Becky had a great question the other day: Why is the Mr. Goodbar (candy bar) a "Mr." instead of a "Mrs."?


The smaller container of Some Dude's Fry Sauce was simply not enough [see earlier post]. Then we found the larger, serious container - and grabbed two!   =)

I found my 12-15-2005 "lost podcast", and have now finally uploaded it. Be forewarned - it's very poor quality (recorded in the car) and rather boring, but it's finally available. It's a rant about Wikipedia.

Personally, I don't find anything wrong with Wikipedia. I find it just as accurate as any other "authoritative" encyclopedia source. Therefore, and without any further ado...

My 'lost podcast' from 12-15-2005 is a rant about the Wikipedia scuffaw that was going on last month, and also features the podsafe song "If Every Day Were Christmas". Tune in here:

Show #: 21  
Length: 19 minutes, 35 seconds
Bitrate: 128 Kbps
Size: 17.90 MB

Mentioned in the podcast:

Britannica entries have 3 errors on average
Wikipedia just as accurate as Britannica
Podsafe For Peace
Wikipedia
Adam Curry

Actually, I think the timing of this podcast is fortunate and still apropos since Wikipedia may be in the news again this next week, with the Wikipedia abuse and vandalism by politicians being recently unearthed.

It snowed a bit here last night, so this morning, we all went outside and played in the snow. Misti and Becca made a small snowman, and Jared ran around and basically just stomped in the slush and puddles in the street. Becca and I threw a few snowballs at each other, but it was fairly wet and cold and slushy, so we didn't stay out too long. We had fun, though.   =)

Becca, Jared, and I tried some new Neopets Islandberry Crunch cereal tonight. Not as good as I was expecting, but the kids like 'em. Speaking of food, I scored some delicious English muffins with raisins over at the Hostess bakery outlet store this afternoon. Mmmmm.

I finally polished off a tube of Aquafresh Sensitive toothpaste and opened up a brand spankin' new tube of Aim Tartar Control Gel. The Aim smells better, and it's quite refreshing, whilst the Aquafresh always had a bit of a weird smell. Glad that's over!

I also found a really great free desktop wallpaper site, called WallpaperStock. Very cool.

I tried out the new Google Video Player. Nothing special, except for the uncommonly bad (pixelated) video. Wow, I was definitely not impressed.

We also uploaded some video to Google Video, and on our uploaded video (the source was a high quality WMV video, 640x480), Google Video actually downsized it and converted it into two different formats (GVP, the proprietary Google Video format), and to MP4 for Video iPods. At first, we thought - sweet!, but then we saw the quality degradation and the horrendous size differences.

The original WMV was only 19 MB, but the lower-quality MP4 was 45 MB! Ouch. The GVP doesn't actually let you download it, it only places a shortcut on your system then streams it when opened. In either case, however, the quality was pretty poor. Lame. Two thumbs down for Google Video.

Two minor, yet commonplace, annoyances I've found with Firefox (1.5):

1. The "End" button on the keyboard doesn't work like it should (in IE it takes you to the bottom of the page). UPDATE: it works on some computers, but not on others - on FF 1.5 at home it works just fine, but on FF 1.5 at work, it doesn't. Lame.
   
   
2. You can unfortunately have two things highlighted at the same time in Firefox. Thus, when you hit 'Ctrl+C', which one are you actually copying? See screenshot:

Today was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 250th birthday anniversary. Good stuff.

I finished listening to "Star Wars: Jedi Search" on abridged audiobook today, courtesy of the Caldwell Public Library. Very entertaining. It's fun to get the 'rest of the story'. (This book is about how Luke Skywalker starts to rebuild the Jedi Knight order.)

We here happy to hear that President Hinckley's intestinal cancer laparoscopic surgery was successful and that he's expected to make a full recovery! Our prayers are with you, Pres. Hinckley!

Apparently not only is croup making the rounds, but also RSV (Respiratory Stress [or Syncytial] Virus). Are they the same thing? They appear to have similar symptoms, although the treatments are different.

Google is legal. Who knew?! Glad that's finally been decided!

We watched "Black Beauty" (1994; David Thewlis, Sean Bean, Alan Cumming) on DVD a few days ago. Becca likes the horses. Misti has been enjoying two awesome Sudoku sites lately: Free Printable Sudokus by Krazydad, and Life's Online Sudoku. Fun stuff, indeed.

Adam Curry's unfortunate yet phenomenal Mac hardware problem (the unwanted audio looping) on his podcast makes me embarrassed for Apple (although since I don't like Apple, I'm not really that embarrassed). Stick to the PC, people! (BTW, I'm glad Adam bought a PC laptop to use until his Mac problem gets fixed.)   =)

Brad's reference to the Idaho "Napoleon Dynamite bill" was interesting. Since we're new to Spudland, we weren't aware of the bill until now. Here's the complete text.

