I bought a 1996 Plymouth Grand Voyager SE with 136,000 miles on it - to replace my 1993 Honda Civic that had been stolen and crashed. All told, it cost me a few hundred bucks to upgrade to a van, but I think it's going to be worth it. I bought it at Woodbridge Auto Auction, and I've had the systems checked. Timing belt looks good, but it needs a new serpentine (not immediately...) belt due to some cracks in it. Replaced the PCV valve, air filter, had the radiator flushed and the transmission looked at. It's got some bumps and bruises, but fairly minor (I could use a new left front quarter panel (misleading - only about an eighth panel on the van..), but I can live without). I think Im going to experiment with this car. Having not paid much for it, and wanting to learn more about cars, I'm going to be a lot more apt to tinker with it. Besides, at the auto auction I saw cars going for $700 that were about in the same shape as my Honda was....I can afford that to just get to work... Yet another hobby ;)

I was reading CNN tonight - and came across this: CNN.com - 'Idol' contestant booted over scandal - Apr. 1, 2003

A month after Fox disqualified a singer from the show amid revelations that she had posed topless on an Internet porn site, the network said Monday it was expelling another finalist, Corey Clark, who is facing trial on misdemeanor charges of battery against his sister and resisting arrest.

Wait a minute? Wouldn't that make them better contestants? Isn't scandal a part of being a celebrity? Instead of pushing them off the show, shouldn't that immediately qualify them to be finalists? You know, a free pass for the round, like on Survivor?
"What, You dealt drugs to orphans in east L.A.?" To hell with what Simon thinks of your singing, you're a BORN SUPERSTAR!!!!

We went to the West End Dinner Theatre last night and saw the Pirates of Penzance [click for a picture]. It was a wonderful show - very lively, well acted, and well-sung. Before we went, I read a review in Potomac Stages. I don't agree with the reviewer about the music at all. The whole show seemed full of sound to me, and I didn't detect one bit of missing music. I did, howver, have to agree with the opinion about Ron Sarro as the Major General. It seemed to me that the actor was not comfortable in his mustache during the singing, and he certainly could have hammed up the role a bit more. As for the rest of the cast, they were wonderful. The women, especially Mabel, had beautiful vocal range, and Thomas Howley nailed the lead quite well!

Remember that total information system I blogged about, that our wonderful government is working on, under the guise of tracking terrorists? In Wired 11.04: VIEW Howard Bloom spouts the following:

Frankly, the critics are missing the point.

Frankly, Howard Bloom is missing the point.

Well, on your commute, flip the switch to your TIA-developed Communicator platform and initiate a search. It's being designed to knit together all kinds of disparate data: travel documents, phone records, credit card and banking statements, even server logs.

This is exactly the problem. We, the American people, believe that this constitutes an unhealthy level of information about us. We believe that it is practically criminal to be able to piece this information together without a search warrant or a valid reason. The technology will become available to us, as he conjectures. But, there are MANY people out there that I don't want knowing what books I buy, when I travel, where I live, and when I'm likely to be on vacation so they can clean out my house.

Just think what a search engine would do - it would let you pull up Mapquest, and click on a link that tells you who's currently on vacation and when they're likely to return. It would also tell you which ones bought portable DVD players, jewelry and other fenceable items. I really don't understand why Mr. Bloom pretends that this is OK with him. It's certainly not ok with me.

You see the new * characters after the links in my page? They link content to blogdex - the weblog diffusion index. This is an index of blogs and the links they provide. When you click on one, a pop up window will display to tell you what other blogs are pointing to the same link.

There's a guy in Iraq who runs a Blog called: Where is Raed ?

:: Monday, March 24, 2003 ::
The last two days we didn�t have internet access.

With today being March 29th, I'm beginning to worry about him. Granted, survival is probably the first and only thing on his mind about now, but the blog is apparently important for him. Maybe he's just without access to the 'net for right now. I hope he gets online again soon so we can read about what's happening from the Iraqi civilian point of view...

Ok, so 11 days and no writing - what's that about? Well, I've been busy. Work is busy as hell. We're planning a move to a new office space to save loads of money. The move isn't bad, but the problem is that a lot of things are not resolved yet, politically or technically. So a lot of planning is on hold for the move until certain decisions are made, and the time it takes to make them is just very stressful. In addition, we're busy as beavers with software releases and other projects. School started up again. One of the classes I signed up for (Computer Organization) turned out to be a class I already had credit for (the registrar had changed his mind, apparently), so I had to do a quickie-turn-around, putting me about a week behind on assignments and readying. The class I signed up for is Legal Issues in Technology, another work-at-your-own-pace course. Deja vu is hitting me pretty hard (think Psychology), and I think I'm about 2 pages of writing behind at the moment. (major sigh)

What else is new? Oh yeah, thieves broke into both my wife's car and mine (and quite a few neighbors). They actual drove mine off. The police told me the guy driving didn't turn on the headlights. As the cops tried to pull him over (about a mile from my house), the thieves spun my car out (into a guardrail) and made a run for it. Two of the three got away. Allegedly, one of them stole a bicycle, and was found a short time later a few miles up the road. He's in jail now. Meanwhile, the faceplate on my wife's stereo had to be replaced, and my car is just about totalled (waiting to see what the insurance company says)

Patch your servers! Patch your IIS Servers!! New HOLE, new patch, as of this week. Patch them now, before it's too late - InfoWorld:�US Army hacked via IIS hole:�March 18, 2003:�By�Paul Roberts:�Security. I'm going to go out on a limb and say "2 weeks" - that's when the worm will start. And....let me guess....60% vulnerable....

I've got something to say about this Wired News Article and it's implications, but it's been said by many others before me (even years ago). As an example, just take this test at the Llama Party web site. Think about it, do airplanes get hijacked by people with poor credit ratings, or do airplanes get blown up by terrorist Extremists? Just what the HECK are they thinking?

Now coming at you in full 1280x1024 in 17" LCD color! I purchased a Kogi 17" LCD monitor for $299. It's black bordered and has built-in speakers (although I doubt I'll use them..). I wanted the extra resolution for doing graphics work, and I started up Blender already to test it out. It looks fantastic on the screen. Let's see, what else is going on? Oh, yeah - got a B in pre-calc, and an A in Internet Applications. Just signed up for my 3rd semester at Limestone College. I'm taking Introduction to Programming II and Legal Issues in Technology. At the same time, I'm going to try to study for the CLEP test for Calculus. Taking math classes over the Internet is a ridiculous idea. I found myself turning to people near me to help with difficult concepts (e.g. logarithms, ugh). Why should I pay for the whole class when I can test out of it? Ramble later...