ChetOS.net

I just realized that when I dramatically changed the stylesheet for this website I forgot to go though the pages and change the tags (I was concentrating on the blog code, I didn't check the About, Projects, etc pages).

I went though and changed the tags to be more standards compliant, it should also look nicer too.

Mark Twain once said, "I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know."

It is very rare for me to see a computer book that I want... Usually I go to the computer books section at Barnes and Noble and grab a few, look them over, and put them back.  I think the last book I bought was Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering, and it was very good.

You see, usually I discover a topic/technology online, play with it, decide what I think about it, etc., then I might go get a book on it so I can see what other people think.

Anyways, I was reading a /. article on AJAX (previously discussed here) and I saw this book: Pragmatic Ajax.  It goes over several aspects of AJAX that I have thought about and want to know more about.  Things like when to use it, popular debugging methods, layering, stuff like that... so this looks like a good book.

Unfortunately, it has not been published yet.  You can buy the "beta" version of it in PDF format for $20, or you can buy it later for probably $40.  I am not paying for PDFs, so I guess I will wait for it to come out.  I suggest you get it too, even if you don't know what the Web is.  You can jump on this "Web 2.0" bandwagon... I don't even know what that is yet!

I made it to level 52 in Warcraft over the weekend.  I still have not finished all the quests in Zul'Farrak... we just cannot get past the waves of trolls... there has got to be some trick that we are missing.

Anyways, I am about 40% through to level 53, I might be able to get there over this next weekend (maybe).  Also, this week marks the one year anniversary of the game.

Since my wife's aunt and uncle are moving away (and we always have Thanksgiving at their house), we are having it at my sister-in-laws house.  I am also going to visit my parents on Friday.

Everyone have a safe time.

I quit my job... and got a new one.

I actually had two very good job offers, I picked Software Techniques, Inc because I felt it was more in line with my skills and because I felt I had more to offer them.

I got everything squared away at Aurelius, I am sad to let go of http://www.runonideas.com because it did so well.  I built it to survive, so it should do fine.  I left Wayne do to all the easy stuff.

Well, I started my new job on Monday.  It is much better here.

I am a Web Application Developer for a small software development company in Winter Park.  We build custom "CAMA" tools (CAMA stands for Computer Aided Mass Appraisal) for county property appraisers -- you know -- like the tax reports and land usage.

They hired me because they handle the websites for their clients and because they want to build out more web-based applications.

The drive is pretty much just as bad, I am only one exit closer (which shaves about 10 minutes off the commute).

Anyways, I am busy.

I set up a "myspace" the other day... I don't plan on putting stuff there.  I just wanted to provide a way for old HS people to find me (for some odd reason).

Anyway, you can check it out at http://www.myspace.com/36056252.

According to the Social Security Administration website, only 603 people were named "Chet" during the entire decade from 1980-1989.  That ranks 980 of the top 1000 most popular names.  Only .0031% of the population (born in the 80s), that is like 1/3 of 1%.

Since Chet is in the middle of a lot of other names I have never heard of (Kyler, Jerel, Vito, Errol, Uriel) I have to assume that most people have never even heard the name Chet, that is ridiculous and must change.

My brother Andy comes in at 13 with 284,634; Nick comes in at 6 with 275,518 (for the 90's); and Kelly comes in at 60.

So my siblings have very popular names and I am stuck near Kyler and Jerel... interesting.

Oh, my wife beats my siblings though: Number 3 with 369,460 other people named Amanda during the '80s.  I guess she was right about everyone having her name.

I got to work late today.  The reason: there was a rottweiler walking down the middle of the lanes on I-4 on the bridge over John Young Parkway.  He had traffic backed up for miles.

There are two reasons why nobody stopped and got the dog out of the road: 1) they are late for work; 2) it is a rottweiler.  The latter was my reason.  The dog was probably already scared and I didn't want to get attacked... better leave that to the professionals.

It was odd, however, that animal control wasn't there.  I hope the owner gets his dog back because he looked relatively nice.

I have two things to report.

First, I made it to lvl 50 in WoW last night... "grinding" in Un'Goro Crater.  I also completed several quests so I am about 25% though lvl 50 (I have to get something insane like 150K exp points).

Second,  I changed the standard application background color from pure white to #FFFBF0 which is sort of off-white -- you can tell by the number that I took more blue out than green, and in hex colors, red and green make yellow... so it is slightly yellow, but not really. It is barely noticable but it is much easier on the eyes.  I also increased the font size in notepad (my web development IDE) to 11pt.  That also makes it much easier to code... I wish I had thought of it years ago.

And I have more to report:

I made a ton of revisions to the AIMSender program we use here, I switched it from the TOC protocol to Oscar because I was having major problems.  In addition, I replaced the UDP networking code with the library that I wrote a few months ago... I also fixed a bug in it which was causing CPU usage to spike.

My wife is addicted to Woot!.  She wants a "Bag o' Crap" which has three miscellaneous items in it for $1 (plus $5 for shipping)... there is often some very nice stuff (like laptop bags and mp3 players).  Sometimes it is just junk.

The sad thing is that it always sells out by 1:30AM (Woot! has a new item every day starting at 12:00AM) and she is never awake to check it (oddly enough, haha).  So, I am going to write a quick program which checks Woot! everyday and alerts me by sending a message to my cell phone (which may or may not wake me up).

Until next time.

The answer is "'Wrong', but probably also toile."

Amanda made that joke, the word toile is pronouced twal .

Both of my brothers-in-law now have blogs!

Wayne's is at http://lwayne.blogspot.com
Josh's is at http://www.myspace.com/joshvantassel

Josh doesn't actually blog, he just uses it as a place for people to find him (or themselves...?!)

Wayne doesn't post often, but he does post very good business type things.

Also, my friend Joe Schneider finally got his blog up... he posts the kind of things I wish I had time to post.

If you have a blog let me know and I will go look at it.

I was at Ebaum's World during my lunch break.  There was a puzzle game that I heard was hard to beat.  There is a guy who holds out 18 pearls in a pseudo-pyramid.

   123
  1234
 12345
123456

The object is to leave the opponent with only one pearl to choose.  The catch is that you can only take from one row at a time... you can take as many as you want, but only from one row.  You can choose who goes first.

Well, he beat me a bunch of times so I decided to make him beat himself.  First I let him go first, he took the first three from the third row.  Then I restarted the game and *I* took the first three from the third row.  I recorded his next move and then restarted the game.  I then let him take the first three and did the same thing he did to me, I then recorded his response.

I did this several times until I had mapped out his response to each of *his* moves.  Then I restarted the game, let him go first and just played like we would have played me.

The trick is that he has several opening moves... you could map them all out, but I just kept restarting until he started with the first three on the third row.  I am able to beat him in 10 moves.

Here is the pattern I used:
Let him go first, if he takes the first three on the third row then follow these instructions, if not just play or restart.
For your first move take all three from the first row.
He will take the fourth one on the third row.
You then take the first one from the fourth row.
He will take the second and third from the fourth row.
You take the first and second from the second row.
He will take the third from the fourth row.
You take the fourth and fifth of the fourth row.
He will take the fourth from the second row.
At this point it should be obvious how to beat him, just choose a piece and take it.

Anyways, that is an example.

I noticed that if you go to the creator's website there is an updated version that has different starting combinations, but you can still use this method to beat it.

I finally made it to level 49.  I haven't played in so long that I nearly forgot how to move :)

Anyways, I finally got a group together for Zul'Furak and we completed about 3 quests in there before we all died.  Also, I finished off some of the harder quests in the Searing Gorge.

I have nothing to say, but I want to post.

We finally launched Phase One of RedChip.com.  This will be the first real website where all I did was code.  Someone else wrote the content and another person did the actual design (which I translated into HTML).

Phase One has basic content and subscriber login system.  The current registration model is one whereby visitors fill in a form (or gives us a call) and we call them and verbally set them up.  I also virtually copied and pasted my personal blog code (this website) into RedChip so they could have a blog.

Phase Two has us taking online credit card subscriptions, but it has been a long time since I worked with payment processing servers and will probably take a while to write.

In other news, Runonideas.com's Alexa rating got even better over the weekend and is now an amazing 112,711.  This is better than all websites in our industry.  Not only is it better, it is significantly better.

Until next time.

Background:
In January I ordered plain old telephone service with no frills.  It is 11.05 for the service and 14.33 in tax.  I wanted to add DSL without having to get all the junk like call waiting, call forwarding, etc.  I asked the Sprint rep exactly how much my bill would be, the person said $52 somthing.  I get my bill and it is for $75 something.  So I call back and after arguing for about 30 minutes I got them to apply a discount for $25 so it would be the original price.  They said the discount would last one year (the term of the contract).  End of story.

Fast forward to yesterday... I get my bill and the discount is gone.  It has been 9 months.  So I call them up.  First I wait 5 minutes for a rep.  They confirm my account and I proceed to ask them why my bill is different.  The rep says that the promotions have expired and they there is no way I am going to get my $25 back.  She transfers me to a "tech desk" which apperantly is customer service but not called that.  I wait for an additional 2 minutes.  Talked to "Jim" now. I explained it again.  He said he will try to get my price back in line. However he can only offer a promo for services that they offer and they no longer off 512kbps they offer 1.5mbps.  Then the guy stops talking for a second and then amazingly got it all solved.  I keep my 512kbps service and they reapply the $25 discount.  He also puts a credit on my account for the missing $25 for last month.

