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New River

Went to New River today. Launched at high tide (8am), returned in the middle of the incoming tide. Yeah, that's a bit backwards as far as travel goes, but oh well - exercise is good for ya right?

Paddled up New River to that S bend and the fork. Talked to a groundskeeper on the famous (and colorful) house on the corner who said that the past few days the water was simply being shredded by tarpon and jacks around 4. Given that it was 9am, that news didn't excite me too much.

QotD: Now

Question: What are you thinking?

My Answer: That Florida is really hot, and that I wouldn't notice so much if my air conditioning hadn't gone out while I was fishing today.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Un-Beaching a Manatee

manatee.jpgLast week I went to Jupiter because I had no other place to go. This week, I couldn't decide where to go, so I went to Jupiter again. This time I went the proper direction - I didn't paddle 8 miles out of my way. Stupid me. I'm still kicking myself over that one last week…

My goal this week was to fish the inlet. I was actually going to ride the outgoing tide out into the ocean, but I could see enough waves out there that I chickened out and ducked up the Indian River.

QotD: Retiring

Question: If you could retire at any age, what age would you choose and why?

My Answer: 40. I think it's good to put in 20 years of work, then put in 40 years doing what you love and helping others, and I think that's about what I'd do if I could.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Great Instructions

What does this mean?

Be tights part D with part H together by fitting M. Like a step No. 1. And may be installation handle in this side too.

That's the winner of the 2003 "Worst Manual Contest." Other notable steps include "Test stranger & use on" and, well, just go have a look for yourself.

Lazy

menssom-s.jpgPerhaps the citizens of the United States are not the laziest in the world. Take what I display here as a lovely counter-argument. Heck, order one for yourself at this site for only 35,800 yen. How much does that cost in US Dollars? Etan wants to know. My guess is that it'd be cheaper to hire someone to do this for you. 😛

On a completely unrelated note, did you know that today was the autumnal equinox? Yes, indeed, today there are equal parts night and day. To get through the day, I recommend equal parts scotch and soda. I think we should get the equinoxes off from work as national holidays. Like they would in Europe, home of the two-hour siesta "lunch break" and other nice things. It's ok, though, my weekend starts tomorrow. I'm ready for it!

Good Clients

title_fish2.gifIt's really great when you can find a "cool client" now and then. Mike Uleski of PaddleAndPole.com is one of them.

About a month ago I contacted Mike about doing a site for him in exchange for a guided fishing trip every now and then. In other words, we'd each trade our services. It's been awhile since I put up a cute little site. P&P is such a site.

What makes a good client? Mike was quick to respond, liked my suggestions and had good ones of his own, and got me the content I needed quickly. That's all I ask. He didn't harp, and frankly, he didn't have to because we were both working at a pretty good (though still quite relaxed) clip to get the site done.

I'm proud of the little site. It's not the biggest or baddest in the world, but I think it represents Mike pretty darn well, and I'm glad that he has a "real" home on the Web instead of his former Geocities page. Now, about those trips… 🙂

Sidetrack

This looks awesome:

SideTrack is a replacement driver for the trackpad (touchpad) found on Apple PowerBooks. It brings many of the trackpad scrolling features found on Windows laptops to MacOS X. Most Windows laptops implement trackpad scrolling using drivers made by Synaptics. Although Apple PowerBooks also use custom Synaptics trackpads, the standard Apple driver uses none of the special Synaptics features.

SideTrack supports these features:
* Vertical scrolling at left or right edge of pad.
* Horizontal scrolling at top or bottom edge of pad.
* Map hardware button to left or right click.
* Map trackpad taps to no action, left click, left click drag (with or without drag lock), or right click.

I don't use my PowerBook too much, given its role as a test dummy, but I may just install this on the thing for the heck of it. Very nice.

Copy-Protected CDs

I too like to buy CDs, and as Jeff points out, copy-protected CDs punish the people the record industry should be rewarding - the people who buy CDs!

