God, it's been a long time since I've had time to write. Besides being swamped at work with a bunch of new projects (both a good thing and a bad thing, I guess), working through these two classes at school, and trying to handle my re-found addiction to Everquest, well...what can I say?
Just stopping to blab for a moment and don't have time for a real update. I have stuff to do.

Dear Blog - It has been a month since my last writing:
Wow, it's been a busy month. If it wasn't one thing, it was another this month. Lots and lots of homework for 2 of my last 5 classes. The Psychology course ended up being a whole BOATload of reading and had a term paper as well. At work, they sent me on travel to Texas for 8 days and at home my son is just getting out for summer vacation.
I can't wait until I'm done with this degree. I may not go right back for the Master's program, and instead concentrate on other things in my life for a little while.
One of those things might be considering moving to the Dallas-Fort Worth area in Texas. Real Estate is depressed there at the moment, and it's just the opposite here in the Washington, DC area. It might be just the right time to buy something down there. I'm trying to work it through the office to find an assignment down there, but I'm not going to marry myself to my company. If I can find something on my own that will make sense, I will go for it.
The weather down there is great, too. We came back to Virginia, and the moment we stepped off the plane, it was like a wall of humidity stopped us in our tracks. The temperature was lower, but it felt a whole hell of a lot hotter.
Well, that's it for the moment...ta ta

Eat Butter, Not Margarine - Did you ever get the feeling that 'the experts' just don't know what the hell they're talking about? I remember, years ago, the great push toward margarine. Advertising expounded on the health benefits of eating margarine instead of butter, saying it was better for you. Granted, we're talking 30 years ago, but some of those reading this will surely remember. Well, now, with the advent of the Atkins and other low-carbohydrate diets, margarine is now considered less healthy than butter. And, of course, studies are going to back up this conclusion as well - Looking at this article in Nature Magazine: Trans-fats come under fire: Nutrition experts call for ban on hidden food villain.:

"Evidence for the harmful effects of trans-fats has mounted, however. In 2002, a US expert committee charged with making nutritional recommendations concluded that there was no level of trans-fats in the diet that could be deemed safe."

Wow, that's strong language for talking about our food. What the article is talking about is hydrogenated vegetable oil. That's the ingredient in your Country Crock(tm) or other margarine that lets you spread it around the same way soft butter is spread. What gets me is that we have spent years and years on processing foods in this country to make them more available, more accessible and more desireable to the majority, so that they could be mass produced and mass sold. In doing so, we've removed the food value, and instead have created a supermarket full of food that is going to end up killing us.
Disclaimer: I have lost 25 pounds on the Atkins diet and am a proponent of healthy alternatives for processed foods, where possible.

In New Scientist, an article I'd like to bring to your attention mentions the use of auditory signals from a CPU being used for cryptanalysis in a recent study. So, on top of Tempest considerations, now we may have to worry about high-frequency sound filters for classified and sensitive cryptographic devices.

I got my degree! I'm finally legal after 20 years! My Associate of Arts Degree from Limestone College - here it is:

Tried this - it didn't work: blender.org :: the dot org era

This didn't work either: ATI sponsors 3d cards :: blender.org :: the dot org era

Is this a possible fix for ATI Radeon problems with Blender?

"After removing 'atioglxx.dll' menus draw correctly. Performance depends on system speed now."

. Will have to check tomorrow. Blender is even faster on an old 400Mhz laptop than my 2.4Ghz machine with an ATI Radeon 7000 VE card.

Well, I checked it - it didn't fix the problem - Blender still is shit-slow drawing menu items.

IIS 6 Error: "Unable to read configuration for Microsoft Internet Information Server" while trying to add FrontPage Extensions 2002 to a new web site. The solution was in this article on Usenet (thanks Google). Basically, Sharepoint Portal Services, which is web-based, is required to make this installation. Sharepoint had been stopped on the server (by me) due to our 'if you don't need it, disable it' policy. Well, turns out you need it. So, if you have this problem, there's your potential solution.

A friend of mine, not a friend of ours, but one of mine, asked me to post a link to his website. Alright, it's my son, and he's learning to build a website using Tripod's Site Builder. So give it a visit at http://games-galore1.tripod.com. He's got some games on there and a comic that he drew. Feel free to send me any comments you'd like to pass on. He isn't old enough for his own email address yet.