Incredibly it was not much of a fight, and on top of that I only talked to two people.  Usually I talk to a nice person, then a mean person, and then a person who can help me.  Still, they often just stop talking and give no indication as to what they are doing… minutes go by with no talking.  Then you say something and they are like "just one moment."  How about just telling me up front, "Give me a minute to check my email and send a few IMs, also I am doing something to your account which may or may not be good, you will know when you get your bill."  That would be much better.

I finished Time for Truth by Os Guinness. It definitely goes on my list of Top 10 books... perhaps I should compile a list of Top 10 books.

Defining the distinction between Premodernism, Modernism, and Postmodernism, this book shows how the lack of truth undercuts our society.  It also gives a case for truth as the basis for freedom.

I would write more about it if I had time, but I don't.

Well I have been trying to fix my boss' computer for the past few days.  Every time he starts Acrobat reader (version 6.0 or 7.0+) the application freezes at the splash screen. Looking at the performance monitor I see that AcroRd32.exe CPU usage spikes at 95%. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling both versions and also removing unneeded plugins.

Well, I finally found a solution... it is quite simple and should be listed on Adobe's website as this would seem to me to be a critical error.  Apparently Acrobat Reader creates a temporary file with 0 size each time it starts up; however, it does not delete it when it closes.  It uses the format AcrXXXX.tmp where XXXX is a hexadecimal number from 0000-FFFF.  Well as you know FFFF is 65,535.  So after you open the program that many times the program freezes while enumerating the temp files -- I guess so it can find the last one and increment it.

So the solution? Go to C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\username\LOCAL SETTINGS\TEMP and delete all the files with the format Acr*.tmp.  It took over five minutes to delete them on my boss' computer.

After futher examination on my own computer I found that I don't have any Acr*.tmp files.  I am running Acrobat 7.0.  The lack of temp file deletion may be an Acrobat 6.0 only problem, but since Acrobat 7.0 still enumerates the files it will hang too.

"Woot!"

Our Alexa Rating is now 144,363.  We are now officially beating all of our competitors!

I expect it to get exponentially harder to gain rank from this point because we are going to be competing with businesses that exist only online (and therefore pour huge amounts of money into their websites).

Update: Amazingly our rating dropped even more last weekend, we are now at 135,789.  When will it end? The world may never know.

Update 2: Again our rating went to 124,564.

I haven't posted in two weeks, I have been busy.

Aurelius bought a company and they sent their servers to us, there were 5 of them.  These things are *real* servers, hot swapable hard drives and power supplies, 6 fans in each, RAID-0 disk arrays.  Dual or quad processors... too bad they are a bit 1) old 2) overkill for us.  Besides, having those fans going in my ears would prevent me from thinking straight.  Also, we couldn't get a hold of the company to get the Administrator password, so I had to hack them, that wasn't pretty.

Also, we are in full swing on doing a website redesign for the new company.  I finally got the layout (provided to me by our graphic designer) converted to HTML.

I got to level 46 in World of Warcraft, I am about 50% though that.  I decided to go to the Searing Gorge, which I think was a good idea.  Lots of smaller quests to get me to level 48-50.

I started reading How Should We Then Live again.  I started in the middle.

Amanda and I spent all last weekend working on the outside of the house.  She pressure washed the back patio while I mowed the lawn.  I also bought an edger/trimmer so the yard looks really sharp.  We also planted some flowers in front... that is phase 1.  Phase 2 is planting some flowers in front of our window, we are doing that tomorrow.

We went to Grandma's for Labor day, had some hamburgers and hot dogs, watched Clear and Present Danger on the TV.  It was pretty fun.

I found out that Joe started as youth minister at First Christian Church of Titusville.

Thats all.

The Alexa rating of my company's website (which I designed, wrote, and maintain) just broke the 200,000 mark.  The lower the better.  Technically this means that out of all the websites in the world runonideas.com ranks 197,349 in hits.  This is actually very good.  We have been chasing our competitor for a few months and we beat their score a two weeks ago, now we are just increasing the gap.

Anyways, 200,000 was a milestone, just thought I would share that.

I finally finished migrating everything from one server to another.  I had to recreate everything: Active Directory, DNS, IIS, Exchange, User data, etc.  And I had to do it without the specialists knowing about it (not a secret, just seamless).

This was not a copy, this was a total reconstruction on a different server, I then copied the pieces from the old server to the new one (like the "shared" drives and the "users'" drives).  I came in at 6AM yesterday and got half the computers on the new domain (I had to stop working on that at 8:30 when everyone arrived).  Then Wayne and I came in today at 6 and copied Exchange over.  It went pretty seamless, except we have an employee that needs to access Exchange from outside the firewall, I had a solution on the old server, but it involves registry editing and I didn't document... shock!  we don't have time to document anything here :(

All of this because Exchange would not except a new domain.  We bought a company and needed to accept email for it.  It is a very straightforward process to add a new domain, just add a Recipient Policy and make sure you have AD set up.  Well, I added the recipient policy and Exchange pretended like it didn't know what I was doing... so my solution was to just make our backup server a full fledge DC and migrate everything.

I celebrated my 23rd birthday last weekend.  We went to Alexander Springs in the Ocala National Forest.  I got the inflatable boat out and we messed around.  Wayne and I swam down a ways into the boil.  We used a 40 foot rope to estimate the depth, we swam over 30 feet down.

The spring was pretty nice.  There are three things that are important to me for a spring: depth, a run, a shallow place for kids to swim.  This had two of them, it had a deep enough boil so that it wasn't easy to reach the bottom, it also had a nice beach.  It doesn't have a swimmer-accessable run, you can take canoes.  My favorite spring it Blue Springs in Volusia county.  It has a deep boil, and a very nice run; however, it does not have a shallow swimming area (that isn't important to me personally, but I go with my brother-in-law and he has kids).

Anyways, I also went out to NSB to see my parents.  We ate at a "nice" mexican restaurant.  They gave me a Fender guitar (learning to playing the guitar is something I have been meaning to do for a while).  My sister gave me a cool fiber-optic light thing, Nick gave me a Duncan yoyo.

Amanda got me exactly what I wanted: a nice lighter for camping (it is a "torch" lighter that is wind-resistant), she also got me some very nice books and a foam camping mat.

Mark got me a Pink Floyd CD.

I finished Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering, but I cannot talk about it... sufice to say it is good.

This is probably the first computer book that I have read that I will need to read again to get... am I defeated? No.  But I don't know assembly language that well and he expects people to understand what programs do by looking at it... go figure.

So we stopped by Chick-Fil-A (or as Mark calls it, Fillet-Of-Chick or Chickah-Fillet) yesterday to get some breakfast.  Wayne asked for an "8 piece," and the lady was like, "8 piece of what?"  So Wayne said "chicken nuggets".

What is up with that?  Its not like they sell anything other than chicken.  You cannot order an 8 piece chicken sandwich or something like that... they only have one product that comes in 8 piece.

Even people at McDonald's know this, up until they started with their most excellent Select strips you could say 6 piece and they automatically knew chicken nuggets... and they even sell more than just chicken.

Anyways I just though I would share that.

Also, I was thinking (but that has nothing to do with the person at Chick-Fil-A) that they could get some very cheap labor teaching monkeys to get the food.  I mean, they could teach the monkey that if someone says "chicken sandwich" they grab it from the proper bin.

I took a stroll down OSI Model lane today.  I took a class that covered this stuff in high school, I have also read a lot about it in the past, because that is what I do, but I needed to brush up on it.  Here is a synopsis.

OSI Model provides an abstract description of network communications, it breaks down each process as a layer and describes the layer.  Each layer passes information up (or down) to the next.  The layers are unconcerned about the processes of other layers, they just take data the way they need it, modify it, and send it along the chain.  There are seven layers identified by the OSI model: Applications, Presentation, Session, Transport, Network, Data Link, and Physcial.  Each layer has its own data encapsulation method, as the data is moved from layer to layer they encapsulate/decapsulate their specific information.

Layers:

Application - The application layer is simply the program that acts on the final data, it also sends data to the network.  This is often a user-interactive application but does not have to be.  Eg.  A web-browser is an application layer network device that interacts with the user, a web server does not interact with the user.  Examples of this layer: AIM, Internet Explorer, VFS, HTTP, SMTP.

Presentation - The presentation layer organizes the data into a format that is usable for the Application layer.  If I send a email through the mail to an Apple user, the presentation layer will convert the "enters" from Cartridge Return/Line Feed to plain Cartridge Return.  Also, encryption is usually done on this layer, SSL will be implemented here rather than the application layer so that the final program will not have to deal with it (ie, the Application layer program will tell the Presentation layer to encrypt/decrypt the data, it will not do it itself).  Examples of this layer: SSL, TLS, XML, other archaic stuff.

Session - This is a rarely used layer, it manages sessions.  Lets say you have a video, it will have an audio component and a video component.  In order to have these line up, you would encapsulate them before they hit the transport layer, the session layer would see them as individual components and combine them.  All the layers below see them as a single data stream.  Examples: NetBIOS, SIP, SDP.

Transport - This is where we get into "real" networking.  The transport layer controls reliability, connections, states, and ports.  It is responsible for making sure packets arrive and if they don't resending them (if the transport protocol used supports this, some don't).  This is the "TCP" of "TCP/IP" there is also UDP which is a connectionless, stateless, non-error-checking protocol (it is used when the data is not critical because it is faster than TCP).  This layer has nothing to do with actual network topography, it just makes sure that all the packets arrive. Also, this layer will put out-of-order packets in order for the higher levels.  Examples: TCP, UDP, NetBEUI, SPX (Novell).

