Beanboy89's Blog - offline

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2007-02-08T23:37:14.266-05:00

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Other blogs I read: The Andrew Turnbull Web Journal, AntBlog701, Don_HH2K's Blog, Llais Ifanc Reloaded.

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Beanboy89's Blog - offline

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beanboy@gmail.com

New Blog!

2008-02-01T23:48:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone,

I would like to officially announce that I'm leaving my blog here at Blogger and I'm going to create a new blog over on my personal webspace.

The new blog is located at http://billy.mozfaq.org/blog/

Remember to update your bookmarks!

Thanks, Billy Miller.

Another new year

2008-01-01T17:11:00.000-05:00

Well, it's January 1st, so that means another year's come and gone. I can't believe 2007 has flown by that quickly. A big change has happened for me in 2007; I graduated from high school and started college. The new year is sure to bring some changes, but to what extent, we don't know.

Back home

2007-12-15T17:44:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm back home for a month. I actually came home Thursday afternoon, after I most certainly bombed my Chemistry 111 final exam. But that's OK, since I couldn't fail the class since my semester grade was so high anyway.

Since I actually now have free time away from school, I spent most of the day over at Spencer's place yesterday playing (Xbox) Halo 2 and Portal. I must say, Portal is one of the strangest, and ingenious games around today. After that, we went to the basketball game, and joined (or crashed, depending on who you asked) the pep band.

Then today I went paintballing with Spencer and Ryan (aka Sloth). It was pretty fun, and I enjoyed it (except for my fingers freezing) more than I did the last time I went (over a year ago). I did get to use the nice Tippmann 98 Custom, and not the crappy (IMO) rental guns. We may go again next week, and if so, I'll need to remember gloves.

I'm back... (and scanning for WiFi)

2007-12-10T11:42:00.000-05:00

I decided that I would get back into blogging. Nearly six months have gone by since I've said anything here.

On my way back to school yesterday, I decided to get my laptop out and see how many wireless networks I could find. Almost as soon as we got on the main road, three networks popped up, all secured. A few more popped up at different points, and within a matter of minutes, I realized how popular the SSID "linksys" was and how many of those were unsecured. It seems as though all of those were stock Linksys wireless routers with everything set as default. Heck, as I sit here in my dorm typing this, I see an unsecured network named "linksys" (I know who's router this is, too). On my way to school yesterday, I was scanning for networks for about 30 minutes, and I saw "linksys" appear nearly 25 or 30 times. Some other networks had more creative names, and some were business names, and most of those were secured networks. If we weren't sailing down Route 30 as fast through York, I believe I could've attempted to connect to at least one of the unsecured networks and browse the internet.

Missed it!

2007-07-26T10:09:00.001-04:00

Well, apparently FedEx decided to attempt to deliver my laptop today. I wake up at about 9:45 AM, boot up my computer, and then go and check the package tracking online and I see this:

I missed the thing by minutes due to my heavy sleeping. Then I go downstairs, and there's a tag stuck to the window next to the door from FedEx saying that they were there, but the package required a signature, and saying that they'd be back on Friday.

Nonetheless, I'll be sure to be up tomorrow extra early to be sure I'm available when they come by!

Welcome back

2007-07-24T00:48:00.001-04:00

Well, I'm back I suppose. In a larger sense, I need to welcome myself back to blogging. It's been nearly three months since I bothered to write anything here. Why? To be honest, I lost interest in blogging. Well, in any case, I'm in a mood to blog again.

I'm really hoping that the laptop I ordered arrives tomorrow (Tuesday). It was ordered online last Monday, and anytime before Wednesday falls into the "5 to 7 business" days that HP.com promoted.

I have also fought off two colds in the past week. Last week sometime (I think it was Tuesday) I woke up with a sore throat, which has always been a sure-fire sign that I was getting a cold. I took a cold pill and a Cold-Eeze lozenge, and by that afternoon, I was feeling great. Then yesterday came around. I worked in the afternoon, then I went to a friend's (late) graduation party, which happened to have an outside setting. I was sitting in the grass for a while, and by 9PM or so, I was beginning to feel wheezy, so when I got home, I took a shower and a Benadryl, and I was in bed by about 1AM, which had been the earliest I had gone to bed in months.

I woke up at about 4:30 AM, and I didn't feel well at all. I could feel a sore throat. I again woke up at 7:30, and took another Cold-Eeze and a cold pill. I napped throughout the day, and finally had to go to work at 6PM.

I actually like working evenings more than my usual afternoon timeslot. Tonight it was pretty bust the first two hours, and when I got off my break, I had some work to do clearing the lot, but by 9:30, I was pretty much finished.

Now, It's 1:05 Am, and I'm still feeling some cold-like symptoms, so I'm off to take some medication and get some sleep!

It's over

2007-01-07T19:56:00.000-05:00

Today was officially my last day working for Wendy's. On Christmas Eve, I have my two-weeks notice, making today my last day. I was hired back on July 5th, and in the past six month, going to work has been torture for me, mainly because the one manager was a bitch. I didn't quit because of most of the people, but the job itself. I hated going to work and getting greasy from all the fries, nuggets, and burgers, then coming home at night and having to shower.

Now with Wendy's pretty much over with, I have been hired at the new Wal-Mart on the south end of town, and I started there the day after Christmas. The store is set to open Jan. 19.

Another lap around the sun

2007-05-03T20:50:00.000-04:00

Well today at about 6:18 am, I've made another trip around the sun. It doesn't really feel like my birthday, and I didn't really do anything that special. It started out like a normal day. I got to school, took a quiz in geometry, went swimming in physical education, had lunch, went to physics and still didn't really understand anything, then had study hall and band in fifth period. T=hen I went to work to puck up my paycheck. One thing I noticed is that my name wasn't up on the "birthdays" list on the back white board at Wal-Mart. I know they didn't forget my birthday since they sent me a card in the mail.

For dinner, we went to the new Texas Roadhouse with my grandparents on my dad's side. I got my usual out-to-eat meal (chicken fingers and fries). My grandparents on my mom's side couldn't come since my grandma is in the hospital. She has had some medical problems the past few months, and she had to go to the emergency room last night. We visited her at the hospital after we went out to eat.

On the plus side, we have a three day weekend; no school for Friday, so I might have a few friends over. But the fun will end there. I have to work on Saturday, the spring band concert is Sunday, and on Monday I have to take the AP Government test, which will take up three periods. And on top of that, I have to have a song memorized for band by Tuesday in order to go on the band trip, and I need to do all the homework and quiz corrections in physics that I neglected the past week and a half.

Ugh...

Happy 25th Birthday, The Weather Channel.

2007-05-02T15:42:00.000-04:00

Today marks the 25th birthday of cable network, The Weather Channel. On May 2, 1982, the network made it's first live broadcast. While I didn't watch in the early years (mainly because I wasn't yet born), I began watching sometime in the early to mid 1990s. While other kids my age would be watching cartoons, I'd spend hours a day watching the weather on TV. I don't know why I was so interested, but I'm thinking it was because I was so interested in maps and geography, and when I saw the weather maps on the TV, I was hooked. I watched the channel throughout the late 1990s, and I remember all the different changes the network went through, and I remember our cable company's Weather STAR 4000. As I got into my teenage years, I lost interest, but then in March 2006, I discovered TWC Classics, a website devoted to the "classic" years of the network, and I finally re-found interest in the channel, and really meteorology in a larger sense. So in celebration of The Weather Channel's twenty-fifth birthday, I present an emulated Weather STAR III Local Forecast for TWC's 25th birthday:

Another monthly update...

2007-04-24T20:54:00.000-04:00

Well, it seems that, once again, I have totally neglected by blog here. I just seem to forget about it in my semi-hectic life.

So some of you might be wondering what's been happening in my life as of April 24, 2007, 9:00 PM EDT as I sit here in my balmy room since the last time I bothered to make a meaningful weblog post over four months ago. Well, not much, I suppose. I'm still in school, and I still work at the local Wal-Mart pushing shopping carts on the weekends. I expect things to pick up in my life, though as summer approaches. I graduate high school in June, and I applied for a maintenance job with the school district with a friend, but if that fails, I always have my other job to back up on to get as much money as possible over the summer as I'll be off to college in August.

On a technology note, my custom-built computer is still running well with Windows Vista RC1 (note to self, I need a non-trial OS to install on this thing before May 31). I really want some hardware upgrades now, though. I want to upgrade to at least 2 GB RAM (1 GB is nice, but I could use some extra "kick"), and I may get a TV tuner card so I can record television content and transfer some old VHS tapes to DVDs and such.

And this time, I will try my hardest to attempt to update this blog as often as needed.

100th blog post!

2007-03-23T23:29:00.000-04:00

After just randomaly signing into Blogger, I've noticed that I have made a total of 99 blog posts, with the 99th being back on Febriary 8. Has it been that long since I've blogged? I guess so. I keep telling myself that I need to keep this place updated so the cobwebs don't start to build up, but I always fail to do so. I guess it's just a lack of interesting things going on in my humdrum student life.

Anyway, this is my 100th blog post, I guess that's a special occasion.

Mozilla Firefox 3.0 alpha 2 released

2007-02-08T23:38:00.000-05:00

The second alpha release for Gecko 1.9 and Firefox 3.0 is out under the "Gran Paradiso" codename. More info and release notes over at mozilla.org.

Netscape 9 coming

2007-02-02T22:27:00.000-05:00

Netscape 9 is coming. The once glorious web browser that was effectively dead in the water a few years ago is set to have another major release. Netscape 9 was announced announced last week to a fairly receptive audience. It has been revealed that Netscape 9 will integrate into several "social networking" websites (like Flock?) along with Netscape.com. It is also known that Netscape 9, unlike it's predecessor Netscape 8, will be cross-platform.

Here's my personal comments: I am looking forward to having yet another Netscape-branded browser, but after seeing the disaster that was Netscape 8.x, I am a bit hesitant. Hopefully AOL has smartened up a bit since the release of Netscape 8 and is more focused on making Netscape 9 a usable web browser.

Merry Christmas

2006-12-25T21:37:00.000-05:00

I hope everyone is having a safe, enjoyable, and happy Christmas!

I'll get around to posting a comprehensive outline and review of my Christmas in the next few days.

First snow of the season

2006-12-07T20:05:00.000-05:00

This evening at about 7:55, it started snowing for the first time this year. It was a light snow, and it hardly stuck to the ground, but it was indeed snow.

Snow was reported at the NWS's reporting station in York:

The Weather STAR 4000 Emulator showing a "Light Snow" observation.

By 8:05, it looks like the snow has stopped.

If you'll recall last year, our season's first snow happened on November 23, 2005.

Done with that (well, just about)

2006-12-04T21:34:00.000-05:00

I'm about 95% complete on my Graduation Project. For those that don't know, all High School students in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania must complete a Graduation Project in order to graduate from High School. The project can be basically anything from a minimum 30 hours of community service, to constructing a shed, or just about anything else constructive. Me, I chose to build a computer.

The long road, figuratively speaking, for me started back in November of 2005 when my old Pentium III machine finally kicked the bucket (well I tried to install Windows NT4 onto a dying hard drive), but that's a totally different story that I won't dive into right now. But after that happened, I decided to order some new parts to modernize that five-year-old machine.

Now step a few months into the future...July 2006 when I finally decide to order the parts for my main project, which was to build a computer from scratch. When all the parts arrived in August, I took a Friday evening to assemble all the parts the best I could. When I thought I had everything together, I powered up the machine, but ran into problem after problem, like the power button not wanting to work properly, the optical disk drive not working, and various other trivial issues. Finally, a few weeks later, I was looking closely, and I discovered a power wire to the motherboard wasn't properly connected. After I corrected that issue, the machine booted. I was able to finally get a video signal, access the BIOS, and load the Windows setup program. I was able to boot from a Windows CD, and at least load the text-based portion of the setup. When I got to the partition disk screen, I found out that setup couldn't detect my hard drive, thus I wasn't able to partition the drive or install Windows. This was in September.

The computer basically sat in a non-working state for about two months, until over my Thanksgiving vacation I finally took the machine to a local repair shop to have them look at it. I took it in at around 2:30 PM, and by 4:30, they called and said that it was working! When I came and picked it up, they told me that I had been using a floppy disk IDE cable to attach the hard drive, thus I wasn't able to setup Windows. It cost me $11 for 15 minutes of work to tell me that I had messed up. Oh well, something that I probably would've found on my own.

That night, I got Windows Server 2003 x64 installed, but shortly, I noticed some issues, like missing drivers. I was expecting to have some, though, since I've heard horror stories regarding Windows x64 drivers. The most important thing to me was getting my D-Link DWL-510 802.11g adapter working so that I could get on the internet. I had searched PlanetAMD64 for the correct drivers, and I thought that I had found a match, but the drivers just didn't work.

Finally, I decided to install Windows Vista and give that a try, hoping that I'd be more likely to find drivers for Vista x86 than Server 2003 x64. I was right. After installing Vista (which took less than a half an hour), Vista detected my network card out right out of the box. I had to install no drivers for it.

