Yet Another Place to Spout My Views - Newsvine

I've signed onto the beta for a service called Newsvine. It's a contributory online newspaper that is composed of postings from people and comments, pointers to online articles (like Digg or Fark) and other combinatory threads. So far, I've written three op-ed pieces (which you'll see if you click on the link), along the same lines as the crap that I usually post on here, but with less personal of a slant. I think I'm going to like the service, and perhaps it will intrigue me enough to keep me writing. At the moment, the service seems to be invite-only, but I have a bunch of invites if you want one. Just let me know and I'll hook you up!

Will Virtual War bleed over into reality?

Virtual Chinese warlords? Are Chinese warlords at it again, invading Korea and stealing their goods? This news article discusses how Chinese hackers are capturing the Lineage accounts from infected web-site trojans, and are alleged to be using that information to log into the user's accounts and steal (and sell) their online goods for real cash.

This activity seems to be leading to virtual war, with South Korean players attacking Chinese players on sight in the online game, identifying them by their inability to speak Korean. It was not stated whether other international Lineage players were also being slaughtered. With real-world cash on the line, could this virtual war lead to real-world war? Certainly the players behind the attacks on both sides may take the fight offline, at least psychologically.

Stay tuned to the battle, keep your eyes open, and your browser safe (stay off those hacker web sites, update your machines, yada, yada...).
*Thanks belong to The Raw Feed for bringing this to Rich's attention.

Changing Web Hosts

I'm changing web hosts to Lunar Pages. I was with Go Daddy for a year, and had problems with their customer service not knowing how to do things, and had problems with their control panel not having adequate control over the website files (like file-level permissions, for example). Now that my term is up with Go Daddy, I'm switching to Lunar Pages, and so far their technical support has been very good. The person on the end of the phone knows exactly what I'm trying to do, and can actually help me with it.

I had a few hiccups with repointing Blogger to the new ftp site, because there are three different places you have to set up the ftp path to your blog files, and it wasn't immediately obvious where the errors were occurring. The blog seems to be publishing fine now (although republishing the whole blog is still taking a while - not sure what the problem is, but 6 years worth of Blog entries could indeed take a while....)

I'll let you know how it turns out....so far I think I'm happier.

Internet Explorer 7: Beta 2 Preview

What I like about the Internet Explorer 7: Beta 2 Preview:

Better Printing - about time - printing a page won't overrun the margins any longer and you can size output intelligently. This has long been a pain in the butt in IE6.

Zoom Feature - an easy accessible Zoom feature on the status bar lets you blow up that picture of Pam Anderson (or whomever) quickly and easily. Great for hard-to-read web pages! It zooms the whole client window, text and pics, and looks like a great feature.

What I DONT like about it:

Whose dumb-ass idea was it to put a non-movable address bar ABOVE the File/Edit/View menu bar? When designing Windows applications, we are instructed OVER and OVER by Microsoft to keep the user interface consistent. That means Application Title Bar, Menu Bar, then anything application specific. What the hell is this crap? I used to be able to turn off the address bar, and now I can't? AND it has to stay on top of everything else?

The irremovable Search box - AND I have to have an extra input box to tab through to get to where I want to be when I'm in keyboard-only mode? Wasn't there ALREADY a search box in IE6 that would safely tuck away if you DIDN'T want to use it? YUCH!

What a full day!

I bought a new laptop for myself today.
My car's battery terminal got so corroded that it broke apart and I couldn't start my car today.
My wife and I entered a poker tournament for the first time today.
My wife came in 5th in the poker tournament today.
We almost hit a racoon driving home today.
We DID hit 2 deer driving home today.

It's been a full day. Maybe I'll be able to sleep today. Maybe not.
More news on these to come as they come.

The Drunk Hungarian

Last night we went to eCiti with a friend from work and my sister-in-law. eCiti is a fairly upscale bar in the Tyson's Corner. We ate dinner, and moved over to the bar section, where they have a large dance floor, a sushi bar and a few tables around to sit at.
Since John is a smoker, he was being considerate and stood up on the dance floor a few feet away to smoke a cigarette. As he was smoking, we noticed that he was chatting with a man. After a few minutes, I caught John's eye and motioned him over so that we could meet his friend, and John made a quick simple introduction to Tibor, from Hungary. Completing the introductions, Tibor leaned into me and confessed, "I'm a little drunk! I've been having some troubles at home, so I've been drinking."
Ok, no harm, buddy...and that explains your complete lack of personal space at the moment. So, on to the first question. So, where do you know John from? "Oh, I just met him now."
Great, John has just sloughed off a friendly drunk on me, and he's not making any sign of leaving. Instead, he's reaching for John's chair. And to think, I even introduced him to my wife and sister, so he probably feels welcome. "Oh, may I use this chair?"
Alas, a way to hand him back off! I point at John. "It's his chair, so you'll have to ask him", I say, and grin at John.
Thankfully, the drunk leaves, not realizing that he could have pulled up another chair, if he wanted to sit at the table and talk. We all laughed a bit about the Hungarian drunk, who had confided that he came here to this country 5 years ago, and learned English by watching television.
A bit later, Tibor comes back to the table. We're all wondering what he could want, and he begins to tell us about the free buffet upstairs. "They have pasta and chicken 'something', I forgot the name, but it is good. You should try some out. It's right up there", he says, pointing at the steps upstairs.
While hesitant about Tibor's overly friendly attitude, I am a little irritated that I may have just spent $70 on dinner unnecessarily. As he walks away, I begin discussing that with my wife and glance over to the stairs. A large sign says "Private Party" at the base of the stairs, and we all burst out laughing again at Tibor, apparent drunk wedding crasher from Hungary...

