Recently in Personal Category

My Richard Petty Driving Experience at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on June 20th 2010. It's hard to tell from this video that we turned a lap at 105 MPH. I wish the instructor would have gone faster! I'd like to try it on a bigger, faster track sometime. All in all though, it was AWESOME! It was SO much fun!

  I had the most Amazing day yesterday. For Christmas, my Beautiful, Loving Wife gave me a gift certificate to a driving experience with the Richard Petty Driving Experience. I used that gift card up on Father's Day! While I've done a ride along with them before, this was my first time driving. It was AWESOME. It took a bit of time to get used to the fact that you have to steer right in order to go straight as the cars are set up to turn left. As we left the pits, the instructor driving the car in front of me was telling me to go faster. By the time we reached the flag stand on the front stretch, he was telling me to back off :)

  New Hampshire Motor Speedway is only a mile long track with a little banking so it wasn't super speedway speeds but my top speed for the day was 105 MPH. 

  It was a great day out with my wife and daughter.  My mom, Mary Lou and Linda all came to watch too. 

  After we were done at the track, we stopped for a quick bite to eat and then headed home to grab a few things.  We were off to a cook out to visit with friends, many of whom were in town for their high school reunion.  It was great to see some friends that are usually so far away.

  All in all, I couldn't have asked for a better Father's Day. 

  Last Christmas, my wife gave me an automatic car starter for my truck. The truck is outside all winter and it's very nice to be able to warm it up without ever going outside. She purchased it from Boomer McLoud in Nashua, NH. We took the truck in and had it installed there as well. Everything worked great all winter long. Then, over the summer, I took Lauren to the pool. I went swimming with her, forgetting that my keys were in my pocket. So much for that remote starter remote control. Oh well, I thought, I have another one. Well, the second one didn't work at all either. I changed the batteries and it would work for a day or two and then stop again.
  With winter coming, I decided it was time to resolve the problem. I assumed I would have to spend a fortune to purchase a new remote. I went in to Boomer McLoud and told them about the problem I was having and even told them I took one of them swimming with me. The answer was "No Problem"! He took out two new remotes, went out to my truck and within about 2 minutes had them programmed. When I asked how much I owed him, the answer was "Nothing". "Seriously?" I asked and he said :Yes. All of our remote starters have a lifetime guarantee with no questions asked." And on top of all of that, he was friendly and took the time to show me how the remotes are programmed to the truck! I thanked him and was on my way.
  It's nice to see that customer service is not dead and that some companies stand behind their guarantee. I'd just like to say, Boomer McLoud, YOU ROCK!

  I was having a great weekend with my Family. I'm happily snapping pictures of everyone enjoying the lake. Then, I looked down to see "Memory Card Error" on the screen of my camera! So I took the card out and put it in a computer where it said the card needed to be formatted before I could use it. I said "No" to that and put the card away until I got home.
  I own R-Studio data recovery software that I have used several times to recover deleted files. I ran it against the SD card but everything it recovered was corrupt. So I started searching for other data recovery software. I downloaded several different programs. Many did nothing because it couldn't find the file allocation table. One, Stellar Phoenix, was able to see all of my pictures but it required payment before it would recover them. I wasn't sure I was willing to pay $39.95 for a few weekend photos. So I continued searching. Then I found ZAR. ZAR stands for Zero Assumption Recovery. ZAR allows photo recovery with their free version. I ran it and it took a while but it successfully recovered all but two of my pictures. Those two were corrupted. The videos that it recovered were corrupt but that's ok. In the end, I got my pictures back and I didn't have to pay to do it!

  As of April 16, 2009 I am officially unemployed. I haven't been unemployed since I was 12 and started working at my parents rental store. It's definitely a bummer. However, it has given me a little extra time to do things I enjoy. I've had the chance to do a little geocaching and found some incredible water falls right in Wilton, NH. I lived in Wilton for quite a few years and never knew the falls were there.
  So, while the economy stinks I'm still trying to find a little enjoyment day to day...

  A friend of mine posted this on his facebook page and I thought I would post it here to share with all of you. This is the most insane adrenaline rush I've even seen but it is SO COOL! Check it out!


wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

  The cold weather has definitely arrived. Soccer is now down to 1 hour a week inside the Hampshire Dome. So, it's fun to reminisce over our fall season. The coach, Chris Hall, set up a team site with pictures over at http://svujaguars.shutterfly.com. Go check it out. There are some great pictures of the girls having a lot of fun!

  Ben is home. He had run away. He called his parents and had them come get him yesterday.

  Our friends, the Thomson's, 15 year old son Ben has gone missing. He was last seen yesterday at the skate park in Merrimack. He was last seen riding a blue Trek mountain bike. If you have any information, please call 673-0409 or 566-3292.

  The other night, I was checking my credit card charges online when I noticed a charge for over $400 at a stop & Shop in New York. As I live in NH and I haven't been traveling I knew this wasn't my charge. The next charge was over $100 at a Spencers in NY. I immediately called my credit card company who looked up my account and responded with "Your card number is one on a list that was possibly stolen from an online merchant. Do we have your permission to close the account". Um.. YES! Close it NOW. So, now I am waiting for my new card to come in the mail. Then I will have to deal with changing it in all those places that automatically billed that card every month. What a pain!

  I received a check from IWON today for $1000. It's nice to know that they really do pay out the winnings! Thanks IWON!

  We went to Falmouth Maine for a soccer tournament last weekend. Lauren played in three games. They lost all three but the other teams were much larger. Lauren is 9 but she plays on a U11 team. One of the opposing teams players (#27) was taller than I am. She must have been over 6 feet tall! All in all, though, it was a great weekend. The weather was perfect and the girls had a blast!

  Time just seems to get away from me sometimes. I don't get in here to blog often enough. It's hard to keep up with a nine year old!

  My friend Lynn was in town for the first time in 8 years. We had a chance to meet up for dinner. It was nice to see her. It has been far too long! It was also great to meet her husband Gary. He seems like a great guy! Unfortunately, Lynn's son Tanner decided to stay with his Grandparents so I didn't to see him.

  I also won again on IWON. This time it was a $10 gift certificate to gifts.com. I have received this one but I need to write to them about the $5 gift certificate that I won a while ago and never received. It probably got caught up in my Spam email.
  IWON also confirmed that they have received my paperwork and it's now in the hands of their accounting department to cut the check.

  Well, this time IWON a little bigger prize. While playing on IWON last night I won $1000. However, it seems odd to me that it didn't show up on the "winners" page. So we'll see if it ever actually shows up. So far I have won:
$5 Amazon Gift Certificate - received
$5 Gifts.com Gift Certificate - waiting to receive it
$1000 - waiting to receive it

  We went away last weekend to celebrate both Marianne's birthday and our anniversary. We stayed at Dockside Guest Quarters in York, ME. Our room had a sliding glass door that led out to a small deck. From the deck, it was less than 30 feet to the water. It was GREAT! Here are a couple of pictures from our weekend.

  I also went back to Works of Heart and asked her to make a bouquet of flowers that was like the ones we had at our wedding. I gave them to Marianne today to celebrate our anniversary.

  It's been a fantastic first year! I'm looking forward to Many Many More!

  Marianne and I did a little hiking in Tucker Brook Town Forest today. It was a nice hike on a beautiful day. We haven't had a lot of nice days this summer so it was great to get out. Here's a picture of Tucker Falls...

  I have found that there are pros and cons between hiking in New Hampshire and hiking in Maryland. In Maryland, you have a chance of running into a rattle snake. You won't find any rattle snakes in NH. In New Hampshire, you are guaranteed to get bitten by mosquitoes. The mosquitoes aren't that bad in Maryland.

  Marianne and I went geocaching in the Hitchner Town Forest yesterday. It's only a couple of miles away from our house but I never knew it existed. That's one of the reasons I love geocaching. It's a great way to get introduced to new locations.
  This was Marianne's first time geocaching. She really enjoyed it.
  It's nice to get out in the woods and enjoy nature. We saw quite a bit of wild life while we were out yesterday. We saw a big frog, a lot of tiny toads and a couple of small snakes.

  My new GPS, a Garmin GPSMap 76csx, worked great! It is much faster to lock on and much more accurate than my old Magellan Meridian Platinum.

  We were in a store today when I saw a book. The title was "Homeschooling for Dummies". Really? I mean, I've read a couple of the "for Dummies" books before but am I the only one who thinks that's a really bad title?

  I won on IWON. This time it was a $5 gift card to gifts.com. I've never been to gifts.com. I wonder what they sell...

  Movabletype 4.2 was released today. I have completed the upgrade. The speed improvements were immediately noticeable!

  Marianne gave me tickets to the American Idol concert for my birthday again this year. The only difference from last year is she included 3 tickets so Lauren could come too. We went to the concert last Sunday and it was GREAT! It was like going to 10 different concerts at once because each of the top 10 contestants came out a did a few songs each. We had a great time!

  Well, I received the $5 amazon gift certificate from IWON. I finally wrote them because I hadn't received it. They said they had issued it. That's quite possible as I receive A LOT of spam and I don't always look at everything that ends up in the spam folder. So, without any hassle, they reissued it. Thanks for the prize and the great customer service IWON!

  Marianne and I spent Saturday in the lakes region of NH. We stopped at Weirs beach and decided to take a 2 hour tour on the Sophie C. The Sophie C is a US Mail Boat on Lake Winnipesaukee. So we actually went to several of the islands and delivered mail. They also bring something even more important on board. They bring ice cream to sell to the people on the islands!

  Take a look at the beautiful view!

  I have always been pretty good about backing up my desktop. My laptop, however, never gets backed up. I occasionally copy important files over to my desktop, but that's it. So, after a virus and a bad sector on the hard drive made the laptop start acting up, I had to rebuild from scratch. I decided it was time to have a single backup solution that works for all of my machines. So, I bought an HP EX475 Windows Home Server. So far, I'm very happy with it. It just sits in my basement with a gigabit network connection and my machines automatically backup every night. I've only found 1 gotcha so far. It says it allows remote access to your home machines, which it does... as long as you are running Vista Ultimate. If you are running any other version of Vista, you can't remote in.

  Anyone who eats at the Uno's Chicago Grill at 593 Amherst St. in Nashua, NH tomorrow, June 14th, please bring one of these certificates. If you do, they will donate 20% of the bill to the Animal Rescue League of NH.

  I play games on IWON quite a bit but other than free spins or coins, I've never really won anything. But today, I did! I won a $5 Amazon.com gift certificate. Yeah! Of course, they say it will be delivered in 5 - 6 weeks. Why does it take that long to send a gift certificate that should come electronically?

  When I lived in Maryland, I put my house up for sale just 2 weeks before my neighbor did (March 2007). The Realtor I used had also talked to my neighbor and when he gave them his estimate of what their house was worth, they basically threw him out of the house. They thought it was worth SO much more. I, however, listened to him and followed his suggestions. The result?
  I sold my house, TWICE (the first set of buyers never showed up to closing), by July 2007. I was asking $400,000. My house sold for $400,000 with $10,000 given back at closing to help with closing costs.
  My neighbors house sold in February of 2008. They had finally put it on the market for $425,000 (which was still less than they really wanted for it). It sold for $347,500. I have no idea if that was final or if they also gave back at closing.
  Maybe, just maybe, if they had listened to the Realtor they would have done better. Their house was larger than mine. I never did see the inside but I'm told it was in good shape. Of course, the houses were both put on the market right as the housing market became a buyers market so having it take 10 months to sell meant that the prices were in the free fall of todays market. I am SO glad I listened and didn't try to get greedy.

  Last weekend, we took Lauren to get her ears pierced. check it out...

Just the actual piercing
The full 4+ minute video

  The last week of February, we took our first family vacation. We went to Disney World. We had a GREAT time even though the last couple of days we had to deal with being sick. Check out the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/msjones71/2008DisneyTrip

  The new closet space and office are done. The builder finished on Thursday. It's the one good thing that happened this week! I just finished posting the pictures of the finished space. You can see them at http://picasaweb.google.com/msjones71/Construction.

  We started this week with Lauren playing with her friend on Monday evening. Lauren got on her friends shoulders and when she went to get down she was dropped on the couch. Her arm went through the cushions and her elbow slammed into the frame. After a call to a nurse, Motrin and over an hour of ice she was still crying and claiming it was hurting worse. So, we went to the Emergency Room. They took x-rays and found it was just a bad bruise. So, she has been wearing a sling and declaring "oh, my arm hurts" constantly.
  Then, on Wednesday, I woke up at 3:30 in the morning with some sort of flu bug. I spent the day with all of the usual bad things that come along with that. I was out of work Wednesday and Thursday. Thankfully, this was my off Friday week so I didn't need to work today.
  Let's hope things go better next week!

  We had a great weekend! One of the presents I gave to Marianne for Christmas was a night away at the Wentworth by the Sea. We were scheduled to go on December 27th, but due to health issues, we ended up pushing it back to this weekend. We left Saturday morning and went to Portsmouth, NH. We spent a good part of the day just wandering through the little shops. We had lunch at the Portsmouth Brewery and went to the Mainely Gourmet Chocolate Shop around the corner for dessert. We then went to check in at the Wentworth.
  The guy at the front desk asked if this was our first time there. We said no but on our previous stay we had stayed in the Marina Suites. He asked if we would like to upgrade to the Marina Suites for our stay this time. Marianne jokingly replied "not unless it's free". He said yes, it would be a complimentary upgrade! So we ended up getting a room that costs almost $800 a night for a standard room rate of $179!! So we could sit and watch the water and the boats right from the suite.
  After we checked out on Sunday morning, we went back to Portsmouth. We had seen a show on TV a week or so ago where Rachel Ray went through Portsmouth and one of the places she ate was Muddy River. So we went there for lunch. The food was very good. Unfortunately, I ate too much and spent the rest of the day feeling over stuffed.
  Sunday night, we watched the Super Bowl (along with 40 million other people). Unfortunately, the Patriots lost. I knew that their decision to go for the TD on a 4th and 13 was going to come back to bite them. If they had taken the field goal, they would have at least been tied at the end and had a chance in overtime.