We visited the Caldwell public library on Saturday, and also found two caches as well:

The Crossing
Touring the City 5-Centennial Park

Well, the kids' toilet, the exterior siding, the kitchen screen door, and the kitchen faucet are all now fixed. Gotta love having a home warranty! The garage door opener is being installed today! Finally!

Misti's having fun decorating, and each day when I come home, more and more things appear on the walls. The wall in front of the computer is Mondrian-esque, with our "Composition in Red, Blue, & Yellow, 1930" Mondrian print straddled by my mini watercolor knockoff on one side, and a 24-photo segmented display frame on the other, filled by Misti with photos from our wedding in San Diego and honeymoon in Playa del Carmen (at La Posada del Capitán Lafitte). Nice.

Both Becca & Jared had the Croup (laryngotracheobronchitis) last week, but they're finally better! Jared had the classic deep barking chest cough symptoms and trouble breathing, whilst Becca had the ear ache and the fever. Whew, not a pleasant illness.

Becky and I both tried some Boylan Bottleworks Grape Soda recently. We saw it at Paul's Market and decided to try it because it had a bottlecap that she didn't yet have. Sweet.   =)

Hilarious quote:
"To be or not to be. That's not really a question." - Jean-Luc Godard

Becky and I enjoyed playing some classic Dig Dug last night at Game-Oldies.com. They've got literally thousands of old Nintendo, Sega, and Arcade game emulations available for free online play, in Java 1.5-supported browsers. Very nostalgic. (I, of course, had to play a few other titles, as well.)

I finally finished listening to "Eldest" by Christopher Paolini (book 2 in the Inheritance trilogy) on unabridged audiobook. Very cool. Guess I'll have to go back and get the first one, too! We also surpassed 73,000 miles on the car on Friday.

We watched two movies tonight: "Yours, Mine and Ours" (1968; Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda, Tom Bosley, Tim Matheson) on DVD, as well as "Home on the Range" (2004; Rosanne Barr, Jennifer Tilly, Judi Dench, Randy Quaid, Cuba Gooding Jr.) on DVD. Both pretty good.

One night recently, when my folks were here, we all enjoyed a wonderful meal at a local Perkins restaurant. Speaking of food, we have discovered (and love!) Some Dude's Fry Sauce. Here's a photo:


I tried out the new ItsAStart.com, but found it not much different from Start.com. In fact, one could argue that it's a blatant knock-off. Still, though, it's nice and works well.

More music I've heard recently:

"Plush" by Stone Temple Pilots
"We The People" (album) by Flipsyde

I read another informative article on artificial sweeteners the other day. I don't know why, but it's a topic that I always seem to come back to from time to time.

Jared has the croup, and is, therefore, on a whole regimen of medications at the present time, including steroids, a nebulizer, cough medicine, and antibiotics; exciting stuff!

Neal, Marta, Tawna, and Bryden came over to visit today. Because of Jared's croup, however, Amber and her newborn did not come by. We had some Chinese takeout from Golden Dragon Buffet tonight. Not the best. We also stopped by and shopped at Paul's Market for the first time. Reminds me of a Scolari's - the club card even looks the same.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was recently in a motorcycle accident, and didn't have a motorcycle license. (Oops!)

Becky graduated from Sunbeams into CTR A today, and she's really excited about her very own CTR ring!   =)  And here, especially for Brad, is a photo of our new house:



Here, also, is one of Misti's new crack creme (as mentioned in a previous post):


Cool tip of the year: MP3 scriptures for iPod users. If only I had known about the Book of Mormon ones about a month ago...   =(

Rick, Darlene, and Bonny spent a week up here for New Year's. We had a great time, especially Becca and Jared (Baby Samson - did you know that "Samson" means "Little Sun"? Baby son...)

Like Brad, we were also sad to hear about the deceased Sago Mine miners in West Virginia. We found the "Welcome to Caldwell" cache tonight - our first of 2006, after a month-long hiatus from caching.

I tried a Doctor's CarbRite Diet Sugar-Free bar (Cookies 'n Cream flavor) a few days ago. Pretty tasty, actually. It uses maltitol as a sweetener. More music I've heard while at work: "Best of You" and "DOA" by Foo Fighters.

The Windows Metafile (WMF) security hole has obviously made the news during the past week. Glad it's already patched. How did your antivirus software fare during this attack? Here's the report card.

I tried out the new Google Pack service tonight. Of course, I always balk at any software adding anything into the startup folder, which in this case is the Google Updater, but it's a cool way to manage updates for several products all in one spot. If anything, it makes it a little faster for IT professionals to install software. Great idea, Google!

Misti scored some Zim's Crack Creme (Creamy Daytime Formula) the other day. It's actually just a dry skin lotion. It seems to work pretty well, but it does smell a little funny...

We watched "Snow Dogs" (2002; Cuba Gooding Jr., James Coburn, Nichelle Nichols, Joanna Bacalso, Graham Greene, M. Emmet Walsh, Sisqó) on VHS tonight. Cute.