Network - The network layer is the first layer to actually see the network, it handles routing and topography.  At this stage the packet will have the information to find the destination.  Also, it determines if packets received are intended for the user and pass them along if so (it drops them if not).  IP is the most common protocol for the network layer, this is where we get IP Address.  IP stands for Internet Protocol and along with TCP/IP was invented for UNIX networks.  This layer also does the work of cutting the packets up (and putting them back together).  Note that the transport layer also deals with "packets" but they are called segments and deal more with end-to-end communcation rather than routing.  Each packet can arrive by taking a different route, there are protocols in place to detect when a network segment is down and using a different route automatically.  Routers work at the network layer, they are the smartest of traffic routing devices.  Examples of network layer: IP, IPX (Novell), ICMP (ping), and router protocols like RIP, OSPF, BGP.

Data Link - The data link layer is concerned with access to the media, it is the hardware side of the network.  It breaks packets down into frames with are fixed length.  Also, the data link layer makes sure the media is open before sending and if a collision was detected it waits and retries.  Switches are the routing devices that operate on this layer, they will only route the impulses if the data link address is on the appropriate wire. Most of the popular terms for networking refer to technologies on this layer, Ethernet is by far the most popular.  Examples: Ethernet, Token Ring (old), FDDI, PPP (dial-up), Frame Relay (T-1), ATM.

Physcial - This layer is the actual medium which the data travels through.  This can be copper wire, fiber optic, wireless (the "Ether" :), or anything else that can be used to convey information (ultrasound *could* be used).  A physical layer specification would determine the substance (copper wire), method (electricity), and physcial properties (100ft, 60Hz, +5v).  Hubs are the networking devices that operate on this level, they simply route the electrical impulses to all the connected wire.  Some of the most cryptic acronyms are in this layer.  The most common physical layer specification is 10BASE-T and 100BASE-T which uses twisted pair copper wire.  Some examples of this layer are: RS-232 (serial), V.35, T-1, ISDN, SONET, DSL, and the Ethernet specific 10BASE-T, 100BASE-T (Fast Ethernet), and 100BASE-FX (Fiber Optic).

These layers form a stack where each layer passes data to the higher layer and requests information from the next lower layer.  Each layer is technically self-contained whereby it knows nothing about the lower layers.  As long as the lower layer interfaces properly it is acceptable.  This means that the TCP protocol doesn't care if it is running on a copper wire, or a wireless radio, or ultrasound.  And in the same way, the data link layer doesn't care if you are running an HTTP server.  Each layer takes the data, processes it its own special way, and hands it off.

I found a great picture that graphically explains the OSI model in standard communication terms here.

Mandy and I went to Busch Gardens last Friday... that was very fun.  Amazingly have lived in Florida for 15 years and I have never been there.

The roller coasters were great, the first one I went on was 'Gwazi'.  It was a wooden roller coaster and it was very intense.  I have been on several wooden coasters before (the Hurler at Paramount's Carowinds and Great American Scream Machine at Six Flags among others) and this was the best.  Amanda hates wooden roller coasters (understandably) so she sat that one out.

We went on the new SreiKra, that was great.  They take you up 200 feet, hold you there for 5 seconds (while you just hang by the restraining harnass) and then drop you.  You figure that you accelerate at 10m/s² you will reach a top speed of 30m/s by the time you reach the bottom (which will take about 3 seconds).  That is nearly 70 miles per hour.  That is assuming you are actually in freefall, and you are not because there is friction on the rails, etc.  You probabably hit 65mph and zoom along for a while on that speed.  It is not nearly as *intense* as the wooden one, but it is extreemely fun.  It is intense in a different way.

We also went on Kumba, was a lot like the wooden coaster but metal.  Lots of loops (though there were no loops on the wooden one :) and turns.  This coaster is like a tightly wound spring, if feels like you are holding on to the back of a snake that is trying to get your off.

On top of all that we took the train through the African tundra (which looks amazingly like Florida pine scrub :) and went to all the animal exibits.  I was there for the roller coasters, Amanda was there for the animals.  We spent about 45 minutes at the chimpanzee exhibit.  The baby was very funny and you could tell it liked having attention.  He tried (nearly sucessfully) to walk upright, backwards on a rope.

Also, there is a aquarium where you can look both above the water and below it through a glass window.  There was a hippo in the water, it looks like a big cow.  It is amazing that from above the water you cannot tell, at all.

We got to see the tigers get fed, that was neat.  Our cat Adira looks just like a tiger, and I am not exaggerating.  She looks like a mix between raccoon and tiger.

Although this park doesn't really offer what I call the "Disney Experience" (ie, *everything* is kept perfectly neat and the enviroment is totally controlled), Amanda tells me it is better than Animal Kingdom (appearently all the animals were hiding when she went there).  If I have the chance I would defininately go to this park again... when it is cooler.  Florida residents get two days for the price of one, which is nice.

This website is now fully XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant!

Not sure that it matters, I know for sure that I don't care... but it was fun to do it.  XHTML standardization is the "new" thing.

Also, the CSS for this website is compliant as well.  That was easy.

My biggest complaint on Strict vs Transitional is the lack of font tags and the inability to use target="" in an anchor.  How am I suppose to open a new window without target??? Use Javascript? That would be even worse.

I got around the font issue by using divs with a display:inline; set.

I also rewrote the blog tag parser (like when you use [b or [code) so that it is more flexible (the bold, underline, italics, and code tags are all parsed using the same function, urls are parsed differently).

I made it to level 44 over the weekend.  I am finally doing quests in Tanaris.  I have to go to Zul' Moth which is a dungeon.  I have like 6 quests to do in there and I will need a group to do it.  It will take about 2 hours I suspect, so I will need at least a 4 hour block of time to get a group together and execute the quests.

I have been spending a load of money getting my blacksmithing skill up.  I have decided to become a weaponsmith (as opposed to an armorsmith), so I have to make a lot of stuff for free to go down that path.

So, I finished off the quests in STV, and most of them in the Hinterlands.

This is a two part entry, the first is about family relationships and the second is the thought that started it all, my wife's cousin's husband's birthday.

Yesterday we celebrated my wife's cousin's husband's 30th birthday.  I think that I am considered his cousin, but I am not sure.  I know that my wife's cousin is my cousin, but I am not sure if that transfers across marriage boundaries.  I think that from now on I am going to just refer to these people as my cousin, aunt, grandma, etc, because I have very little contact with my actual extended family.  Not to mean any disrespect to my family, but it is a lot easier to refer to Keith as my cousin rather than my wife's cousin's husband.

I found a chart that might help some.  Appearently Keith's son is actually the illusive first cousin once removed.  I just thought that was interesting... not that it matters, because I refer to my wife's cousin as my aunt, just for fun.

Anyways, we had an "over the hill" party for Keith.  I guess they decided to do that theme because he is planing an over the hill party for my aunt and she wanted to beat him to the punch.

We had pizza and very good home-made ice cream cake.  Then we unloaded on each other with several games of mafia (which has become the go-to game for family functions).  I got to be the doctor several times (which I like because I am pretty good at doctor).  My cousin Zack and I usually talk amoungst ourselves and he played me twice when he was mafia.  And when I say played, I mean PLAYED.  Oh well.  Keith called mafia out very well one game.  Also Aunt Bonnie has become quite the mafioso, I think she was it three times and nearly won every time.  I went gung-hoe on "aunt" Tammy in the last game, but she wasn't mafia.  I was the doctor and managed to save KGB twice.  I should have saved myself the last round, but I didn't.

Amanda and I went for a walk the other day, we decided to walk down the road and through a subdivision that is behind our house.  It was very nice, nice houses, appearantly nice people, etc.  We discovered that it actually looped around and came out up the road from our house... that makes a nice loop.

So we went to Wal-Mart and bought some bikes.  Amanda got a Roadmaster, and I got a Schwinn.  I really hated to buy the most expensive bike there, however there was a world of difference in the quality between the bikes.  I figure that it would be better to pay more for a bike that will last 15 years (and it had better last that long).  I am sure with oil and stuff it will.   It has one of those new-fangled suspensions on the head tube.  I am not sure what that is actually for, but I have noticed that if I slam on the back brake the bike heaves forward and is absorbed by the springs.

Either way, we have been extreemely busy this weekend so we haven't gotten to use them :-(

Background: My wife's grandma lives in backwoods Florida.  She lives in a house built (literally) around 1910.  The house was moved about 100ft during a tornado years and years ago, they had a company move the house close to the original position a long time ago.  It is a two story house, the second story is basically a tall "finished" attic.  My wife's grandma is taking care of my wife's 99.5 year old great, great aunt.

Now, when I say backwoods, I mean backwoods.  She lives on a lake (Lake Tohopekaliga [Lake Toho or West Lake]) and is surrounded by orange, cyprus, oak, pine, and palm trees.  It is a 15 minute drive into town and there is only one set of power lines running out there (which means the power goes out often during the summer t-storms).  Grandma doesn't kill the spiders in her house becuase they eat the bugs.  She eats local wildlife (I think I have too).

The Way I Remember It: So, this weekend a bunch of family decided they wanted to do some work in the attic.  The ceiling was falling in because it is so old (and I don't think the hurricane helped much).  And it was used for storing stuff (old, old stuff).  So they wanted to rip out the ceiling and the paneling on the walls and put up drywall.

