Monthly Archives: January 2004

Mike has made a deal with the devil. He has signed up for high speed internet service. He called me a short while ago to let me know he was up and running. Welcome aboard, Mike. We’re all glad to see you free of the bonds of dial-up. Must have made watching Homestar Runner almost unbearable.

Of course, the burning question is everyone’s mind is this: Will broadband be enough to convince Mike to update his weblog? Inquiring minds want to know.

Bob Smietana: “The valuation of the company and everything [it produced],” Vischer told CT, “was based on these forecasts that in hindsight… were just based on bad assumptions–just flat out bad assumptions.”

Here’s hoping they get everything straightened out. I love Veggie Tales.

Lots of snow and slop in the forecast for the next few days. Messy driving ahead. Fortunately, I drive what Gracie refers to as a Power Car and the VPN seems to be working. So I shouldn’t miss a beat. And I have some great new tunes to listen to while I plug away at the keyboard.

Which is pretty cool.

iLife 04 (with GarageBand) should be arriving soon, barring any super extreme weather. Hopefully my preamp will arrive shortly thereafter and I can begin recording some demos. It’s time to sing again. I’ll post MP3s when I have something ready. I know several of my readers are musicians, so I’m looking for suggestions for low budget vocal mics. Nothing fancy, just male vocals on a budget.

By the way, for those who asked, my new web hosting company is ModHost, and so far, I’m quite pleased. This site is running on them now, as is bradrhine.com, which is still very much under construction, but up and running nonetheless.

That is all.

For now.

CBS News: “Two years from now, medicine spam will be solved,” he told a select group of World Economic Forum participants at this Alpine ski resort. “And a lot of progress this year,” he added at the event late Friday, hosted by U.S. talk show host Charlie Rose.

Oh, this should be good. Hopefully this will be as successful as his Secure Computing Initiative.

People would set a level of monetary risk – low or high, depending on their choice – for receiving e-mail from strangers. If the e-mail turns out to be from a long-lost relative, for example, the recipient would charge nothing. But if it is unwanted spam, the sender would have to fork over the cash. “In the long run, the monetary (method) will be dominant,” Gates predicted. And who enforces it? Do I need to use a Microsoft email client for this to work for me? Do I need to use a Microsoft mail server for this to work for me? Will need to switch to all Microsoft products to be able to communicate with the rest of the world when a couple of people start using it?

Josh, hospital in Japan, treatment en route to Thailand, writes:

I am writing this entry from a sort of cyber cafe in a Japanese airport waiting for our final flight to Thailand. It is 4am Lancaster time and all is reasonably well. Unfortunately, I cannot access hotmail or Yahoo email, so of course Truetech was the next logical vehicle for communication…well I suppose I could have also used that crappy splitfocus blog that is never updated.

Anyway, I am pulling for you in the NH primary. Watch out for Lurch…I mean John Kerry

I’m moving web hosts. Access may be spotty for the next few days. Everything should be cool by Monday or Tuesday. See you on the flip side.

Well, that went well. Everything’s up on the new host and this blog seems to be working fine. Now to put up the Frequency sub site… which is moving soon anyway. I’m keeping my personal weblog here at truetech.org, but I’m moving software sales to bradrhine.com as soon as DNS propagates.

Carry on.

UPDATE: The Frequecy subsite is back up.

Well, my hat is in the ring, so to speak. I’ve applied for another job. Will I get it? Probably not, but if you don’t make yourself available when opportunities present themselves, you’ll never make a change.

Today is my 31st birthday. Gracie and Jen gave me their cards this morning. I opened up Gracie’s card and saw this picture, which she had drawn.

Gracie: This is you and me, Daddy.
Me: That’s me with just fuzz for hair, right?
Gracie: Yeah, because you’re bald.
Me: Why are you so sad in the picture?
Gracie: Because I fell down and hurt myself, but it’s okay because you’re helping me up.

Here are some excerpts from our current list of open tech requests. Names have been changed, but these are otherwise unaltered.

The new teacher coverage system that [name deleted] wants me to use is not working out at the present time.

Okay, this doesn’t sound like a tech problem.

Please make every effort to put working computers in room 2745.

Hmmm… every effort? That sounds like a lot of work. How about every other effort?

Is there any way we can delete student accounts on [program name deleted]? The students have been creating nonsense account names, and some are vulgar.

These are the requests that make me feel like I’m really contributing to the world.

I’d really like to use my laptop at my desk. Can you run cords safely to get it there?

Of course, her desk is like fifty feet away from the nearest network connection.

[Name deleted] checked the computers in the lab and here are the results: #14 shows a disk with a ?; #23 is 0.k.; #24 is o.k.; #25 is frozen; #28 – the cursor won’t move. Thanks for passing this on.

Well, I’m glad 23 and 24 are OK.