I am very impressed with Vista on this machine. It runs quickly, and believe it or not, the user interface is not as bad as I expected nor anticipated it would be.

Here's a quick overview of the machine:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+, 2.0 GHz

1.0 GB RAM

250 GB HDD

DVD-RW

ATI Radeon x700 SE, 256 MB (capable of running Aero Glass)

Windows Vista RC1

And some photos of it complete:

Case fan in dedail:

My ten-year-old monitor and keyboard:

Ick, FrontPage!

2006-11-15T19:28:00.000-05:00

As the First Marking period ended, so did our work in the "HTML" section of my Web Design class in school. After finishing HTML Project 8 on Friday, I got a rare "free" day in Web Design to surf the internet. Mrs. Henry, the teacher claims what we did the "difficult" section of the class first (hand-coding web pages in Notepad), then we will end up with the "easy" coursework, FrontPage. Well, on Monday, we started our work in FrontPage 2003. Aside from a preconceived perceptions of the program, I basically know nothing about it, other than it's lack of ability to create very standards-based pages.

As soon as we opened the program, I knew I'd not enjoy the next 40-some days of class. FrontPage 2003 itself has that same gradient-laden GUI as the rest of the Office 2003 Suite, which IMHO is ugly in itself, but that's a totally different story.

The rest of the GUI looks like it had been thrown together, there are seemly random buttons everywhere for who knows what. What we are going to work in, design view, is basically a WYSIWYG editor, which seems way too noobish for most "normal" users. Then there is opening ans saving pages. The teacher mentioned that that is the most difficult of the program. But it is just too bad. For example, little things like each time you open the Open dialog box, it defaults to My Network Places, as opposed to My Documents or the last opened folder. There are countless more little annoyances in the program that make it just hard to use.

Another major thing is that if you'll examine the code that FrontPage spits out, there is no DOCTYPE Declaration.

For one thing, I enjoy hand-coding web pages in Notepad tons better than I like using FrontPage and having it create crap HTML for me.

Oh well.

In other news, this weekend, for the second consecutive year, we have won the Cavalcade of Bands Yankee Open Championships. In my four years in marching band, we have been the champions three times. That's a pretty good record, methinks. :D

I got a car

2006-11-02T22:21:00.000-05:00

My parents have just purchased me a 2003 Dodge Neon, my first car. I'll post more information and photos later (hopefully over the weekend)...

WeatherSTAR 4000 Emulator Updated

2006-11-01T22:39:00.000-05:00

Finally, a new version of the WeatherSTAR Emulator has been released. After, literally months of waiting, and numerous delays, Bill and the beta team have gotten together a once again working version of the emulator. The previous version has been broken since at least May due to a bug that caused the program to crash every time local data tried to be validated, making it impossible to set up a config file from scratch.

Here's a screenshot of the Regional Observations page, showing my new regional map, which is nearly spot on accurate to how my 4000 was set up prior to 2004.

I actually updated somthing

2006-10-09T23:28:00.000-04:00

No, your eyes didn't deceive you, that is an image banner at the top of my blog. I decided that my blog was getting too boring, and needed some color to it, so I made an IntelliStar-inspired banner for my blog. Editing Blogger's template to add the banner sub-text below the image was reasonably easy after I skimmed over the XHTML.

Any comments?

Some Programming Fun

2006-09-21T15:36:00.000-04:00

I made this today in Computer Math C++:

Click here for full-sized image.

Sick

2006-09-20T19:47:00.000-04:00

Hmm, I'm sick once again. This time, a cold/flu-like ailment. I believe it all started early this past weekend.

For starters, we went to the football game at Littlestown. For the third straight Friday night it had rained during the game. But unlike the previous two weeks, we preformed our show on the field. We didn't have our full uniforms on (jacket, hat, gloves, sneakers, jeans with coveralls) at the risk of getting them muddy for Saturday. The first half of the game, it didn't rain, but after we preformed and got third quarter break, the showers came; it was a light mist, but enough to get things considerably damp.

For Saturday's show at Hempfield, everyone had to be there by 1:00 PM for the practice on the parking lot. It didn't rain on Saturday, indeed it was clear for a good part of the afternoon. I felt fine all of Saturday, and the back of the bus was quite active the entire trip. (To note, I did get up to Level 12 on Tetris DS :-) ).

When I was my mom after we got back from school, she informed me that she called Wendy's and I had to be at work at 9:00 AM Sunday for a work meeting. I was also informed I had to work until 6:30 PM.

On a sunny Sunday morning, I woke up at 8:00 AM, and got ready for work. Not knowing when I actually started, I got into my uniform, and arri8ved a few minutes early. After eating a doughnut and drinking some orange juice, the meeting was over by 10:10. After looking at the schedule and finding out I had to start at 11:45, I called mom to pick me up. At this point, I started occasionally blowing my nose. Thinking it was just common allergies, I ignored it. As my day at work continued, I started getting a sore throat. At that point I knew I was getting a cold. By the time 6:00 rolled around, I was just about out of it, especially after Brian made me empty out the fryers. (Note to self: that sucked).

On Sunday, night, I got a shower at around 7:00 PM, and I was in bed at around 10:00 - the earliest I had gone to bed in a long time. After tossing and turning for most of the night and waking up at various times, I woke up at 7:00 Am for school.

Monday I was sniffeling and sneezing alot, and I even went through the 20+ tissues I brought from home plus countless hard Georgia-Pacific tissues from school.

Yesterday was about the same as yesterday, but I was given a gift by Mrs. Franco - a box of the aforementioned school tissues. Yay!

I brought these tissues with me to band on Tuesday night, where we learned seven new pages of the closer. I emptied that box by the end of practice. At 10:00 PM I finally got around to studying for my Unit 1 AP Government test, which was first period Wednesday.

This morning (Wednesday), I woke up with a painful right ear. The first thing I thought was an ear infection. I told mom about it, and she gave me some pain medicine and a cold pill. It seemed to work, as be first period the pain had worn off. In second period, C++, we finally got to the actual programming, writing a simple, 10-line program in Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0.

As the day wore on, I once again blew my nose alot, then 5th period was graduation project meetings. I met with the adviser, then left a few minutes later. At 3;35, I had to be down on Tower Field for band, as Band Night is Friday night, where we play a song with the 7th and 8th graders in band.

It is about 8:30 PM as I write this line, and my right ear is beginning to hurt again. Medicine time, methinks!

A month

2006-09-02T00:52:00.000-04:00

Wow! Has it been a month since I last posted anything in my blog? It looks like it. Err, I probably should blog more often, but historically, August has been a busy month for me. Band camp taking up two weeks, plus a lot of other days and evenings, and school starting, I can see myself easily slipping off the blogging slide.

Anyways, school started on Wednesday, and it has been a "normal" first week. On Wednesday, the first day of school, I arrived early, at around 7:45 and migrated to the music suite area, where I spent almost every morning last year, since they've enacted the whole "bus room" concept in the cafeteria. To my surprise, I was the only person in the instrument room. When the 8:10 bell rang, I left to go to homeroom, where everyone got the standard first day of school paperwork. Then at 8:35 all the seniors were called down to the auditorium, for a class meeting. That, again, was pretty much the same as previous years, except the assistant principals. One is back from a year sabbatical leave, the other guy is new this year.

At around 10:15, the meeting was over, and we got to go to first period, which for me is AP American Politics. Although it is an AP class, I feel it should be pretty easy, even considering I've never taken an honors or AP class.

Second period, I have Computer Math C++. The first day, I reported to the computer lab in the 500 hall, where my schedule said, but the teacher told us to report to his classroom, as we'd not be working on the computers yet. Once the class got to his room, we got our text books, and we were told to think of designs for paper airplanes.

Third period is where I think I'll have my biggest challenge this semester: English 12 British Literature. The first day, we got two text books (grammar and literature, but no vocab :-) ). From what I've heard, we'll be reading a lot of poetry and such in the class. Today, we started reading Beowulf.

And fourth period is another computer class for me, Desktop Publishing and Web Design. So far, the first two days of the class, we were able to play online games, since there was no work to do. But today, we finally got some webquest to do on the history of the internet.

In other news, I'm currently using SeaMonkey 1.1 alpha. The release seems to be very stable and the spell checking feature is awesome, even if a GUI for it hasn't been implemented yet.

Heat Wave '06

2006-08-02T00:42:00.000-04:00

We're in the middle of yet another wave of heat here in the eastern United States (well porbably more like the eastern two-thirds of the country). Today, the forecast high was 100 degrees. While, I don't belive it hit that high, I know it got well into the 90s, and heat indices went well into the 100s.

Screenshot of the WeatherSTAR 4000 Emulator's Local Observation screen.

Tomorrow, the forecast high temperature is supposed to be in the 100s as well.

On the subject of weather, Tropical Storm Chris has formed in the Atlantic Ocean. The National Hurricane Center has more info on TS Chris, and it's projected path.

No onto a completely different subject... As some of you might know, I got a job at Wendy's. My first day was Wednesday. It was absolutely horrible. But first some backgroud info.

Back on July 5, I want in for a job orientation. I was joined by five others that day that day all whom were to start working soon. Basically, that involved completeing an interview/questionare over the phone woth some regional manager, then watching a DVD on Wendy's procedures about safety and security. That lasted two hours. At the end of the day, it was stated that three people would start the next week, then the other three would start the week after that. I was in the latter group.

I called for my schedule on Sunday July 16 at around 11:00 AM. There wasn't a manager around to give out the schedule. So I called at atound 5:00, and got a hold of a manager. They said I was to start July 18. That was the same day I was to get my wisdom teeth removed! My mom got onthe phone and told them that I couldn't work that week since my wisdom teeth were to come out. They told me to call back Friday.

Friday came, I called at around 4:30, but they didn't have the schedule ready, so they told me to call back at at 9:00 that night. I called back at around 9:30, but they said they were too busy to give out the schedule. Call back tomorrow, thay said. I called at 11:00 AM. Their responce this time was that "their satellite was down." From what I found out all their scheduling is computerized, so for some reason they need to upload the schedule to a satellite. I was told to call back at 3:00 that afternoon. I was out all afternoon, so when I got home at around 6:00 PM, I called.

Finally, I got my schedule, but not after some wrong times... Originally, I had given the manager a list of all the days I COULD NOT work on. I catually gave them the list twice. They had scheduled me to work on Tuesday. I had band on Tuesday, thus I couldn't work. Therefore my first day of work was Wednesday.

On Wednesday, I worked from 4:00 through 8:30. I got there early, then I was given a work shirt, apron, and hat. Then I was told to watch an hour-long DVD on how to make sandwiches and how to use the grill. Then I was told to put on a pair of gloves and start making sandwiches for the drive-up window during the dinner rush. I was lost. As orders came op on the computer screen, I had no idea what to make, nor how to make it. I didn't know what to do. Thankfully, there was a small chart on what each sandwich had (i.e pickles, ketchup) so that helped me somewhat. Basically all I did on the first day was make sandwiches.

Thirsday, was like Wednesday. I basicaly made alot of sandwiches. I did some other stuff, too. Like go into the big walk-in freezer to get out lettuce and such. Then Friday came. There were different managers on duty, so that made things a little better. But then I was presented with a new duty: do a "trash run." Basically, I had to empty all the trash cans in the store then replace the trash bags. Sounds easy, right? Not so. First, I had to det a dolly out to roll the trash cans out back to the bigh trash can, and put the full cans into the big can. There are six trash cans in the store, so I had to empty all them.

I get outside to the big trash can, and then I wheel it over to the dumpster. Then I had to throw the bags in the dumpster. But there was a snag. Some of the trash bags were leaking. So as I struggle I lift the lid of the dumpster, and lisf a heavy trash bag into the dumpster, I get wet from people's sodas, greese, frostys, and whatever else people put in the trashcans. Thankfully I thought to wear gloves to do this.

What else consists of a trash run? Well I also had to collapse a whole bunch of double corrugated boxes. Not an easy task, as there are two layers of corrugated board glued together. And I was told all the boxed had to be collapsed because we could get fined if there was any non-collapsed boxes in the dumpster.

Saturday was my first "full" day, working for seven hours, I got a break at around 4:00.

Then I called back Sunday and again Monday to get a schedule for this week. I was scheduled for Monday. I had band Monday. Didn't work.

To sum it up, I really dislike my job, and the managers can't seem to schedule me correctly. Grr. I want to fine another job!

Wisdom teeth

2006-07-19T16:27:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I underwent a procedure to remove my wisdom teeth. Back a few months ago, my orthodontist recomended that I get all four removed since there wouldn't be enough room in my mouth for them if they had grown in any further.

Then about three weeks ago, I visited an oral surgeon for a consultation, and the doctor told me basically what they'd do in the procedure and the possible risks of it.

Now, flash forward to yesterday. My appointment is scheduled for 9:30 AM, I wake up at 8:30, not eating breakfast, since I wasn't supposed to eat six hours before the surgery. I gut into the opffice at around 9:25, and when my mom and I arrived, we checked in, and were presented with a disclamer, stating what risks were involved during the procedure.