  I got the bill for my ER trip back in December. I think they were trying to give me a heart attack so I would come back again! MY portion, after insurance, is almost $600. The total bill was over $2000. That's absolutely insane! I told Marianne that the next time I'm having chest pain, I'd rather just keel over and die than pay that again!

  I have updated Movabletype to version 4.1. Now I have to figure out what's different. I see the create entry screen has changed. It will take a while to find out what else is new. In order to take advantage of everything you have to update your templates and that's more work than I'm up for right now...

We had dinner at Elisha's tonight. They are giving 20% of tonight's proceeds to the Jaiden Tlapa fund.

We are having some new closet space and an office (dubbed the "man cave") built out over our garage. You can see pictures of the construction underway at http://picasaweb.google.com/msjones71/Construction

I left NH right out of High School and went in the military. It was 1989 and I was 18 years old. I moved back to NH just a little over 6 months ago. I now live in Milford. Just before Christmas, an 8 year old girl that went to Kindergarten and played soccer with my step-daughter Lauren had a terrible accident. Jaiden Tlapa was pulled into a snow blower. She was fighting for her life at Boston Children's Hospital. Yesterday, on the Ribbons For Jaiden blog at http://jaident.blogspot.com, it was announced that she lost her battle. It was a sad day for Milford and the rest of the world as well. You see, I first heard about what happened the next day from my wife. The word was spreading quickly through the "network of mom's". Everyone that heard about it was touched, even those who had never met Jaiden. Before I knew it, Ribbons were showing up in support. People were wearing them. They were on mailboxes, cars and even the Milford Fire Engines. Prayer vigils were held and well attended. Local businesses have signs up expressing their "prayers for Jaiden". Before long, fund raisers were started to help pay for the care. Just last Sunday, the Milford Fire Station held a waffle breakfast that served over 600 people and raised over $5000.
Jaiden's death is a tragedy. I start to tear up every time I see the picture of her playing soccer. But in the light of looking for something positive from her death, she brought this community together like I have never seen it. I'm proud to be part of a community that comes together like this. A community that is there to support their own, even if they don't know you personally. I'm happy to be back in NH. I'm happy to be home...

Update: You can see some picture of the waffle breakfast at http://fire.milfordnh.info/Recent%20Events.htm

I received an email from an old co-worker recently. He pointed me to a web site about how to make money from blogging. I did a little poking around and found a few sites that talked about making a six figure salary from blogging. However, they were very generic. I decided to start an experiment. I have created a new site at http://www.canicashin.com to document all of the steps taken and whether any money was earned. Check it out!

  I was woken up at 5 yesterday morning with chest pains. I have had them like this before and they are usually just gas. One good burp will usually take them away. So, I pressed on with my day trying my best to ignore them. Burps came and went but the pain persisted. By 3:30 in the afternoon, I finally gave up and had Marianne take me to the ER. They took blood, ran tests and took x-rays. Everything is fine. They think it was just my acid reflux acting up. I let out a sigh of relief that I wasn't going to kick the bucket and last night I slept very well.
  I must say, when you walk in to the ER and say you've been having chest pains, things start happening fast! They didn't even wait for me to finish what I was saying before they were up and getting the doctor. Once the EKG was done and looked fine, then things slowed down while we just sat around and waited on the results of the blood tests. All in all, we were there for a couple of hours.

  Last year, I spent Christmas at the hospital. My mother had to have an emergency appendectomy. This year, we were hoping things would be better. While my mother is fine this year, there has been a whole string of other bad news.
  My sister in law, Pam, has a father in law who is not doing well. They are not sure if he is going to make it.
  My brother in law, Greg, has a father in law who is also not expected to make it.
  Marianne's Grandmother had a mild stroke just before Christmas. She is still at the hospital but appears to be doing quite well. She will need some therapy but is expected to pull through just fine.
  My friend Lynn had a tonsillectomy on the 26th. They are hoping that will relieve her problem of not being able to breath. All of her tests came out normal so they are not sure why she is having problems. Her tonsils were just one possible solution. I haven't heard yet how the surgery went so I am just praying that she is doing fine. I doubt she is in a position to talk on the phone right now.
  I feel bad for everyone going through hard times right now and their families, but the one really bad thing that just makes my heart ache is what happened to Jaiden Tlapa. Jaiden is an 8 year old girl that went to kindergarten with my step-daughter Lauren. Her and Lauren also play soccer together. On Thursday, December 20th, Jaiden had an accident with a snow blower. She is now at Boston Children's Hospital in ICU. There have been some breakthrough moments where she has moved and opened her eyes but she still has a very long road ahead of her. We are keeping her and her family in our thoughts and prayers. If you would like to read more or leave your well wishes, you can do so on the Ribbons for Jaiden Blog.

  We had our first snow fall yesterday. It wasn't a lot. Just enough to cover the ground and send the kids scurrying outside to attempt to build a snowman. It was also enough to let everyone know that winter is here and the holiday season is upon us.
  This will be my first holiday season as a married man. I now have a lovely wife, Marianne, and step-daughter, Lauren, to share the holiday with. I have not only the family I was born into but also a family brought together by Love. As such, I feel very lucky!
  I also find it sad that there are others out there who feel more alone or unloved at this time of year than at any other. Having spent 9 years in the military deployed around the world, I know what that feels like.
  Jen Lemen has reposted her experience from a trip to Trader Joes at this time last year. Jen has a beautiful soul and I think this is a glowing example of how her random acts of kindness help to make this world a better place. I think we all need to take this story to heart. Remember as you're out doing your shopping and you're getting frustrated with the traffic and the crowds that there are others out there who have it worse than you do. Try to spread a little holiday cheer instead of screaming at that person that just took your parking spot. Put on a smile and give a friendly greeting to a stranger you pass in the store. You never know how your kindness may affect others.
  I have just one more example to share with you of kindness and helping others. This Story off of the Official Google Blog tells of a couple of their employees who helped others bring their bundles of joy into this world.

  May you all have a wonderful holiday season!

  I decided to take the Mustang out for a ride on Friday. While I was out I stopped at the Country Store (a hardware store). When I came out I found that someone hit my car in the parking lot. Of course, they didn't leave a note either. There's a crease by the drivers side rear tire now. Of course, I dumped collision and comprehensive insurance on it quite a while ago so I guess it's just going to stay that way....

  How many times have you heard "It's the little things that count". Well, according to this article about Wal-Mart working with Cleantech, Wal-Mart has "Saved $1M a year on energy costs by removing the light bulbs from employee coke machines in the back rooms". It doesn't get much simpler than that!

  If I've learned one thing in the last few months, it's that having kids makes a HUGE difference in your amount of free time! I used to live alone and come home after work to a quiet house where I did what I want when I wanted to do it. Now, I often don't even go right home after work. Instead, I head straight to the soccer field to watch Lauren's practice. Heck, it took me over a month to get around to posting the blog entry on the flowers for the wedding. There are definitely times when I miss quiet time. All in all though, I wouldn't have it any other way.

  The flowers for our wedding were absolutely beautiful! They were done by Works of Heart in Milford, NH. We gave her a general idea of what we liked and creative rights to "make something that looks nice". They aren't open on Sundays but still came in on Sunday so we could pick up our flowers. They did a very nice job for a good price and they were very accommodating.

  I would like to say Thank You to my new Mother-In-Law for the beautiful wedding cake. Denise makes the BEST cakes! Have you ever had one of those fancy cakes only to find that it looks nice but doesn't taste very good? If you did, Denise did NOT make that one! Her cakes look AND taste great! If you're looking for a cake for any occasion, check out Tastefully Wright.

  Ok, so it took a while for me to get around to blogging it, but I'm Married! On 9/9/2007, Marianne and I were Married at the Wentworth by the Sea. Everything went so well. We were worried about the rain, but even it held off JUST long enough!
  You can see the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/msjones71/Wedding.

  It's been over 3 years since I wrote this review of my Alienware experience. You might wonder why I don't take the review down as being outdated. Well, I'll tell you why. If you do a google search for "alienware review", my review is the very first hit. As such, that page gets quite a bit of traffic. To this day, I still get emails from people who won't buy from Alienware because of my review. I also get emails from others who continue to have terrible experiences with them. One reader recently wrote me about her experience with their support. She wrote a letter to them. It read:

So I moved. Then I called July 8 & 9 to talk w/ support. I went through all procedures as they instructed me. They determined that two parts were needed and said they would be there in 2 - 4 business days. I PLEADED with the technician to send the parts overnight AT MY EXPENSE. He REFUSED. He said that could install the parts myself to expedite things and that I was to call when they arrived. Two days later the non-essiential part arrived but the essential one did not.

On July 13 I called again. The essential part had not yet shipped. This technician said I would need a repair person to install the part (the story had changed, here). Again, he refused to ship the part overnight - even though it was Alienware's error that it had not shipped out on time, and even though I was wiling to pay for the shipping. It was to arrive in 2 - 4 MORE business days. I called again on July 18. The part had finally shipped. It arrived here July 19 (note ELEVEN DAYS AFTER IT WAS DETERMINED WHAT PART I NEEDED I RECEIVED A PART). This was a violation of the 2 - 4 day rule...

All of this time I could not operate my business for lack of a computer. But guess what.. IT WAS THE WRONG PART THAT ARRIVED! The computer repair man came to install it on July 20 and said he didn't even think that was the part that would fix the computer, even if it were the right one.

I called support again. They insisted that I MAIL THE COMPUTER TO THEM TO REPAIR! After refusing weeks prior! At this point I'm already over two weeks without a working computer with no hope in site. I WAS FORCED BY THIS CIRCUMSTANCE TO BUY ANOTHER COMPUTER SO THAT I COULD OPERATE MY BUSINESS. THIS COST ME OVER $4,000. You can be sure that what I bought was NOT an Alienware system!

I then had to take my Alienware computer to a local shop to have a back-up disc made because I did not trust the company to take care of this for me. This cost me my time and $100. I sent the computer in for repair (more time...). I received it back from repair on August 6. This was 32 days after my initial call for support. I don't even know if it works yet. I haven't had time to try it!

Alienware has let me down in a BIG way. I am bitterly disappointed with this terrible excuse for service. I got so behind on work that I lost a long-term client and several good-sized projects. I am still working night and day to catch up. They have cost me thousands of dollars, multiple hours, and acute frustration. Alienware has lost my business. I believe that they owe me both an apology and monetary compensation for poor service. They did not keep their word. They have not provided the service spelled out in the warranty I purchased.

When I wrote to Alienware Customer Service they offered no compensation whatsoever.

I had multiple problems with this computer and service prior to this incident. This was just the last straw. I will never buy another Alienware computer again.

Thanks for listening,
Kathleen

  On Saturday the 18th, Marianne and I went to my sister Debbie's house for a graduation party for my niece Jen. Congrats Jen!

  We went to the town hall this morning and got the marriage certificate. One of the things I didn't know was that the form asks for you mother and fathers place of birth. Now, I do genealogy and I have that information but I certainly didn't have it with me. So our certificate has Unknown in those fields. So, if you are going to go get a marriage certificate, find that out before you go!

  So, now that the word has gotten out that we are getting married and not everyone is invited, people are hurt, upset and just plain pissed off. Why can't people just be happy for us???? We want to be married and we want to do it on September 9th. There is no way we can have 50 - 100 people and do it in that time frame. Heck, we're having to jump through hoops just to get Marianne's dress altered in time. We'll have a party later to celebrate and everyone will be invited.
  I pulled up my "MyYahoo" page which has my horoscope on it. They are usually way off, but today's is fitting:

You'll be dealing with some short-tempered people today,
and one of them might get moody if they don't get exactly what they want.
Luckily, you're not in charge of giving it to them,
despite what they may think.
So don't take on the burden of trying to make them happy.
If they choose to throw a fit or sulk in a corner, that is their choice.
Sure, it might make your job a bit tougher,
but wasting energy on someone who's choosing to be miserable
is never a good idea.

  Well, Marianne and I decided we didn't want to wait anymore. Besides that, trying to find the right place and coordinate everything was getting to be too much. So, we decided that on September 9th (our anniversary), we are "eloping" with just our parents. We are going to go to the Wentworth by the Sea. We may have a party sometime next summer to celebrate. We haven't even decided when or where we are going to have a honeymoon. We just know that we are going to get married on September 9th 2007.

  Although it's only been 2 months since I left Maryland and moved to NH, it seems like a lifetime ago. I try to keep in touch with old friends and coworkers via phone, email and just reading their blogs and websites.
  Probably the biggest surprise to me was that my friend Kyrie got engaged and is now getting married in October! They now have a website setup at WeddingWindow.com
  Recently, Brian Levay took some fun shots at Dave Lemen for comments he made at a conference. Normally, I would have left Brian a comment on his blog but it apparently requires registration and has no "log in" link. So, I guess I'll just have to shoot for a trackback instead. Hey Brian, fix your blog comments!
  Meanwhile, it appears that Dave's wife, Jen Lemen, recently had a great time at the Blogher conference in Chicago.

  I would have blogged about this earlier, but my internet access died. I hate it when that happens! As of July 11, 2007 I am not longer a home owner. This set of buyers actually showed up for closing. As I am in NH now, I did closing by mail. I had to sign papers, get them notarized and FedEx them to the title company. All of that was still cheaper than a plane ticket, rental car and a day off from work. It feels great to have that done and over with!
  So, to celebrate, Marianne and I went out and traded in her 97 Accord for a new 2007 Honda Pilot yesterday. It's a nice vehicle! We still have to take it back to get some of the dealer installed accessories put on but we get to enjoy it in the mean time.

  My move is finally complete. I drove to NH yesterday and this time I'm not going back. No more dealing with airports every couple of weeks!

  I started this week with a second interview for a job with a different division of my company on Monday. On Tuesday, I got a new contract on my house (the original buyers never showed up for closing). On Wednesday I received and accepted the job offer that I interviewed for on Monday. My final day in my current office will be on June 1st.