Bud (my father-in-law), Wayne (my brother-in-law), and myself showed up at 8:30, Uncle Michael was already there.  Our first job was to tear out what was left of the ceiling and throw it out the window (which meant throwing it onto the first floor roof).  Now, remember this is a 90 year old house, the ceiling had [stuff] on it and it fell on us and it wasn't pretty. After that we pulled the paneling off the walls and threw that out the window.

Then some more cousins and uncles showed up.  We put the drywall up on the ceiling.  Here is why it was important for me to relate the house being moved... the rafters were not straight.  When they screwed the drywall up they would often miss the stud and that was a mess.  Also, we wanted to put insulation on top of the drywall.... so guess who's job that was.  Mine, since I was the smallest.  So as if it wasn't bad enough having the [stuff] fall on me during the ceiling removal process, I now had to climb up in there (on the shaky 90 year old rafters) and get my whole body in it.  The attic is actually one 10x10 core area with four areas that come out from it.  We insulated 3 of the outer areas as we did the drywall, but when we did the core area I had to go up there for about 10 minutes and rearrange the insulation on all the other areas (we didn't use enough, actually we did, but we were being stingy because we weren't sure how much we had).  It was about 110° because there was finally insulation keeping the heat up there, so I got cooked.  While up there I crushed a old wasp nest with my back and it went down my pants; I was shaking wasp nest out of my pants for the next two hours.

After we finished with the ceilings we put the rest of the drywall up on the walls.  One area that needed drywall was over the stairs so we were balancing trying to get that up... also cousin kept measuring the walls wrong and we cut the drywall funny.

Finally I climbed out the window onto the roof and started throwing the debris into the yard so we could call it to someplace, I am not sure where that place was because I didn't help with that.  Even though I drank a lot of Propel (10x better than water) I got bad heat exhaustion (lets put it this way, I stopped sweating for over an hour, that is very bad).  At 2:30 I went home.

All in all it wasn't that bad, it was an great learning experience.  I have watched/helped my dad do drywall a long time ago, but I didn't really pay attention.  Here I measured, cut, mudded, etc, so that knowledge should go a long way.  My arms were itching from handling the insulation, so I took some benedril and that knocked me out.

Also, Wayne chickened out... I mean had an appointment at 10:30, so he jetted.

I have added code to display a notice if someone comes here from google.es (because ChetOS is being confused with the spanish word for Cheats).

Just thought I would let you know.

If you turn on Outlook and get an error saying "Exchange is currently in Recovery Mode" and have the options to Connect, Work Offline, or Cancel fix it using the following method:
Click Cancel
Go to Control Panel -> Mail
Click on Profiles
Remove the Outlook profile
Click Add and follow the steps in the wizard.

You can just click Connect and use Outlook just fine (I did for several weeks).  However, that will get annoying so just fix it.

There is a new web application technology called Ajax (short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML).  This technology is not a language, framework, or anything like that... it is a method of communicating with a web browser without refreshing the page.  Basically you have a Javascript "listener" which receives information from a webserver (that data is transferred in XML).  When the listener receives the data it dynamically changes stuff (form variables, images, calculated fields, pretty much anything).

This is considered the Next Big Thing.

The funny part is that I have been using this for, literally, years.  I built a Java-less Instant Messenger and Chat program that runs natively in the web browser, does not refresh, and uses async calls to the webserver via Javascript and XML (it is mentioned on my Projects page but I don't think the link works).  Also, the current Runonideas.com website uses this method to dynamically verify the validity of a stock symbol.

Also, if memory serves me I got the idea from the ASP.net methodology.  I don't know *how* they did it, but if you choose an item from a drop down list the page sends the information to the server and the page is reloaded with another drop down list pre-polulated with new values (this is just an example, it is like when you choose a state from a list and the city list is populated with cities in that state)... however, now that I think about it, they used the old ASP postback technique but made it transparent for the developer and web user.

Either way, Ajax is another technology that I invented :-) but is just now catching on (like wildfire).

I have removed "Bootloaders, again" from my current hobby list because I don't care about them anymore.  That means that I officially have no current hobby.

I finally fixed my website so it renders correctly in Firefox.  I did it because I am doing the same for http://www.runonideas.com and I figured this would be good practice.

There appear to be three main issues:
1) I use width and padding to make things look nice.  I set the width to the actual width that I want and I use the padding to keep the text off the border.  With Firefox, the width is set first and then the padding is added to it.  So if I use width:100px;padding-left:10px; then I would get a box that is 110px wide.  Why this is the case, I don't know.

2) I use the height property to keep areas from getting too small (if there is not enough text to fill it).  In this case IE gets it terribly wrong and FF gets it right.  IE is not technically bad, but it messes me up.  There should be a min-height to keep the box from getting too small.  FF supports this, however if I use "height" then FF uses this as an absolute height and makes the text go outside if it is too long (rather than growing with the text).  So I do min-height:300px;_height:300px; by putting an underscore in front of "height" it makes it so FF ignores it and IE reads it.

3) No one pixel table heights.  Sometimes I will use a 1px table height in IE to create a small line.  It looks nice.  But FF does not support 1px tables.  This is bad.  I have not resolved this issue yet.

So either way, now when you come to http://www.chetos.net in Firefox it will look nice.  And I am working on getting http://www.runonideas.com to look nice as well.  Since runonideas.com is a *much* bigger site.  I have opted to load a seperate stylesheet when FF is detected.  This is not what I wanted to do, but that is how it is going to be.

In commemoration of chetos.net's 6970th page request I have redesigned that three thing at the top.  I am not sure what the effect is called, something like a translucent highlight.  I also removed the word "ChetOS.net" from the image and put it in there with HTML.

I was also looking at the website stats and noticed that most people come here by looking for "chetos", however, I also noticed that most people who search for chetos do so at http://www.google.es.  So mostly spanish gamers looking for cheats (and not finding any) come here.  I think I will write a redirect page so if someone comes here using that site they will go to an actual cheat page. Nine people came here after searching for Don ChetOS.  I am the Don ChetOS, so this is not a bad thing :-)

I currently get an average of 67 page views per day and 464/week and 1740/month.

IE7 is killing me so I am going to uninstall it.  The built in search (google search) does not open in a new window/tab so it does me almost no good.  Also, I keep looking down at the taskbar to open a different window and that is driving me crazy.  Hopefully uninstalling IE7 will properly reinstall IE6.

I have a copy of IE7 now, it is nice.  Tabbed browsing, phishing blocker, general UI change.

I was really hoping for alpha transparency in PNG files and full CSS compliancy.  I haven't checked for those yet.

Overall it is rather unimpressive, I thought the UI for IE6 was great and I could care less about tabbed browsing.  It looks like MS ripped the interface off Firefox (which I don't use).  Hopefully it will support plug-ins better than IE6 and somepeople will actually start using them.

I am/was writing a class library for UDP networking.  It is suppose to be very simple... it has support for listening, sending, and broadcasting.  Sending and broadcasting are fine, you just parse the data and send it throught UDPClient class.  Listening is a little more tricky.  In order to keep your UI thread from blocking (pausing) you have to use a seperate thread for the listener service.  This in and of itself is not bad, creating a thread is easy.

The hard part comes when data is received.  You see, each thread has its own context (stack, memory allocation, the whole bit) so you cannot simply edit a variable that is in use on another thread (it doesn't truely exist as far as the editing thread is concerned)... this brings up an interesting question: When data is received on the network listener thread how to do you get into the UI thread so you can do meaningful work on it?  The simple answer is by using an invoke method to marshall the data accross the thread.  This is called Cross-Thread Communciation.  The .NET Framework handles all the for you (but you have to know to do it).

Form1.Invoke(handleData, new Object() {receivedData})

But this is not truely the problem, I have used the invoke method many times.  However, now I want to turn my UDP networking code into a .dll file so I can use it without having to modify it.  The Form1 has to be hard-coded into the UDP classes.  This is a deal-breaker if you want to turn it into a dll (not all people call their main GUI class "Form1").  So I made it so that you can pass the Form object you are using into it when you initialize the class.  Therefore you get this:

Dim m_CallBackThread as Windows.Forms.Form
Dim m_CallBackMethod as incomingDataDelegate

m_CallBackThread.Invoke(m_CallBackMethod, new Object() {receivedData})

This way you just tell UDPNetworking that m_CallBackThread is "Me" and the m_CallBackMethod is "handleData(data)" and when new network data is received the UDP listener thread will ask "Me" to run "handleData(data)" under it's context.

If anyone wants this .NET 2.0 DLL (specifically tested with VS Express Beta 2) then please use the contact form and ask for it.

L. Wayne has posted a short writeup on why being predictable is an important property of leadership.  It is also an important property of parenthood.

http://lwayne.blogspot.com/2005/07/predictable.html

I will sum up:
Being predictable is important because it gives your subordinates a sense of security.  When they know what your reaction will be (good or bad) to different circumstances they will be prepared to handle it.  If you act differently each time they will not know what to expect and it can throw them through a loop.

Reacting unusually a few times may shake your "people" up, but being different every time will wear them out.  On the other hand, is it possible to be predictably unpredictable?  That is kind of like being consistently inconsistent.