At arounf 9:35 or so, I was taken back into the room where I;d get the surgery. First, a nurse took my blood pressure, then I was hooked up to a heart/pulse monitor. After a few minutes, the doctor came in and inserted a needle into the inside of my arm. In about fifteen seconds I was out.

At around 10:45, I had awaken up, but the anesthetic hadn't fully worn out, so, according to my mom, I kept dozing on and off for a while. And at this point, I'd been moved to a holding room, after the surgery was finished, but before I'd awaken, so I don't remember that.

At around 11:30, we left the office, and I arrived at home. When I got home, I had to wear an ice pack around my face to try to reduce any swelling. Also, I had to bite down on gauze pads and change the pads every fifteen or so minutse because they'd become blood-soaked. The use of gauze pads lasted until early evening when the bleeding finally had stopped.

As far as food, for lunch, at around 1:00 PM, I had cherry Jello since I couldn't really chew or bite anything very solid, and then alter in the afternoon, my mom went to my future workplace, Wendy's, and picked me up a frosty.

Also, in the afternoon, maybe a few hours after I got home, my nose started bleeding. We called the doctor, and they told us that one of my top wosdom teeth had roots that hit my sinus cavity, and that's why ny mose bleed. Thankfully that stopped after maybe an hour. But to be safe, I was prescribed to take decongestants for a week on top of the antibiotics(to prevent any infections) and the pain pills I'd been taken.

Today, when I woke up, I was feeling alot better, but after I was awake for a while, the pain in my mouth started to get worse. Also, my cheeks are swelled for now. I also ate some more solid food today: for breakfast I had scrambled eggs and for lunch I had a slice of pizza.

In other news, I've taken advantage of Microsoft's offer of free Virtual PC 2004, and I went ahead and installed it onto my AMD Sempron box. Then yesterday, I went ahead and installed Windows NT 4.0 Workstation on Virtual PC. The installation was alot easier than the previous time I tried to install NT4 onto an old Pentium III box, which basically killed that PC. Infact NT4's installation only took about twenty minutes, including the formatting of a 4GB partition.

While installing NT4 itself was easy, after that, things started to get more difficult: First, during setup, I chose the wrong network settings so I couldn't connect to the internet.

After getting the interent connectiion setup, I went off to update the OS since I was using SP1. My first snag was Interent Explorer 2, as that was shipped with NT4. It didn't take me very long to figure out that I coundn't do anything with IE2, including downloading any EXE files. Thankfully, I had SP4 and IE4.01 on a CD (which was included in the box when I bought NT4 on eBay three years ago). I installed SP4 and IE 4.01, and then I went to update to SP6a. After installing SP6a, I went to get Interent Explorer 6.0 SP1 since I wanted to be up-to-date, so I fired up IE4 and I discovered that it couldn't render Microsoft's own IE download site correctly, so I had to view the page source to find the URL to the IE6 installer. After installing IE6 SP1 and running Windows Update, I went to download K-Meleon 1.0 since I'd never want to use Interent Explorer by choice. As soon as I got K-meleon installed, I recalled that menus in K-meleon don't seem to agree with Windows 95 and NT, so I had to find a workaround by disabling the Rebar and Bitmapped menus plugin from within about:config.

Mozilla Firefox 2.0 Beta 1

2006-07-12T13:59:00.000-04:00

I plan to get back into the "swing of things" here, and I'm going to start blogging about Mozilla software releases again, after not blogging anything about web browser releases in over six months.

Anyway, today the Mozilla Corporation has released Mozilla Firefox 2.0 Beta 1. So far, I think I can only identify one new feature listed in the release notes of Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 (Gecko 1.8.1b1), and that is support for JavaScript 1.7.

I did, however, discover how to revert back to the old-stlye tab strip in Firefox 2.x. Previously in all other pre-Firefox 2.0 (and Mozilla) releases, the tab bar had a close button at the right side of the window. In Firefox 2.x, the tab close button was moved to show on each tab. IHMO, I don't like the decision. It makes it way too easy to accidently close a tab (thankfully, you can now reopen closed tabs), and it clutters up the UI. Today, while browsing the MozillaZine KB, I found a document which details instructions ho now to revert back to a Firefox 1.x-style tab close button. The preference is an about:config enrty, but before Firefox 2.0 goes final, I'd like to see the option available as a preference in the Options dialog.

Screenshot showing before and after changing browser.tabs.closeButtons:

What's the big deal with MySpace?

2006-07-12T00:56:00.000-04:00

If you've been on the internet during the past year or so, you've probably heard of a service called MySpace. Infact, I've never heard of it myself until sometime last year, when someone at school asked me "Do you have a MySpace?" I replyed "No. What's a MySpace?"

Since then, many, many more people have asked me the very same question, and I've replyed "No" each time, and I plan to continue that response, as I refuse to get a MySpace account. Why?

Well, first, 90% of the pages I've seen look horrible. A typical MySpace page seems to consist of the following elements:

• A background image. Most of the MySpace profiles I've seen use background images. The image is usually some sort of image that obscures the text in front of it, making the text next to impossible to read without highlighting the text.

• A Flash-based embedded music player. The annoying part of the player is that the music starts playing automatically on page load. Very annoying, espically if you're listening to your own music playing on your computer. I want to hear the music I choose to listen to, not what someone else listens to.

• Some kind of embedded video. Again, either a Flash-based, YouTube-like selection, or an embdded WMV file. Personally I find the latter very annoying, as many times embedded WMVs like to slow down or even freeze up my web browser.

• A blog, which at times can get way too personal. Do I really want to know how much you drank at someone's party? No. Like my photography teacher once said, 'why do people put that much personal information on the internet for everyone to see?' If you want to blog, fine, but if you're on MySpace exclusively to blog, do yourself a favor, move to another blogging service, like Blogger, Moveable Type or WordPress.

Next, the grammar and spelling of most MySpace pages I've seen is atrocious. Sure, I make mistakes in spelling and grammar, but most of the pages I've seen look they're conversations directly out of a typical teen's instant messaging session. I have a hard time desiphering some of the text on some pages, and I'm around this AIM-style language a heck of alot more than I want to.

So this ends my short rant on MySpace for this evening...

Stupidity and the Fourth

2006-07-04T23:41:00.000-04:00

Today is the 230th anniversary of the signing of a draft of the United States' Declaration of Independence. And for this one day a year, July 4, people do some crazy stuff. No, not lighting off fireworks, but stupider...

Yesterday, I call Spencer and I ask him if he's doing anything the night of the Fourth. I invite him to come over to my grandparents in town to watch the fireworks show. He takes me up on the offer. Then, today at around 5:00 we pick him off at his house and head in town. We get to my grandparent's place, and we eat dinner, whih was more like a picnic inside their garage.

After we wat, I call Brandon and see what he's up to, since I've not heard from all summer break. I ask him if he wants to come over to watch the fireworks. He says he'll be there in about an hour.

So in the mean time, Spencer and I walk doen to Moul Feild about a block away, where a large group of people always hang out on the Fourth to watch the bands play before the fireworks and the actual firework show itself.

After seeing that there is nothing to do down at Moul Feild, we walk back to my grandparent's place, where Dalton (son of my mom's one friend) is there. I don't really like to hang out with him since he;s four years younger than me, and he does some pretty stupid things. Then we got there, he had a few smoke bombs lit out on the sidewalk.

Then we head out behind my grandparent's house, where they have a an apple tree, and a whole bunch of rotten apples that have fallen off the tree on the ground.

We go out front and put an apple on the street, and se how long it takes a car to hit it. A few minutes later, splat. A car hit it. Then we got a few more apples, and put them in a line of about five apples, and a car comes by, very carefully and runs over all five apples. Pop, pop, pop... The sound of apples as a car runs over them.

All this time, we were sitting in the back oy my dad's truck, which was parked along the street, and Dalton wants to keep throwing the apples onto the street. We tell him, "Don't throw them at cars!"

Then we sat a couple of more apples onto the street, then here comes Brandon in his big primer-colored '84 F150. Splat! I quickly get out my cell phone and call him, and tell him to park his truck in the alley behind the house.

After getting his truck parked, he gets out and pops the hood. Sonce his truck stalled out while he was parking it, he pops the hood, and says he probably has a loose throttle linkage.

All four of us head out front, and set in the bed of my dad's truck. Dalton gets a few more apples. After a few minutes, and some more warnings of 'don't throw apples at cars,' and a few cloce calls of theowing apples behind moving cars, he throws an apple at a moving car, and hits the back window of a sedan.

The apple bounces off the window, and I saw the brake lights of the car, then the white back-up lights. At this point, Spencer, Brandon, and I jump out of the truck and run behind the house, leaving Dalton to fend for himself.

While Dalton takes the blame, and says that he did it, the guy gets out, and says I saw four guys, where are the other three? We come out from behind the house, and I thought the guy in the car was going to get in a fight with us or somthing.

We come out into the garage, infront Dalton's mom, my paremts and grandparents, and the guy just lectures us for throwing the apple and how not to do stupid things like that. He sounded really pissed off, and rightfuly so. I'd be that mad if it happened to me.

The rest of the evening until the fireworks show, Dalton sat inside, watching TV with his sisters, my sister, and my suster's friend, while Spencer, Brandon, and I were outside talking.

Then at 9:30, everyone gathered at the front of the house to watch the fireworks show. Normally, lasting about twenty minutes, the fireworks show is enjoyable to watch. But this year was different. It couldn't have lasted more than ten minutes. And there weren't even that many lit. What a disappointment. Even the fireworks I saw a few weeks ago at the lake which I saw from my house, which is over a mile away, was better.

Then after the fireworks, we normally light sparklers behind their house, but that didn't happen. Instead, Dalton lit off some of his fireworks.

When I got home, I lit off a box of sparklers just to light somthing myself and not watch other people light things off.

Happy birthday, SeaMonkey Project

2006-07-02T17:29:00.000-04:00

Exactly one year ago, today, the SeaMonkey project was founded. If you're out of the loop and don't know what SeaMonkey is, it is an all-in-one internet application suite build upon the codebase of the Mozilla Application Suite, complete with a web browser, email client, HTML editor/creator, and IRC chat client.

The story actually started back on March 10, 2005, when the Mozilla Foundation announced their transition plan to focus their efforts on the stand alone products, Firefox and Thunderbird and abandon any new development on the once flagship Mozilla Suite product line. The news didn't come as a suprise to most, since the creation of the Mozilla Foundation back in 2003 revamped the development roadmap that pushed the standalone products over the integrated suite.

After the March 10th announcement, a group of dedicated developers and end-users came together in a community-run group for the support of the suite. The group dubbed the project as "SeaMonkey," taking the name from the early codemane of the Mozilla Suite.

Then on July 2, 2005, an announcement was finally made, officially creating the SeaMonkey Project; the name of the continuation of the app-suite was to be "SeaMonkey."

On September 15th, 2005, complete with crude placeholder graphics, logos, and icons, SeaMonkey 1.0 was released, the first public release of SeaMonkey.

In the following months, the project gained professional artwork, a beta was released, then the culmination of the SeaMonkey Counsil's work, SeaMonkey 1.0, which was released on January 30th, 2006.

In the months leading up to the 1.0 release, many new features were checked into the SeaMonkey tree, including autoscroll, tab drag and drop support, download notification, phishing protection, and inline spellcheck in mail were all added - backports from Firefox and Thunderbird - and most likely would not have ben added if the Mozilla Foundation were still in charge of suite development.

On this, the SeaMonkey Project's first birthday, I'd like to say thanks to all those who have worked on the SeaMonkey project, and for making a great product - one that I use everyday, and would be lost without!

Ugh...

2006-06-29T23:30:00.000-04:00

So far my summer has been very boring, almost too boring. Since I last blogged, I've gotten the music for the marching band show. I have To have 23 measures memorized by the second ewwk in July. It shouldn't be too hard since there are two four bar phrases that are nearly the same, and about 15 bars or rests. I'll probab;y start memorizing tomorrow.

Also, tomorrow, I have a doctor's appointment to get a physical so I can get a work permit since I need one as I have a good chance of getting hired at Wendy's.

In other news, the whole mid-Atlantic area of the United States has seen ton of rainfall the past few days. Here, it started raining Sunday afternoon and it rained most of the time until Wednesday morning. There were a few breaks in the rain on Monday afternoon, though. The reason it rained so long is that the system that brought the rains was "training," which means that the storm was moving over the same areas, as if it were on a train track.

On Monday night and Tuesday nothg, after I had band practice, it was raining, and when I stepped outside it felt like I was in a steam room because it was so humid outside. Most of the rainfall was tropical in nature since there was an undeveloped tropical low in the Atlantic ocean, and that got cought betewwn a ridge of high pressure in the Atlantic Ocean and a stalled front over the Mid West US. Those two elements worked to suck up all the tropical moisture along the Appalachian Mountains like a funnel, thus causing the training.

