reading "A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Miserable Mill" (book 4) by Lemony Snicket today. Speaking of books, the library bus was apparently broken this past weekend, so they substituted a van instead. Not the same. I'm finding that our local library system doesn't seem to be as sophisticated as the Washoe County Library System (i.e., that's my impression, anyway). =(

We attended the "Praise to the Man" Joseph Smith Fireside, Sunday night at the stake center. Misti and I spoke in church earlier in the day, on the topic of Family Home Evenings. I ran into Brad York from Nevada, too, in the church hallway. Small world.

I installed OpenOffice 2.0 yesterday and am trying it out. Okay, but, so where's the Publisher and Outlook alternatives? Hmmmm.

I tried the developer preview of the new Flock browser tonight. Not bad, but it did crash on me (not surprising - it's not even a beta yet). It looks nice, though, and has lots of potential.

Well, Firefox has had its 100,000,000th download. This does not mean that 100 million people are using it, merely that it's been retrieved, cumulatively, that many times counting all versions. I, myself, have downloaded it at least 15 times, no joke. Thus, more than likely, 10,000,000 fans have each downloaded it 10 different times, whether due to upgrades (they require a whole new download, unfortunately), or simply just installing it on multiple machines, friend's machines, etc.

UPDATE: eWeek says that Firefox acknowledges that only 45 million unique people have retrieved the software, and that many of those have come back for different versions. I knew it! (Of course, I still think 45 million is too high, I still think it's about 25% of that.)

The company I work for, Bodybuilding.com, has just entered Inc. Magazine's Inc. 500 list at #230 today! Very cool. In virus news, there's now a Skype trojan making the rounds. In Apple news, there is now, finally, a dual-core Mac available. The scandal, though, is that it's based upon the old IBM PowerPC chips, not the new Intel chips Apple is evangelizing lately. And speaking of Intel, they have abandoned work on 4.0 Ghz Pentium CPUs, switching more of their focus to dual-core chips instead.

Brad's second podcast was, of course, very entertaining. Keep 'em coming, Mr. C.! I added two new maps (Southwest Idaho and Boise) to my Geocaching.com profile. They pinpoint where we've found caches locally so far.

I thought it was interesting that MI6 is recruiting for spies on their new website. Could you be the next 007? Send in your résumé! In unrelated news, I finished reading "The Wide Window" (book 3) by Lemony Snicket tonight. Good stuff.

Weird news: Brad killed by iPod. I finally attained another milestone tonight: half a million neopoints in the Neopets.com Neopian Bank. My savings account is now at the "Diamond Deposit Gold" level, which yields an even 10% annual interest rate. =)

Yesterday marked the start of Joe Weider's Olympia Weekend 2005 Bodybuilding Competition in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Orleans Arena. At work, we watched some of the live Fit Show video feed yesterday - interesting stuff. Check it out this weekend if you see this in time! (Here's the webcast schedule, and here's the official site.)

Today we found the following four caches (including two we couldn't find before):

S A M Cache
Poltergeist
Are you hungry?
C L M Cache

In cool news, Neopets is coming out with a Playstation 2 game, called "Neopets: The Darkest Faerie". The Wilsons came over for dinner and a movie tonight - it was fun, and the movie hilarious. We watched "Robots" (2005; Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Greg Kinnear, Mel Brooks, Amanda Bynes, Drew Carey, Robin Williams) on fullscreen DVD.

Well, I didn't puke. On the contrary, the flight was quite smooth and enjoyable. Ryan's a good pilot - shocker! J/K. The plane was a Cessna Skyhawk II. Here are some photos:






I also finished reading "A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Reptile Room" (book 2) by Lemony Snicket last night. I like his conversational and commentary-like style of writing. Becky and I have also been enjoying some 12 oz. cans of Minute Maid Light Lemonade and Raspberry Passion sodas this week. Very tasty. At work, I've also overheard some hilarious cover songs and comedy routines by Richard Cheese and Tenacious D. (The latter not necessarily the best for sensitive ears, however.)

