7610

This is the summer to go skydiving

I'm going sky diving at some point this summer. Who wants in? I'm doing it. Even if I do it alone. There's a place called Skydive Orange about 1-1.5 hours from DC. That's where I plan on going. (Prices and FAQ)

Let me know if you want to come along or just leave a comment here.

Red eyed baby

update: by request of the maker of the film, I've edited this post

Here is an ad from Olympus. I can understand that the commercial is pretty dumb, but it was supposed to be viral. I think it suceeded in that aspect. It was originally up on a site: Redeyedbaby.com, and then the site was 302'd to Olympus. [via Screenhead]

Coincidentally, that is the camera that we got my sister for her birthday last year.

Impeach Bush

Most of us have seen the bumper stickers, like Nobody Died When Clinton Lied or some similar message.

We've seen the protest posters against the war, and how no WMD's have been found in Iraq. The primary tenets driving Bush's decision deception to go to war with Iraq are coming us as fabrications and misrepresentations.

Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the ISG's final conclusions and will be published this spring.

1. Make up some lies


2. Pretend you got the information from an intelligence branch


3. Launch an investigation into why you got bad information from said intelligence branch


4. Get your ass impeached

Boston.com has an article today pointing out that exact fact. Interestingly enough, the article was written by Ralph Nader and Kevin Zeese. Granted, this is not the first time that the impeachment issue has been brought up, there is John W. Dean's commentary from back in 2003, and countless bumper stickers calling for Bush's impeachment.

Productive Weekend

So I'm going to call this past weekend productive. I played two rounds of golf, went to the driving range twice, picked up my pants at Nordstroms (that I was supposed to pick up April 22nd), did a little shopping, and made quite a bit of food. The main thing that I made, as mentioned yesterday, were crabs. I ate about half a dozen yesterday, and cooked the rest last night before going to bed. I got all the meat out of them today before I went golfing, and then found this simple crab cake recipe and made 6 crab cakes. Yeah, they were big crabs. Anyway, I added too much Old Bay, especially since the crabs were made with Old Bay to begin with. But, hey, I have 4 more crab cakes to eat! Maybe I should have used Barbara's recipe.

On thing that I'd like to point out regarding East Potomac Golf Course here in Washington, DC. Anyone who's played the course there knows about the fox. The first year I played East Potomac, there was one fox. The next year, the entire island was flooded, covered by about 3 feet of water. I thought the fox had perished. However, the year after that, I saw a fox on the course. Today I saw at least three different foxes, and a deer. Yes, a deer on the golf course. While this sounds like a normal occurence for golf courses like General's Ridge in Manassass, East Potomac park is an island. So, how does a deer get onto the property, and just as importantly, how does a deer get off the island? Or are there two deer?

Crabs and Malbec

This Memorial Day, I got a dozen NC blue crabs, and cracked open a bottle of Terrazas Malbec 2003 that I brought back from Mendoza, Argentina. The wine was very good, and you can buy it at Zachys in Scarsdale, NY. Good stuff.

Oh yeah, and the crabs were huge and very good.

No, I'm the stairmaster!

So you want to get up these stairs huh? Look what happened to the last guy.

Car shopping

I'm looking to buy a new car. I've thought about a slew of things that have influenced my possible purchase. Among the considerations is gas mileage (especially with the rising costs of gas in this country). So naturally, I did a little bit of research on hybrid cars. One thing I didn't know though, was that the Toyota Prius has buggy software that can make the car stall when it's riding on the highway. That's convenient.

So, the car that I test drove yesterday was a Subaru Outback XT. As soon as the sales rep calls me back, I'll have some more details. But, it's a very fast car. 0-60 mph in 6.9 seconds. That's pretty fast. I've got a few options that I would really like to get on it, so they're locating my ideal car. It should look pretty much like the one in the picture though.

Pics are up from England

Here are my pics from England. Most are unfortunately from the plane, but those are pretty too.

Enjoy.

Back from England

I'm back from the country of England. The motherland for some, across the pond for others. Regardless, I'm back, and very dehydrated and very tired. It was quite exhausting, but definitely a great time. As I mentioned before, we stayed at The Belfry. Drank a lot at the bar, went to the club Bel Air a few times, and went to play paintball. That was very very fun. I'm going to be uploading pictures shortly, so stay tuned. I didn't get many pictures, but I guess that's assumed with a bachelor party or what the Brits call a "stag" party.

The Brabazon course at the Belfry was simply the most beautiful course I've ever played in my life. I wish I'd seen this guide to hole 18 before I played it. Actually, I wish I'd seen the guid to each hole that we played. That was on Friday.

Then we played the PGA National course. I didn't play too well on that course though.

Anyway, we drank a lot, didn't eat a lot, but I've learned to like tea. Join me for a spot sometime mate.

Cheers.

England, here I come!