  It seems like it took forever to get to this point and now it's all happening very fast. I can't wait! Next weekend I will be completing my move to NH...

  My Uncle Ty passed away recently. He was a long haul trucker and was found on the side of the road by another trucker. They performed CPR on him and brought him back to life. They were there when the ambulance took him to the hospital. While most people would have left it at that thinking their duties were done, they did not. They went to the hospital and stayed with him. They talked to him and bought him a small stuffed animal. They were with him until he died. I truly appreciate the kindness they showed him. Here is the letter they wrote:

This is Marjorie Boozer my husband drives for sammons trucking out of missoula montana sunday morning we came upon one of your drivers by the name of Henery Tyson Jr. truck no:6698 his truck was in a ditch and was running and i opened the door and henery was on the floor half in the front and half in the back. he was not breathing and was purple in color there was no pulse at all. i began cpr on him and after about 6 times of sets of 3 he began to breathe. the police got there and the ambulance got there and i moved out of the way for them to move him out of the truck. i went to the hospitol in hugo colorado where they had taken Mr Tyson. I thought he was going to be okay and i was happy that i was granted the honor of bringing him back.

after about an hour and half he started not breathing on his own again. i watch as they tried everything to bring him back. But he died. My heart was broken and still is. My name was the last name he heard. they told him just before he died that the lady semi truck driver that saved his life wanted to see him and he said okay. i walked in the room and went to stand by him to say hi and the next thing i know i was being told to leave. i watch thru the window and i seen that hospitol do everything possible to save him. his wife needs to know that Henery did not die in alot of pain. he went quitely there was no pain on his face and i kissed him on the forhead and gave him a ty monkey that i had bought him and put it in his arms tell his wife to please keep the monkey and put it in his casket for me from me and my husband if she would. if not for her to keep it. i am so sorry i tired he was with us for over an hour before he went home to be with Jesus. if she would like to talk with me give her my number please. hopefully i can go to his funeral. i would truly like to do that.

plus everyone needs to know what henery did he got his truck off the road without even turning his load over of damageing his truck. it was a 2 lane road and Mr Tyson made sure that no one would get hurt. he drove his truck off the road to saftly. This man is a hero in my eyes. he made sure no one could get hurt even though he was sick. he made sure of that. His wife needs and should know this. He was and is a great truck driver to have put others safety first.

marjorie boozer

Ronnie boozer

[Contact information removed]

My heart goes out to all that knew him.

  I just finished signing a contract for the sale of my house. Now I guess the next step is going to be the home inspection. Assuming everything goes well, settlement will be on May 21st.

  The real estate agents were showing my house from 6 - 8 pm tonight so I had to leave. I went to see the movie Wild Hogs. It was a good movie! It made me laugh and I've been so stressed out lately that I really needed that!! So, all in all, it turned out to be a good night.

  My house is officially for sale. The listing has finally started finding it's way onto the web sites. Here are a couple of links to it:

[link removed. no longer valid.]
HomesDatabase.com

  I couldn't sleep last night so I decided it was a good time to update my website. For those of you who read my blog, it has now been merged into my main page. I hope you like the new look!

  For those of you who follow the blog with an RSS reader, please update the URL to http://www.mjonesweb.com/atom.xml (or index.rdf).

  This weekend I filled the Mustang with boxes (small ones, of course) and drove it to NH. The car is now a NH resident. On Thursday the 15th, my house officially goes on the market. Now I'm just hoping for a great job to come along!

  As you know, I'm a HUGE Mark Martin fan. Mark just missed winning the Daytona 500 by a nose! What a great race!!! It would have been better if Mark won though!!!

  Well, the free KFC Snacker sandwich that I won arrived today. Thankfully, it was a coupon!! :)

  Yesterday, I ordered a "box kit" of 20 medium sized boxes from moveout.com. It was $37.88 for the boxes with no shipping charge and no sales tax which works out to less than $1.90 per box. That seemed like a good deal to me. Based on the confirmation page I got when placing the order, I was a little skeptical on what I might actually get. There was no indication of how long the shipment might take. But, much to my surprise, they were waiting for me when I got home from work today. Ordered yesterday, delivered today! I can't ask for more than that!

  NASCAR lost two people this month to cancer. On Sunday, January 7th, Bobby Hamilton passed away at age 49 from neck cancer. Then, today, Benny Parsons died at age 65 from complications with the lung cancer that he spent the last year battling.
  I know people say that bad things tend to happen in three's, but let's hope the rest of the year goes better than this month!

  I went to KFC for dinner tonight and on the side of my drink cup was a code to plug in to a website for "your chance to win!". So I went ahead and filled it in and I won! This is the email I received:

Congratulations!

You are an instant winner in the Mountain Dew Ultimate Gamer's Sweeps!

Your prize (One (1) Complimentary KFC Snacker valued at .99) will be delivered to you in about 4-5 weeks.

Congrats on being an instant winner.

Your friends at
Mountain Dew and KFC

  EWWWWW! I REALLY hope that's a coupon!! :-) Otherwise, I don't want it!

Christmas

  Christmas day was anything but normal this year. Of course, there is a 7 year old in the house who is overly excited that Santa has visited. That meant that we were woken up at 4:18 am. We managed to delay going downstairs until around 5:00. All the presents were open by about 6:30. As it turns out, this was a good thing. Just before 7:00 I received a call that my Mother was at the Emergency room at Milford Medical Center. MMC is a small local center and they don’t open until 7 so they were waiting for it to open because she was having abdominal pain. By 8 I received another call that she needed a CT scan which is something MMC can’t do. So I went and picked her up and took her to a hospital in Nashua. There they determined that she had appendicitis and performed an emergency appendectomy. All went well and she is doing fine.
  It amazes me that they can go in laproscopically, remove an organ and send you home the next morning.
  So, we will be celebrating Christmas with my side of the family today. I guess that’s one way to spread out Christmas over an entire week but I’d rather do it with everyone healthy!

  I took today off from work because a contractor was supposed to be coming this afternoon to install a new sliding glass door. I got a call this morning from Lowes saying that when the contractor came to pick up the door, they noticed a large crack in the bottom of the door. So, now I have to wait while they order a new one (it's a special order door).
  Based on the time, and the fact that my back was bothering me, I decided not to go in to work and instead to work around the house. So I showered and then went to Target where I picked up some hardware to put up curtains in my bedroom. By the time I got home it was about time for lunch. So, I called my friend Sue to see if she wanted to do lunch. Her parents were in town and we decided to all meet at Bertucci's in Columbia. On my way there I was sitting at the light waiting to turn left into the plaza. My light (the left turn light) was red while the straight lanes had a green light. Well, about that time a woman decided to cross the road. She went in front of me and almost got hit by the car in the middle lane who managed to stop. She waved to them and started running across again and ran right into the side of a moving car. I watched as her body bounced into the air like a rag doll. I don't think her body had hit the ground before I had 911 on the line. They responded pretty quickly and ended up flying her out on the helicopter. It was quite a scene and a picture that I just can't seem to get out of my head.
   After all of that, I continued on to Bertucci's for a nice lunch. Now I'm home where I plan to hibernate for the rest of the day.

I was going to write a rant over this story, how stupid it is and how nice it is of California to kick our automakers while their down. But it appears that WIRED magazine already did that for me...

http://blog.wired.com/cars/#1560246

  I went to NH again last weekend. It turned out to be a great weekend! On Saturday Marianne and I met up with Kathi, Mom, Larry and my Grandmother at the Wilton Legion where we had a tile dedicated to my Grandfather (who died before I was born) and presented it to my Grandmother.
  What Marianne and I thought was going to be a quiet Saturday night dinner with us, her Mom and Step-Dad and my Mom and Step-Dad turned out to actually be a surprise engagement party! So Saturday night we had a house full of people and it was great! I saw some relatives that I haven't seen in a long time and it was nice to catch up.
  Sunday was Lauren's birthday. We had a few presents in the morning and then had her birthday party at the Animal Rescue League in the afternoon. This is the second year in a row that Lauren has asked that donations to the Rescue League be made (money, kitty litter, whatever...) in lieu of birthday presents for her. I think that's pretty amazing for a 7 year old. It shows a good heart.
  I went right from the party to the airport. I was SO tired from the weekend but it was SO worth it!!

  Well, most of the people who actually care received this in email, but I figured I would post it here anyway.

As of Saturday, Marianne and I are engaged!!! I was going to write up a long email explaining our Incredible weekend, but Marianne has already done that much better than I ever could. So, I'm going to cheat and send everyone what she wrote! :) I have put up pictures of our weekend trip to Maine at:

http://groups.msn.com/MichaelSJonesPhotoAlbum/ourmainetrip.msnw

and I have put pictures of where I proposed here:

http://groups.msn.com/MichaelSJonesPhotoAlbum/theengagement.msnw

I hope you enjoy the pictures!!

Love,
Mike

PS. Here is the story...

==================================================================================================
Hello All:

What a weekend I had.....and all in a gloriously wonderful way....brace yourself, this is a long e-mail!

Keeping in mind that Mike and I's first dating anniversary was on Saturday, September 9th.

Since Mike had come up and spent the long labor day weekend with Lauren and I and is coming back up next weekend for her birthday, I had planned to do laundry, cleaning and getting together with close friends. In any event, that all changed on Thursday night....

It was @ 8:30pm and I was laying in bed with Lauren (putting her to sleep) and she was happily trying to teach me how to do duck sounds when I heard "HELLOOOOOOOOOO" echoing through the hallway. Mike had surprised me by flying up from Maryland to spend the weekend with me for our anniversary! I was in shock! He simply said, "You don't think I'd make you spend our anniversary alone, did you?" He whips a brochure out of his pocket saying pack your bags, we're leaving tomorrow for Maine. I of course came right back with "I can't, I have to work, etc." In any event, the planning for this event had been going on since June so my boss knew about it, both sets of parents, etc......as usual, I was the only clueless one!

In any event, Lauren went off to school and then to her dad's on Friday and Mike and I left in the morning for Maine. We stayed in an adorable cabin right near the entrance to Acadia National Park....his mom and step-dad had scoped it out for Mike in advance (thanks Brenda & Larry)! We spent Friday and Saturday cruising through Mountains, beaches, etc......way too beautiful to describe via e-mail!

The pinnacle of the weekend came on Saturday afternoon (our anniversary). We had climbed up to an area where you could see ocean, mountains and beach all around you. It was BEAUTIFUL! The sun was shining bright and Mike then proceeded to say "There's only one thing that could make this weekend better"....he then got down on one knee and proposed to me! Needless to say, you all need to start calling me Mrs. Jones:) Of course, I said, yes! He presented me with a GORGEOUS three stone leo diamond ring (past, present & future). We enjoyed our happy occasion for the rest of the weekend with lots of sight-seeing and smiling :) The more I talk to "the parents", the more I hear just how much planning went into making this weekend perfect.....and PERFECT, it was :)

Lauren took the news better than expected and proceeded to take out an old ring of my and "marry" Striker (our beagle). Whatever gets her through the news :) I overheard her explaining to the dogs this morning that her dad would still be there dad but that Mike was going to be their step-dad.

Gotta run and get some work done (if I can pry my eyes away from my rocks as I type today, that is:)

  I love this picture! I've been doing this at work a lot lately :)

  This is a funny video about the NSA wiretapping...

CNN.com - Chicken and egg debate unscrambled - May 26, 2006

A geneticist, a philosopher and a chicken farmer have finally figured out the answer to the great debate of which came first! :)

  Did Ben Franklin predict what would be happening in 21st century America? Probably not. But this quote describes what we are doing today with things like the Patriot Act. I've heard so many people saying that they don't care if the Government takes away their privacy rights as long as they stop the terrorists. Of course, in my opinion, what that really means is that the terrorists have already won.

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."   --Ben Franklin

  On Friday, April 21st, I flew to NH. On Monday, April 24th, I flew back with Marianne and Lauren. We had a great vacation! The weather was fantastic. We spent quite a bit of time going out and feeding the ducks in the pond near my house.
  On Tuesday, we went to the National Aquarium in Baltimore during the morning and afternoon. In the evening, we went to Bob and Lisa Bishops' house for a cookout. It was a really good time!
  On Wednesday, we headed to State College, PA to meet up with Marianne's parents and her sister Amy so we could go and surprise their brother Greg for his 40th birthday. He was Very Surprised to see all of us show up!! We stayed the night and then went to Penn's Cave for a tour of the cave. It was pretty cool! Then we spent the rest of Thursday driving back to MD.
  On Friday, we went to the National Zoo. We had a good time wandering around looking at the animals and checking out the new baby Panda bear. After that, we met up with John, Sue and Michael and headed to The Cheesecake Factory for dinner. Marianne and Lauren had never been and they Loved it!
  Today, Marianne and Lauren will be packing up and heading back to NH. That will be the only bad part of the whole vacation...saying good-bye.

  As many of you know, I flew to Orlando on Wednesday, February 15th to meet up with my Father, his girlfriend of many years Marsha Foster and our friend Ray to enjoy a NASCAR weekend at Daytona. What was to be a joyous time of visiting with friends and family has turned tragic.
  Before leaving Phoenix, Marsha had a bit of a chest cold. During the flight she was joking around and having a good time. A short time after arriving at Tampa, on her way to Kissimmee where we are staying, she began to feel much worse. She had a rough night of being up getting sick. By Thursday morning it was decided that she needed to go to the hospital. The doctors found that she had pneumonia and admitted her. As the day went on, she was in a lot of pain. They continued to try and help her but she was having a hard time getting oxygen and they moved her to ICU. Around 0200 this morning the hospital called my Father and said they were going to need to intibate her. He gave his permission and asked if she was ok. They said she was. Around 0300 he received another call that they didn’t think she was going to make it. We rushed to the hospital but it was too late. She went into cardiac arrest and passed away.

Rest In Peace Marsha. We Love you and will miss you!!