The Weather Channel's Dr. Greg Forbes has more info on this at his blog.

Summer vacation: week 1

2006-06-18T22:17:00.000-04:00

Well, I;ve been out of school for over a week now, and it's felt like a typical summer, so far. Here's a summary:

Friday was the last day of school.

On Saturday, I went over to Spencer's house for a gaming party. At one point we had a total of four XBoxes, one GameCube, and one PlayStation 2 running, with three of the XBoxes in a LAN playing Halo 2.

Monday was my first "normal" summer day for me. Suprisingly, I woke up at 9:00 AM, which is very irregular for me over the summer.

Tuesday, I went out for dinner at the Hungry Parrot.

Then I wrecked my bicycle in the evening. I got some nasty injuries on my knee, elbo and wrist, along with general soreness the for a few days afterward.

How'd it happen? I was riding wioth my dad, and he I thought I heard him say to turn right at the next street, then I looked back, while riding at a good speed, and he said to contunue going straight. By the time I heard him, I was about to hit the curbing on the side of the road. I clipped the curb with my front tire, and I started to do down. I think I tried to over-correct myself so I'd go back into the street, and hopefully remain in control of the bike, but I wrecked into the street, and I slid for a few feet on the street. That's how I got the brushburns on my right wrist, elbo, and knee. I belive if I hadn't tried to over-correct myself, I'd of landed in grass, which would've probably been much more pleasent to hit that asphlat.

I picked up my bike, and I noticed that the handlebars had been turned around at least once, so flipped them around, and I noticed my front brakes had become tight, and the cable was almost unscrewed. But I didn't care, I just wanted to get home and clean my open wounds. I rode home, not caring about my front brake, sonce my back one still worked. Once I got home, my dad looked around at my front brake, and it looked fine after the cable was reconnected. I'll have to take the bike out for a test sometime to see if everything is functioning at it should be.

Wednesday: I went for a consultation for my senoir pictures, which will be taken in August. Then I went to York to get my photo driver's license taken, since I was driving with my stamped permit for the past month.

Thursday, I called Nell's and Wendy's about the applications I turned in. I was told, in the Wendy's call, that I could come in at 7:45 to talk to a manager. So I got to the restaurant at 7:40, and I asked for the manager. She was busy, so I was told to take a seat. 8:00 came and went, as the the various people comming in, ordering food, and leaving. At one point at least twenty people entered as part of a softball team, and they must;ve been in the place for near thirty minutes. Then Dan came out, and told me that the manager would be out in a few minutes. At 8:45, after an hour of sitting, I finally got to speak to the manager. The meeting was brief, lasting not even a minute. I was basically told to come back and supply a Social Security card, work permit, and I'd get an interview.

On Friday, I was over at school for most of the day. The Cadets Drum Corps were on campus for the day since we're cloce to Gettysburg, their seasons first preformance. Students from our school, and other area schools took part in a workshop, called "Music is Cool" with the Cadets and their staff.

The day started off at around 9:00 AM, with registration. All the students taking part had to wear some wristband and nametag. Tehn we went over to the middle school, where al the day's activities would take place, for an orentation. After that, we had about two hours of music sectionals, where we played some warm-up excerizes, then played an easy version of "Cadillac of the Skies" that we would preform with the Cadets later in the day.

After lunch, we were outside the rest of the afternoon. First for some marching basics, which practically everyone already knew. We did that for about an hour, taking water breaks about every 20 minutes, sonce it was about 90 degrees outside. Since we left our instruments outsode in their cases, the staff told the brass players to take their mouthpieces out of the case since we'd "burn our lips" if we played on them after hours outside. I took that message as a joke, but about two hours later, I got my trumpet out of the case, got out the mouthpiece and nearly burned my fingers since it was so hot. I quickly poured some cold water on it, and it cooled down some, but it was still warm. At about 4:00 PM, we got a chance to preform the music we worked on, playing it with the Cadets. The day ended a few minutes after 5:00 when we watched the Cadets preform their field show.

I was over at Specner's house most of yesterday (Saturday). I woke up at 8:00 and felt my like I was getting a cold. I had a sore throat, and was blowing my nose. But regadrless, I had to be at Specner's to help him woth his Eagle project, constricting Owl Boxes. I got there, and forst drew the layout fot the boxes out on plywood, and the wood was cut by Spencer's dad. Then we had to put the boxes together. Since I had never operated a power drill before, I was relegated to holding the pieces while Rob operated the drill. By lunchtime, the team of Rob and I got two boxes built, and I felt like crap. I was blowing my nose about every ten minutes. At that point I realized that I probably had really bad allergies, and not a cold. After lunch, Rob and I played some Metroid Prime Hunters, while ther others played Diablo 2 on Spencer's computer, which is a Penttium II 350 with 128 MB RAM, and can barely handle the game. At 1:00, we got back to work, and moved the building into the shade, to avoid the afternoon sun. By 3:00, we were finished, and I still felt really stuffed up and sick.

I got home slept for about an hour and then I took a shower since I had to be at my aunt and uncle's house for a Father's Day cookout.

Last day of school

2006-06-09T21:37:00.000-04:00

Today was the last day of school for me this year. I can now be officially be called a senior, which I suppose is a good thing.

Regardless, I had to take final exmas. Yesterday, I took the Algebra 2 and the 156-question English 11 A. The English exam seemed more difficult than I expected, since there was alot more grammar than I originally expected, and maybe it was my fault for not studying more than one hour the night before the exam. On top of that, the exam was averaged with the Vocabulary unit 1-12 exam we'd taken on Tuesday, which I scored a 68% on.

The Algebra 2 final was easier than I thought it would have been. The test was 28 questions with ten or so vocabulary questions at the beginning. Though there were some questions that I struggled on, like one where I had to find the perimeter of a rectangle be factoring the sides. I had no clue what to do, so I used the guess and check method to find the answer. I'm sure I got some points taken off for that.

Then Thursday night, I had to head back over to school for the Band Picnic. We started off be wating dinner, then played some class vs. class games, like softball and volleyball. By the time I got home, around 8:30 PM, I knew I had to study for my Photography final. I wound up reviewing for twenty minutes.

Then this morning, I left for the last day of school. I took no backpack since I had no books to bring. My shorts pockets were full of pencils, my house keys, Nintendo DS, MP3 player, and cell phone. I was ready to take oy one final for the day, Photography.

After homeroom, I arrived in the photo lab, and was ready to take the final. The exam itself was very easy, and it took me less than 30 minutes to complete the 90-question test. Since everyone was completed with the test in a short time, the teacher took the tests to the Scantron machine to be graded. I found out I got an 88% on the test, but when the three extra credit points were added (since my team won the review game yesterday), I recived a 91% on the final, and an 89% in the course.

After the period one test, everyone went back to their homerooms to clean out lockers. It took me lass than a minute to clean mine sonce I raraly use my school locker. Then we had 80 minutes to waste in homeroom, so the end-of-the yearvideo was played over the school's closed circuit TV system. While that was going on, a group of people, including myself started to play a Monopoly game, but before long, it was lunch time.

I didn't expect to eat lunch bwcause we were to dismissed at 1:30, but I had a slice of pizza anyway. After lunch, I headed down to to my English class room to see what I got on the final. With the two tests averaged together, I got a 73% on the final and an 81% in the class.

Afterword, I had to return to homeroom since there was still 30 minutes in the period. With about 10 minutes laft in the lubch/homeroom period, it started raining. Then a clash of thunder. Again, another crash, the lights went out for a few seconds, then came back on for near 10 seconds, then went out again. The clocks were stopped at 11:44. As what happened six weeks ago, there was another power outage. I've been going to school in that building for three years, and had never experenced a power outage, then withtin two months, two outages.

The generators kicked in, and the halls were lit. The bell rang, and were disimissed to go to fourth period. For me, it ment band, and no final. I got into the bandroom, and saw that the emergency lights had kicked in. It looked quite neat seeing the soamm lights on, and gave the room a different "atmostphere." Quite cool.

Despite the outage we stil had to go set up seats in now poorly-lit the gym, for graduation was later in the evening, and the weather was still pending.

As we were about to leave the bandroom, the principal gave an announcement saying that lightning had struck a pole across the street at the middle school, and it'd take some tome to restore power.

We got ourselves set up in the gym, and got back to the band room, quietly, so we didn't disrtub the students who'd been sent out in the hallway to take finals beacuse the outage.

At that point, it was 12:30, and there was an hour left in the school year. I did get toghther a big group (six people, including me) to play Tetris, and we did that most of the time until the end of the day.

Then at about 1:15, the lights suddenly came back on, and everyone started getting "hyper" and overly excited since school was about to be let out. When we were dismissed, I stopped by my Algebra classroom to see what I scored on the final: a 79%.

I then left the school, knowing that I did well on all my finals, and to my suprise, it was sunny outside as I walked to the bus.

I got home at 2:00, and as I got on the computer, I noticed I;d been disconnected from AIM. This had been happening alot lately, so I figured I;d reconnect. I try, and I see there's no interent connection. I thought it had somthing to do with the storm, like it took out the cable line or somthing, but I tured on the TV but the cable worked. I looked at the modem, and the status LED wasn't blinking, so that must've been the problem.

I spent the rest of the afternoon watching The Weather Channel and napping, while occasionally checking to see the internet had been restored. The time then came around what I had to go back to school for graduation. Thee was alot of debate weather to have it indoor in the gym, or outdoors in the stadium. The weather cleared (just barely), to have it outside. The band meet at 6:15 to warm up, then we traveled out to the stadium. The actual commencement ceremony took place at 7:30 under sunny skies. But soon dark clouds rolled in, and it looked as if it would rain. It did, right as the commencement ceremony ended, around 9:00. They were lucky. And I certainly hope that kind of weather doesn't happen next year when I graduate.

My mom picked me up in the back of the school afterword, since it was way too hectic in front, and we got home. I asked if the internet was back up, and she called tech support and they told her to unplug the modem, but that didn't work eariler, so they eventually told her to unplug the router, and it would reset itself, and that worked.

Yay!

All is well with, methinks. :-)

A taste of summer

2006-06-01T22:46:00.000-04:00

Today was another warm day around here. And that's been the theme all week, well since about Saturday. The daytime high temperatures have been in the 80°Fs to low 90°Fs, which is unusual for late May. The hottest day this year occured on Tuesday, where unofficially we hit 94°F.

But let's go back before that, to Saturday. I was in school at 9:00 Am working on my portfolio for photography. I basically finished a few slides in Photoshop, imported them into iMovie, then made a few songs for my portfolio's background music in GarageBand. I ended up being at school for four hours. Then in the afternool, after grabbing lunch, I picked up two job applications to Nell's and Ollie's. The weather was very comfortable at that point.

Then in the evening my family visited my grandparents (on my dad's side) since it is my grandpa's and cousin's birthday. We had to order the pizzas (six total) and then pick them up at Domino's and take them over to their house. Later in the evening, my dad, uncle, cousin, and myself played boccie ball, which is a bit difficult when you're in town, having to deal with a small lawn and trying not to hit prople's cars and windows.

Then Sunday, I spent the entire day inside watching auto racing. The Indy 500 in the afternoon, then the Coke 600 in the evening kept me enterained.

On Monday, Memorial Day, I had to wake up at 6:00, which is eariler than I awake on most school. The reason, I had to march in the Memoral Day parade. We played two non-patriotic songs, followed by the Star Spangled Banner (which all the bands played) during the ceremony in the cemetery. Shortly after we finished playing, I got out of my hot, sweaty band uniform. At that point, according to the thermometer at one of the banks in town, it was 78° at 9:45 AM!

Monday evening, we went over to my other grandparents house, since my grandpa's (mom's dad's) birthday is this week for dinner. At this point in the day, the temperature had hit 91°, making it the first 90°+ day we'd seen this year. When I got over to their house, I checked their digital theromometer, and the outside temp. read 96.1° inside read around 91°. As we ate dinner, I started swtating, since they were baking food in their kitchen all afternoon. And of course, they don't have any air conditioning, nor did they have any of their fans running. Needless to say, Monday wasn't a very fun day.

Tuesday was another 90°+ day; the high hit 94°, or at least that's what The Weather Channel's HiRAD system repotred on the IntelliStar.

Anyway in the evening, I had to head over to school for marching band pre-camp, which is where all the incomming freshmen band members who want to be in marching band come to learn marching basics. I had to be there since I'm a candidate for next year's leadership team.

Wednesday was another warm day, but the high temp didn't quite reach 90°. I had planned to stay after school and finish up my portfolio, but I got into the lab at 3:15, and there was already someone om my comouter. Great. I couldn't stay since I had trumpet lessons at 5:30, so I went home.

After trumpet lessons, my mom dropped mt off at school to finish up my project since it was due Thursday morning. I only planned to stay for an hour at must, but then I started creating more music in GarageBand so I ended up staying until 9:00.