Furthermore, the whole idea behind these copy controlled discs is absolutely absurd to begin with. With this method you are actually punishing those who are willing to buy your product! Unless they think they can get rid of all copies of the music on P2P services, it wont work. Those who wont buy the album will still download it - copy protecting CDs isn't stopping it. The only thing copy protecting CDs does is it makes your customers really angry.

I've bought several CDs in the past few months - but I'll never buy a copy-protected CD. I'm not a pirate, and I don't give my music away either. How about lowering the prices of non-copy-protected CDs and enticing more people to own the music they listen to? Nah, instead they throw this bullshit out there.

Todd Did

A friend of mine played a joke on another friend of mine today.

I am. We Todd did! I am sofa king. We Todd did!

Heh heh heh, sorry Rob. You walked right into it. Twice! Oh, and sorry 'bout them Jets, eh?

Pittsburgh 17, Cincinnati 10

Ahh, the Bungles. Regardless of their record over the past, oh, since whenever the hell Boomer Esiason retired, the Bungles typically put up a pretty good show against the Steelers. Today was not a day for that show. Today was a day for Steeler football a bit like the way it used to be: 138 yards rushing, 27 points total, and lame special teams play.

The Steelers dominated fairly well: 21 vs. 9 first downs not on penalties, 37:06 vs. 22:54 time of posession, 376 vs. 182 total yards, and so on. Steeler football. The offensive line stepped it up with the return of Jerome Bettis (who netted 59 yards in 16 carries), and the defense played acceptably, shutting down the run as well as the pass. Also returning this week (and key to the shutting down of the Cincy offense) was "Ouch, My Ass" Joey Porter.

QotD: Exes

Question: How many of your ex-girlfriends or ex-boyfriends do you continue to talk to regularly?

My Answer: Over half. The first requested we stop talking so that she could "get over me." Another short "fling" of a thing ended when the woman (girl) got childish. The others (and it's a stretch to call anyone but the first a "girlfriend") I still talk to quite often. Talked to two today, in fact. 🙂

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

20 Questions

From the 20 Questions site:

You win, but the computer did guess it eventually
You were thinking of a computer mouse.
Is it a common household object? You said No, I say Yes.
Does it bring joy to people? You said No, I say Yes.
Would you use it in the dark? You said Irrelevant, I say Yes.
Would you give it as a gift? You said Irrelevant, I say Yes.
Is it part of a set? You said No, I say Yes.
Do you use it at night? You said Irrelevant, I say Yes.

Uhm, okay, whatever.

/usr/share/calendar/*

Great tip!

cat /usr/share/calendar/* | grep `date +"%m/%d"`

I've added that to my .tcshrc file. Good stuff. FWIW, my birthday is a pretty damn boring day:

[10:51pm iacas@Gaia:~] % cat /usr/share/calendar/* | grep '03/23'
03/23*  Maundy Thursday (3 days before Easter)
03/23   Pakistan Day in Pakistan

MSN

I was attempting to set up a client's email account today, and he was having trouble. He connects via MSN dial-up, and though he could receive mail through his account (at his own domain, hosted on a server of mine), he could not send email. He kept getting a message about the server terminating the connection.

I've created his account on my machine, and my friend has on his (a Windows box), and we don't get this error. We changed his SMTP server to an MSN one (smtp.email.msn.com) and he got two errors (the first was that MSN was rejecting his FROM address, no surprise there).

What's required to send email through an MSN dial-up account with your own domain name/account? Specifically like this:

Name: Joe Schmoe
Email: joe@mydomain.com
POP: mydomain.com
SMTP: mydomain.com
Account: myaccount
Password: **********

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. The client is using Outlook Express in Windows XP. The server authenticates when checking mail and adds the IP address to the list of allowed relays when a check is performed, so no password is needed to send mail - just a valid FROM address (one on the same server, which hosts multiple domains).

If you can help, please do. It's a 90-minute wait for MSN's tech support.