(picture taken at Daytona in 2005)

This is Hohenschwangau Castle.

This is Neuschwanstein Castle.

  We went to see Hohenschwangau Castle and Neuschwanstein Castle today. They were awesome but man was it COLD out!! I was freezing! It was all worth it though. I'll try and get some pictures up soon. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, so to see the inside follow the links to the office sites. Also, if you're interested in castles, check out Great Castles.

7/6/09: updated URL for Neuschwanstein Castle

  This is the entrance to Porsche museum in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen Germany. Do you believe it? We didn't. We turned in, turned around, went around the block again and stopped at a Porsche dealer who assured us that it was in fact the museum. It looks more like an industrial area or where the factory workers might go to work. It certainly didn't look like a tourist area. But, it was! The museum was pretty small but it did have a few really cool cars in it. All in all, the whole day was more about the adventure of traveling around than any destination we ended up at. We had a great time!

  We started our day having Burger King for breakfast. It was edible, but that was about it. For lunch, we went to the commissary where we got subs. A 1/4 sub (which was HUGE) with anything you wanted on it was $2. Any meat, any veggies, anything for $2 and it was GOOD! But for dinner we went to a German restaurant right around the corner from the hotel. We had cheese spaetzle with onions which was VERY good. Then we followed that up with some Schnitzel (breaded fried pork cutlet) and french fries. What a great meal! So the meals got progressively better throughout the day!

  Well, I made it to Germany alright. It wasn't the best flight I ever had but it wasn't too bad. I was originally in a middle seat and I managed to get that changed to an isle seat. Unfortunately, the new seat was a bulkhead seat with the movie screen right in front of me. On top of that, the lady behind me kept her light on the whole time even though she was sleeping. Every time I reclined my seat, that light was right in my eyes! So between the time being early on eastern time, the movie being right in front of my face and the light being in my eyes I only managed to sleep about a half hour. On the trip from Frankfurt to Stuttgart I managed to get about another half hour.
  But, I'm here and in one piece. That's the important part!

  Wow, it's been over a month since I've posted a new entry. How bad is that?! A lot has happened. Christmas and New Years have come and gone. I've made a couple of trips to NH and now, unfortunately, it's going to be about 6 weeks between my last visit and my next. Luckily, Marianne is going to come down here on the 10th as long as this go as planned.
  On Monday, I am leaving for Germany for 10 days. I am going in place of my coworker, Steve Wallace, who was in a serious car accident. Steve started a blog to write about the accident. It can be found at http://swallac2.blogspot.com/
  I return from Germany on the 8th.
  Marianne flies in on the 10th and will stay until the 12th. During that time we will celebrate Valentines Day. February makes 6 months that we've been together. The only way I could be happier is if we weren't so far away from each other. Thank God for Southwest and their relatively cheap airfare!
  On the 15th I fly to Florida to go to the Daytona 500 with Dad, Marsha and Ray. I return home on February 20th. I haven't made any definite plans beyond that, but I would guess that I'll be going to NH the following weekend. So that has me gone most of the month of February. Phew! Maybe I'll take a week or two in March to catch my breath!

  Well, I had the joy of spending last night in the Emergency Room. Sometime between 10 and 10:30pm I started having severe abdominal pain. I tried going to the bathroom, that didn’t help. I tried taking GasX and that didn’t help. The pain just kept getting worse. Finally around 11:30 or so I decided I couldn’t take it anymore and headed to the ER. When they asked me to rate the pain on a scale of 1 to 10, I gave it an 8. I had to wait for a room and while I was waiting I was praying that it would stop. When I finally saw the doctor, he was concerned with my appendix. So they put in an IV and drew some blood. Then, what seemed like an eternity later, they pushed in some saline, a couple of narcotics for the pain and an anti-nausea drug. I wasn’t nauseous, but they made me drink a contrast agent that they needed to stay down and it can cause nausea. They narcotics worked fast and I had to move from the bent over position to laying down or I would have fallen over as things started to spin. I had to wait an hour after drinking the contrast agent before they sent me off for a CT. The CT showed that my appendix appears fine. My white cell count was high but that could be related to the flu that I had a week or so ago. So they think it might have been a virus. They told me that all the stuff they gave me would cause diarrhea and if it was a virus that should flush it out. I was discharged and arrived home a little after 3am. I feel fine now (well, except for the diarrhea anyway), but it was a rough night. I can’t remember ever going to the ER. While they did a decent job (and fairly quick for an ER even though it seemed slow at the time), I hope I never have to go again!!
  Now, I'm off to the dentist for my cleaning.

  I was in NH this past weekend and on Sunday I woke up sick. I haven't been this sick in a LONG time (thank God!). I was supposed to be flying back to MD Sunday night but there was just no way I could get on a plane. So I had to change my flight to Monday night and notify work that I'd be out on Monday. On Tuesday I worked a total of two hours and then went back home and crashed. Today is Thursday and I'm FINALLY feeling better! I think I'm about 90 - 95% back to normal.

  I went to the dentist today. I haven't been in 3 years (WAY too long) because I moved and just hate the whole act of trying to find a new dentist by randomly picking them off a list. Every one who had been recommended to me didn't take my insurance of course. So, between being a new patient and needing to do the whole history run down and trying to get off 3 years of build up, it took longer than the allotted appointment time, so I have to go back for another appointment to finish up. But, no cavities and no gum disease! WooHoo!

  This weekend I went to NH again. It was nice to have the 3 day weekend this time. Lauren wasn't feeling too well. She has an intermittent cough that can get pretty bad. That meant she wasn't sleeping too well and wasn't letting Marianne sleep well either. Marianne's Mom called and offered to take Lauren Friday night so Marianne and I took a nap! :) Then we went out to Bertucci's for dinner. It was good!
  On Saturday, we went to see Chicken Little. It was a fun movie. It wasn't the best I've ever seen but it did make me laugh a few times. It was worth going to see.
  Sunday was a slightly busier day. We had a house warming party to go to AND a birthday party for one of Lauren's friends too! The birthday party was held at Lamy's Tae Kwon Do school in Milford. I've never seen a birthday party being held at a DoJo before and it went really well. I was impressed. The instructor seemed to do really well with the kids.
  My next trip up is over the Thanksgiving weekend. Unfortunately, all of the flights for that weekend were booked so I will be driving up. That's going to kill about 2 days of time I would rather be spending there but that's better than not getting there at all!!

  I have been looking at a product called the Squeezebox. It's a pretty cool device for streaming music from your computer to anywhere else in your house. It's software is very extensible, so the internet community has extended it in a lot of ways. Also, their software for the computer (slimserver) is free, downloadable Open Source. There is a software emulator for the hardware interface (SoftSqueeze) so you can see if you'll like the interface before buying the hardware (around $250). All very cool! I'm currently running both slimserver and SoftSqueeze on my computer. One of the plugins I installed allows me to automatically update my blog with the song information the slimserver is currently dishing out. At least while I'm testing it out, you can see it in the upper right corner of the main page. It looks something like this:

I'm listening to:

Song: Let Me Put My Love into You

Album: Back in Black

Artist: AC/DC

Last Updated: Monday, November 7, 2005 5:18:24 PM

Unsecured Wi-Fi would be outlawed by N.Y. county

The proposed law has two prongs: First, "public Internet access" may not be provided without a network gateway server equipped with a firewall. Second, any business or home office that stores personal information also must install such a firewall-outfitted server even if its wireless connection is encrypted and not open to the public. All such businesses would be required to register with the county within 90 days.

REGISTER? You now have to REGISTER with the county?? I think the politicians here just need to keep their nose out of technology!

Google founders' heady purchase

  Here's an interesting article about how the founders of Google use COMMON SENSE in their purchases even though they are worth billions. Instead of following the normal corporate path of blowing millions on a corporate jet, the spent far less on an older 767 and retrofitted it. They also figured out that flying the 767 would cost considerably less per flight hour than a nice new GulfStream V.

  I guess criminals really are stupid! This guy had a plea bargain for 30 years in prison and said "No, I want 33 years"! Why? Because he is a Larry Bird fan and Larry Bird wore number 33 on his jersey.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/basketball/nba/10/20/prison.bird.ap/index.html?section=cnn_topstories

  Ok, this was just too funny to pass up. I was reading through some blogs when I came across this post by Tony Calabrese. His wife left him a warning letter about having PMS. I think it's something all women should do to help keep us men out of trouble!! Give it a read, it's pretty funny! Maybe my next search should be for his obituary...

  I took last Friday off and made it a four day weekend. I flew to NH Thursday night.
  On Friday, the weather held out for a beautiful day! Marianne, Lauren and I went to the childrens museum in Portsmouth. Then we ate lunch at The Friendly Toast. After that we went to Odiorne State Park.
  The rest of the weekend rained, but we made the best of it. On Saturday we went to eat at The Weathervane. I LOVE FRIED HADDOCK! The we went and visited with some of my family.
  Sunday was basically a down day. We went grocery shopping, cooked dinner, watched TV and played.
  On Monday, we went to see the new Wallace & Grommit movie, Curse of the WereRabbit. It was good! I flew home Monday night. I was bummed to have to leave. Now I'm looking forward to my next trip north!

  My friend Vicky is in the Louisiana National Guard. She's been working long hours to help recover from Katrina. Many of her fellow Guard members were also hit and she is looking to help them. I've included her message below. As she has asked that I not post her contact info on the web, I have setup an email address. If you would like to help, please send email to help@mjonesweb.com.

===============================================================
Well, I finally have a weekend off since Hurricane Katrina hit. The military has been really, really, busy down here between Katrina & Rita and our unit in particular has been pulling longs days with little time off. Thank goodness for all the units that have come in from all over the US to help us out, both Army and Air Guard. They have been a tremendous help and have enabled our guys to now focus on themselves as they try to re-build their lives again. The effects of the disaster are far reaching and whether or not you had any damage, everyone has been touched.

Even the specific unit I belong to (Communications Flight) has several members who have lost everything. But, I don't think they've stopped long enough to even begin to think how they are going to start re-building.

And so, I'm trying to see if there's anything I can do to help them. Several of them of little ones from 3 months up to 10 both boys and girls. I was wondering if any of you may have or no of anyone who may have extra clothes, toys, bottles, furniture or anything to give away. I'm trying to focus on the little ones because I know the holidays are coming and their parents are just trying to get by today.

Please don't feel obligated but if you happen to hear someone ask how they might help, please feel free to forward my e-mail and snail mail address to them as I start distributing stuff out.

Again,thank you for all your prayers and thoughts for us. If nothing else, the prayers are always welcome. :)

Sincerely,

Vicky

===============================================================

  The Danish Air Force just had to pay Santa because Rudolph died of a heart attack when two of their jets flew over. The odd part of this is... it's not a joke! Check it out on Yahoo News!

  Well, I set out to have a Fantastic weekend and I succeeded! I hope your weekend was as good as mine was!

  I am off and travelling again. This time it's for pleasure instead of work. I intend on having a fantastic weekend!

  Ok, so I'm a little late posting. Day 2 of the conference went well. It provided us with a view of what was coming down the road and gave us access to the engineers and product managers who were VERY interested in hearing what we wanted and what our vision was for where the product should go.

  Day 1 of OPSWorld 2005 went well. It was mostly customers telling how they use OPSWare products as well as VMWare talking about their partnership with OPSWare. At the end of the day, the bussed us all down to Cobbs comedy club where we had dinner and a show. The headliner was Jake Johannsen. He was really funny!
  Now, on to day 2!

  I have made it to San Francisco in one piece. I will be here until Friday morning. I'm here to attend OPSWorld 2005. It's just a two day conference and we didn't even get a rental car so I won't be seeing much while I'm here. This will make the third time I've been to San Francisco and I still haven't done any sightseeing here.

  My plan for today was to stay home and go through a few boxes to clean some junk out of the house. I did a little of that in the morning, then I made the mistake of stepping outside. It was such a beautiful day! At that point I decided the boxes could wait. I threw my backpack in the truck and headed for Catoctin Mountain National Park. I drove the hour of so with all the windows down and the sunroof open. When I got there, I did the hike out to wolf rock and then on to chimney rock. It was a relatively short hike ( about 1.3 miles each way ). The first half mile, however, was uphill and it just about killed me. It's been quite a while since I've been hiking and I guess I'm a little out of shape! After the trail leveled off I got back into my stride though and it was all worth while.

  Today, we are all focused on the heartbreak and devastation brought on the south by Hurricane Katrina. While we need to have that focus and we need to help rebuild, I would like to take a moment to remember those who perished, those who were harmed, those who lost loved ones and those who came to help and became Heroes on this day four years ago. While current events may overshadow this anniversary, you are not forgotten. Nor have we forgotten our troops who, four years later, are still fighting battles around the world to help ensure our safety here at home.

  Well, the first clinical trial of Gelstat Migraine has been published in the Medical Science Monitor. The conclusion:

This open label study suggests that GelStat Migraine appears
to be effective as a first line abortive treatment for
migraine when initiated early during the mild headache
phase of the attack in subjects with migraine who experience
and can identify, with regularity, the mild headache phase
of their attack. Satisfaction with GelStat Migraine was reported
by 59% of subjects and was well tolerated. Further,
more stringent studies of GelStat Migraine are warranted
in migraine treatment.

  A small piece of my childhood is gone. Bob Denver, AKA Gilligan, passed away today at the age of 70. While Gilligan's Island was off the air long before I was born, I watched the reruns and remember it well.

  While it's not uncommon for the United States to reach out to other countries after a disaster, it is unusual to hear of the US accepting help from others. Ninety different nations have offered to help the US in the aftermath of Katrina. Some have offered money, others have sent equipment and still others have offered Doctors and Nurses. Thailand, who is still recovering from last years tsunami, offered 60 Doctors and Nurses as well as rice as a "gesture from the heart." I think that's a good sign that Karma is still alive and well.