Today was another warm, sub-90° day, but with the humidity factored in, it felt much warmer. Also, today was the final day of band pre-camp. It lasted after school until about 8:00 PM. Today, we went outsode, and marched some drill so the freshmen could find out how to drad a drill and dot book, and some bacic marching formations. The evening part, was more technical marching stuff, like slides and stop-and-gos.

Tomorrow's my section leader tryouts, and I'll have 75 seconds up infront the group, and have to call marching commands, and I'll be evaluated on how well I do it. Ugh. I'll find out on Saturday at the Band Banquit if I make it in.

Ranting...

2006-05-19T23:43:00.000-04:00

I've not ranted about anything in a while, and I'm bored out of my mind this evening, so I've come to rant about what I don't like about Macs and specifically, Mac OS X.

The past few months, I've been taking a photography class in school. At first, all the class projects were film projects, but then as the class progressed, we moved into the digital side of photography. The first things we (the class) did was scan out black and white film prints into the comouters, which are all Macs in the classroom.

Scanning in my prints was pretty simple: Put the print into the scanner, plug the USB cable into the side of the eMac, open Photoshop, go to File > Import > Epson 2480/2580 > Preview the scan set the DPI, and scan away.

Since we're scanning the prints for one reason: to put them into our digital portfoilo,they had to be cropped, and then saved. That's where my first major issue is: the save as/open dialogs. I cannot find a way to drag and drop files between varoius folders in the dialog, or drag files into/out of the dialog. If I want to do any quick file managment from within a program's Open dialog, I'd have to open Finder, and do it there.

And that leads me into my next issue: One day in Photoshop, I created a whole lot of PDF files in Photoshop to use as slide backgrounds in my portfolio. When I opened Finder to put the six or so files into a new folder, I found that the file's icons had been placed ontop each other. Accustomed to a Windows environment, I right (context/control/command/whatever) clicked in a blank space in the Finder window to try to find a 'arrange icons' menu entry. I saw none. So now I was stuck having to root through the folder, trying to find the "stacked" icons, and move them into a new folder.

Then just today, I was playing around in Finder, and I discovered a small icon in the bottom left corner of the Finder window that aligns icons to a grid.

My next issue is with iPhoto, which we use to import digital photos to the computers. First, the process involves opening iPhoto, connecting the camera to the Mac, then iPhoto recognizes the camera, and imports the photos. Fair enough. But when it comes to managing the photos, that's where I find trouble. First, since up to eight students use the same machine, we have to save everything with our names on it. So I'd put somthing like "miller-photos" as the name for the "roll" in iPhoto. But, you enter the roll name when you import the photos. If you forget, like I did a few times, I have found it next to impossible to rename the roll after importing the photos. Then there are Aphoto "albums," which you can remane, but I have yet to find a difference between a roll and an album.

Then there were a few photos that I knew I didn't want. I should be able to delete them, right? Not too easy, though. First, I simply tried to drag the photo to the Trash Can icon on the dock, but nothing happened. Then I did a right click on the photo, and looked for some kind of 'delete' or 'remove photo' option, and was dumbfounded to see nothing. Then after a few minutes, I finally discovered, I could just select the photos, and hit the "delete" (not backspace, which is also labled "delete") key on the keyboard.

Personally, I find iPhoto difficult to use, and photo managment near impossible to understand. For me, Windows Explorer is great for managing my digital photos. If I want to rename a photo or folder, I can right click the icon, and rename. If I want to move photos around, I drag and drop from folder-to-folder. If I want to delete, I can easily do that.

Sure I may be a little biased here, but I see iPhoto as kind of a watered down program for new computer users, and that same theme seems to follow all the iLife applications.

I'm now a licensed driver

2006-05-11T18:05:00.000-04:00

Nine-and-a-half months after getting my driver's permit, I racked in my "required" fifty hours of guided premit driving last night, and at 7:30 this morning, I rolled out of the school's parking lot in the school's driver's-ed Civic for my test.

Since I knew what route we'd take on the test from hearing what other people told me, my mom and I practiced the the same route over and over again until I had it down pretty good.

Overall, the test was very easy, and since I did take it through the school, I didn't have to do parallel parking. But I was somewhat concerned over one part, and that was changing lanes on Eisenhower Drive (a four-lane dividedroad), since you turn left onto the road, and must turn into the left lane, then switch to the right lane, then less than a mile later, switch back onto the left lane to turn left off the road.

When we returned to school, the instructor stampted my driver's permet, saing that I'd completed and passed the test. In a few weeks, I'll be getting a letter in the mail, saying that I can go to get my photo licence taken, and that'll be my real laminated licence.

Now that I have my licence, all I need is a car to drive around and then pay for gas. :-)

But I don't feel any older

2006-05-03T20:48:00.000-04:00

Well, today is my birthday, but for some reason I don't feel older. Infact if feels like any other day around here.

The celebrations (if you could call it that) started yesterday, when my mom, dad, sister, both sets of grandparenst, and I went out to eat dinner at Damons. I got my usual meal, chicken tinders, and cheese sticks. Then, we told the waiter that it was my birthday, and at the end of the meal, they gave our party a small chocolate cake, but everyone was too full from dinner to eat it, so we took it home in a styrofoam "doggy box."

After dinner, the grandparents came over, and after we let our stomachs settle a bit, we ate some of the ice cream cake that my mom bought.

I also opened the gifts I picked out for myself last night. I got Tetris DS for my DS and F-Zero GP Legend for the Game Boy Advance. Then, my sister gave me a larger package. At first, from the shape of the box, I thought she bought me a shirt, but as I opened it, there was a sheet of paper with "Happy 17th Birthday, Billy!!!" on it, and a picture of the box of the new Super Mario Brothers game for the Nintendo DS on it. The game won't be released until May 15, so she preordered it for me.

Today, seemed like a more normal day for me. No one at school wished me a happy birthday, since I told so few people about it...

Power Outage

2006-04-26T18:27:00.000-04:00

Today was a pretty odd experence at school. I was sitting in my first period class, Photography, and at about the time the class was to start, the lights went out in the classroom. Since the door was opened, I saw the hallway lights remained on. I didn't see anyone turn off the lights, so I thought it was a joke played by my teacher, who was in the hallway at the time. Then less than a minute after the lights went out, his G5 must've turned off, since I saw the reflection of the screen disappear on the whiteboard. The strange thing was that the eMacs and iMacs in the back of the room still worked.

As my teacher came in, he said the school had some kind of "voltage problems." Also, at one point, a custodian came around and said that he heard a loud bang near the school, and that a transformer had blow. He then heard the natural-gas powered gemerator was running behind the school.

My teacher also noted that the computers in the back of the room were still running, and went to shut them off, since there was a possibility of a power surge when the power was restored. It was pretty strange seeing some things like the TV, LCD projector, and eMacs/iMacs working, while the PowerMac computers, and the room lights not working.

Since we are mainly into the digital portion of the course, and most things are done on the comouters, we couldn't do much other than sit and wait until the power was restored. Then there were alot of rumors floating around that we'd get out of school early if the power wasn't fixed.

But then, after about an hour, the lights suddenly flashed on, and everything seemed back to normal.

I'm back...

2006-04-13T22:01:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I returned from my band trip trip to the Bahamas and Florida. Overall, I enjoyed myself on the trip, plus I got out of school for four days, and to follow that up, we have five-day Easter break. Since we traveled by bus, we left at about 2:45 PM on Thursday. Then at about 6:30 that night, the busses stopped for dinner in Virginia. After an hour long break, the busses once again rolled, stopping at various rest stops along Interstate 95 until we stopped at a Burger King for berakfast on Friday. Over the night, I got little sleep, partly due to playing many rounds of Metroid Prime Hunters and Mario Kart DS with friends, and alot of caffeine. Then Friday sometime in the afternoon, we arrived at Port Canaveral, FL, where the ship was set to sail at 5:00 PM that day.

After a lengthy boarding process, which involved going through a metal detector, and having my carry-on bags X-Rayed, I got on the ship and went to find my room, which I shared with Brandon. As I opened the room door, I was shocked to see how small the room was. By my best guess, the room, or cabin, was about 14'x10', and part of that was bathroom! There were two single beds, which could be converted into sofas or a large bed. Obviously, they stayed as two single beds for the three nights on the trip.

When I first arrived, one of the first things I did was explore our ship, the Sovereign of the Seas, and then get lunch at the Windjammer Cafe, which is an all-you-can-eat buffet. The Cafe is where we ate breakfast and lunch everyday on the ship. Dinner each night was held in one of the ship's formal dining rooms.

On Saturday, the ship docked in Nassu, Bahamas. There, the band got off, and played a concert in the city. First, the marching band preformed in a standstill formation, then jazz band played. Since it was pretty windy, we had a hard time keeping the jazz band sheet music from blowing away.

Sunday was going to be the day where we could goto Cococay, Royal Caribbean's private island in the Bahamas. At first, it looked like we might not get to go to the island, since it was raining, and there was low visibility, but the ship did get to anchor down. I spent a few hours on the island, swimming in the moctly clear ocean(while avoiding thunderstorms) before I went back to the ship. Sunday night was the concert band's preformance on the ship. Then later in the evening, the ship must've went through a storm, becuase as I was on the 12th deck of the Windjammer at about 11:30 PM (getting a slice of pizza), I felt the ship begin to rock, and I saw flashes of lightning outsde.

Monday was the last day on the ship, and we were off the boat by 10:00 AM, on the way to our next stop, Orlando, FL. Monday was spent as most of the day in Universal Studios and the Islands of Adventure theme parks. I spent the day with Spencer riding roller coasters, and walking back and forth between the two theme patrks. Then Monday night, we got to our hotel in Orlando.

Tuesday, our last day in Florida, was started off by a lack-luster berakfast buffet at the hotel, followed by a parade through Islands of Adventure. Then we got to spend most of the day in the park. Since Spencer, Brandon, and I were bored, we went to visit the Hard Rock Cafe in the park. There, a tour guide pulled us aside, and asked us if we wanted to see some music memorabilia not available to the general publie. We said yes. At first, I thought we were going to go into some back storage room, but soon I found out that that wasn't the case. We got acess to the "Lennon Room" full of John Lennon memorabilia. That was connected to a large theater and stage, where many famous rock stars have preformed. Tuesday night's dinner was at the NBA City, an NBA-themed restaurant. The busses were once rolling again. Stopping at more various rest stops, we some how got ahead of schedule.

Wednesday, for berakfast, we stopped at a Cracker Barrel restaurant. Since we needed to stall for time, to arrive on schedule, the busses drove through Washington, DC. We then stopped at a Taco Bell outside Baltimore for lunch. The caravan of busses rolled into the school's parking lot at 3:15, right as school was disimissed. My grandparents were waiting, and drive my mom, dad, and me home.

Since I was tired, I went to sleep at around 8:00 Wednesday night, and woke up this morning at 9:00. I'd slept for nearly thirteen hours!

Now I'm enjoying ny Easter break from school, and I'll probably put off all my homework that's due when I get back to school until Monday.

Away

2006-04-05T16:17:00.000-04:00

I'm going to be away for the next week. I'll be on a cruise with the high school band. I'll have more information in about a week. :-)

Standardized testing time!

2006-03-23T21:22:00.000-05:00

Okay, they're really over now. This week, all eleventh-grade students in my school (and the state for that matter) were taking the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) test. Basically, its a standardized test, sponsored by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to measure how well the school is teaching English and Mathematics. Tuesday, Wedensday, and today (Thursday), we took the test, which ate up the first two blocks of the day.

Each day, the procedure was pretty much the same: All juniors were called out of homeroom at around 8:25, and went down to the cafeteria for a school-issued "breakfast," which consisted of strawberry-flavored Pepperidge Farm Goldfish cookies, and a choice of orange, grape, or apple-flavored juice. The first day, I grabbed one pack of the Goldfish cookies, and an orange juice in a small, sealed cup. I opened the juice, and found it to be mostly frozen, as if it were sitting outside for the morning, or in a freezer for a while. I "drank" the juice, but wasn't hungry for the cookies, so I threw them in my pocket to eat at lunch.

Then I got to my assigned testing classroom, with about 30 other students. After the teacher read the test instructions verbatim, as required, I got to work on the math section. I could handle most of the questions, but then there were some more involved questions beyond the multiple choice section. The first day, there were three, the other two days, two questuions. You had to solve the problem by showing all your work, then explain what you did. The thing is that the two or three questions were really more, because all had multiple parts that built on the previous part of the question.

Then about half way the 160-minute period, we wrapped up the math section, and started the reading section. The same format followed with the teacher reading off the instructions. This week was actually the reading section, not the grammar part, which took place last month. Tuesday, there were three passages to read, then Wedensday and today, two per day. The format was read the passage, answer about ten multiple choice questions, then a constructed responce (writing a paragraph about whatever the prompt asked you). The passages were a mix of fiction and non fiction works, with one short poem.

Now that it's over, I really think it was easier than I originally thought, but by no menas would I want to do ot again. But the possibility does remain: if a "basic" or "below basic" scored this year, as a senior, you'd have to go through remediation, which means you will not get senior privileges, like being able to leave school early, and you will have to retake the test until a "proficient" or "advanced" score is achieved.

