I have been a fan of Microsoft software for a long time, and I remain a fan. However, I feel like they dropped the ball with MS Money 2006. The UI is just not intuitive and easy. Katie constantly gets frustrated with it and finally last night, I officially announced my condemnation. MS Money is…
This looks cool. It takes a jpeg or other photo and turns it into ASCII art. Ill give it a try. Of course, this post will be delayed. DSLExtreme, normally pretty good, changed my IP address without telling me. Nice, huh? I have been down all afternoon.
I am becoming disillusioned with Vista (Longhorn). I can deal with stuff being broken, that is not the problem. The issue is that the “new things” just do not seem all that valuable. The UI is much more confusing. It is hard to find things. The fonts seem blurry. There used to be a sidebar…
My new Dell showed up and I got to work. First I swapped out the native HD for a better, faster, bigger one. Then I admired the Precision 380 case. Very nice. It opened and closed very easily. The form factor was excellent. Next, I installed the 64-bit version of Windows XP that came with…
I recently saw a special on TV about the Beach Boys. It spurred me to give Pet Sounds a listen. I have listened to it about 10 times in the past 2 days. This album is really special. I think it may be my favorite album. Others in my list would be (no particular order)…
Yesterday was the first flight, I really believed I could die. The plane was approaching Vegas en route to Dallas. All of the sudden the air stopped blowing from above and we started bouncing around like crazy. If I had eaten anything it would’ve come up. The shaking was not just shaking, we were being…
I need to take a trip to Texas next week, so I told the boys this morning. The very first thing they both said was, “Daddy! There are COWBOYS in Texas! They might think you are a bad guy! They have guns!” Initially, I thought it was cute, now I think it was bizarre. Why…
Why do I have a mail server and a web server in my garage?The servers cost (when I bought them) about $1200 each. Hosting of email is pretty cheap. Less than $50 a year. Hosting of Web is also pretty cheap. With a $2400 budget, why do I bother buying when I can host with…
Dell had this pretty amazing deal. Quadruple Ram on select systems. Here are the details: Pentium D 2.8 ghtz 2mb L2 Cache 4 (FOUR) gigs of Ram SATA Hard Drive (I will upgrade this to Sata-II HD soon) 48X/32XCD-RW AND 16XDVD+/-RW 128MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro Price: $1400 The deal is because of the ram.…
Jared has recently learned to pronounce L. He emphasizes it in every single word. “Daddy, Can we go pLlllllay tennis?” “My name is Jared CoLllllle Llllipka.” He also started teasing Ethan about it. Ethan says W instead of L. Wipka. I don’t think it is a problem. He will certainly grow out of it. I…
I set up my 2005 NFL Football pool using http://www.officefootballpool.com. Decent Interface, pretty fast. Written in Cold Fusion. Lots of options for setting up the pool. Nice statistics information. Everyone you want in a football pool with participants scattered about the country. I am going to be picking the Jets every week. Nothing can stop…
It seems the most important quality in public debate is the catchiness of the phrases one uses. Some Examples: Everyone thought conservatives just don’t care about the plight of the working class and poor people. They were right. But then came “Compassionate Conservative”. None of the policies changes, but people changed their perception of conservatives…
I used to have this speech I gave people at Koko of what a vision and mission was. I used the analogy of the United States of America. Vision A “Vision Statement” is really just an idea. It is a statement to the world saying, I believe this to be true and will make decisions…
I am current reading Master of the Senate, by Robert Caro. Pulitzer Prizing Winning Biography on Lyndon Johnson. Caro also wrote two other books on Johnson and one book, The Power Broker, also winner of the Pulitzer. 4 books in thirty years and two of them won the Pulitzer. Not bad, eh? Lesson, slow and…