So today I leave for England. I'm going for my friend Dan. He's from Engerland, so we're having a cross-pond bachelor party for him, and there will be one here in the states. This is where I'm staying when I'm there. We'll be playing two rounds of golf, and then going skeet shooting. I'm going to try to take a lot of pictures, but I'm sure you understand the nature of bachelor parties.

On another note, my body is either, too scared to tell me that it's not getting close to normal, OR, it is getting back to par. I'm really not sure which scares me more. The group of people that I'm going with, I believe that I am the lightest weight drinker. And that's still when I drink heavily. Yeah, someone could end up not coming back from this trip. This is going to be one of the scary trips where, when someone asks, "Oh, how was the trip?" our reply will be, "Well, no one died."

Ginormous woot

A lexicon site Merriam-Webster had a contest to see what people's favorite non-word word was. Topping the list: ginormous (adj): bigger than gigantic and bigger than enormous. Let's put this word into the regular dictionary. Among the other words that made the list, chillax (v): chill out/relax, and woot (interj): an exclamation of joy or excitement. Not like this woot though.

HOWTO fold a t-shirt

I was browsing around the web today, and happened upon this video that shows how to "fold" a tshirt. It's really find of funky and really does work. I just folded a t-shirt using this method. Sweet. Just in time, since I have to pack for a trip to England. I may see if I can blog from over there, but won't make any promises.

Still not 100%

As I posted yesterday, I was pretty hungover. The funny thing is, that people today are telling me today that I was hilarious, and my dance was cute. Yeah, I don't remember those. Anyway, my body is still not 100% back to where I was on Friday (during the day). I haven't eaten much, and have probably consumed an inordinate amount of alcohol since Friday. I must be getting old. I used to be able to drink like this and then go right back to the bar the next day. Although, should my week go as expected, then I maybe doing that anyway.

It's my 29th birthday and I'm hung over

And I can't type. Anyway, I'm 29 years young today. Still trying to recover from yesterday's festivities. I am supposed to go play pool at 6, but I don't care to see alcohol right now. I don't remember all of last night, but I think it was the best Chuqo de Mayo yet. People came from many different parts of the East Coast. My sisters Gloria and Linda friend Matt came up from Florida, Snowdog brought his whole family, Steven came down from New York with his brother Dennis. My grill is broken, the ketchup is brown, and yes, there is writing all over me again. It seems to happen every year.

Happy Chuqo de Mayo to me!

Today is the day of Chuqo de Mayo. It's my birthday tomorrow, but the party is tonight. I'm sure there will be plenty of straight up jacked pictures that go up right here. This is the picture from the evite. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go get a keg.

Moonwalking

Ever see a cat do the moonwalk? Now you have.

Spread Firefox

The Mozilla Organization has taken the browser market by storm. Their Firefox browser is quite simply put, badass. It's reached over 50 million downloads, and continues to climb. I have a copy of the firefox setup file on my USB key fob so that I can install it on any of my friends computers if they're having IE problems (like anyone that uses IE does).

There are some pretty funny firefox ads here (I think the mobile is the funniest).

I've been using Firefox since version 0.8, and it's come a long way in terms of stability, and features. It's got a built in popup-blocker, live-bookmarks, tabbed browsing and it's just so badass. I can't put it any other way. You should really really just get it. I've shown my little sister and parents that firefox is better than IE.

By the way, today they released Firefox 1.04 today.

Retina, fingerprint, voice, or vein

A lot of hype has been made over the past few years about biometrics. Congressman Honda has been talking about using biometrics in airports as a way to help airport security in a way that is not subject to racial profiling (assuming everyone is scanned.

Most of the colocation facilities that I've seen (ever) have had biometric hand readers. There was also talk about retinal scanners in airports.

Fujitsu, has announced today, that they have deployed contactless Palm Vein Authentication technology based scanners at the University of Tokyo hospital. They scan the vein patterns in a hand, and are contactless, so they don't have to potential health concerns of direct contact authentication such as a finger print scanner.

Evacuated again

Ok, so my office, the Capitol and the White House were all evacuated a little while ago. I've got some gripes about how my office handled it.

• Nothing from the administration - No one at our office told us that we were evacuating. People we already crawling all over near the office by the time I got the word that we were evacuating. And that notification came from my friend Maura. Thanks Maura!


• No plan - We have no plan for what to do when we evacuate. There were people walking around the front of our building that didn't work there. We had people from my office standing right in front of our building. I asked the security officer if I should pull the fire alarm, and he said, no, they're letting everyone know now. Whatever. The last time this happened, there were people in our office that didn't even know we had evacuated.


• No notification - There is no way for us to know that we're being evacuated.