Photograhpy woes...

2006-03-17T18:17:00.000-05:00

Well, It's been another few weeks here since I've updated the blog. A major highlight (if you can call it that) of my week haas been doing a "Creative Interpretation" project; basically a fancy name for a project that involved taking pictures of various subjects of a certian matter. I.e. we were given the word "narrow." I had to find subjects that related to the word "narrow." I started taking pictures on Sunday, and finished up Sunday night. As I began to rweind the film out of the camera, I felt some resistance. I didn't think anything about it. When I opened the back of the camera to get the roll of film out, I saw ripped film; part still in the cassette, and some still on the spool in the camera. After a few select swear words, I reclused the camera to pervent the film from being damaged any more (from light). Then I told my dad, so we went into out interor bathroom, which is always pitch dark inside, and got the film out of the camera and put it into a black plastic film canister.

I went to school Monday, expecting to attempt to develop the ripped film, but then I remembered that I'd miss 1st preiod bscaues the jazz band was going over to the middle school to see IUP's jazz band play. So I mised out on Monday. Then Monday afternoom, I went out with a fresh roll of film, and tried to take the same pictures that I did the previous day. All went well.

Then on Tuesday, I got a chance to develop my good roll. I'd of tried to develop the ripped roll, but I ran out of time in the 77-minute period. Wednesday, in Photography, I thought I'd make prints, or at least a contact print, but after speiding near 30 minutes reviewing for our big black and white photography test on Thursday, I found I got into the darkroom too slowly, all the enlargers had been taken! I waited for one, but once I got my contact print set up, I exposed it for 10 seconds, the print turned out totally black, so I threw it away. By that time, I had 5 minutes left in class, so I stopped for the day.

Sometime on Wednesday, I realized I'd not have enough time to finish the project on class time, so I decided to go in to school early on Thursday and get things finished. So I woke up early (6:30 AM), and got into school by 7:30. I made my contact print (with a 5 second exposure time), then did two test strips, and made a final print. I'll admit that the print truned out dark, even with a #2 filter and 10 second exposure, but for any points I loose for that, I'll fet 5 extra credit points for turning it in early.

After Thursday's test, I mounted my print, and turned it in.

Needless to say, I can't wait until we move to digital photography...

Now it's Friday, and I have basically nothing to do with myself, since it's Spring break, and I have four days off school...

Photography project

2006-02-19T20:50:00.000-05:00

Last Wednesday, I got my first assignment in my Photography class. Take six pictures of subjects in motoin: Three different subjects, two pictures per subject. Six depth of field photos: Three different subjects, two pictures per subject. And twelve photos of whatever I want, but all pictures had to be in an outside setting. Sounds like an easy assignment, right? Well, so far, it's had some snags.

First, I needed a camera to use. The school has nine (I think) SLRs that students to sign out to take home overnight. I didn't think to get one Wednesday. On Thursday, after school, I had to be at the band sub sale to make subs. Then my chance came on Friday. Since students must wait until 3:15 to sign out a camera, I thought I could rush from clubs to the photo lab quickly enough to get there before anyone else. I was sure wrong. Outside the photo lab was a large group of students, all waiting for a camera, and most were seniors, who get out of school at 2:30 on Fridays. I thought, "Oh great, I won't get a camera!" Once I finally got in the room, I found that only five cameras were available, and I was tenth in line. Now I'd have a three-day weekend, and no camera to use.

I got home from school, and mentioned this to my dad, and he does have an SLR camera, but the light meter is no longer working. He said the camera could be still used, but you'd have to judge how much to open/close the aperture and the shutter speed for proper exposure. Regardless, I chose to use his Nikon SLR camera, and self-judge the settings.

Then today, during breaks in the Daytona 500, I went outside and took my pictures. The first set of two was my dad running down the street. The next set was my dad riding his bike. Then for the last set of motion, I got my mom to drive her car down the street, and take two pictures of that. We then did some depth of field photos. There must be three items in a line, and you must focus in the center object. Then to adjust the depth of field, to make background objects in focus, I had to adjust the aperture. But since I have no working light meter, I had to guess on the shutter speed.

So at this point, I have no idea if any of my pictures have turned out. So, I plan to take the remaining 14 pctures on my day off tomorrow, then develop the film at school Tuesday, then make prints on Wednesday. If they don't turn out, I'll attempt to get a school camera and take more pictures Wednesday night, develop on Thursday, then make prints on Friday, the project's due date.

In other news, I've updated my website with some new colors and fonts, and have created a sidebar tab for Mozilla and Firefox browsers. Check it out!

Boring week

2006-03-04T13:59:00.000-05:00

Yes, I've had a boring week, so there's not been much for me to talk about... On Tuesday, I was in the annual band Pops Concert, playing in concert band and jazz band. (I thought the jazz band did very well. :-) ). On Thursday, we had a two-hour delay for rain. It was supposed to be a mixture of freezing rain and snow, but neither ever happened, but the delay was still called. I wasn't complaining, though; I got two extra hours of sleep. Then yesterday (Friday), I had another project to turn in for Photography: the portrait project. We were supposed to have a vocab unit 4 quiz in English, but since too many people weren't ready, the test was pushed to Monday. Then in Algebra II, the Chapter 2 test was supposed to be Friday, as well, but a few students convinced the teacher to have Friday (and Monday) as review days, and then have the test on Tuesday.

Clubs

2006-02-11T22:30:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, like every Friday in the second semester of the school year, I get to spend 40 minutes at the end of the day in a Club. In eigth grade, in the process of siginig up for high school classes, we had to choose a club to attend. I choose one called "Challenging Internet Activities." Basically the club met in the Library, and we got to play internet games. That was in ninth grade. Then for my teneth grade year, the club slightly changed names to "Challenging Online Activities." It was the same idea, just a different name. Then about a year ago, it was time to sign up for clubs for this current year. Absent from the list was the "Challenging Online Activities" club. I thought "WTF? Where did the club get to?" Then I saw a club which I swear was called the "Entertainment Club." The description included playing internet games, and reading newspapers and magazines. Sounded like the same club. I got my schedule this year, and I saw "Edutainment Club," and I thought "What? I thought it was called the "Entertainment Club" before.

Regardless, I showed up in the Library last Friday for the club, and it was pretty much the same as the previous two years. The only thing is that the Library has finally phased out the old beige LAM desktops (blog post) for newer Celeron D-based LAM desktops which have 15" NEC LCD displays sitting atop the desktop.

Like all the computers at school, these run Windows XP Pro SP2 (we were running SP1 last year) and have Office XP installed (some computers in some labs have FrontPage 2003). Somthing I noticed in the first semester was OpenOffice 1.9.118 was installed on all the school's computers. Then I heard from my English teacher, who uses OpenOffice, that the school may switch to OpenOffice.org next year. I think it's good that they recognize alternative office suite software; next hopefully they'll drop that OS component, AKA Microsoft Internet Explorer, and have some better choices available. But I'm not holding my breath for that!

On a side note, why are there no good Flash games on the web? And if there are, I can't find them. I did manage to find a non-Flash online Tetris game to play in school. But when I got home and tried to play, I got a nice little JavaScript popup saying "You need IE4+ to play Tetris!" Oh well. If I want to play Tetris badly enough, without opening up IE, I'll either play Xultris, or I'll get out my archive CD-R which happens to have a NES emulator and Tetris on it.

I got my MP3 player back

2006-02-07T15:59:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, my 5 GB Creative Zen Micro MP3 player stopped working. So I sent it back to Creative for repair. Well, when I arrived home from school today, I saw a small brown box on our porch, I looked at it and saw "Creative Labs" on the packing label. I knew it was my MP3 player. I got inside, and almost immediately (after feeding the cat) opened the package. The box was full of styrofoam peanuts, had a few papers in it, and the player itself. I first thought they'd fixed my player, but when I opened a bubble-wrapped bag, I found a brand new player inside, and this note. They not only gave a new player, but upgraded me from a 5 GB model to a 6 GB model. Currently, I'm charging the new player, and later I'll attempt to load all my music back onto the device.

New classes and other stuff

2006-02-02T16:14:00.000-05:00

Last wednesday, I started my new semester of classes. So far, they're easier than I originally thought. In first period I have Photo. and Digital Media. Basically it's photography. The first few weeks of class, we'll be using film cameras, then be moving to digital for the remaining time. So far we've taken pictures with a pinhole camera (made from an oatmeal box), then developed the negative and positive images. In second period, I have English class. We are working on writing persuasive essays. So far, mine is seven paragraphs, which is one more than recomended. since a typed draft is due tomorrow, I'd better get started typing it before Jazz band tinight. During third period, I have Algebra II, which is mostly review thus far, from Algebra I. Fourth period is basically what third period was last year, band and study hall in the auditorium on non-band days. Also, I found out that I got a 98.5% on my American Cultures final, so I was happy; I expected a grade around there as the test was so easy.

Then last Sunday, I noticed I started to get a scratchy throat. Then Monday morning, my nose started running. At some point on Sunday, I knew a cold was comming. Since then, I've been smeezing, blowing my nose, and coughing every few minutes. This sucks.

On a computing-related note, SeaMonkey 1.0 and Firefox 1.5.0.1 have been released.

Chemistry, cleaning, logo issues

2006-01-23T22:16:00.000-05:00

I took my final exam in Chemistry today. In the beginning of the school year, I thought I'd struggle through Chemistry, but as the semester progressed, I found very little to be tough about it. So as the weeks wound down in the course, and we got our nine-page review packet two weeks ago, despite a few problems, I sailed through it. But I was still concerned about the final. I thought I was unprepaired, as I thought I was for my Office XP exam (more on that later).

I started off slow on the Chemistry final, as the first few pages were more involved questions. For example balancing combustion equasions and then finding out the moles or grams produced from the reaction. I was on page four of seven when I looked at the clock, and noticed twenty minuted left in the period. I thought 'I'd better hurry!' thankfully I completed the remaining questions of the test with five minutes left.

After the period 1 final, we returned to homeroom, then left to eat lunch d-wave. After that, I went to the gym. I have PE period 4, but sonce there's no PE final, we got to sit in the bleachers and talk (or in my case, play DS).

When we were disimissed early (1:30), I came home and checked Lettergrade, and to my suprise, the Chemistry final was graded, along with the Office XP final from Friday. I was suprised for both tests. I got an 87% on the Chemistry exam, and even more suprising (to me) a 92% on the Office XP final. Currently, my American Cultures final has not yet been graded, but I don't expact that to be entered until Wednesday.

Eariler this evening, my mom and I started to clean out our downstairs spare room (or den or "play room"). The room's closet, is were we started. The closet was literally covered by old toys and junk piled about three feet high. So we started, piece by piece, to remove or throw ayay things we didn't want any longer in the room. After two hours, a large trash bag was full, and ripping at the botton, full of junk and trash from the closet. Along with that, alot of old toys are plied on the foor in the main room.

The most interesting thing I found in the mess was an old wind-up alarm clock that my mom said she had when she was growing up. I'm interested in it because the glow on the hands and face of the clock. It is possible that they're painted on with radioactive radium paint, as was the case with many old portable alarm clocks and watches many years ago. The glow from the hands is very dim, which would indicate that any radium may be decaying. But of course without a Geiger counter I have no way of telling if the clock is indeed radioactive, but I'll still take caution; I don't want to be exposed to large amounts of radioactive beta particles.

After that, I tried to do some work on my K-Meleon build. One of the effects of updating K-Meleon to use a newer Gecko from Mozilla is that your about:logo will be changed to Mozilla's star logo. I tried to fix that by editing toolkit.jar, and chaiging the Mozilla star with the K-Meleon logo. I tried swapping out the logos; replacing thee Mozilla logo with a K-Meleon one. That did not work. It showed a blank about:logo, and no logo in about:.

Then I saw that K-Meleon's logo was 150x200, while Mozilla's is 200x200. I figured I'd try to make K-Meleon's logo into a 200x200 GIF by adding 25 blank pixels to each side of the logo. I inserted the new GIF image into toolkit.jar, and it worked. But there's one issue I've run into. The logo looks great in about:logo, but it is distorted in about:. It looke like about: resizes logo.gif to 150x200. So the 200x200 logo looks streached. But none-the-less, it's still the K-Meleon logo, and not the Mozilla logo. On my day off school tomorrow, I may release a new version with the updated toolkit.jar and logo.gif, the most recent Mozilla 1.7.xx nightly, and possibly a new K-Meleon theme I created.

Friday's final exams

2006-01-20T20:43:00.000-05:00

Today I took two final exams. One I was prepared for, and one I was not.

First thing in the morning, after homeroom, I went to Amreican Clutures. Period 2 was first. We reviewed in class for twenty minutes, then our text books and course projects were collected. The test itself was very easy. 200 questions total: 115 multiple choice, 10 ranking, and 75 matching.

Then I went to first preiod for an hour of Chemistry. The whole time was spent finishing our review packets. I still have a few Stoichiometry-related questions to finish on the packet. I'll do those Sunday night.