Well, since I don't really have anything too interesting to write right now, I'll borrow some recent news: Wallace and Gromit's factory goes up in smoke. Very sad for Aardman fans. The new beta Yahoo! Podcasts search tool debuted, and I'm listed! =)

Speaking of Yahoo, they and Microsoft are now allowing their IM clients to communicate with each other! That's been a long time coming. In other news, fish keeps your brain healthy and scientists have found hobbits on a remote island, but they're dead. Maybe they didn't eat fish...

Oh, Misti and I did finally finish reading Isaiah last night, so that's a milestone worth mentioning. Whew! And depending on weather, I'm also scheduled to go flying tonight with Ryan, so I'll let you know tomorrow if I puked or not... (I probably will - it's a small plane.)

We saw John "Pressed Sandwich Meat" Prestwich and his family at the park last night. It had been four years since seeing him last, I believe. I tried the new beta Google Reader (feed reader) today, but I'm sorry to have to admit that I really hate it.

Seen in a non-spellchecked LinuxWorld article: "Google has exploited AJAX for some of its most eye-pooping services such as GMail and Google Maps." (Paragraph 11.) The DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 is now almost over. Three vehicles have already crossed the finish line, however.

I finished listening to "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier on abridged audiobook today. Becky also enjoyed watching the last four minutes of the Boise State Broncos vs. Portland State Vikings game tonight on TV (BSU won, 21-14) after we got back from playing a little tennis.   =)

We briefly attended the TVCA Cachaholic's meeting event cache a couple of nights ago, and got to meet a few local cachers. I finally got to hold the Holy Grail of travel bugs, too: a Moun10bike coin. (I somehow missed the one that made the rounds at the 2004 Fallon GeoRally.) I tried some Fresca Black Cherry Citrus soda also recently, but it's not all that great. Phil and Nerea married recently in the Boise temple. Happy times!   =)

Well, my 4-week "vacation" is over - I started work full-time today at BodyBuilding.com here in Boise. I also enjoyed a chicken chalupa this afternoon at Casa Mexico - very tasty, indeed. This "Hail to the prophet" article made it onto Google News' front page tonight. Very cool.

In "it's about time" tech news today, the next version of MS Office will natively support PDF documents. In "ouch" news, Kaspersky's antivirus has a security flaw. Not good. In the "Brad Rocks" category, have you listened to the first-ever Bradcast yet? Very cool.   =)

I finished reading "A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning" (book 1) by Lemony Snicket tonight. Cute. We listened to the rest of Conference today, and it was wonderful. Mike's Fight for Nevada 2005 started yesterday, and I can't wait to see what Saturday will bring! Three interesting tidbits I heard about today: the Super Mario Opera, the iPod Nano dissection video, and that they've discovered that beyond Pluto lies the proposed tenth planet and her accompanying moon: Xena and Gabrielle in the Kuiper Belt.

Microsoft will offer a phishing filter in IE7 eventually. Very cool. We tried some delicious Tillamook yogurts last night - very tasty. The Vanilla Bean and Marionberry flavors are especially wonderful. Mmmmm. We surpassed 70,000 miles (112,654 kilometres) on our car today. Ouch. We listened to the Saturday morning session and I watched the Priesthood session of the LDS 175th Semiannual General Conference today and tonight. Very nice.

We visited both the Boise and Meridian libraries today, and they're great. We're both now officially cardholding Idaho library patrons. Watch out. We viewed "Sabrina" (1995; Harrison Ford, Julia Ormond, Lauren Holly, Greg Kinnear, John Wood, Richard Crenna, Angie Dickinson) tonight on VHS. Not bad, but not my favorite. Thereafter, Becky expressed an interest in trying to understand football, so we watched a bit of the Boise State vs. Hawaii game on TV. The Broncos defeated the Warriors, 44-41.