GTD Project list

I've been searching for an easy high tech way to essentially implement GTD. I'm almost done with the book, but unfortunately, probably don't have the time (two days) to implement it for a few weeks. This is fine since I've got a lot going on, and it gives me more time to research how I'm going to implement it (with what tools, etc.). I decided that I did need some sort of easy to use and flexible content management system. Fair enough. I'm not sure what I'm going to use for that, but I thought about a wiki, so I installed Instiki. That's fine, but I did want something a little more flexible.

I also installed ExtCalendar2 on this server to manage my calendar. I like it, there are features that I'd like to see added, but I'll save those for later.

One thing I did yesterday was to start up an account on tadalist.com to manage my lists. I like the checkbox feature since it gives me a sense of "I got things done!"

Now, as you can see, this has already gotten to be a pretty disparate list of tools. Three different places, all of which I need a computer to use. One thing that I saw today, which is especially targeted directly to GTD people is: TiddlyWiki. I am playing around with it right now, just to see if it will work, and if it does the things that I'd like it to do. A neat feature (of many) that is implemented on this page is the fact that these lists can be printed directly onto 3x5" index cards (on of the GTD supplies), and filed into your Hipster PDA. The Hipster PDA can also be "modded" to fit your personal preference.

Right now, I want something that can do todo lists, calendaring, contacts, and link them all together. Oh wait, you say Palm makes those? They sure do. I don't like Palm products though. I sure as shit don't like Microsoft's Windows CE products either. And, I'd like something that does all that and is a telephone too. Hmmmm. Something like a blackberry? Yeah, something like that.

Giant grass eating bird

I woke up this morning, got all ready for work, and then got into my car. Not such a big deal, and nothing too aberrant from the norm. However, as soon as I started driving, I noticed that there was an absolutely enormous spot of bird dung on my windshield. I'm really not sure of what kind of bird (or what size bird) takes dumps like this, but the thing must be huge! It looks like the turd bomb was made of all grass though, so maybe it was a flying grasseater bird. Or maybe a flying plu-lakka-lakka. In real life, chances are it's a Canada goose.

That's a Starbucks Venti Americano (my drink of choice) in the picture.

Shamokin Dam

On my way back from my parents' house, we pass through a borough called Shamokin Dam, PA. I just thought that this was a shamokin damn good picture to take of the town sign. If you're interested in learning more, here you go. (It's short reading).

Calendar installed

I just finished installing ExtCalendar2 here on kaplink. I decided to make it private for now. Although, if you want an account, maybe we can work something out.

There are groups in the user management, but I'm not so sure if they are configured so that one group or user can't see any events of the other users/groups. Hmmm. Maybe that's something that either I should look into, or even more geeky, write.

Making soup

I'm back in Hornell, NY for Mother's Day. Tonight, we're cooking for my parents since all the Yang kids have to go back to their respective cities tomorrow. I'm responsible for the soup, so I chose a Shrimp Bisque. I've just finished peeling and deveining a pound of shrimp. That's all they had at Wegmans.

One of my sisters is making stuffed shells, which should be good, although she doesn't cook a lot, and my other sister, well, she is in charge of the dessert: a fruit tart from Wegmans.

Here's a picture of the shrimp bisque. It was absolutely delicious in my opinion.

Here are some pictures of our dinner:

Knots on show

So if I show this to someone, they would say, wow, that's pretty cool. And most people would be talking about the fact that the kid tied a knot with one hand, one motion.

I'm more interested in the fact that it's a java script movie!

Friday Liberal Cat Blogging

I finally have a section of this website dedicated to me(ow)! Check it out here. I also have one from 2004 over here. I want it to say blur.kaplink.net though.

I love looking out the window from my chair on cool Friday mornings though.

Ingenious fly plane

If you've known me long enough, you probably know that I can catch flies in my hands. I sometimes even tie them to a long piece of hair that serves as a leash. Well, that hasn't happened in a while.

I don't think I would have EVER though of making a plane fly.

After first, this is quite funny. Now, I really want to try it.

Dutch court's decision

This would have been simply awesome.

Google Web Accelerator

Google yesterday, released the Google Web Accelerator. I installed it on my firefox browser, and I've had a pretty frustrating morning thus far. The Web Accelerator does not play well with Movable Type. I lost revisions to the previous post multiple times before I realized how to turn it off.

I'm going to leave it off for now since I don't like that it's a proxy. I'll still have to configure if it I decide to turn it back on though. One more thing to add to the list.

This technology seems to be a caching technology on speed. The company that I think should be most concerned is Akamai. With the money and the resources that Google has, it could "gently step" into Akamai's previously uncontested territory and quickly create a problem for Akamai in the browser world anyway. Or, they could work peacefully together and make everyone happy.

Collaborative dreaming

This morning I had an interesting but truly and absolutely useless thought. What if, just imagine, what if, you could dream collaboratively. So, you have this dream that you went out golfing, and you're normal foursome is there with you in your dream. You have a great round, one of your friends drives a cart into a lake (this by the way, has happened to me in real life), and one of your friends gets hit by a golf ball (this has happened to me as well).