There is a place in Dun Morogh that you can see when flying from Ironforge to Menethil Harbor.  This place is known as the "airstrip" and is technically unreachable.  Well I did some digging and appearantly there is a way to get there.  I followed the instructions at http://www.warcraftstyle.com/video/airport.wmv.  It is very straighforward and not terribly difficult.  There is nothing up there but some Ironforge Guards.  There are also Stormpike Guards or something.  I related this info with someone and they said that Stormpike guards are a sure sign of a upcoming Battleground... that would be really cool.

On a side note, I made it to level 41.  I also unlearned my talents so I could reorganize them.  I decided to go completely Retribution route and get Blessing of Kings.  It is not too impressive, but I haven't actually used it for fighting.  It was better than holy shock I guess and much better than repentance.  I picked up Concecration and that is very nice.

I am off to finish some quests in Desolace.  I wanted to play in the Warsong Gulch BG when I was lvl 39 (so I would be the highest player in the 30-39 range) but now I am the lowest in the 40-49 range and that wouldn't be too fun.

I finally made it, level 40 in World of Warcraft.  This means I am 2/3 from the maximum level.

Now that I am level 40 I can ride a horse and wear plate mail.  Not to mention the status of walking around and seeing "the little people."

I spent most of my time lately in Desolace which is a very dark desolate area.  I think it is a dried up lakebed.  Lots of copper and tin and some mithril.  The funny thing is that this area is mostly lvl 30-38.  I haven't seen a single lvl 40+.  That probably means I should not technically be here.  There must be another region where I belong.  But I will continue here until I finish the quests.  I am already halfway to lvl 41.

I also exchanged my nice two-handed mace for a nicer polearm.  Unfortunatly I have zero "skill" with it and have to walk around killing stuff to increase it.  However, I think it is worth it.  I paid 6g for it, so it had better be.

I bought my house in December of last year.  The hurricanes in early fall had done quite a bit of damage to the house and the previous owners had it all repaired.  However, there were two very nice palm trees in the backyard that have been leaning... a lot.  We're not talking about a simple 70° angle, like the pine tree.  This is like 30° (assuming an upright tree is 90 degrees).  I had one pine tree cut down because it was almost leaning on the house and would rub up on it during bad storms (which we get daily).  I didn't want to cut the palm trees down because they are very nice.

So I have spent parts of several Saturdays throughout the past months digging out the trees.  A few weeks ago I accidently bought a ratcheting tie-down strap instead of a come-along (Amanda pointed out it should be called a paraklesis).  Well that wasn't the right tool so I spent hours and got no where.

I borrowed my wife's cousin's come-along and it took me literally minutes to pull the trees up.  Then I spent over an hour putting the dirt back in the hole and tying up the trees.

I have the palm trees tied up to a leaning (70°) pine tree.  I meant to take a picture before I pulled the trees up because it looked like the palm trees were causing the pine tree to lean.

I have always wondered what the actual different between the UK, Great Britain, and England is.  Each name encompasses a smaller area, here is the scoup:

United Kingdom of Great Britian and Northern Ireland (UK) - This is a state which consists of all the countries on those islands up there.  However, in 1922, Ireland broke into the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland.  Therefore, the UK is not all the land on all the islands.

Great Britian - This is the geographical area which is the largest island of the British Isles.  This island contains Scotland, Wales, and England.  Great Britain is not the same thing as the UK.  The UK consists of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

England - England is the largest and most populous country of the UK.  It is part of Great Britain.  It has Scotland to the north and Wales to the west.  There is no such thing as English citizenship, nor is there Great Britian citizenship.  The UK is the state.

The capital of UK, Great Britain, and England is London.

Also, it should be noted that "the British" as a group are descentants of the "Britons" which were largely Celtic tribes from France.  The German-based Saxons and Anglos invaded in the 6th century and they are more closely "English".  This also explains why the English language is more akin to German in sentence structure and not Latin (although it borrows tons of words).  Middle English is a blending of German with French which started when England's administration starting using French as it's official language.

This looks fun: http://mnt.is-a-geek.org/tron/

Hook a GPS up to a laptop with a wireless connection and have  a server track your movements.  Turn these tracks into a perimeter which encompasses your opponent and you win.

If you were to take away the fancy input/output devices this would be extreemely easy to construct however, why construct it if you cannot tell where your opponent is and where his track is?

Wow!

If I could use any interjection to describe this book that would be it.  I finished "The Last Battle" over the weekend and I have to say that, in conjunction with the other five books, has got to be the best book I have ever read.  It was extreemely though-provoking.

Starting off with the founding of Narnia and its first King, the Chronicles of Narnia detail the events leading up to the appearances of Aslan.  The final book shows the destruction of Narnia and the existance of a more-perfect Narnia.

There are a few theological issues I have with this chronicle.  The most glaring occurs in the final book.  There is one man who is a Calormen (neighbors to the south, the worship a god called "Tash" and offer human sacrifice to him).  This man is allowed to enter the new Narnia because he is loyal to Tash.  The reasoning went that since all goodness, all loyalty, all kindness are properties of the true God, Aslan, that anyone who protrays these aspects are in fact following Aslan--albeit inadvertently.  I find this to be patently false because he did not accept Aslan as his Lord (in fact, he hated him) and simply having the property *loyal* does not mean you have the same characteristics as Aslan.

For example: I am a Satan worshipper, I am ferverently loyal to the devil and do anything I think he wants.  I die and God says that since I was loyal to Satan, and since loyalty is a aspect of God, I was in fact worshipping God by being loyal to Satan.  Somehow this isn't right.  Perhaps I am misunderstanding CS Lewis, but I doubt it.

I think he is trying to make a case that people who never hear of Jesus can still follow him by doing what is good and holding on to the truth, but this doesn't hold up because the Calormen knew of Aslan, but rejected him for Tash (the opposite of Aslan, read: the devil).

Overall this is a great book, it is funny, though-provoking, and very good at imaging (yes, imaging, not imagining) spiritual aspects.  As much as the Lord of the Rings is not allegorical, this is.  I recommend this book for anyone over 13, I first read this when I was 10 or 11, but don't remember it.  Since this is allegory, I think you need to have a 1) idea of what "the abstract" is and 2) knowledge of certain Christian ideals which are protrayed in the book.

I have found two uses for the ill-used Scroll Lock Key.

First, open Excel and press Scroll Lock.  Now you can move through the document using the arrows rather than the scroll bars.  This is the original intent for the key and Excel is probably the only application that still implements it.

Second, open Regedit.  Navigate to HKEY_Local_Machine\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters
Add a DWORD value called CrashOnCtrlScroll and set the value to 1.

i8042 is the keyboard control chip, adding this registry entry will allow you to throw a BSOD when you hold down RCtrl and press Scroll Lock twice.

You might have to reboot after adding the registry key before it will work.

Anyways, just thought I would share the only uses for the Scroll Lock key.

Also, just in case you care, the never used SysRQ key was added by the original IBM designers as a way for the user to gain the attention of the system (System Request).  This was before multitasking environments and was to be used to pause the currently running application so the user could do something.  It was never implemented.  You can recompile the Linux kernel with CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ=1 and then pressing Alt+SysRQ, (x) will do special things like force reboot or resync the mounted disks.

I am about to write a web-based contact management system for an overseas call center (in India).  The system is extreemely simple, the person logs in and is presented with a contact.  At the bottom of the screen there are two options: Scrub (bad lead) or Send DD Package (send more information).

The problem is that there are 5 people at this facility (currently) and they are "professional" callers, therefore they will be going though a lot of leads.  This presents some concurrency issues because if India #1 completes a call at the same time as India #3 they might get the same contact (which would be extreemely bad).

This could be thought of as a mutlithreaded application, in that there are several instances doing the same thing that need access to the same resources.  Unfortunately, ASP does not have a very robust locking mechanism... in fact it has only one: the Application.Lock() method.

I have used it before as a "best practice" when creating smaller sites, technically if you modify an application-level variables you have to lock it first or else someone might modify it at the same time and cause inconsistency, eg:

Application.Lock
Application("numVisitors")=Application("numVisitors") + 1
Application.Unlock

Response.Write Application("numVisitors")


Now, this code locks the Application scope, get the current numVisitors, adds one, and saves it.  Then it shows it.  Now, this is what would happen if we didn't use Application.Lock.  Visitor #1 would check Application("numVisitors") and get (zero).  He would then add (one) and save it (as one).  However, if Visitor #2 comes at the exact same time then he checks Application("numVisitors") and gets (zero), he adds (one) and saves it (as one).  We now have a serious problem because we had two visitors but the value for Application("numVisitors") is only (one).

Using Application.Lock causes Visitor #2 to wait until the lock is released (using Application.Unlock) before 1) Obtaining the lock and 2) Reading and writing the value.

Now, I have two important questions before I can use this to fix my problem.
1) Will everything in Application.Lock/Unlock be protected or only Application level stuff?
2) Does the person who does not have the lock just skip it or does he wait for the lock to be released?

I found the answer to #2 at Microsoft's IIS reference website.  The "second" visitor does in fact wait for the lock to be released... this is good.

I can intuit the answer to the first question, but I cannot be sure... I would assume that ASP does not actually check what is inside the lock and just assumes that whatever is in it needs to be locked.  This is how I would want it.

I will work on this some more and post when I figure it out.

When you go to a webpage or check your email have you ever wondered what is actually being communicated over the network?  I have.

Have you ever desired to view the source of a webpage (such as this page) and had it tell you that you cannot view the source?

Have you ever had a problem sending email with Outlook and had a sneeky suspision that the username you typed in is not the username being told to the server?