  Researches are using brain scans to figure out what women want in bed. They are looking to develop a product for women that accomplishes what Viagra does for men. While they have learned some things about what a woman’s brain does during orgasm, the quote that I found funny was "women are much more complex than men". Ok, now who really needed a study to tell us that??

  Well, it was an interesting week. I arrived in San Diego on Friday the 26th of August. I'm on the plane on my way home now. If you're reading this, I guess I made it ok! We spent Saturday and Sunday setting up for the conference. The setup all went well except for the sound. For some reason we just couldn't get the feedback out of the system. We finally ended up dumping our microphones and renting some from the hotel AV people. That worked out for the best in the end. However, it is rather irritating to have around $10,000 in Sabine SWM7000 mics that are only a year old and then end up renting some to use.
  The conference went very well. It was one of the smoothest we've ever had. I had MUCH less stress this year than any previous year. By around 8 am on Thursday our equipment was on the truck back to Maryland. So, a few of us headed over to tour the USS Midway. It is a decommissioned aircraft carrier. We spent about 3 1/2 hours walking around on the Midway. While the audio tour was informative, we had our own tour guide. Bob was stationed on the Midway when he was in the Navy. So it was a walk down memory lane for him and some stories and explanations for us. It was a good day.
  On Friday, John Sue Michael and I went to the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park. It was pretty nice.
  All in all, it turned out to be a really good trip!! That’s the good news. Unfortunately, there was a lot of bad news from the week as well.
  While the conference was going on, Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast. As I have been to New Orleans a few times and lived in Biloxi Mississippi for a couple of months, I am familiar with the area. I am absolutely stunned at the devastation I have seen on the news.
  I have received word from my friend Vicky who lives near New Orleans that she and her family are all fine. They have heard that their house survived as well. Vicky is in the National Guard and has been activated to help with the relief effort. I'm thankful that they are ok. My prayers go out to all of those affected by Katrina.

  Well, I made it to San Diego ok. Things with the hotel haven't been great so far, but I'm hoping that will smooth out once things get rolling.

  Well, as most of you already know, I'm home again. I got home yesterday and would have posted this then, but my internet connection died. I have now replaced the cable modem and spent countless hours on the phone with Comcast and it's FINALLY back!! Of course, I'm just leaving again on Friday but who wants to go 3 days without internet access?? I know I don't!

  Well, My Grandfathers funeral went very well today. I saw a lot of people I haven't seen in many years. It was nice to see them and to catch up. Why is it that we only seem to get together when someone dies??? I want to have everyone get together for a joyous occasion for once!
  I held it together very well today...that is, until they played taps and presented the flag to my Grandmother. That just did me in.

  Well, I have arrived safely in New Hampshire. I flew up today for my Grandfathers funeral. Work was nice enough to give me three days of emergency leave so I didn't have to use up any of my vacation or sick time. I should be home again on Monday. Of course, then I'm just leavinging again on Friday for San Diego. Lately, it seems that I'm always on the go......

  I just received the phone call I had hoped would not come. My Grandfather passed away today. Rest in Peace Gramp. The fight is over. I Love You and I'll Miss You!

  Well, I'm home. My Grandfather is still in ICU with very little change. Only time will tell what is going to happen. Overall, the trip went well. I spent quite a bit of time sitting in the hospital but I also got to see Peg (my Grandfathers daughter) who I haven't seen since I was a little kid. I also got a chance to visit with Marianne, a friend I haven't seen in years, and to meet her daughter.
  My Sunday pretty much sucked. I got up and showered and went to put my luggage in the car. Roxy (my sisters dog) jumped up on me and got mud all over me. I went in and cleaned that off with no problem. I got to the airport to turn in the rental car and they mixed me up with someone with a bill 3 times what mine was. I got that corrected. I went through the fun of checking in while being on the watch list and the counter agent forgot to give me a boarding pass. I noticed it before walking away and got the boarding pass issued. Then I went upstairs and decided to get some breakfast. So I ordered the hotcakes and sausage from McDonalds. I sat down and opened the maple syrup. It shot all over the place. It went on the table and all over my pants. I cleaned those up and noticed it on the floor. When I looked closer I found it was on my laptop bag. I cleaned that off and finished eating. I went into the bathroom and cleaned as much up as I could. Then I went through security. When I grabbed my shoes to put them back on I found that they had syrup on them too. So now my hands were all sticky again. I made ANOTHER trip to the bathroom to clean my shoes off and wash my hands again. About the only good thing that happened was when I was leaving BWI. A bus from the Red lot came through and picked me up even though I was parked in the blue lot. I thanked him for saving me the wait for the blue lot bus and tipped him well. Now, I'm home watching the race...Go Mark! :)

  I'm off to New Hampshire. My Grandfather is not doing well. He is in ICU and seems to be getting worse instead of better. So I'm heading home to visit with him. Man this has been a rough year for my family....

  I took these pictures from my hotel room at the Hyatt in San Diego on Friday 22 July 2005.

  Well, I had a good laugh when my friend Joe's name showed up on the No-Fly watch list. He couldn't check in online or even at the automated kiosk. He had to go to a person at the counter to check in. What makes this even more humorous is the fact that he is a Government employee with a security clearance. Well, I guess karma is a bitch. Now MY name is on the watch list. If the name "Michael Jones" is on the list, just how many people in this country are affected??? The woman behind the counter said it's because it's a common name. This makes me wonder if, when they went to the heightened alert status due to the bombings in London, they put all common names on the list. I don't know, either way I was flying Southwest and ended up in the C group because I couldn't check in ahead of time. How irritating!!

  I made it home ok. The trip wasn't as much of a waste of time as I expected it to be, but I still hate those short stays. It seems like I spent as much time in the air as I did in San Diego (not quite, but it's close). Oh well, all in all it was a successful trip.

  Well, I made it to San Diego ok. The flight was uneventful (always a good thing). The hotel is nice and the weather is FANTASTIC.

  Well, I have been terrible about updating my blog lately. This post makes a grand total of 3 so far this month. Now, I'm off to San Diego for a couple of days. I leave Wednesday morning and return home Friday night. I'm almost spending as much time in the air as I am in San Diego. Oh well, that's work for ya!

  Heather and I saw "War of the Worlds" on Monday. It was a REALLY good movie. The special effects were great. I never read the book or saw the original movie, so I can't compare those. But I really enjoyed this one.

  If you're looking for some decent FREE music, check out GarageBand.com. They have a large selection of Independant and emerging bands from just about every genre out there. Some of the songs can only be streamed, some can be purchased, many can be downloaded for free. For the American Idol fans out there, this years Runner Up Bo Bice has music out there from his previous bands.
  If you are a music lover, you should definitely check it out!!

  Now this is funny. I bet Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter didn't think anyone would go after HIS house when he ruled that towns can take private property under eminent domain laws for PRIVATE development. Well, Logan Darrow Clements of Freestar Media is trying to do just that.
  I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand, I don't think it should happen because I don't agree with the law at all. On the other hand, I think it would be good for Justice Souter to get a taste of what his ruling does to others. I bet when he made the ruling, he thought this would never happen to him.
http://www.freestarmedia.com/hotellostliberty2.html

  I was cleaning out some old papers today when I came across a receipt for gas. At the Kerr McGee gas station at 801 N.E. 12 st in Moore OK on 1/31/1994 I paid 87 cents per gallon. Now, I wish I could find gas for $1.87 a gallon....

  Most of us are aware of the laws of Eminent Domain. This is the law that allows the Government to take your property, while paying you fair market value, for public use. This is used most often for things like building new roads. However, MSNBC reports:

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that local governments may seize people’s homes and businesses — even against their will — for private economic development.

  For those Star Wars fans out there, this is a funny parody.

  Heather and I went to see Batman Begins last night. I liked it! I think it was the best Batman so far. The only complaint I had at all was that some of the fight scenes were dark and things were moving fast which made it hard to see and follow what was going on.

  I went to NH and Maine this weekend to help Mom and Larry make it home. They are now back in Hampden. Hopefully things will continue to go well.

  I didn't even make it into the building at work this morning before I was being told about the things that were broke. I started working on fixing those and took a break to accomplish something that has needed to be done for a while now. I got that half done when I got a phone call from Mom. The Doctor called with the results of Larry's blood work. He said it was way off and we needed to get him to the closest Emergency Room ASAP. Mom didn't even know where the closest ER was AND the exterminator was already on his way for our scheduled appointment. So I left work and went home to wait for the exterminator while Mom took Larry to the hospital. After work I went to the hospital to see what was going on. Larry was admitted because his coumadin levels are supposed to be between 2 and 3 and they were at 17. They were afraid he was going to end up bleeding internally. So we left Larry at the hospital for the night and came back to pack up the truck because Larry's daughter Cindie is already on her way down from Maine to pick up the truck and take it home. What a mess!! Now, I'm just tired. So, I'm off to bed...

A New Hampshire officer called Immigration after stopping a couple of illegal aliens. The Feds refused to come and said "write them a ticket and let them go". The officer didn't think that was good enough so he arrested them for trespassing. Their trial is pending. If the Feds aren't going to do their job, the local police will find a way!

New take on immigration in N.H.: trespassing - washingtonpost.com Highlights - MSNBC.com

  Larry was discharged from the hospital today. He and my Mom will stay with me for about a week to make sure everything stays going well before they head back to Maine.

  We took Larry out of the hospital and came back to my house for about 8 hours today. It was a great day. We sat outside on the deck. It was about 80 and sunny with a light breeze. I cooked burgers on the grill. John, Sue and Michael came over for a little while and brought a variety of salads and made a strawberry shortcake. We also munched on some cookies and whoopie pies that Julie and Jen made. All in all, we couldn't have asked for a better day.
  We brought Larry back to the hospital around 6pm. He is supposed to be released on Thursday. They want him to stay here with us for around 5 or 6 days after he is released to make sure everything stays going well and then they can go back to Maine.

  The room is pretty well done. The ceiling fan is up. The curtains are hung. The closet is put together (with some damage to John's finger). I need to replace the wall switch for the fan and eventually get some doors for the closet. Then it will be time to find some furniture so Mom doesn't have to keep sleeping on the air mattress. I know that no matter how good an air mattress is, it gets old fairly quickly.

  Larry was accepted into a rehab at Maryland General Hospital. He was moved from Bangor to Baltimore on a Life Flight on May 26th. I went to the hospital and met him when he arrived. My Mom is driving down and will be here tomorrow. I've been trying to work, visit Larry and get a room ready for Mom. Thanks to some help from my friends, we've gotten pretty close. The room has a fresh coat of paint (it was just drywall before). I have a new ceiling fan (threw out the old one a year ago) to put up, curtains to hang and a shelf & bar to hang in the closet tomorrow.

  Well, as I said in my previous post, we wrote to the Governor of Maine on Saturday May 21st about the problems we were having with Larry's medical care. We received a reply today. He contacted the Commissioner's office at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services and requested a review of the information we provided. He requested that they contact us directly with any helpful information and/or recommendations for recourse.
  Of course, at this point, the hospital corrected their actions on their own. It's nice to know that there might be a little Government oversight to help out if we run into problems again though. I'd like to thank Maine Governor John Baldacci for a prompt reply to our request for help.

  I have been a little out of touch lately. For those of you who don’t know, my step-father, Larry, had a massive heart attack on March 10th. He has suffered brain injury due to lack of oxygen. He was in the hospital (Eastern Maine Medical Center) for about 6 weeks. After that he was in Stillwater rehab for a little less than two weeks. Then he went home. Things were ok most of the time but he still wasn’t right. After being home for three weeks, he had an episode where he got so agitated that my mom couldn’t calm him down. She had to have him taken back to the hospital. That happened on May 15th. I received a call from my Mom saying “Come as soon as you can”. So I called my boss and got the week off. Then I packed a bag and jumped in the truck. It was 6pm when I started out and 7am the next day when I arrived. Up until that point, I thought I had a good idea of what Mom was dealing with. I didn’t.
  I slept until noon on Monday. Then we headed in to the emergency room where Larry had been all night. He was being held in a closed room because he was agitated and aggressive. He had supposedly ran after some of the ER staff and, depending on which report you read, either fell down or ran into a wall. Either way, he had a black eye, 7 stitches over his right eye and his glasses were broken. None of these existed when he entered the ER. When we entered the room, it was a mess. There were dirty blankets on the floor, the pillow case had no cover and was covered in blood on both sides and there was trash (bloody wrappers from gauze bandages) on the floor. I was NOT impressed!! We bitched and the charge nurse went in and cleaned it up.
  Larry was admitted to the hospital and around 5pm on Monday he was moved to the 5th floor. He was assigned a 1 on 1, which is a person who sits at the door and monitors everything he does. This room was in much better shape. All of the 1 on 1’s that I met were nice and did a good job of informing us of how he was doing each day. The Doctor was working on adjusting his medications trying to get him right. The Nurse Case Manager talked with us and said “We’ll need to try every rehab facility in New England as well as one I know of in Atlanta Georgia.” We said, Great, Go For It. Well, she sent the information to the one in Georgia. Other than that, the only places she has tried are the ones we’ve told her about. We were on the phone continuously when we weren’t at the hospital. We’ve had so many facilities say no. It’s quite disheartening. Many are even saying he’s too healthy because he doesn’t need any physical rehab.
  On Friday, the Nurse Practitioner told us they intended to discharge Larry on Monday because there was “No Medical Need” to keep him there. She said if we hadn’t found a rehab facility to take him to and we weren’t willing to take him home that Mom would be responsible to 100% of the bill (Medicare would stop paying). We were flabbergasted. How could they say there was No Medical Need when his meds obviously were not correct and he had just gotten so aggressive that they had to restrain him? Heck, the 1 on 1 just took a bottle of lotion away from him because he “wanted to get the skin on the inside” and was going to drink it. What the hell were these people thinking????
  On Saturday morning, we let the Nurse Case Manager on duty (weekend, not the normal nurse) know that we had contacted the Governors office and a Congresswoman’s office and that this was NOT a SAFE DISCHARGE. We also let it slip that we intended to contact the press. Amazingly, on Saturday afternoon the Doctor called to say he had seen Larry and decided he could not be discharged. I can’t say for sure that he knew what we told the Nurse Case Manager, but I’d be willing to bet he did. Either way, we won a reprieve.
  Saturday night I left Maine. I went to NH and crashed at my Sisters house for the night and then left first thing Sunday morning for Maryland. I arrived home around 5:30pm.
  I have learned A LOT from this incident. Most importantly, I’ve learned about the importance of a Health Care Power of Attorney and a financial POA also. I guess it’s time I find a lawyer and get a will, a living will, a Health Care POA and a financial POA.
  There is SO much more to this story, but I’m out of energy to write it. Our search for a rehab facility continues. They continue to either say no or they say they don’t have any beds. My Moms nightmare continues. She is on her way to the hospital right now…

  Heather and I went to see the movie CRASH last night. I thought it was very good. They did a great job of interweaving all the characters together. The movie really showed just how screwed up this world can be.

