The most frustrating marketing decision any company can make is forcing consumers to upgrade unnecessarily. Microsoft chose this path with Vista. In order to maintain Xbox and Vista sales, commonly referred to as hedging a bet, Microsoft decided that several of their games would only be compatible with Vista. (more…)
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I’m Famous!
I just found my mixer paint job on a site! Heres the link. It a site with a bunch of mixers that have all been customized. Check it out.
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American High School Class of 90′ Reunion!
Well folks after 17 years it finally happened, the Class of 90′ got back together again and had an absolute blast! We talked, ate, talked, danced, talked, and stayed up till they started collecting glasses in the bar. 17 years was too long to wait. Right now we are trying to figure out when we going to get together again…3 years, or 5 years. I’d say 3, heck I still have a bunch of people I didn’t get to talk to that night. We are all migrating onto MySpace, so if you were in the class of 90′ join up on MySpace and link up with the rest of the class. Here are some pictures from the evening. Sean Kilbride will also have a lot of pictures up at his site. Email me and I can give you details about how to access those pictures if you are interested. -
Cory, Corey, Corry, Correy…
A few years ago I started researching my ancestry. I’ve been told of our ancestry as being something of a mix of Scottish, Welsh, Irish, French, Prussian, and German to name a few. A bit of a European mutt if you will. So the next logical step was to try and research my last name to see where it leads me. It doesn’t take me long to discover that there a half a dozen variations of my last name: Cory, Corry, Correy, Corey. So I tried looking up a few other names from my ancestry: Hambleton, Doud (I’m actually related to Mamie Doud), Habighorst. Some lead to other information, other lead to more variations. Take Hambleton, Hambelton, Hamletonn, Hamilton, Hambletonne and the list goes on. My first thought was that these were all different families, with similar names. Turns out it even more complex than that. (more…)
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RIP Windows 2000, Hello again to Linux
I started out using computers a long time ago. Here is a brief re-cap: My first computer was a Commodore PET, simple and fun. I moved form platform to platform as different options became available for me to experience: Apple II’s at school, a Mac SE that my parents bought, PCs running DOS for Autocad. From that point on I stuck with DOS/Windows based machines because I had invested in software for that platform.
As most people know, Windows is a double edged sword, it seems easy at first but there are lots of potholes on this road. Windows 3.1 seemed to become corrupted almost weekly, and I was constantly re-installing it. Windows 95 was more stable, but you always had to exit into DOS to get some applications to run. Windows NT 4 suffered a similar problem as 95, and was drastically different in terms of system administration. Windows 98, and ME were really only patches to 95 to support USB and a few other technologies. And then finally windows 2000. Stable and robust like NT 4, but more inline with the workstation user than NT 4 which really felt like a server environment. I really liked Win2K. Even after XP came out, Win2K was better because it was just as stable as XP, but could be run on half the computer that XP required. Half the RAM, drive space, and video card. Eventually XP’s bells and whistles won me over and I switched. It made some tasks really easy, and the improvements from day to day were enough to convince me to switch. When I built my new PC I wanted to move XP onto it, so I had to decide whether I wanted to shell out for another license of XP, or try something more daring. I settled on trying Linux. (more…)
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Spam Arrest, Are they still spammers?
I just got an unsolicited email this morning from Spam Arrest. The email was from joelt@spamarrest.com.
I wasn’t aware of Spam Arrest so I did a Google search to see what I could find out. I discovered quite a few pages detailing the poor practices of the company. I would think it would be in bad taste to spam people to use your anti-spam product. No worse I suppose than installing malware on people’s computers and extorting them to pay you to remove other malware applications.
According to this email I emailed some guy at www.joel.net. For kicks I followed the rabbit hole to see what was at the other end. Joel Thomas seems to be a web developer, but at no point do I recall emailing him. I just submitted an email via his form mail on his site to see if he can shed some light on the subject. We’ll see what happens.
I will update this as details arrive.
UPDATE: I did hear back from the gentleman that uses Spam Arrest, but he didn’t conform what the first emails was that I supposedly sent to him. It’s a tricky system. He can’t see my email until I reply to his. His email was from some automated bot so I have no intention of replying to it. So now neither of us will ever know what that initial email was. Probably spam made to look like it was from me…
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HTML 5 – More semantic page elements
In an effort to continue the advancement of web technology it seems that everyone, a panel of industry giants, got together and started formulating the next version of HTML standards. HTML 5 incorporates into the HTML standarda new set of tags that should bring the standard in line with how developers are currently using CSS to structure their pages. I know that statement calls into question the whole standards movement, but it’s true. (more…)
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2007 Scattante CFR Review
With the demise of my circa-1994 Ti frame I settled on the 2007 Scattante CFR. I opted for the full Ultegra, double chainring “Race” version. (more…) -
It was the best of times…
Here it is, the route I ended up on this weekend:
It was a miserably fantastic ride to the top, the last six miles to the summit felt like 15 miles. On the descent down Bear Creek Road I glanced back for a second, just long enough to slam into a big rock when I turned around , and crashed. I dented the crap out of the front wheel, but everything else is good. (stay tuned for an article on straightening bent bicycle wheels) I only got a little road rash, and a bruised knee and ego. Oh well, that’s the price for speed. I ended the day with a total of 60 miles, and 6,091 feet of climbing.
I was a bit timid coming down the first few technical sections, but once I got onto Deer Creek Road it all came back to me. There’s not much like the experience of flying down a technical descent at the same speed or faster than traffic (~40 MPH). A great ride, and today I feel great, even when I rode into work. Yeah!
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Updates..for everything!
Here it is, my site design is fractured and disjointed. I admit it. I added the blog capability, and started a gallery portion, and then never integrated everything together. Shame on me. So now that I have a lull in the storm of projects that were on my plate I am going to start working on tying everything together.
I’m still debating the gallery though…Maybe someone has a suggestion. I could use the gallery I started to set up. Or Flickr, which I already use. Or build something in Flash. Or… See it’s a problem too many choices.
Lastly I’m excited because I get to ride in Santa Cruz tomorrow! I’m planning on hitting the hills going towards the summit of Highway 9. It’s a mixed blessing, as I haven’t done much climbing in the last few years so this may be a very painful day in, and out, of the saddle.
