Home from Kings Dominion. We spent about 5 hours there, most of it in the water park. Getting old does something to your enjoyment of a place like that. I used to 'have' to ride every thrill ride, and I wouldn't mind spending an hour in a line to do so. But I just don't feel that way any more. Speaking of monopolies, though (I know I wasn't..but now I am..), they charge $2.50 for a 20-oz soda in the park, and $2.75 for a 20-oz bottle of chilled spring water. I'm glad we didn't eat in the park as well! I couldn't help but mutter 'thief' under my breath when the vendor said "Thank you very much" as I paid him for the bottled water and soda. As I searched the Internet this morning for restaurants near the theme park, I noted only one within 6 miles range. It's unbelievable how they get you! If you do decide to leave for mid-visit meal, they make sure you have to drive 12 miles round-trip unless you eat at the Burger King just outside the gate! At today's gas prices, that's $1.50 in gas alone! Plus the hassle of riding the Interstate to Ashland and back to the park. It makes me wonder how much that Burger King owner had to pay for the priviledge of opening up his restaurant right off Theme Park Way.
I'm looking for a counter for this page, and I might even put a cookie (this link is DECIDEDLY on the paranoid side but it's VERY good informative stuff about cookies) on the page to identify unique visitors...if you see a cookie in the near future (if you even watch for them), the cookie won't be dangerous or unique...it'll just identify you as having been here, I promise...If I ever do collect any info on your browsing habits, I'd let you know and give the chance to decline.
Rich...over and out.

I picked up a new magazine tonight on my way home from work. It's called Time digital. The publication peaked my interest because of an article on Virus Hunters. The article was an interesting discussion about updates on virus protection technology and where virus protection folks are trying to take us in the future. A lot of the articles in the magazine were geared toward people with technical know-how, which is just perfect for me. I've noticed that most news outlets are geared toward the computer novice, and I rarely find value in reading beyond the headlines in most newspapers and magazines. The articles in this magazine seem to be written toward techies, but not as in-depth as what you might see in Wired magazine, which is another favorite read of mine. For those of you out there with any PC knowledge at all, it's a nice read. Although if you want to be truly on the edge, I still have to recommend Wired. Still, there's no reason you can't read them both.
Anyway, it's late..I'm off to bed...talk later.

I just added a link in the out of band portion of this web site. It's for subscribing to LockerGnome. LockerGnome is an ad-supported newsletter that had humble beginnings. With all the stuff that comes out on the web every day, it is next to impossible to keep up with what the latest and greatest is, in many arenas. Chris Pirillo puts out a daily and weekly summary of the newest free/cheapware, system updates, system candy, favorite link, desktop enhancement and tips. That is...you get one of each a day, or a bunch for the week. Rather than surf around and spend all your time browsing for the best, rely on the work that Chris does. He really gets to the 'root' of the web....really!

I started thinking about the delivery mechanism of the web, and what it can and cannot do. Stemming from the discussion I just had with Terry about what a journal is, I started thinking about how this web site could expand. Don't ask me how I got there from here, but lets say that each of the subjects I talk about is considered a single 'thread' of conversation. On Usenet, threaded discussions are the norm. In a newsgroup, each participant can start a thread on a particular item, and each person's thoughts can be read by reading all the messages in a thread.. (Click on Usenet link to learn more about it). On the web, given enough resources, I could provide threaded discussions for all sorts of things, like King's Dominion, and stupid weathermen (just kidding, see last post). But that's not what the web is about. The web is about linking information, and the information delivery was meant to be uni-directional.
OK, let's organize those thoughts. Usenet is used for threaded discussion between groups of people. The Web was meant for delivery of information with hyperlinks to follow "information trains" (poetic license, me). Then that takes me off the hook for providing two-way communication in this forum...if I want to do that, I'd create alt.people.rich.gautier or some such and ask you all to participate in a discussion of my life. Of course, if I did that, either noone would participate, or I'd be too busy discussing the intracacies of my life to actually LIVE it. OK, what about the 'information trains' I mentioned? Should I include websites devoted to Information Security, King's Dominion (or outings in general), books I've read, or people who can't read a satellite image correctly?
This web site is decidedly shallow. If I spent my life creating all of those web pages, my wife would leave me and I'd probably lose my job. Instead, what I offer is simply a shallow opinion, with hyperlinks to web pages I feel can give you better specific information. And the web is great for providing expert sites on all sorts of information. My links will decidedly sway the way you see things. For example, for Usenet, I chose to link to DEJA.COM because it's a free service and provides beginner info. I could have linked to www.usenet.com. Don't go there...they're trying to sell you something. So you see, there is some inherent value in my weblog.
Then, there is another side of the coin. Writing to my audience. If I just go on about my life, I'll bore you. If you're bored, you won't come back. Not that that's any loss to me, but I do actually have something to offer; my opinion. He had a point. As this site evolves, and I understand my writing style more and more, I'll offer more specific opinions on topics of interest in order to keep YOU interested. It may also help me to ensure I have cohesive opinions instead of just jumbled thoughts.
I'll write later, maybe about how I felt about the roller coasters at King's Dominion, or about my new favorite acid reduction medicine which I'm sure I'll need. And when I finish that book, I'll be sure to let you know how it ends. :-)