  I had a migraine last night. It's the first one I've had in a few months. I'm happy to have gone so long without one. I'm also happy I had some Gelstat Migraine on hand. This time, I can definitely say that Gelstat kicked my migraines ass. The bad side is that the sublingual application method feels a little odd and it doesn't taste all that great. The good side is that my migraine was subdued in less than 15 minutes and completely gone in about 30. I'll take two applications of 60 seconds each over a migraine any day.
  About.com did a product review of Gelstat Migraine and gave it 5 stars. There are also several articles on the web from doctors who are starting to use it as another treatment. Have you tried it? I'd LOVE to hear from anyone else who has tried it. You can leave a comment here or email me at blog@mjonesweb.com.

  While I'm on the subject, I received a sample of the prototype for Gelstat Sinus back in January. I have used it and I found it to be about as effective as Nasonex. I'll see if I can get an update on its release date.

  I got my truck back from the body shop on Monday. The keying damage has been repaired. Overall, I'm very happy with the work. Tristate Collision did a really good job on the paint. You can't even tell the damage was there. I haven't found any runs or color discrepancies. While their work was great, their customer interaction skills could use a little work. The truck was done on Friday but when I called on Monday they couldn't find any paperwork in the front office so they decided it must still be being worked on. I called my insurance agent who said his notes said it was done. So he called them and about 20 minutes later called me back to say it was done. I went in and picked up the truck. On Tuesday, a friend noticed that a piece of plastic molding was gone. So after work I went back to the shop. They looked into it and said "When we put that piece back on a clip was bent and it wouldn't go on tight. We had ordered a new piece but it was on back order. It's in now and we replace it. It will take 10 minutes.". Well, I find it odd that they didn't mention that when I picked up my truck. If it hadn't disappeared and I hadn't come back, would they have called me to come back in and replace that part??? I doubt it. Anyway, I gave them the truck for "10 minutes". 40 minutes later I was still waiting. I finally went to find out what was going on. It turned out that they forgot to put a new FX4 decal on when they were done painting and they were waiting to get that put on. It would be "another 5 minutes". That 5 turned into 20 before it was done. Had they just come to me and said they found something else and it would be a bit longer I would have been fine. The fact that they left me hanging without telling me what was going on had me a bit annoyed. Well, that and the fact that they had crappy reading material in the waiting room. :)
  So, if you want good paint work and can put up with a little lack of interpersonal skills, feel free to go to Tristate Collision in Columbia MD.
  I'm also quite happy with the way my insurance company (Progressive) handled things. There were very good, especially since I waited three weeks before calling them. I'll have to wait a few months before I can tell you if they raise my rates for making a claim or not though.

  The image below is from the FRONT PAGE of the April 22, 2005 (Volume 27 Number 16) of The Processor. The Processor is a paper for IT professionals.
  I'm wondering how much trouble the editor got into for leaving out the "L" in public! This just goes to show that you can't rely on spell check for everything! Luckily, they have fixed it in their online version.

• 27 Million - Number of F-Series trucks sold to date since the first truck rolled off the line in 1948.
• 939,511 - Number of 2004 F-Series trucks sold in the past year -- A New Record!
• 34 seconds - Time elapsed between each 2004 F-Series sale during the past year
• 28 - years in a row that the F-Series has been ranked the best selling truck in the U.S.
• 258,743 - Number of vehicles by which F-Series outsold its nearest competitor in 2004

--Stats taken from the Winter 2005 issue of myFord magazine.

Meanwhile, MY 2004 F-150 is at the body shop hopefully getting the keying damage repaired.

  I bought The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage and it arrived yesterday. I finished it up today. It was an interesting book about the true story of an astronomer who was temporarily placed into a system administrator position when his astronomy grant ran out. There was a 75 cent discrepancy in the accounting program that he was asked to look into. This turned into over a year long project of tracking someone who was hacking into their system and, through their system, into other university, government and military computers.
  This happened in the late 1980's and it's interesting to see how little all of the Government agencies wanted to help with computer security back then. Today, the Government understands the importance of Computer Security. In the 80's, however, they just didn't get it yet. The FBI just kept saying "If it isn't over one million dollars or classified information, we won't touch it."
  While the book can get a little repetitive at times, it is definitely a good read. I recommend it!

  I made it back from San Diego in one piece. It's good to be home. Now I just need a few hours to get through all the mail!

  This was the view from my hotel room in San Diego. Terrible isn't it?? :)

  Today was "UNIX Security" day. The topics were:

• Patching and Software Management


• Minimizing System Services


• Logging and Warning


• User Access Control


• System Configuration


• Backups and Archiving

  Today was "Windows Security" day. The topics were:

• The Windows Security Infrastructure


• Permissions and User Rights


• Security Templates and Group Policy


• Service Packs, Hotfixes, and Backups


• Securing Windows Network Services


• Automation and Auditing

  Today was "Secure Communications" day. The topics were:

• Encryption


• Applying Cryptography


• Steganography


• Wireless Security


• Operations Security

  Day 3 was "Internet Security Technologies" Day. We went over:

• Attack Strategies and Mitigation


• Firewalls and Honeypots


• Vulnerability Scanning


• Network and Host Based Intrusion Detection


• Network and Host Based Intrusion Prevention


• Risk Management and Auditing

  Today was "Defense-In-Depth" day. Unfortunately, it started with policy and procedure. A general view of Defense-In-Depth and some interesting things about worms and viruses to explain the need for it got us started. However, that led right into policy and procedure. At that point in the morning, Policy and Procedure just wanted to put me to sleep. It wasn't engaging my brain too well!
  Access Control and Password Management was next. Basically, passwords are just a BAD authentication method. An interesting note: Doing a brute force attack using a Quad Xeon 400 Mhz machine (400MHZ? Who uses those any more?? Today's machines are about 10 times faster than that) ANY password using just alpha-numeric characters can be broken in 5.5 hours, Alpha-numeric and some symbols in 45 hours and alpha-numeric and all symbols in 480 hours. Strong passwords just takes longer to break.
  We also got into Incident handling and touched on chain of custody for legal purposes. Then we finished went into Information Warfare and finished up the day with "Web Communications and Security".
The night sessions took us through DumpSec, snort, hping2 and we did password cracking using John the Ripper. This was an interesting evening. hping2 can do some cool stuff for crafting packets. Fun Fun Fun!

  As I was heading out of town, I dropped my truck off at the dealer. I asked them to do the scheduled repair and get me an estimate to fix the paint damage from being keyed. The estimate: $1645!!!! OUCH!!

  I spent most of the 2 hour evening sessions fighting with Knoppix. You're supposed to be able to just drop in the CD and boot right into linux. However, it turns out that I had a bad CD. It only took about an hour for me to figure that out and get a new CD that worked just fine. Luckily, I didn't really need the time to play with tcpdump or to boot into windows and run ethereal as I've done both before.

  The morning session was a good review. We went over things like network topologies, the OSI layers and protocols. In the afternoon we got a little more in depth by looking at TCP headers, IP headers, routing and, of course, physical security. While there were a few little things that I picked up (like Windows uses ICMP for traceroute but UNIX uses UDP), it was mostly a really good refresher. That covers 9am to 5pm. I have to be back at 7pm with my laptop where we will do labs until 9pm.

  Well, I have arrived in San Diego. I will be heading down stairs soon to get registered for my SANS course. I'm hoping it's as good as it's supposed to be!

  This would be why I'm not so excited about biometrics. I would really rather they steal my keys and my car WITHOUT cutting off my finger!!

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Malaysia car thieves steal finger

But having stripped the car, the thieves became frustrated when they
wanted to restart it. They found they again could not bypass the
immobiliser, which needs the owner's fingerprint to disarm it.

  I have now noticed that the keying also goes all the way across the tail gate! ARRRGH! I called Giant to see if they have video surveillance on the parking lot, but they don't. :(

  Some ASSHOLE keyed my truck yesterday at the Giant here in Columbia. We were in the store for a grand total of 10 - 15 minutes just grabbing a few things and when we came out there was a big gouge in my passenger side door. What kind of low life scum does this? I didn't cut anyone off on the way there. I was parked perfectly in my spot (unusual for me in the truck, I know). There was absolutely no reason for it. It definitely succeeded in PISSING ME OFF! As a matter of fact, when I woke up this morning the first thing that went through my mind was "Someone keyed my truck". It's STILL pissing me off! All I got to say is I HOPE KARMA BITES YOU IN THE ASS!!!!

  Well, the getting up at 0430 and running a conference is done. The long days are over and the conference went well. I think this one was the smoothest we've ever had. Now, I have four friends in from out of town. Two are staying with me. They will be flying out on Monday. I will be flying out on Wednesday. I'm going to San Diego for a week to a SANS conference. I'm going to be taking the SEC 401: Security Essentials Boot Camp course. Things are definitely staying busy!

Click the link... the picture is worth the laugh!

MSNBC - M&M's characters go to the 'dark side'

As if the candies are not enough, consumers can collect 72 Star
Wars/M&M's-themed packages in plain and peanut varieties that
feature exclusive under-the-wrapper Star Wars and M&M's trivia.

  Well, that spot that was leaking is leaking again. I thought for sure that filling in the hole that went all the way though the wall would do it, but I guess not! Due to my schedule, there is no way I can get anyone back in here until at least the middle of April. How irritating!!!

  I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter! I went to a friends house where we all gathered for our annual Easter fondue! I know it's a bit of a different tradition, but it has worked well for us for quite a few years now.
  I would still like someone to explain to me how Easter ended up in March this year!! Anyone? Anyone?

MSNBC - Italian wins in court after husband's 'sex strike'

  Uh huh... Women have been with holding sex from men since the beginning of time, using it as a weapon to get what they want. Now, a man has with held sex from his wife for 7 years for taking sides against him in a family dispute over money. Then, when she couldn't take it anymore and divorced him, he appealed the support payments that the Italian courts ordered. But the courts ruled against him saying "The refusal of affection or sexual attention must constitute the blame for the separation"
  In my opinion, the marriage ended because the guy must have been having an affair. It doesn't say that anywhere in the article, but no man in his right mind is going to go without sex for 7 years just to make a point!

  The first official press release that I've seen on the upcoming cobra is pretty exciting! They are talking about having over 450 horsepower! Sounds like fun to me! I guess I better hurry up and get my truck paid off!! Find out more at the Ford SVT site.

  Ok, I HAD been pretty good about keeping the blog up to date until lately. I've definitely been slipping but keeping up with the family is more important some times. However, after reading this post from Robert Scoble about how he spends 3 - 6 hours PER DAY on just ONE of his blogs, I'm feeling guilty about not finding 10 minutes here and there to post!!

  Well, they have taken Larry off both the pump and the ventilator now. He is awake and talking. It's hard to hear him right now because his throat is still irritated from have the ventilator tube down there. All in all, things are looking pretty good though!!

  Well, it's a good year for Mark Martin. He just won another Busch race. As we saw a couple of weeks ago, that doesn't necessarily translate into a Nextel Cup win, but it did at least turn into a top 10. Let's hope he can at least strike another top 10 at Vegas this week!

  As I was heading out the door this morning, my sister called. Apparently NH is supposed to get up to 10 inches of snow and Maine is supposed to get up to TWO FEET of snow tonight and tomorrow. So now I've cancelled my flight and my rental car and I'm taking a wait and see what happens approach. There isn't much else I can do right now I guess...

  My step-father, Larry, had a massive heart attack today. My Mom called me from the hospital. I've started the plans to go to Maine, but it's going to take a couple of days to get there. It looks like I'll be flying in to NH tomorrow night (I have a Doctors appointment tomorrow afternoon that Mom said I needed to go to BEFORE flying up) and then my sister and I are going to drive up first thing Saturday morning I guess. Of course, with me just getting over the flu, I'm not sure if they'll even let me in to see Larry. Maybe by Saturday morning I'll be completely healthy. Either way, I'll be there for Mom.

  I think the water leak around the rear sliding glass door is FINALLY going to be fixed. It's only been leaking for a little over 2 years. It's been "fixed" 3 times. This time, they tore the drywall down and found a big whole in the concrete. They patched the hole and then coated the whole are with drylok (a concrete water proofer). Let's hope that this is the one that does it!

  Well, I've been a little remiss in writing here lately. My room mates car broke and we've been out car shopping the last few nights. She finally settled on a 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix. Now, I have a cold. I'm not sure if it's because I was walking around frigid car lots for a few nights or because one of my co-workers was in and not feeling well. Either way, I HATE being sick!! Once I get a cough, it takes me FOREVER to get rid of it.

  A couple of british students are setting out to set the record for breaking the most laws. They are using old, generally unenforced laws. They are starting with riding a bicycle in a swimming pool in California. Then, they are going whale hunting in Utah (a land locked state). This could be interesting (and funny)!

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Underwater bike ride to launch students' eight-week crime spree

  Well, a couple of bad pit strategies kept Mark from winning today. He may have finished back in 7th, but he moved up 4 spots to 3rd in points.
  I signed up for track pass today and followed the race online and on the TV. I really enjoy listening to the drivers radios. It gives another whole dimension to the race.