Then onto fourth period: Health. Our class took the final Wednesday, so today we got our final grades, which I already knew. Pretty much a boring waste of 80 minutes, so I played Mario Kart DS. :-)

Then we had third preiod. Pretty much I was expecting the final in Office XP to be today (Period 2 and 3 finals always fall on the same day). But I was so unprepaired for the exam. We were given no information about the finals, so I didn't study anything. Probably a mistake. The first 45 questions on Word weren't too bad. But once the Excel and Access questions appeared, I took wild guesses on some, while others were so obvious, I sailed right through them. Then there were three bonus questions at the end of the test, which were easy, but had nothing to do with Microsoft Office, but on the history of computers: One was about Xerox PARC, one on Steve Jobs visiting PARC and "creating" a GUI for the Macintosh, and finally one about Bill Gates "borrowing" (yes "borrowed" was in quotes on the test) Apple's GUI to create Windows.

Finals

2006-01-19T20:48:00.000-05:00

Well, it's that exciting time again: final exams. This time we are to end the first semester of classes. The way finals break down is each marking period is 40% of the course grade, then the final is the remaining 20%.

Yesterday, I took my Health final, which I spent a grand total of zero minutes studying for. The test was 150 questions on a Scantron form, and broke down to 80 multiple choice questions and 70 matching questions. I just checked Lettergrade, and I got an 89.3% on the final, but I'm disaponited I didn't get an A; I missed it by seven-tenths of a point. But I did get a 92 in the course, so I'm happy.

I also took a test in Amreican Cultures, but it was not the final, only a test for chapter 24. I got a 96% on that test, I wish I'd of done better, though.

Here was my day today:

In Chemistry we spent the preiod doing our 9-page review packet, as we spent Tuesday and Wednesday. Tomorrow, we're getting an answer key for for the odd(or even, I forget) answers. The final will be Monday.

In Amreican Cultures, we went over our semester grades, then breifly covered topics in chapter 20, 21, 22, and 23, all of which we didn't cover in the class. It kind of bothers me that we spent 20 minutes on lessons that should have taken two to three weeks to cover, but we just ran out of time in the class. Last night and tonight, I looked over the 7-page worksheet/study guide that recived for the test.

In third period, Office XP, the past few days everyone in the class had to present their PowerPoint presentations. The students had to grade the presenters. But I still think the teacher's grade will be entered in the gradebook. I think it was to keep us busy, and to get us to not fall asleep during the presentations. I presented on Tuesday. My topic: Access - Reports. Basically, I had a 14-page presentation about how to create a report in Access, and then add a calculated formula in design view. What fun . . . We were told nothing of the final in the class, except I remember hearing somthing about it being 100 questons. I think I have the exam Monday, but I'd not be suprised if it were Friday.

In fifth preiod study hall, I played Mario Kart DS against Rob and Mark. I seem to be getting worse, or they're getting better. Oh well.

Then I stayed after school because today was the day that the band fund-raiser pizza, funnel cakes, and pretzels arrived. I didn't want to ride the bus, so I stayed at school, roaming the halls with Brandon until my mom came from work and picked me up.

Tomorrow I have my Amreican Cultures final for sure, but I don't know of any more. Then Monday I know I have my Chemistry final. We also get out of school at 12:30 Monday, Tuesday we have off, then Wednesday we go to our new classes, and have another half-day.

MP3 player, Meteos, SeaMonekey...

2005-09-26T21:44:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the lack of here updates recently. Alot's happened in the two plus weeks since my last post here. Here are some highlights in no special chronological order:

• Bought a hard drive-based digital music player. To be speficic, I purchaced the Creative Zen Micro. It is a 5 GB device, which retails for $200 USD, but I got $60 off at Staples as I had two old gift cards laing around that I've been meaning to use for a long time. I had been looking at alternatives to my aging portable CD player for a while. I was originally looking at a CD/MP3 hybrid device that one could put many hundred MP3 files onto a CD-R and listen to them on the player. But then a friend of mine had the Creative Zen Micro, and the player had attractive features I'd not seen in any other protable devices. I further looked into the player, and read fairly positive reviews on major technology sites.

The player itself is very light, and easily fits in my pants pocket, which cannot be said for any portable CD player that I've had. Plus this thing beats carrying around a CD book with fifteen CDs in it.

• I bought the game Meteos for my Nintendo DS. On Saturday, on the long bus ride to the band competition, me and three friends played Meteos in multiplayer mode. Meteos is a puzzle game, which losely resembles the game Tetris. At first I had no idea how to play, but hen as we kept playing, I eventully figured it out, and enjoyed the game. In fact I liked the game so much, I bought it.

• SeaMonkey 1.0 Alpha released:

Over a week ago, in MozInfo701, I wrote:
"Last March, the Mozilla Foundation announced that they would officially put an end to new development of the Mozilla Application Suite. Now, over seven months later, the SeaMonkey Council has made available the first alpha release of the SeaMonkey browser suite. There are many changes and new features in this alpha release from the last official Mozilla Foundation release, Mozilla 1.8 Beta 1."

I have been using SeaMoneky 1.0a since then as my primary browser on Windows XP. It has been very stable for an alpha, but then again it's based relatively stable Gecko 1.8 codebase, which will eventully become Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and SeaMonkey 1.0. There are some noteable features in SeaMonkey 1.0a that I'd not specifically mentioned before. One thing that was ported from Firefox is a small notification that pops up when downloads are completed, and one thing that I have already made great use of is inline spell checking in Mail. More about these new additions are over in the SeaMoneky Blog.

That's it for this update, for now.

My MP3 player is broken

2006-01-12T19:57:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was sitting on the school bus after school, as the busses idled in front of the middle school, before they left. I had my Creative Zen Micro MP3 player in my coat pocket, and all of the sudden, the music stopped. At first I had thought I bumped the play/puse button, but then I realized thet the hold switched was on. I looked at the screen on the player, everything was frozen. I tried pressing all the buttons, nothing responded. I even tried switching the player off, nothing happened. At that point, I knew somthing was badly wrong. Then I slid off the back cover and removed the battery. I put it back in, and the plalyer booted, but it hung on the "Creative" screen. So I thought, what now? I arrived home, and plugged it into my computer with the USB cable. No responce from the player or computer. The "Creative" logo screen remained on for hours until the battery finally ran dead.

Today, at school, I talked to Rob, who also has a Zen Micro, and he told me that that happened to his once. He told me to remove the battery for a few hours, put it back in, and that will reset the player. I tried that, but guess what, it didn't work. Probably because the dead or drained battery. For kicks, I put thte battery back in, and plugged the USB back into my PC, and the player turned on. But, all that was on the screen was the tiny battery charging logo. The battery was charging. I let this happen for an hour and removed the plug. Then I found on Creative's support site a way to access a recovery mode. I tried a Disk Cleanup, but that went on for some 30 minutes before before I quit.

A little later, we called Creative's tech support. First, they had me on hold for 15 or so minutes, then got to speak to an operator. I was instrucred to go through the recovery mode again, but I told the tech suppory gut that I'd already tried that. He said that the issue is most likely a bad or broken hard drive. So they gave me some "RMA" number. I will be returning the MP3 player back to Creative so that they could repair or replace the player. Since I bought the palyer in September, it was out of a free 90-day warrantym but I still did qualify for the 0ne-year warranty, so I'm paing $25 for the return/fix/replacement of the player.

Christmas and recent happenings

2005-12-27T18:43:00.000-05:00

So it is now winter, and my 11-day "holiday" break from school, and I am so bored, sititng at home at the computer all day. I need to get out and do somthing!

Friday: Created a Christmas-Styled Windows Classic display scheme.

Saturday: Christmas Eve: Went to a family-friend's place for a party/get-together.

Sunday: Christmas Day: I had an enjoyable Christmas. A short list of things I recived is as follows: Mario Kart DS, a 512 MB SanDisk Cruzer Mini USB thumb drive, a They Might Be Giants CD - "Spine," a three-pack of Nintendo DS Stylus, I got some clothing, and a new Bach TR200 silver trumpet (which I really got a week and a half ago.)

My mom's parents came over for lunch, then we went to my dad's parents for dinner.

Monday: Attempted to create a customized build of K-Meleon and transfer it to another PC, using my new thumb drive. At first, I had some trouble on the other PC starting K-Meleon, it turns out there was some silly issue with the profile folder after transfering the build. I also tested Pu7o's customized Firefox build, Firescape.

Tuesday (today): Another shot at customizing K-Meleon.

So that's where I'm at now. I have another six days off school, in which I have to complete an interview for health class, work on a project on WWII for American Cultures, and work on learning a song for band tryouts in a few weeks.

SeaMonkey 1.0 Beta released

2005-12-21T21:27:00.000-05:00

SeaMonkey 1.0 beta was released yesterday. For those who don't know, SeaMonkey is a continuation of the Mozilla Application Suite, which was, at one point, the flagship product of the Mozilla Foundation. Yesterday, at MozInfo701 I wrote:

"The first beta version of the internet application suite, SeaMonkey has been released. Some new features include the ability to reorder tabs by dragging and dropping, ability to return to the last opened tab after closing a tab, autoscroll for users with mouse wheels, and the new SeaMonkey artwork. The release notes have a full list of new features and fixes."

After further research, albeit on #seamonkey, I found out that SeaMonkey 1.0 beta is feature complete, and a final 1.0 release should happen sometime in January.

Here's a screenshot of SeaMonkey 1.0 beta's about window, featuring the new artwork.

Like a new computer

2005-12-03T17:21:00.000-05:00

Last Friday, I was plaing arounbd on my old Pentium III computer, and I had been having various issues with that computer previous to that, such as random BSODs, freez-ups, and reboots. I thought they were all problems with Windows 98 SE, which was the installed OS on that PC for over five years. So I decided that I would try to install Windows NT 4 Workstation, which I'd bought two years on eBay, and never used. I rebooted the PC, inserted the NT4 CD, and proceded to format the drive . . .

But, shortly after I formatted the drive, I tried to select the partition to install NT4 to, but setup didn't let me install it. I went through this process numerous times, and same thing; no installation. I exited setup, and when I tried to get back to Windows, there was some sotr of message saing that there was no OS installed. I thought, oh great, now I have to reinstall Windows 98 SE. So I once again rebooted, and inserted the HP recovery CD that was included with the computer. I ran the recovery program, and I thought everything would be fine, but as I rebooted the computer, it was asking me to type in some command about somthing (I can't remember the exact words).

At that point I knew I was screwed. On Saturday, after my dad found out what I'd done, he asked if I could upgrade the hardware in that computer, and if that would fix it. I said sure, but I thought it would be expensive and difficult to find parts for an older computer. But I soon found out that finding parts would be no problem. On Sunday, I ordered an AMD Sempron 2200+/motherboard combo, 256 MB DDR PC2100 RAM, a 80 GB 7200 RPM Maxtor hard drive, and an OEM copy of Windows XP Home with SP2. When it was all finished I spent less than $300. The CPU/motherbaord, hard drive, and copy of Windows XP arrived Thursday night, and the RAM was sitting on the front porch Friday when I arrived home from school.

On Friday night I began to assemble the computer. My dad and I spent over two hours getting the old hard ware out and the new stuff in. Those old HP cases are small, and hard to get to some of the inside parts, with screws in awkward places. But finally, we had everything in place, and we went to try to boot the PC up. . .

But, I plugged the computer in, hit the power button, nothing happened. I tried this a few times. I then looked back inside the case, I knew the problem was somthing in the connection between the power button and the connection in the motherboard. The old wiring was a five-pin connector, but there were many more pins on the motherboard. So we tried different configurations, and differet placements. Finally one worked. The machine booted! The first thing I noticed is that the fans were very quiet.

Anyway, I went to install Windows XP. The install was fairly straight forward, and alot easier than that of NT4. Overall, setup took a little over an hour to complete. I then logged into Windows XP for the first time on this computer. I now needed to install my USB-powered Netgear WG111 v2 802.11g WiFi adapter. I had some problems at first with the install, but I realized I needed to reboot. Amazingly, the computer starts up in less than a minute, which is suprising, because my Pentium 4, takes near five minutes to boot. I than ran Windows Update, and installed 30-some updates, and rebooted. Then I noticed somthing: there was no sound. I ewnt into Windows Media Player, and tried to play an audio clip, but I herd no sound. I went back to Windows Update and downloaded some audio driver. After that was isntalled, I could hear sound, but it was quiet, with the voloume control up the entire way. I'll have to get drivers off the CD that came with my motherboard.

That's been my past week or so, and a unique experence rebuilding a PC. Overall, I'm happy.

Oh, and one last thing, I'd like to thank Don Luchini and Billy Nelson for helping me look for parts and such...

First snowfall of the year

2005-11-23T22:03:00.000-05:00

Screenshot from The Weather Channel website.