You wake up, and the friend that was hit by the golf ball in your dream asks you, "Wasn't that crazy, that I got hit by that ball?"

If man figured out how to actually make this a reality, there would be several good things that come from it, the first thought that comes to my mind being productivity gains. You would then be able to schedule meetings for 3:30 AM with your colleagues to talk about a new project, or you and your friends could try to change the world (think Matrix).

In addition to gains, there would also be more grave concerns that would have to be addressed first. Privacy, choice, dream leader, and scheduling are some of the things that I can think of right off the bat.

Privacy: how would one keep from having someone else stop by your dream, or how would you keep someone from just watching your dream.

Choice: What if you don't want to collaboratively dream, but your boss has scheduled a meeting at 2:45?

Dream Leader: Who would drive the dream? Some people can control their dreams, if two or more of those people were in the same dream, who would be the one in control?

Scheduling: If you have a round of golf scheduled on Thursday night, and you also have a dream scheduled with some other friends, I guess this would be just like regular scheduling in real life.

These concerns would be real, but I'm glad they are not. Most people, including me, consider sleep to be the last haven of release, and relaxation that is (usually) a daily routine. No one should ever step into this personal space.

Web based calendars

Part of my ultimate goal of getting more organized is to get a functional (and cool looking) web-based calendar. There are a few that I'm considering, and I may try to combine some of the features of them. Here are my options:

• DHTML Calendar


• Datenator


• php-calendar - which I find is like Datenator, but without the decorations


• ExtCalendar2 - currently the front runner in my mind

Please let me know which one you like best or if there is one that I am neglecting (besides iCalendar), let me know.

Personal organization

If you're a regular reader of 7610, then you know that I've been on a kick of getting things done. Along these same lines, I've been searching for tools that I can use (high-tech obviously) to further aid and abet getting my house in order. Some of the tools that David Allen recommends mentions in his book Getting Things Done are Moleskine notebooks, paper trays, labellers, manilla folders, and file cabinets; pretty much all of which you could probably get at any office supply store. Except maybe the Moleskine. Not being too much of a pen and paper kinda guy, I'd much rather use all high tech tools (read: Bad-ass gadgets).

That's when I found a project called the Inistiki [zip, tgz, dmg]. It's a tiny implementation of a wiki written in Ruby. I have it installed on my USB thumb drive. You just run the instiki executable, and you have a web server (built in) that runs on port 2500 of your local machine. Please be aware that it does actually bind to all interfaces on port 2500. This means that anyone can see your wiki if you're running it. That is a little problem that I see :).

One of my complaints about it is that the coloring and format are not easily customizable. I suppose I could go into the code and change that though. Other than that, it's just another wiki, but it's my wiki.

I'm doing a test run of it just trying to see if it's something that I will be able to use as I want. Otherwise, I'll have to buy a more high tech toy to serve that purpose. I'm of the camp that thinks that the PDA only devices have a limited life. The end is near for them. Especially with devices like the Treo and the Blackberry phones out there. Even my Sony Ericsson T637 has basic organizer functions built in.

Should I wait for an all in one solution, with something like a 7.0 MP cameraphone hoping that is has an organizer? Or do I separate them all and start carrying a man purse around? Hopefully, some company will come up with something like the Treo that doesn't blow as badly as the Treo does. If someone does, I'll be first in line. Even if it's like $1,000. Camera, phone, organizer? I don't think $300 per function is too bad.

Monkeys and technology

Today I found myself wondering what the relationship is between monkeys and technology. There are literally, millions of hits when you google "monkeys technology". It's just amazing to me how intertwined the two seemingly unrelated things have found themselves married based on something, and I can't figure out what that something is.

ThinkGeek has a monkey for a mascot, there's the techmonkey, lotsofmonkeys blog, Space Monkeys, a project based in Princeton to help kids design with sound, stories of the monkey legacies, a programming language called Ook for orangutans, Goldenpalace.com Monkeys, and an open source project called monkey.

Plus you can Spank the Monkey!, and then get advice from the WebMonkey. Obviously, I can't forget ximian either.

Granted, these are just a few (or more than a few) of the monkey technology links out there, but, who remembers the Flyingbuttmonkey.com lawsuit?

One of my friends suggested that monkeys and technology are related because of the Wizard of Oz's flying monkeys, but what the hell does that have to do with computers? I want to know. I need to know.

Carnival of the Cats on Running Scared

Blur has gotten into this Friday Cat Blogging thing where he takes his own picture on Friday and posts onto this site. He also gets mentioned on the Carnival of the Cats and the Friday Ark. I like the Carnival of the Cats shout-out:

At the blog 7610, we find a cat battling the ages old problem of liverbreath. I can relate, buddy.