  Mark Martin is starting out well this year. He may have only placed 6th in the Daytona 500 (better than the 43rd from last year), but he won the IROC race at Daytona. Tonight, he won the Busch race in California. I'm hoping he can carry the momentum into a win in the Nextel Cup race tomorrow!

  My work shut down for today due to the snow. I'm not sure why, the roads weren't bad but if they're giving a free day off I'll take it!!

  I haven't really had time to go through all the pictures and create a good page for them, so I have just put them all up on my MSN Groups page.

  Well, I have returned from Florida. It was a FANTASTIC long weekend. It may take me a few days to recuperate (and get back to work), but I'll try and get some pictures up soon.

  in the mean time, there have been plenty of other things to see :)

  Well, I'm leaving tomorrow for Daytona!! I can't wait! It will be good to see Dad and Marsha again and we ALWAYS have a good time, especially when racing is involved.

  Now that I'm home and have access to my scanner, here is the picture of the whole crowd at Paradise Cove on 2/9/05.

  Well, I'm home. It may seem odd to leave Hawaii and be GLAD to be back in Maryland, but I really do enjoy coming home (even if it is only for a few days). Hotel rooms get old no matter where you are.

  On Sunday, I had planned on leaving Bellows AFB beach and heading up to Turtle Bay to watch the sunset. Well, as we left Bellows, I noticed that the dark clouds had rolled in to the north. So, we took the Pali back across the island and went to PUU UALAKAA state park to watch the sunset instead. Here's a picture of the view.

  I've climbed Diamond Head before, so I didn't plan on taking pictures when Kyrie and I climbed on Sunday. I did bring my camera though and I'm glad I did. When we reached the top, there was an elderly lady who had heat stroke (I'd guess anyway). On our way down, there was a firefighter with a small med kit running up to help and another firefighter with a BIG pack on his back hiking up. Shortly thereafter, a helicopter flew in and landed on one of the bunkers up top. They flew the lady back down and put her in an ambulance. I don't like to see anyone not feeling well, but rescues are always interesting to watch.

  Yesterday, we finally got a day of sunshine. It's rained pretty much every day since we arrived. We drove to the north shore and came back around as far as H3 where we crossed back over the island. Here's a picture I took from the hotel room yesterday morning.

  Kyrie and I met up with my friend Maghan again tonight. We also got to meet her boyfriend Poncho. We went to Cheeseburger in Paradise for dinner and had a great time chatting and eating. Then we walked down the beach from the Hilton to Dukes where we sat in the bar area and had drinks and shared some Hula Pie. SOOOOO GOOD!!!! Tomorrow, if the weather is nice, we are going to head up to the north shore.

  Tonight was a good night. I went to airport after work and picked up my friend Kyrie. We came back to the hotel and dropped her stuff off.
  Then we went and met up with my friend Maghan. It was SO good to see her again. It's been FAR too long!!! We went to dinner at the Brew Moon. Their food is SO good. We ordered three PuPu's and shared them. We have Vegetarian Quesadilla, Kalua Quesadilla (my personal favorite) and the fish and chips. Good friends and good food, what more can anyone ask for?

We went to the Cheesecake factory for dinner last night. I've always loved the food there. I've also always loved the Kalua pork here in Hawaii. So I thought I would try their Kalua pork sandwich. I should have known better than to try a local dish at a chain restaurant. It was awful. I only ate a few bites of the pork and some french fries. It's the only time I've ever had a bad meal at the Cheesecake factory. Oh well, live and learn!

I'm in Hawaii. The flight was long, but uneventful. We have the rental cars and are all checked in to the hotel, which thankfully has high speed internet access! We went to Outback for dinner tonight. I know, travel all the way to HI and then go to outback. It was convenient and we were hungry. Work starts tomorrow...

  I went back to the ENT doc for a follow up today. Basically, the drugs (entex and nasonex) haven't really helped. He said the next avenue is surgery. Endoscopic sinus surgery and possibly septoplasty. I had him write it down so I could do some research on it first. I'm not too fond of the idea of surgery, but I'm not too fond of constant sinus pain / pressure either. I think I'm going to take the next couple of weeks during my Hawaii trip and try out the Gelstat Sinus sample I have received. If it's bad enough that they are suggesting surgery then I don't hold out much hope for the Gelstat to help, but I'm willing to give it a shot.

CNN.com - Darth Tater: The dark side of Mr. Potato Head - Jan 19, 2005

I just can not stop laughing over this one!!

  One week from tomorrow I leave for a 10 day business trip to Hawaii. It's a rough assignment, with a hotel right on Waikiki beach, but someone has to do it! :) It will be terrible to have to leave the snow we got yesterday behind and head into 80 degree weather. Sometimes you just have to make sacrifices. A couple of days into the trip, my friend Kyrie will be joining me. She's never been to Hawaii so I will play tour guide when I'm not working.
  Less than a week after I return from Hawaii, I will be leaving for sunny Florida. I'm going to meet up with my father and his girlfriend and we are heading to the Daytona 500. So, I'll be gone for most of the month of February. I'll still be posting, but probably not as regularly as I normally do. Given the choice between a computer screen and a Hawaiian sunset, well, there really isn't a choice there...

MSNBC - Atheist rebuffed in bid to bar inaugural prayer
  Oh woah is me... The President wants to have a prayer at his inauguration ceramony. I'm sooooo offended! He's trying to push religion on me! Separation of church and state! Help Me!
  He's not pushing his religion on you, you fucking whiner. You're trying to push your religion (or lack thereof) on the rest of country. Now get over it! No one said you have to agree with everything that's said in this world. If the President wants a prayer at his ceremony, it's HIS CEREMONY. If you don't like it, go have your own damn ceremony and you can have it without a prayer. God, people irritate me sometimes.

We had our first real snow today. It didn't add up to much, maybe an inch. But it sure was nice to be able to drive in a straight line. This is the first year I've owned a 4x4 truck. My Mustang sucks in the snow. I used to spend A LOT of time driving sideways. Now, the Mustang is in the garage for the winter. When the real snow hits (we're supposed to get 6+ inches this weekend), it will be nice to have the ability to get out.

I have temporarily changed the comments section of this blog to be moderated. If you do not log in through TypeKey, the comment will not show up until I approve it. I will continue to work on a better solution to fighting the spam, but for now it's all I've got.

Anyone who has to fold laundry should watch the two video's on speed folding over at wyckedone. They may be in Japanese, but you don't need to understand the narration, the demostrations tell it all.

  My room mate Heather had a tire blow out last night. It wasn't just a little blow out; it bent the rim and beat up the fender. She got the car stopped immediately. Unfortunately, it was in the left lane of I395 and there is little to no break down lane there. Of course, it was night time. On top of being dark, it started raining too. All in all, it was VERY dangerous. She called me because, while she had a spare, she had no jack or lug wrench. I showed up and parked my truck a little ways back hoping to add a little buffer zone. Unfortunately, the lug wrench I had with me wouldn't work on her lug nuts. While figuring this out, I heard several cars skidding to miss my truck and watched one Tractor Trailer come FAR too close to it too. All I could picture was that tractor trailer hitting my truck and then it plowing into us. Eventually, the police arrived and turned on the lights to give us a little more safety. They were nervous about being in that spot too, even with the lights on. Finally, the tow truck came and we got out there... alive... I think I need to say a "Thank You" to what ever guardian angel was watching out for us last night...

  If you're looking to buy or sell real estate in Arizona, look up my Dad... www.prescottareahomesandland.com

  Things are getting a little ridiculous. We have had a lawsuit because the judge in Georgia wouldn't remove the Ten Commandments from the county courthouse. To this I say, GET OVER IT! No one is forcing you to go over and READ THEM. Unfortunately, the courts disagreed with me.
  Then we have students suing a college because it required them to read "Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations," which contains 35 passages from the sacred book of Islam before they arrived. First of all, suing a college because "I don't wanna read that" is stupid. If you don't like it, find another college. Second of all, reading a book that goes against your religion only helps you understand other people's views. It in no way requires you to agree with them.
  Now we have a court ruling against placing stickers on text books that say:

"This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."

  I received an email from Stephen C. Roberts, M.D. He is the CEO of GelStat and managed to find my previous blog entries on Gelstat Migraine. He was interested in my opinions of the product and offered to send me some samples. I agreed to the samples as long as he was ok with my giving an HONEST opinion of the product on my blog. He said, and I quote, "We love honesty."
  It's nice to see a company actively researching what the "common man" thinks of their products. I find it even more surprising that the CEO takes the time to do the interaction himself. He emailed me and he actually read my reply. How refreshing is it to find TRUE customer care in today's corporate world?

  I was a KISS fan when I was a kid. I still listen to them once in a while. However, I would like to know how it is that Gene Simmons claims to have had sex with 4,600 women. Is it the fame, the fortune, or just the really long tongue that attracted all the women?
  Also, is 4,600 just a guestimate? I mean, at what point do you stop counting? Does he have a big notebook just full of tick marks or what? Or is that the number of penicillin shots he's had?

   I went to the Ear Nose & Throat (ENT) doc today. This is a continuation of my sinus pressure issue. He took a look at my sinus CT scan films (that the radiologist had reported as "normal with indications of allergies") and said "Well, they aren't EXACTLY normal". He then pointed out how my sinus passages were narrower than normal and several spots that "could be" a problem.
  This also happened when I went to an ortho with back problems. He took one look at the MRI film and said "Sure, you have a little swelling in this disc", which is what the radiologist reported, "but the real problem are these stress fractures in the spine right here.".
  Both times, the docs pointed things out to me and to me, they were QUITE obvious. For instance, the stress fractures had that entire spot on the spine AN ENTIRELY different color on the film. How can a trained technician miss something that stands out THAT much?
  Of course, this IS coming from the same diagnostic center that reported my abdominal CT as "NORMAL" and then during another test a year later found out that I only have one kidney. HOW DO YOU MISS AN ENTIRE ORGAN???
  I've basically come to the conclusion that all films should be taken out of the diagnostic center and actually read by a specialist.
  Is this normal? Has anyone else experienced these problems, or is it just this particular diagnostic center?

  I took a look at mt-blacklist today to see about starting the anti-comment spam attack. Because I'm running version 3.1 of Movabletype, I would need to run version 2.04beta of mt-blacklist. Version 1.65 had a grand total of 5 files to drop into a few different directories, version 2.04b (the one I actually need) has like 50 files and alters the MT database schema. I'm wondering if it's worth it or if I should try some of the other products first.

  I thought the only spam I had to worry about was in my email. Now, I've started getting comment spam in my blog. I've deleted a half a dozen spam comments today alone. I wasn't even sure anyone was reading my blog, never mind thinking it was worth spamming.
  It's funny that my Spam problem started today and MovableType (the blog software I use) released the Guide for Fighting Comment Spam today. I guess I'm going to have to start looking into using some comment spam filtering techniques. I believe the mt-blacklist plug-in seems to be one of the most popular for MovableType.
  For the other bloggers out there, do you get comment spam? How do you fight it?

CNN.com - Bush pushes for lawsuit limits - Jan 5, 2005

I don't know exactly how I feel about this issue. On one hand, the lawsuits drive up malpractice insurance. This drives up everyone’s medical bills. I know every year the cost of my medical insurance goes up as does the amount of the co-pay I have to pay. If my medical rates are getting high, and I have decent benefits, those who are paying 100% of their own insurance must be paying ridiculously high prices. Many can't afford to pay and therefore don't have ANY medical insurance. At the same time, those high malpractice insurance rates are slowly going to run the small doctors out of business because only the large hospitals will be able to afford them.
On the other hand, if I were to go in for surgery and the doctor amputated something he wasn't supposed to I think there is definitely some seriously justified compensation coming.
I think it all comes down to the need to stop FRIVOLOUS lawsuits. This isn't just in the medical arena, but everywhere. While the low lifes that are trying to get rich from suing people are definitely to blame, the courts are just as much to blame. When someone sues because they spilled coffee on themselves while driving down the road and it was *HOT* and WINS, the courts are just asking for more. (Personally, I think a lawsuit for the coffee being cold and crappy would be more reasonable :) )
Does anyone have any ideas on how to stop frivolous lawsuits? Or are payout limits the answer? Whatever the answer is, SOMETHING needs to change.

Between holiday parties, birthday celebrations and DNS problems, I just haven't been doing well at getting entries in here.
Last night we went to the Cheesecake Factory to celebrate Kyries birthday. The food was fantastic as usual. I had the Key Lime cheesecake for dessert. As a matter of fact, I only ate half my dinner and half my dessert, so that's what I'll be eating for dinner tonight too.
I finished Half Life 2 today. What a GREAT game!
I hope everyone had a good New Years celebration!

I recently bought a game called Half Life 2. I have become quite addicted. The graphics are unbelievable and the playability is too! Maximum PC rated it an 11 out of 10, and I must agree. I could write a LONG review of the game, but I don't have time because I spent it all PLAYING the game :)

We use Sabine SWM7000 wireless microphone systems for an annual conference that we host. I was trying to flash the firmware and was having problems where it was reporting the firmware as corrupted. So I thought I would call Sabine and get some tech support. Well, to my surprise, the message stated "We are closed until January 3". Now, I understand people taking vacation over the holidays, but who shuts down the ENTIRE company???? What kind of crap is that?
Luckily, I finally found the answer on their web site. I don't know why I couldn't find it the other night or why I didn't find it when I *SEARCHED* their documentation, but it's in BOLD on their web site.