Welcome to the Weekend

Ok, time to really start that diet: Update: 212.6 pounds.
This morning, went to the DMZ. The mobBLU was great for standing in line in the mall for over an hour, just to wait to GET a number, so I could wait inside to be called on. Just needed to get my tags, but since they were already overdue, I couldn't do the renewal online. $63 for two years - what a ripoff. I love how the government charges its citizens to keep track of them..... (yeah, I know its necessary, but it doesn't make it cheaper knowing that)

I asked someone to review the playlist on my MP3 player, and she promptly told me that some of my stuff was boring ("You mean the Dean Martin stuff?" - "No, that was ok...") - I need to get a clarification from her. Perhaps she didn't like the John Denver songs. I know she wasn't talking about the dance mixes, Billy Joel, Nickleback and Prince. Perhaps she meant the Harry Belafonte stuff or the Ray Romano comedy stuff...?

Ah well, back to the weekend......I've got music files to sort..

Robot Customer Service for McDonalds? Hallelujah!

Fast food restaurants in the near future may be seeing an upgrade in customer service! As pointed out to me by The Raw Feed (the blog formerly known as Mike's List), [thanks Mike], new stand-alone, self-serve, automated cashiers are coming to the fast food market that will let you skip the line at Wendy's, McDonalds, Burger King, etc...provided the franchisers buy them.

I, for one, say it's high time that we got the cashiers at these places to understand English again (damn it, I said 6 piece nugget meal with a DIET COKE, you MORON!!!). I am so sick of walking into McDonalds, waiting in line (#1) and getting up to the cashier who just got off the boat [or whose parents didn't realize they'd need the English language to get through life]. I'm not knocking immigrants (well, not legal ones) at all. But if you're taking my food order, you should at least be able to pronounce the farking menu items, don't you think?!?!?

If you're a franchiser, I can just imagine the drool coming off your lips right now. Buy these! Buy them NOW and install them in your lobby. Do away with half your cashier staff during rush hours!! Do away with countless wasted training dollars!! Do away with the added liability of barely trained minimum wage, non-English speaking workers in an area where burns, slips, trips and other hazards are waiting to drain your worker's compensation coffers. Minimize your staff to one or two trained counter personnel to handle problems and the drive-through window. Save a ton of dough, and make ME, the customer happy on top of it.

Just so you know, yes, I DID buy stock in the company. I think it's a fantastic idea, and think that if you don't pick up a piece of this action, you're going to soon wish you had a nickle for every ATM installed in America's 7-11s.....think about it, investors...[RBSY] on the pink sheets.

Timewaster of the Month Club

The Dead Awaken - an online web-browser based game that my son turned me on to. While not the best of games, it does have a strange addictive quality to it. Fortunately for the user, it is turn-based and you're only given a full set of turns each day. While you can earn extra turns, the site is probably best visited at most three times per day if you want to use all of your turns.

On the site, I play a zombie - but it's your choice, human or zombie. You can visit the graveyard and go grave-robbing, head down to the mall to kill some wandering zombies/humans, or even head down to the subway for a mission of smearing blood on things to attract more zombies (and get paid for it).

The game harkens back to the like of the old BBS games we played and wrote back in the 1980's. Trying to become top zombie will probably take you awhile, though. The game rewards those who've played the longest, so I'll probably never hit the Top 10 lists on this site.

It's an interesting diversion, and very different from the MUD experience. Give it a whirl and let me know if you like it.

New Years Resolutions?

I'll write these down - but I'm old enough to know they won't happen (*grin*):

1. Lose weight (again) - 20 pounds this year, please?
2. Get and stay organized.
3. Throw away all the useless crap I love to accumulate.
4. Work Harder.
5. Play Harder.
6. Buy Less Crap. Don't we all have enough toys already? I've got to stop buying them.

Rich