Have you ever needed to enable Outlook to communicate with the Exchange server from the outside, and needed that communication to travel through a firewall, and needed to know which ports to open, and not want to use RCP over HTTP because that would require a dramatic reconfiguration of the IIS server?

Have you ever written a P2P self-aware overlay network client and server?

If you have needed to do any of this you're best friend would have been a packet sniffer.  My favorite one is AnalogX's PacketMon.

I have used this thing for years, it is fast, convenient, doesn't require you to install a special packet driver on your NIC, and is contained in just one file.

This thing will tell you the destination and source IP and which ports are involved.  You can then click on the entry and view the packet contents...  need to find out what username is being transmitted for that SMTP connection?  Just fire this puppy up and look for an outbound connection to port 25... then you just have to find the Base64 encoded username and decode it using this webpage.

One of my favorite uses for this is to listen to streaming content with windows media player instead of the website popup window... rather than having to listen to 540WFLA in it's own annoying window with ads and refreshes and junk, you just look at the packet stream and see that it loads from http://live.eonstreams.com/ccri_fl_orlando_wflf_am.asf.  Then you put that address in WM Player and listen to it without care.

One more thing that makes this program worth every cent (although it is free) is its robust filtering.  It can become very tedious to look for a single HTTP packet when there are hundreds of SMB packets flying by.  So, you can tell it to only capture packets that originate from port 80.  I have recently figure out (but not very well) how to get it to do IP filtering... but you would rarely need that on a switched network (if you used a hub you would need this a lot more).

There is one limitation that I have found though, you cannot sniff packets off a wireless network.  I am not sure what is up with that, but I have other programs that can do that.

NOTE: I am thinking about adding another 200px to the width of this site so my longer posts aren't so long.

I have noticed from my website stats that there are three main search querys that people use to find my website.

1) chetos (1,371)
2) 0x100000d1 (133)
3) bugcheck 0x100000d1 (22)

Well, "chetos" is my nickname and also the slang spanish word for "cheats" (it seems).

And the 0x100000d1 is in regards to my post on how to fix the 2200BG wireless card for Intel Centrino computers.  Just to help those people find the page easier I will include a link now: http://www.chetos.net/blog.asp?what=dispPost&postUID=25088  Please post a comment if you find the links in that post helpful, I would appreciate it.

So yesterday was my old buddy David's birthday (22^nd, so for almost two months we are the same age).  I was wondering if he had a website so I did a google search and found nothing... kinda suprising, but not really.

Then I wondered out loud, "I wonder if any other people I know have websites, blogs, anything."

I searched for old high school acquaintances, former co-workers, people from church... nothing, nothing, nothing.  Then I started searching for extended family members.... nothing!!!

What kind of world do I live in?  Nobody has a website.  Sure, Yahoo! has a website, but they have to.  Why doesn't Zac Boyles have a website?  I mean, he builds websites and he doesn't have one.

I hereby extend this offering: if the only thing holding you back is a web hosting provider, I will give you server space for free.  I run a webserver, it would not be any problem to give you some space on it.  I am having trouble with the email, but I will resolve that soon.

So if you know me and want some space, send me a message using my contact form and I will set you up.

My former employer has moved to a new mail server... I am not going to add my old email (czema@compu terdepot.net) to it because it is unnecessary. I could, because I am setting the accounts up for him, but I won't.

Therefore, if you have my email down as czema@c omputerdepot.net don't use it anymore... you can email me at chet$ch etos,net (I don't want spam, replace $ and , with the appropriate characters and remove the space).

While you are changing you're records, how about you go to http://www.computerdepot.net/ and buy something!

Every 6 months I think it might be fun to write a bootloader... actually I think it might be fun to write a very simple kernel, but I start the bootloader first and never finish.  It is just too hard.  However, I get closer everytime I try.

I know that you are not suppose to start with the bootloader (because you get discouraged like I do), but I cannot stand not knowing why I am in protected mode and that I cannot directly control the kernel loading process... it just annoys me and I won't stop till I figure it out.

Anyways, I am going to include some interesting links here that have helped me.

Assembly language opcodes for Pentium II processors this document will help decode any opcodes you may run across.
DOS and BIOS Interrupt list this is one of my favorite lists, it shows each INT you can throw for the BIOS and DOS as well as the AH value for the function.  Just find the service on the list and click it for its parameters and return values.
Systematic analysis of the Windows 2000 boot loader this pages goes over each step/line in the Win2k MBR (which contains the bootloader).  This gives some very good information on reading disks into memory.
General Assembly Information you gotta know assembly to write a bootloader... Like most languages I "know" I can read them better than I can write them.  Ie, I can determine how a boot loader is working better than I can make one work myself.

Either way, I am just using this post to store these links for myself.  Please post a comment if you click on just one of those links (so I can laugh).

I finally got that Rock Pulverizer I wanted.  I am also going along quite well in Stranglethorn Vale.  Just chugging along getting those quests.

I spent a ton of money on Bronze bars for blacksmithing.  I think I am at lvl 170 (maybe 171).  I also did some more mining and am up to 170, I can almost do mithril.  I will probably have to go to the badlands and get some gold to get those last 5 points.

I spent three hours saturday trying to do the Bloodsail Buccaneer's quest.  It had a bunch of lvl 38 guys surrounding the goal.  Sure, I could take a 38 or two... but not 3 of them each with a pet.  After about an hour it was looking good.  I had the help of a lvl 43 guy.  But he died (which isn't a big deal) and the power went out while I was trying to resurrect him.  :-(.  I spent the next two hours (after I spent an hour with the power out) trying to find someone else to help me.

Either way, I finally got it.

http://www.ganssle.com/articles/abuscyc.htm

This webpage has a very good explaination on what happens during a simple CPU bus cycle.

I had a power surge or something at my house last weekend.  It was actually quite funny... I was playing Warcraft on my laptop when the game started freezing up and the house got quiet.  It took me a few seconds to realize that something was up, so I went into the kitchen and noticed the clock was off.  Obviously when the power went out, my desktop computer turned off (which I use as a router and wireless access point :-) ) and my laptop went to battery mode, this caused the game to act funny (no Internet and slower CPU)

Either way, after about 3 hours the power came back on.  I went upstairs and turned the computer on and it just started beeping.   I have a little book which lets you decode the beeps, but I couldn't find it and I know that a steady beep-beep-beep is not good anyway.  Well I turned it off and reseated all the cards and turned it back on and there were no beeps (which is a bad thing).  I also noticed that neither of the fans on my video cards were spinning, they appearantly seized up (they might have seized a long time ago, I don't really know).

Well, that indicates that the motherboard had a serious issue.  All I know is that computer has been on its last leg for at least 2 years and I was fortunate to have it this long.  I used to have a box fan blowing into it because the southbridge chipset fan stopped working and I couldn't play any games without it overheating.  I am giving my 512MB ram to my wife's cousin's husband.  Hopefully it will fit in their computer and they can play some awesome old-school racecar games.

Wow, I have been a prolific writer today.

I finally made it to level 36.  I spent a long time in the Arathi Highlands and Azeroth Valley to get there.  I found out that I was suppose to go to Stranglethorn Vale when I reached level 30 (appearantly that is the place you go when you are at that stage).  Either way, now I am at SV and it is really boring.  It took me about an hour to even find some quests.  I am really tempted to switch to a rogue now, but I think that once I reach lvl 40 things will start to pick up again.

Another thing that stink at this level is that there are so few people at this level.  It makes finding partners difficult.  Either everyone is lvl 50+ hanging out or lvl 30- who are just exploring (like I did back then).

Also, I joined a new guild, "Blessed Warriors."  It was a paladin-only guild when I joined, but they decided to let other classes in... fine with me. They have a website up but I cannot remember the URL.  It is some where in geocities.com.  I offered them web space, but someone there already got that.

It takes 70,000+ experience points to get to the next level.  I only have 20,000 now, so I will be here for a while.  Fortunately Stranglethorn Vale has a lot of quests available so by the time I am done I could easily be lvl 40+ (I have heard you can get to lvl 42 in the zone).

One more thing, you get a quest called Find Agmond which leads you to a quest in the same area.  This quest allows you to get a Rock Pulverizer which will be very nice to have.  However, I cannot find anyone to help me beat it and it is surrounded by lvl 39 mobs and a lvl 40 boss.  Even if I could kill all the mobs, I wouldn't have enough health/mana to beat the boss.

Oh, one more thing... I am at lvl 154 mining... if I can find one more iron vein I can make it to 155 and start mining gold in the badlands.

The Norwegian Minister of Modernization has announced that starting in 2006 proprietary formats will not be acceptable in communication with the government.  He does not specifically mention Microsoft, but refers to "the spreadsheet almost everyone (except Norwegians) uses."

Obviously this is just the latest attack by members of the EU on Microsoft.  If they want to continue using abacuses and roller states then fine, but don't act like you are helping the world.

Personally, I hope that MS just ignores these people.  If Norway wants to alienate "the spreadsheet almost everyone uses" then let them be alienated.

Ok, here we go...

I found some numbers for different swimming pools.  Also, I estimate that I pay *no more* than $3.50 per 1000 gallons.  That is a guess, I think I used 4TGALs and paid nearly $14, so it is around $3-$4.

(all numbers are approximate)
An olympic swimming pool (82x164ft at 6ft deep) holds 660,000 gallons that is $2,200 to fill it up!
A wave pool which can accomadate 300 people holds 450,000 gallons that is $1,600
A "regular" pool is 20ftx40ft at 5ft deep which holds 30,000 which would cost me $105 to fill.