MSNBC - Kids on a mission to help soldiers phone home
A 14 year old girl and her 12 year old brother decided to take the $14 they had in their piggy bank and help soldiers call home. They have no parlayed that into over $250,000 worth of pre-paid calling cards. And, just recently, the IRS has now granted their "Cell Phones for Soldiers" campaign Non Profit status so all donations are tax deductible. What they are doing is taking old cell phones and selling them to a company that refurbishes them, then using that money to buy phone cards to send to the troops. They also accept cash of course. :)
It seems to me that these are two smart kids with good hearts. They have given of themselves and even missed out on things like cheerleading competitions and soccer games to pursue this.
If you have an old cell phone you'd like to get rid of, check their website for places you can drop it off or where to mail it to. Certain phone models can even be mailed in with pre-paid shipping.
I'm glad to see there are some good kids left in this world AND that the news actually reported something good! In a world full of war and tsunamis, it's nice to find good hearted news out there.

I went for the follow up appt with the allergist today. Basically, there's nothing he can do for me. Now it's off the ENT.

Luckily, it came out well! I'm very happy. As I said before, I had no clue as to what was going on when the flash went off. It all happened so fast!

I'm not sure how this happened, or how long it will last, but if you do a search for Alienware Review on MSN, my site is the #1 hit! According to my web logs, that page gets quite a bit of traffic from search engines. I also recently received an email from someone stating that they would not being buying an Alienware machine due to my review. It's nice to know that I can hurt their sales, even if just a little, after being mistreated.

My blog also finally got Blogmarked! I guess I finally found someone out there who appreciates my ramblings. It's nice to be appreciated.

Help our troops talk to their families this holiday season (or anytime, for that matter)! Donate to the USO Operation Phone Home. They take the donations and buy phone cards to give to the service men and women who are far away from their families.
I spent 9 years in the Air Force. I've spent the holidays alone in a dorm room, too broke to afford to call home (especially at $2 a minute!). I wish they had this program back then! I can say from personal experience that the USO (United Service Organizations) helps the troops. When I was 18 years old traveling alone into a foreign country, they were there to give a guiding hand in the right direction. No matter where I was traveling, their offices in the airports gave me a place I could fall asleep without worrying about my luggage being stolen.
I see almost every car on the road these days with a "Support Our Troops" yellow ribbon. That's great! But Talk is cheap. Show them that you appreciate what their doing by giving them a little piece of home.
I just donated $50. I challenge you to give what you can. If that's $5 or $500, anything helps.

Also, I'd like to send a special Thank You to another group of people who SHOW their support to the troops. The Maine Troop Greeters at the Bangor International Airport. They meet EVERY plane of troops that comes through BIA. It doesn't matter if they are heading to training, to war or coming home. They are there to show their support and to say Thank You for all that the troops do for us. My Mother and Step-Father are a couple of the greeters there. My friend Julie and I have joined them while in Maine on vacation. They started doing this during the FIRST Gulf War and they continue on today. My hats off to all of them.
The USO office at BIA offers free cell phone use to the troops passing through so they can call home.

Of course, I’d also like to thank the Troops. They arrive in Bangor after a long trip (I KNOW what those trips are like) and still smile, shake hands, give hugs, sign autographs and show general kindness to all who greet them.

I was surfing along on BlogExplosion and won 25 Credits! Yeah! Then, I apparently misinterpreted one of those stupid pictures and failed to collect the credits! How irritating! I guess there are no second chances :-(

There are some Strange News Photos found at WFTV.

While some are funny:

Others kind of freak me out:

I haven't got through all 99 of them yet, but there are some cool photos to check out!

Teen Accused Of Shooting Santa With Pellet Gun
I'm guessing this kid is now on the "naughty" list. No need to check that name twice. When you shoot Santa Claus, I'm willing to bet he remembers it. And this kid better hope his house doesn't catch on fire, because the one he shot was a fireman dressed as Santa.

There is a really funny entry over on ihaveacrazewife.com called If Women Ruled the world. The pictures gave me a good laugh for the day. Go check it out!

I was on my way home from the White House Christmas party on Monday with every intention of coming home and writing a blog entry about the evening. However, on my way home, I received a phone call with the news that my Great Aunt Maude had passed away. Needless to say, things got hectic quickly while I made travel plans back to NH for the funeral. The blog just took a back seat. I'm back now, and I'll bring everyone back up to date soon.
For those of you that I normally send a Christmas card, if you haven’t received one yet you now know why. I may not get to the rest of them at all this year.

Everyone keeps asking me what I want for Christmas and I keep telling them I don't know because I have most everything I want. Well, I've come up with some things that would be nice...

• Richard Petty Driving Experience - I've done the ride along, now I want to DRIVE!
  
• Skip Barber Racing School - Even just the most basic one day driving school would be a blast!
  
• A 2005 Mustang GT - I'll even trade in my 97 Mustang GT to help offset the cost! :)
  

Ok, Ok... I know these things are expensive. For something cheaper, you can check out the few items on my Amazon.com wish list.

A friend of mine from my High School days, Bob Lampen, is in town this weekend. I went out to see him tonight. We went to a place in Towson called The Still. It's an irish restaurant/pub. The food was good and so was the music. It was great to see Bob and his wife as well as his brother Chuck and his girlfriend. However, it's really hard to catch up in that atmosphere. I can't hear a damn thing over the music and my throat hurts from trying to yell answers back.
Well, I'm off to take a shower. I smell like smoke.

I have started playing around with the templates and cascading style sheets (CSS) for the site. I made it wider and added a little color. I'm not sure what I think of it at the moment, but it's far from done. Let me know what you think.

Well, congress has passed the Intelligence Reform bill. All that is left now is for the President to sign it. I'm wondering how this will affect my little world (I'm a Govt. Contractor).
You should read the article to see what other things are included in the bill besides just creating the position of Director of National Intelligence. I especially found this one interesting:

Creates a Privacy and Civil Liberties Board of private citizens, with access to all government agencies, to oversee privacy protections

Adds 2,000 Border Patrol agents and 800 immigration and customs agents every year for the next five years

That's a lot of new Federal Employees! That's great for the job market and bad for our taxes I'm sure.

What's YOUR opinion of the new bill?

What politician is responsible for making laws that make things like this possible???? "Homeowner Can't Get Man Out Of Her House". Yes Mam, I know you own the house and he doesn't have a lease and he doesn't belong there but you can't make him leave and if you change the locks without a court order YOU will be in trouble. That sounds insane to me, so what politician said "Hey! That sounds GREAT! Let me vote for THAT!"
And then we have "Deputy Fired For Urinating In Parking Garage Elevator". He did this at least 5 times before getting caught. At least they fired him. That's the only thing I can find "RIGHT" about this story.

I went and picked up my new suit today. I guess I can look presentable now. I decided that while I was in there I should pick up a new White dress shirt. I mean, I have several but they haven't been out of the closet in FIVE YEARS. So I was afraid they may now be yellow (from sitting unused) or just completely out of date. So without thinking I just asked for a white dress shirt, preferably "wrinkle free" (I hate ironing) in size 15 1/2 x 33. They rang it up and I about choked. I walked out of the store thinking "I must be on crack! I just paid $50 for ONE plain white dress shirt!". It better turn out to be a nice shirt! I could have bought two or three at JC Penney for the same price.

Most everyone on the net knows that ROFL means "Rolling on the floor laughing". But do you know what ROTFLMAOWPIMPSLAGJTTWFDLAMSUASL means?

I think it's about time I get off my fat ass and start exercising or something too. My weight isn't getting much worse, but my gut sure is. Since I KNOW I have back problems, I guess I better do something before the Gut causes them to get worse.

Today's news: Dealers Report Stolen Marijuana To Authorities.
And I felt stupid for spending $50 on a shirt...HA!

Today was "Sunday Funday". That basically means that Jen, Heather and I laid around the house and watched movies while eating junk all day. It was fun to have some complete and total down time. And I still think Shrek 2 is better than the first one.

I was surfing blogs through BlogExplosion tonight and I found a link to a funny video on offred01s blog. I did find that it didn't play well by streaming, so you may want to download it to your computer and then watch it... it plays well into my "I don't want kids" theory.

I'm a fairly seasoned traveler. I have many thousands of frequent flyer miles spread across several airlines. I found an interesting article on msnbc.com that detailed some interesting travel tips that I had not heard before. The two I found most interesting were:

1) seatguru.com - a website that tells you everything you wanted to know about every seat available for most airlines. For instance, on a United Airlines 757-200 (757), "seat 16F has extra room due to the exit row and is often preferred over row 15 due to the full recline. Many flyers complain that the air that makes it past the door seal can make for a very cold flight." Anyone who travels a lot knows that a good seat makes a big difference.

2) The Knee Defender is a cool little invention that clips onto your tray table to keep the guy in front of you from reclining his seat into your lap. This is especially important if you use a laptop during flight!

If you plan on flying at all, you should check out the article!

This past weekend I had an occasion to try out the Gelstat. It is kind of odd to try and hold a liquid under your tongue for 60 seconds without swallowing. It did seem to help though. I have a lot of pressure from my sinuses right now which made it difficult to really tell the results, but the pressure subsided and the headache that usually follows the aura didn't materialize. I'll report again AFTER my sinus issues get solved.

I stumbled across a blog on Migraines. It is http://www.migrainedaily.com/. It contains a lot of information on things people are trying and links to interesting articles.

Mens Health magazine (Dec 04 issue) reports:

Mayo clinic researchers say the people with migraines often think they have sinus headaches, which prevents them from receiving the best treatment. When 100 patients who said they suffered from sinus headaches received neurological evaluations, 86 percent actually were found to have migraines, says study author Eric Eross, M.D. If you're plagues by headaches, visit a neurologist, who can give you a more accurate diagnosis than a family doctor or allergist.

The next time you think your job sucks, check out some of the jobs listed in Popluar Sciences worst jobs in science list. You could be an Anal Wart researcher or a tick dragger. Maybe instead of your "lousy" job you'd like to be a tampon squeezer? I think NOT! So just remember, maybe your job isn't so bad after all!!

I received my first Christmas card today. As always, my first card came from Lynn. I find it amazing that she can have cards delivered before I've even gotten around to buying any. What makes it all worse is the fact that I know she's been done with her Christmas shopping for MONTHS!!!

My friend Joe forwarded me a link that I found hilarious! It's called the Dialectizer at http://rinkworks.com/dialect/. You give it any URL and it converts it into one a few different dialects such as "Redneck","Jive","Elmer Fudd" and more. Here is a piece of my blog converted to Elmer Fudd.

twip to the Awwewgist
Fow those of you who have nevew been to the Awwewgist, wet me expwain what happens. Oh, dat scwewy wabbit! Dey put a whowe bunch of awwewgens on the skin of youw foweawm.

Too Funny!!

And of course, leave it to someone from my home state of NH to come up with this!

"RinkWorks is a privately owned entertainment web site based in New Hampshire. "

For those of you who have never been to the Allergist, let me explain what happens. They put a whole bunch of allergens on the skin of your forearm. They leave that on for 15 minutes and then check to see if anything reacted. For all of those things that do not react, they shoot some of the allergen under the skin. Then they let that sit for 15 minutes to see what reacts. Well, NONE of them reacted on my skin. That meant I had the joy of getting 24 shots today. Of those 24, only 1 showed any indications. So, I have a mild allergy to mold. The Doc gave me a nasal spray to try out and a follow up appointment in a month. He said if this doesn't help then the next step is to talk to an Ear Nose and Throat (ENT) doctor. We'll see how it goes.

My friend Julie called me this weekend and invited me to the White House Christmas party. I figured if I'm going to be partying with the President, I should probably have a new suit. I don't think my ONE suit which is about 8 years old and getting a little...ummm...tight...is the right thing to wear to a party like this. So I planned on going and buying a new suit after work today. I just couldn't do it though. My sinuses are killing me! I would normally take something to help that, but I have an appointment with the Allergist tomorrow and I'm not allowed to take anything for 72 hours prior to that appointment. Hopefully they will figure out my problem and give me some miracle drug to stop the sinus pressure. I've been fighting this problem for a year or two now. I went to the doctor and they sent me for a CT scan of my sinuses. That came back "Normal with indications of allergies". So this is the next step I guess.
Thankfully, I have a couple weeks before I REALLY need that suit!

Well, in case you couldn't have guessed, I spent the majority of my afternoon watching the final NASCAR Nextel Cup race of the season. It was a great race! Mayhem started before the first lap was even completed. Almost all of the top 5 points contenders were at the back of the pack AND the front of the pack at some point in the day. At one point, I believe there was a total of an 11 point difference between them. Greg Biffle, who drives for Roush, won the race. Kurt Busch, who also drives for Roush, won the Championship. My favorite driver, Mark Martin (ALSO a Roush team driver) took 4th for the year. So, all in all, I'd say Jack Roush has a lot of celebrating to do!!
Now I guess I have to find something constructive to do with my Sunday's until Feb. 20th 2005 when then Daytona 500 kicks off next season.

Would you know it. I forgot to bring in some gelstat to work with me today and I ended up with a Migraine. Thankfully it was minor and didn't last long. I REALLY hate the aura... That's what I get for saying yesterday that the migraines had been few and far between lately...

It was great to see Mark Martin take second place today. Another five laps and I think he could have won the race. The final race is at Homestead next Sunday. The top five are all STILL in it which should make this final race quite exciting! It's still anyone’s championship to win!

As many of you already know, I'm a big Ford Mustang fan. I own a 1997 Mustang GT. Well, just a few months ago, I bought a new 2004 F150 FX4 due to the fact that the Mustang can't carry anything bigger than a bread box and is horrible in the snow. Now, I have a new love. The 2005 Ford Mustang GT.
While I was searching the web, I came across the TV commercials on TheMustangSource. I love the Corn Field commercial and they way the brought back Steve McQueen for the history of Bullitt. But the video I fell in love with is called Performance Trilogy. It just Kicks Ass! It has the 2005 Mustang, the new GT and the new concept Shelby Cobra. I find it interesting to watch the one corner where the GT and Mustang go through and the Mustang is sideways and the GT is just stuck to the road. I guess that's what an extra $120,000 can get you!

Well, I have finally setup a blog. I guess that means I have to think about what I actually have to say. There will be some changes coming. I'm learning about templates, categories, trackback pings and the like. As I get it all figured out I'll be changing the look and feel of this site and hopefully make it a little more functional too.