Terry Moore asked if I keep a journal. I believe this is a journal. Or at least the beginnings of one. I hope to share thoughts on what's going on in the world around me, and in the memes that I happen to have my brain dipped in at the moment. Everyone experiences the world in a vastly different way, and it is interesting to watch someone else's life go by. It may give you a perspective on things that you didn't see before. Of course, it will also end up slanting your own universal experience.
We're planning on going to King's Dominion this wekend. We had planned to go last week on Sunday, and it ended up raining. I caught hell from the wife because I depended on the weather channel and told her Sunday would be nicer than Saturday. Well, they were wrong, and I was in the doghouse for a day.

Fantastic! I just got rid of the IFRAME on this site to make it Netscape compatible! The information I ended up needing was in Table 1 of THIS ARTICLE from WebTechniques. One great thing about this is that I don't have to put frame references in my links any more. I am using Blogger to continually update my site and while it's easy to creat hyperlinks, I kept having to edit them and add target="_parent" tag properties in all of them so that it would break out of the frame when going to the link. Now, I'm using a defined cell size to format my web page, and using a server-side inclusion of the blogger html file. The other advantage is that IFRAME was requiring a HEIGHT property, which would either be too big (giving lots of whitespace to the bottom of my web page) or too small, necessitating a scroll bar in the cell (very ugly, I assure you).
Well, enough about programming..back to the salt mines.

OK. Well, I'm pushing myself today by submitting my site to Yahoo. This is going to force me to do a few things. The first will be to get rid of that IFRAME to be more Netscape compatible, and the second will be to start updating my site more often. I read in WebTechniques last night about server side includes. I wonder if Tripod includes this capability? I also read some stuff in there about XHTML and I think I'm going to start trying to keep my code XHTML compliant. That means two or three changes for me...like keeping my tags all lower case and ensuring tag properties are in quotes.

Wow...who wrote that last log entry? Was that me? It's full of spelling and grammar errors. I wonder what I was on that day? Probably too much caffeine. That seems to have taken the place of a good night's rest in my life. In any case, I thought I'd start a mailing list that would let you know when this page changes. That way, I don't bother people who don't care, and those of you who do will know when there's updates. So, if you care, write me at gautier@sprynet.com and let me know.
I'm writing a white paper on DRC's capabilities re: web development and maintenance and it is taking up all my spare time. That, and we have house guests (my niece and sister-in-law from Korea). I'd like to say that I've never been busier, but of course, I have been.
Last night we watched Air Force One on DVD. If you haven't seen this movie....go out and rent it, or buy it. That is, if you like action, edge-of-your-seat suspense and Harrison Ford. If you don't like any of those, forget the movie. We were all excited watching it. I ate a whole lot of snack food during the tense parts.
The other night we watched another suspense movie that was very entertaining. The Long Kiss Goodnight on DVD. There's a bit more bad language in this one, along with some adult situations. If you're conservative, I'd rule out watching this movie. But apart from that, it was very entertaining. The humor in the movie was very adult in nature, but it was also very funny. It certainly was not immature humour or a teenager movie. The movie was extremely tense as well, and very action packed. It was also an interesting premise that I personally had never seen before.
Well, I'll write later...talk later...
Rich