While doing some research on the capacity of the big gasoline tankers, I came across this article about a smaller gas station going to a competitor with a tanker and attempting to fill up.  They were eventually forced to leave, but not after getting 300+ gallons.

BTW, it looks like a standard gas tanker truck hold 9000 gallons... I wonder how much water a standard swimming pool holds.  Probably about that, I will find out.

Do not go to http://winboot.mine.nu/

Just letting you know, just in case you wanted to.

I am now officially half way though the game.  I finally got Vergan's Fist (powerful weapon for Paladins).

I cleared out the rest of the quests based in Duskwood but still needed about 1000XP to get to lvl30 so I walked around killing monsters (at 200XP each) and got there in about an hour.

I also went exploring the Badlands and participated in a raid on The Crossroads.  I just found out that I needed 25 "contribution points" to get an PVP lvl and I only got 15 (I think).

At level 20 I got that paladin-unique quest "Test of Righteousness" which, when completed, gives me a very nice weapon to use.  The weapon requires four parts to create it, and this quest involves getting them.  This required me to go all over the "world" to get the pieces, including 3 dungeons.  This also enabled me to go to the other contenent (Kalimdor) which is alot like Africa.  It is very cool.

Going to dungeons gives huge XP bonuses, therefore I was able to level up fairly quickly.

Last night I got the third part for the weapon, it just so happened that this was the hardest to get (the Kor Gem in Blackfathom Deeps) then next one I have to do is get the hammer from Strongsomething Keep.  I have heard that it is easier than Blackfathom.

I got to level 18 last night.  I was up till 3:00 completing the Deadmines instance with some really nice people.  I kept rolling the dice (on accident) and getting the good items.  I fell bad, but they were higher levels and were used to newbies (me).  However, there were a ton of almost-very-nice items and plenty of them.  I had to get rid of my blacksmithing hammer and some other "common" items so I could pick as much up. (A blacksmith hammer costs about 50c, I could pick up an item worth 10s)

Unfortunatly, I (for some dumb reason) forgot to grab the quest before I entered the mine and therefore did not get a very good XP increase.  I will have to do it again. Probably going to make it to lvl 19 doing it.

Well, I finally got to Level 15.  I have never gotten this far.  I got to Level 13 during the stress test last November, but then it ended.

I am currently in Westfall killing the Defias by Jangolode Mine.  I have a very nice Two-Handed Sword which I paid 40 silver for.  I can deal 50+ HP per attack.

Well I ordered WoW on April 28 and got it May 9.  That was a long time.  I used super-saver shipping which is a big mistake if you actually want it.

Anyways, I installed it yesterday and got to level 8.  That is pretty good because I played for a week during the stress test and got to level 13.  I should be back there by Saturday.

I wrote a massive write-up on what WoW is about a week ago, but it didn't submit properly and I didn't copy it.  I might write another one sometime.

Since I have this new game I probably won't be posting as much in here.  Not that it matters because nobody reads it anyways :-)

I managed to mess the hard drive up while attempting to resize the primary partition... I wanted to try installing Longhorn on it using a secondary partition.

So Partition Magic managed to crash half way through and mess everything up. (gave BSOD (remember that?) with STOP error 0x00000024)

I am running chkdsk off the XP install CD, hope that works.  I am also compiling a list of stuff I am going to lose if this doesn't work... but hopefully everything will turn out okay.

WindowsITPro Magazine is hosting a contest at http://www.hackiis6.com.  They have put a Windows 2003 Server machine running IIS6, it has all the latest service packs and hotfixes.

I am not even going to attempt to try this, because I have never even pretended to hack.  However, this has rekindled my interest in buffer overflows.  I have now listed that as a Hobby.

A quick explaination of buffer overflows...

When a programmer takes user input, that input is stored in memory.  Each character has a "cell" which is one byte (8 bits).  Lets say the programmer has allocated 4 bytes for a particular string but does not check too make sure the user input is 4 or less (assumes the user will not enter too many letters)

Lets look a the memory for a simple section of code

| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| # |   |   |   |   | # | # | # |

This is what it looks like before the user inputs text.  The '#' indicates program code.  What happens is at memory location 0 the instruction is to jump to instruction 5 and continue executing.  Since memory is flat (there is no special area for user input) it just jumps over the allocated memory.

Now lets say the user inputs text that is too long...

| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| # | g | o | o | d | b | y | e |

When the program hits location 0 it is instucted to go to location 5, it then begins executing 'b'.  Since b (in computer terms) is equivalent to 0x62 which is not an instruction the program just crashes.  However, if I was crafty, I could insert 0xB4, 0x02, 0xB0, 0x41, 0xCD, 0x21 into the memory locations starting at 5.  Then the program would would put an 'A' to the screen.  Then the program would probably crash because the next instruction would not have a context. A clever hacker would do some stuff, then put the original instructions back and jump to them.

The hex above translates into:
MOV AH, 02
MOV AL, 41
INT 21
in assembly, it simply tells the computer to put 'A' (0x41) on the screen.

Even though putting an 'A' to the screen doesn't seem like much, the famous MSBlaster worm which infected SQL server a few years ago used this process.  It overwrote SQL's own code with code that would allow it to replicate.

This is why it is extreemely important for programmers to check and verify that there are no open buffer overflows.  Anything from program crashes to hard drive erasure to virus propogation is possible.

I just joined the ClearType fanclub.

Wayne was saying that ClearType was stupid, then I realized that I didn't have it turned on.  Then I realized what is actually is and told Wayne to use it (he was looking at the wrong place to decide if he liked it).

Anyways, I found the fanclub while researching exactly what ClearType is.  Appearantly it is a font-rendering techology that does sub-pixel editing of the red, blue, and green channels to give the text 1) a better look, 2) pseudo-higher resolution.

I was talking to Wayne a few weeks ago and he was telling me that St. Cloud is going to install a wireless network which is based on the landfill mound (don't get me started about local government offering internet access).  I found this interesting because I have never heard of a promenient consumer-class wireless standard that supports long distances (the distance from the landfill to downtown is 2.0 miles and to my house is 2.3 miles).

Well I went looking around and even though I have heard of this I had never really looked at it.  The standard is called WiMax and it is a standards-based wireless technology that provides high-throughput broadband connections over long distances. It stands for "Worldwide Interoperatibility of Microwave Access" and is defined in IEEE 802.16 (as oppose to WiFi which is 802.11a/b/g)

It can reach up to 31 miles away as long as you are in Line of Sight.  You don't have to be in LOS as long as you are closer.  WiMax allows for shared data rates up to 70Mbit/s which is enough to supply 60 businesses with T-1 connectivity.  That is also enought to suppy 140+ homes with DSL class speed (512Kbps).

Either way, if a WiMax tower is placed on the landfill, it should be able to sustain DSL speeds to all residences in city limits as well as mobile devices with a WiMax card.

Unfortunately, WiMax is so new that vendors are competing to get a product out.  Usually what happens at this stage is two "sub-standards" will emerge and half of the people in the world will use one and the other half will use another (like 802.11A and G).  So I am going to wait to get a WiMax card for my laptop until 1) I am sure St. Cloud is going with WiMax and 2) I know what vendor they are going with.

After I reinstalled Windows last week I went to Asus's website to download the latest software upgrades.  I found an upgrade for the BIOS ROM, so I flashed it.

Then I got to thinking... I hexedited the firmware for my GPS to make it say "Chet Loves Amanda" rather than "Garmin GPS v1.3.2" on boot up.  So I thought that I might be able to do something to my laptop... I really doubt I have the courage to flash my bios with an edited firmware, but it would be fun to mess with.

Either way, I realized the file I downloaded does not have any obvious executable code so I went online to find out what was up.  Well I stumbled across the website of the smartest person alive.

This guy managed to rip the bios assembly off the XBOX even though it is stored in encrypted format and not in the standard location.

You see, most bios code is stored on an EEPROM (Electronically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory).  This means, when you apply power to one of the pins on the chip you can write to it, otherwise it is read only.  The CPU hooks this chip up to its memory controller at address 0000:0000 and begins executing (since the "computer" doesn't know how to read the harddrive on its own, and since there is nothing in memory, it needs a small amount of memory to get it going eg BIOS ROM).  However, the Xbox is tricky.  It has a 1MB EEPROM which stores four copies of 256KB encrypted code... but this is where it gets really tricky... All four copys are fake.  The actual boot code is stored in the southbridge chipset.  The Smartest Person Alive managed to extract the boot code between the southbridge and the CPU.  He posted it on his website, but Microsoft told him to take it off, and he did.

Either way, I would have liked to see the hex dump of that.  I am fascinated by boot code, even though it is in assembly which I am not very good at (but I can make it pretty well).

I highly recommend this website.

So I started my laptop up today and it loaded Windows and then gave me a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death).

I have a custom built Centrino notebook with a 1.7Ghz CPU, 1GB RAM, 40GB HD, built-in Intel 2200BG Network Card and a fresh install of WindowsXP Pro SP2.

Now, my computer was set to automatically reboot after a crash so I couldn't tell what it said.  I booted into Safe Mode w/ Network Support (so I could get online) and it crashed.  I finally booted to normal Safe Mode and it worked.

Then I went into the event log to see what was up.  It had the following entry:

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck.  The bugcheck was: 0x100000d1 (0x10FF03ae, 0x00000002, 0x00000001, 0xf738b8c2).

So 0x100000d1 is DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL and always refers to bad hardware, drivers, or memory.  Well, I was sure it wasn't memory (or, I didn't want to think about that).  And since I just reinstalled Windows I figured it must be a non-updated driver error.

After more poking around I did an analysis of the dump file (located in C:\WINDOWS\MINIDUMP).  The dump file told me that 0x10FF03AE was the memory location for a file called w22nt51.sys (not in so many words, I had to use dumpchk and pstats from the Windows Resource Kit).  I did a google search and found out that w22nt51.sys refers to Intel's wireless card driver.  Eventually I found a website which offers an updated driver.  I got it here

Unfortunately WindowsXP in Safe Mode without Network Support is totally isolated.  I tried copying the file I downloaded to my Jumpdrive, but you cannot access that in safe mode.  I could see it in the device manager and even populate the volumes, but I couldn't access it as a drive.  So I finally had a clever idea... I used the backup utility to backup the file to the harddrive and then restored it to my root directory... I was amazed that it worked.

This story takes a turn for the better at this point.  I installed the drivers with little problem, rebooted the computer, and it worked just fine.

I am posting this for one reason, so people who get a 0x100000d1 stop error can do a google search on w22n51.sys bsod and get a direct link to the updated drivers and a basic method for getting them on the laptop.  This applies to people who have the Intel 2200BG wireless network card and are running non-upgraded (version 8.0) drivers.

I thought it would be funny to post this.

All three hurricanes converged on one point.  It just so happened that that point was within 5 miles of my house.



Lets hope that doesn't happen ever again.

I got the map from http://www.netstate.com/states/maps/fl_maps.htm and overlayed the hurricane track.

If you (for some reason) want to password protect an Access Database but still use it in ASP you have to pass a new parameter to OLE.  I am putting this here for quick reference.

First, set up the database end.  Open the database in Access, make sure you open in "Exclusive Mode."  Click on Tools -> Security -> Set Database Password and enter the desired password.

Next, go into your database access code and add the following to your connection string. Jet OLEDB:Database Password=dbpass

ie, this is how I access the database for this website (when I am in Access Database mode)

oConn.Open "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0Data Source=" & Server.MapPath("dbName.mdb") &"Jet OLEDB:Database Password=dbpass"

You are all set.

Well Joe from Computer Depot got Tiger today (I think, maybe it was yesterday).  He said that there was a plethora of changes, enhancements, and features.  One feature that sounded neat was an RSS driven screensaver (it shows RSS feed data).  And I am glad to announce that he had my rss feed (at http://www.chetos.net/rss.asp) as one of the configured sources.

I asked Joe what the top three differences are between the previous version (10.3) and this one (10.4, aka Tiger).  He said (count them)<ol><li>Speed - Not sure what this is, could be actual speed, or a funny name for a new product.<li>Dashboard - Not sure what this is, sounds familiar (like it was in the previous version).  Perhaps it is old but has been improved.<li>Spotlight - This is the next generation of filesystem (and other source) search system.<li>RSS - I guess that the OS has RSS built right into the kernel so you can just post a change and it is compiled in real-time and implemented accordingly... Just kidding.  I think it has a built in RSS reader... which is cool... I guess.</ol>So there you have it, I asked Joe for the top three and he gives me four.  Oh well.

I finished the second book last night.  Very good.  It is set during the reign of Peter the High King of Narnia (but he is not in the book).  Basically a boy from Archenland (a country between Calormen and Narnia) is kidnapped and taken to Calormen at a very young age.  Many years later he finds a talking horse from Narnia and they venture off together to get back to Narnia (the boy does not realize he is from Archenland, but does know his is from the North).  They eventually find out that a prince from Calormen is going to attack Achenland so they go ahead of him and notify the King.  The King discovers that the boy is his long lost son and they live happily ever after.  The horse goes to Narnia, but visits often.

I have added a RSS feed to the website.  Just in case you are too lazy to come here and check but are sick enough... I mean interested enough to know what is going on.

You can get the link at http://www.chetos.net/rss.asp.  Just add it to your preferred RSS aggregator and you are done.

I use SharpReader and it is pretty nice, but there are tons of them out there.

I also took the time to delve into XSL because I figured if someone just clicks the link to the rss feed they should see something prettier than just plan XML.  It is really cool, I can take a standard XML file and include a command to use a XSL stylesheet, then the browser puts the two files together and displays what is basically HTML.  If you view the source, you will see XML (therefore, RSS readers get what they want).  The XSL file is a mixture of XPath (which I have used quite a bit in the past and is pretty simple) and HTML/CSS.

This is the longest domain name I have ever seen.  Perhaps the longest in the world.

http://www.thelongestdomainnameintheworldandthensome
andthensomemoreandmore.com

Well WinHEC is finally over.  The only reason I care is because hundreds of people with the latest version of Longhorn are making it available online now.

I have to reinstall Windows on my laptop, so I figured I would get the latest version of Longhorn and install that instead.  It is still in pre-Beta and only 1/3 of the planned features are implemented, but it is considered largely stable.  I ordered Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 yesterday (for free) so I hope that if I install it on Longhorn it will take advantage of the new core features.

My biggest concern is the fact that it must be installed off a DVD.  I had Build 4074 on DVD and it wouldn't install on my laptop.  I did go back to some earlier build but it was slow.  I think that since I already have an operating system, I might be able to to a clean install and not have to go off the DVD.  If not I will have to do something (not sure what though).

I hosted a Quake 3::Urban Terror LAN party at my house on Friday.  It was great.  Stayed up until 5:00 shooting at Wayne and Josh.  Nathan and Joe came over as well, but I didn't shoot them too often (if you know what I mean).

If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis,would you recommend that she have an abortion?

If you answered yes you just killed Beethoven.  Have a nice day.

http://profiles.myspace.com/users/5920113

I was at the mafia message board looking at different members' websites and I saw this one.  This is quite possibly the Worst Website In The World.  Don't bother scrolling down because it is stupid.  Just look at the top.  Ouch!

Edit: Looks like someone saw my writeup here and decided to remove the site.  It is no longer there and I thank whosoever removed it.

Whenever I need an ASP file to get the contents of a different website (for various reasons), I use Set objSvrHTTP = Server.CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP").  I got the code to do it by visiting several help sites that talk about it and putting it all together.

I have a "Mail a Friend" feature on a website which sends a webpage to someone via email.  I use the MSXML component to get the webpage code and send it using Persist's ASPEmail.  Every few days I have to restart the IIS service because it hangs when getting the webpage.

Well I got tired of doing that so I did some research and appearently, even though MSXML version 4.0 is out, calling MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP defaults to version 2.0.  Rather than chaning it to MSXML4.ServerXMLHTTP, Microsoft decided that people need to use MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP.4.0

So, if you are using Microsoft's XML parser, be sure to append the 4.0 so you can use the latest version.  Also, make sure you register the dll file that handles that first, it is located in your System32 directory (use "regsvr32 msxml4.dll" to register it).

Channel 9 is a great website for people interested in the very, very latest Microsoft stuff.  They have interviews with developers, a forum to talk to fellow Channel 9ers, and much more.

The latest video is an interview with members of the Avalon development group.  Included in the article is a demo showing off some features of Avalon.  This stuff is amazing and is going to change the way users interact with the computer.

Unfortunately, I am using VB Express Beta and it does not support any .NET version higher than 2.0.40607.  The November CTP of Avalon went with this version so I was able to play around with it.  However the March CTP (which includes Indigo) installs version 2.0.50110 which I cannot use. So after installing Indigo I and then reinstalling VB, I have to uninstall Indigo and restall VB again. :frown:

Well I just finished mowing my yard.  I have noticed something that I thought true for years, but now I can prove it: the bigger the wheels the easier it is.

Back when I mowed my parents yard, it wasn't until we got one with bigger wheels that it become easier.  I always attributed it to my age but...

When I bought my house someone gave me a lawnmower in return for some computer work.  It has big wheels.  I had to mow my brother-in-law's yard last weekend because he couldn't (surgery).  His had smaller wheels.  There was a definite different in the amount of work.

So, I can now say for certain that the bigger the wheels the better... so... go out and buy a better lawnmower... now... do it!

I often times see people using trackball mice, so I thought I should try one.  I loved it.  It took about 2 days to get used to it, but now I can never go back.  I used to get pain in my wrists every few weeks, I haven't gotten any for 9 months.

It is quicker than a normal mouse, more precise, and takes up less room (you don't get to the edge of the mousepad and have to pick the mouse up and move it).

Also, I convinced Wayne to use one and he is hooked.

Still, I have a hard time playing Quake with it, I have to switch to a normal mouse for that.

I now see a new mouse which you use your index finger to move, perhaps I will try that out next.  It looks slightly harder to use though.

Have you ever played mafia?  Well, I have found a great website that lets you play online.  It provides an interesting variation in that there are no facial expressions, giggles, or other tells.  Everthing is based on what people have said and *how* they said it.

Either way, I figured I would share that.  Go to http://www.mafiascum.net/forum to play.  For mafia information go to www.mafiascum.net

Well, after four days of coding I have finally changed the website to a blog format.  I was sad to see the previous layout go (because it was one of the few websites that I have done that I liked).  The new layout gives me a few more options, and it is green... which is nice.

Anyways, now that I have a web-based content editor, I will post more often.  I will share new coding techniques, funny stories, current thoughts, etc.  Feel free to post a comment on the blog entries.  If I don't like your comments I can always delete them. :-)