Tonight we are having our first snowfall this year. The snow started comming down a little after 8:30 PM, and now at 10:15 PM it's still comming down. At first, the snow was only sticking to grass and cars parked outside, but now the snow is starting to accumulate on our asphalt-paved driveway, and the street, but I don't expect the snow to get too deep. Normally we don't get snow this early, but this week has been, by far, the coldest week we've had since last winter, so any falling precipatition would most likely come as snow.

Hopefully the snow will stop by tomorrow, as we have some travel plans for Thanksgiving.

Woot!

2005-11-13T22:44:00.000-05:00

We won the Cavalcade of Bands Yankee Open championship at Hershey on Saturday! We scored a 96.00, which is very good, and is the hightest competition score we've scored since I've been in band. I'm happy. But even though the marching seasion is over, we still have the Christnmas parade to preform in, in two weeks, so I'll have to get that song memorized before then.

In other news, I've decided to re-enable blog comments here, but with one change, Blogger's word verification option. When you leave a comment, you will now have to enter a random code. This is simply done to discourage automated bots from commenting, and should help to reduce spam.

Commenting was disabled over a month ago after some spammers decided to spam the blog. Hopefully they've stopped, but if not, I'll close down comments once again. If the that's the case, I do have an alternate commenting system in the works, it's just not ready yet!

Small dent = big problem

2005-11-03T22:18:00.000-05:00

Well, as a trumpet player, I know that the instrument can take alot of "beating." Drops, being out in the cold and heat, a season of marching band, and alot of other things. And I know, even the slightest imperfection or dent in the valve area can render the instrument usless. Tonight, I learned how easy it was to dent a valve casing.

Tonight was a rare Thursday night off band practice. I decided to take my trumpet home, and practice, and hopefully memorize the song we're playing for the Christmas parade in three weeks. I was just beginning to practice, and the trumpet was sitting im my lap, and I was about to put the mouthpiece in, when I dropped the mouthpiece onto the second valve casing. Little did I know, when I dropped the mouthpiece that it would cause such a big problem. I has seen the mouthpiece hit the valve, and I picked up the trumpet and saw a very tiny dent-like nick on the outside of the second valve casing. I was always told that whenever you drop a trumpet (or any valved brass instrument) to "check the valves." So after I saw the dent, I did that. I pressed down on the second valve, and it went down about half the distance it should. As soon as I saw that, I freaked out. I knew that the trumpet was "done for" (for now.) Right away, I went and told my mom what had happened, and after explaining to her why the valve didn't work (how a valve works.) She said she would take the trumpet into Menchy's tomorrow (Friday) morning for repair. Until then, I'll have to play my cornet in band Friday. But I hope I can get a trumpet to play for the weekend in the game and competition, and the Cavalcade of Bands Championships next weekend.

Update - Friday, November 4, 2005 - 10:55PM.

Today (Friday) at school, I did have a trumpet to play in concert band. I played an old trumpet that belonged to the school.

Then, soon after I arrived home from school my mom called from work, telling me that Menchey's had repaired my trumpet. I didn't belive her when she told it only took five minutes in the repair room for them to fix it. I had expected the trumpet to be gone for days, maybe weeks as I thought it would be that majoor of a problem. That leads me to belive, that this (valve casing dents) must be a fairly common issue, and if the dent is small enough it can be quickly repaired, with little to no problems.

BTW: My trumpet seems to play fine now. :-)

Comments Disabled

2005-10-07T22:38:00.000-04:00

Due to another recent wave of spammers here, I've decided to disable comments, at least for now. I may turn them back on eventually.

Since October 2, there has been another four spam posts, here, all resembling the previous messages. Again, here's a screenshot of my Hotmail inbox for documentation.

If you need to get in contact with me, please use another mode of contact.

Thanks,
Billy.

Blog Spam

2005-10-02T12:38:00.000-04:00

In the past week, I've noticed an increase of spam here. I've had to delete six comments in the past week, five just today. It all sems like one person, or bot, just posting under different Blogger profiles. The style of the messages are all the same. First they give a comment on the blog, then give a link to what they claim to be their blog. The link is infact not a blog, but unrelated website.

The first message, last week, appeared just minutes after I had made a post, and that made me suspicious. Then no spam until I checked my blog today; five spam comments.

Here's a screenshot of my Hotmail inbox to where I have blog comments redirected. I have blurred out non-spam messages to protect the identities of legitimate contacts.

Honestly, I'm tired of trudging through my blog just to clean it up and delete this spam. If I see anymore spam, I will not hesitate to temporarily disable comments.

Thanks,
Billy Miller, Administrator.

Start of school, band performances

2005-09-10T00:43:00.000-04:00

Time for another one of those cumulative updates. I have been very busy the past few weeks. I apologize to the readers for the lack of updates lately.

School:
• School started on Aug 31.
• We have a new schedule at school for the day; the day is now 15 minutes shorter than last year. About a week before school started, we recived a letter, stating the new schedule. I thought nothing of it, except one thing: We had to go the cafeteria if we arrive at school before 8:05 AM, as all the teashers are supposed to be at meetings from 7:30 - 8:00, and they didn;t want students roaming the halls unsupervised. Well, Aug. 31 rolls around, my mom drops me off at school at around 7:45, there were a few teachers standing at the doors, directing me to procede to the cafeteria. I did. I arrive in the cafeteria, and find many students already there, and it was difficult to find a seat, none-the-less find someone I knew. So, I sat down, and pretty much looked at a clock until the 8:05 bell rung and we could leave to go to homeroom. Well, on the second day of school, I arrived a little later, maybe around 7:50, and the hallways were clear. I leasurally walked to the band instrument locker room, where there were a few other band stundents. Now, each day of school after that, I stay there until the 8:05 bell, mostly I study for my first period chemisry class.
• That brings me to another area, my classes. As I already said, I have Chemistry-A first period, and that will most likely me the toughest class I have this semester. So far, we've had two quizzes and done one lab. That lab was today, where the hightlight was when we got to burn a piece of copper wire with a Bunsen burner!
• Amreican History is my second preiod class. It has been so far an easy class(I've always done well in social studies), but I expect it to get more difficult as we advance through the course.
• Microsoft Office XP is my next class, which means I get to spend another 77 minutes a day on a computer. So far the class has consisted of doing activities in Microsoft Word 2002 from a thick paperback workbook. We will also cover Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. A plus to the class is that we get to use the newer PCs at my school with the LCD monitors. Also, it's worth noting that it appears as the school has finally installed Windows XP Service Pack 2 on their computers. I has hoping to see this icon on the desktops of the school computers this year, but no luck!
• Fourth period is where I have both health and phsical education (they alternate days.) On Wednesday, we started our pool unit in PE, so we get to head over to the pool at the middle school for nine classes. Thankfully this year, we do a water games uint, opposed to the snorkeling unit we had last year. Today, we played pool volleyball.

Band:
Today was our first marching band performance at a home football game this year. Tomorrow is our first competition, and Sunday, we have to perform at the York Fair; a busy weekend is lined up...

Now please excuse me, as I try to get some sleep at 1:30 AM!

Updates and Band Camp

2005-08-22T22:44:00.000-04:00

Ok, it's been about three weeks since I've posted anything here. I haven't forgotten about the blog, it's just been because I've been busy with other non-internet related things, mainly band camp. Last monday was the first day of band camp 2005, and started my third camp, as I'm a junior. Monday through Thunbsday we were at school from 9:00 AM through 9:00 PM. The morning sessions we are normally outside, in a marching block reviewing different marching techniques, then we go and learn new "sets." Sets are the position we are in on the field for the marching show. Then we head inside for lunch. In the afternoons, after lunch, we are inside for playing music. First we devide into sectionals. In my case, I'm with other trumpets, as I play a trumpet. We work on spots of music for the show we may be having trouble with. Then after that the trumpets get with other brass insrtuments and play music thgether as a group. Then when that is finished, the whole band gets together and works on the music. Normally the music we focus on is the sections of music that corrospond with the marching sets we learned in the morning. At about 5:15 PM, we head to dinner. When we are finished eating, at about 6:30, we head abck outside. That is where we put the marching sets we worked on in the morning with the music we reviewed in the afternoon.

That is a normal sechedule, weather pending. For example, on Tuesday, it rained all day; we were unable to go outside. So we spent the entire day working on music. Then Wednesday, to compensate for Tuesday's weather, we spent the whole day outside working on marching.

Friday's schedule differs. We had to be at school by 8:25 AM and in our band uniforms, as it is "picture day." A photographer comes and takes photos of the entire band, sections, and indivusals. That takes up most of the morning. Then for lunch, Friday, we hget pizza, this differs from the other days, as we don't have to pack a lunch. Friday afternoon, we were outside until 4:00 PM. We got dismissed at 4:30.

Today was the last day of "normal" the 9:00 - 9:00 schedule. Tomorrow and Wednesday, we have seperate afternoon and evening band sessions. Then Thunsday is the last day of band camp. I'll post more about that day when it comes...

Photos of new computer

2005-07-31T14:23:00.000-04:00

As promised, here are the pictures of the new computer.

These photos were taken on a 3.2 MegaPixel Cannon PowerShot A510.

New Computer

2005-07-29T15:27:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, our new PC finally arrived. Some of the basic spefications are listed below.
• HP Pavillion a1050y
• Intel Pentium 4 3.00 GHz
• 142 GB Hard Drive
• 504 MB RAM
• DVD-RW Drive
• CD Drive
• 3.5" Floppy Drive
• 17" HP vs17c LCD Monitor
• Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack 2

I'm enjoying the speed of this new PC, it's a large improvement compared to my old PC, which was bought by my family almost five years ago.

Of course, I'll have to get used to a new operating system, Windows XP. I've used Windows 9x for the past eight years, so some NT-only things are new to me. For example, user accounts, Windows XP is a true multi-user OS, unlike Windows 98, so we set up four user accounts, one for each person im my family. Then there's the new interface in Windows XP. One of the first things I did, after setting up my user account, was switch to "Windows Classic Style" in the "Dispaly Properties" dialog. Then I turned off some other annoying things in XP, such as Taskbar grouping and then I turned on the classic Start menu. After that, I added the "My Computer," "My Network Places," and "My Documents" icons back to the desktop, and removed the "Internet Explorer" icon. Then I went to download some applications. First was Mozilla App-Suite, then AIM 5.2, IrfanView, and Winamp. I may try some old games I have sometime, and see if they want to run. But for now, I think everything configured how I want it.

If anyone's wondering what this new PC looks like, I'll try to see if I can take some pictures of it and I will post them here.

Two Mozilla Firefox Releases

2005-07-13T16:04:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday, the Mozilla Foundation released two new versions of it's popular Firefox web browser.

Mozilla Firefox 1.0.5 is another minor revision to the Firefox 1.0 release last November. You can read the Firefox 1.0.5 release notes here.

Slightly more exciting is Deer Park Alpha 2, which is a developers preview of the upcomming Firefox 1.1 release. Deer Park Alpha 2 has many new features such as a much improved update system, and the ability to reorder browser tabs. You can read the Deer Park Alpha 2 release notes here.

I got my driver's permit.

2005-06-29T16:23:00.000-04:00

I got my driver's permit today. My mom and I went to the DMV center in Gettysburg, about a 30 minute drive. We got there at 11:30 AM, took a number, and waited... And waited... And waited more. Over an hour we waited. Finally they called "50," the number we drew. We walked to the counter, gave the needed info, and I began to take the test on one of the six touch screen computers. Most of the questions were very easy(e.g., 'What does the following sign mean?') Out of the 18 questions, I only got two incorrect, which isn't so bad providing most of my friends that took the test, had to retake it because they got more than three questions wrong. Then I walked back up to the counter, they started to fill out the permit, but couldn't continue because on my physycal, the doctor didn't fill out a required section. My mom had to call the doctor's office to get the info, and after that I got my permit. All together, we spent two hours at the test center. I didn't drive home, but we did go out behind the school, and drove in the empty parking lot, and did about 10 laps before we went home.

Now I have to wait at least six months before I can get my licence.

Spam via AIM

2005-06-12T00:28:00.000-04:00

In the past few days, I've been getting a number of Spam AOL Instant Messenger messages popping up. Who are they from? I have no clue. Nobody I personally know. Automated bots, perhaps? But whatever the case, I've recived four very similar messages within a few days, from four different senders. All the Spam messages are very similar in nature, wanting me to visit a site and 'sign a profile.' Then today, I recived another message, from an unknown sender with a link to what appeared to be a picture with a *.JPG extention. This looked suspicious, however. I hovered my cursor over the link to look at the tooltip. The link was to an *.EXE file! Someone tried to send me a virus?!

AIM can be an unsafe place if you don't know who you're talking to...

Summary of past weeks; Fianls

2005-06-05T22:29:00.000-04:00

I suppose you could call it laziness on my part, or lack of time, or whatever else, but I have not uptated my blog in a few weeks. Since alot has happened, I'll summerize...

• May 25-May 29 - Band trip in Virginia. On the trip: Visited the Armed Forces School of Music; Played two concerts with combined band and jazz band; went to a beach; sailed on a tall ship; visited National Maritime Center and Battleship USS Wisconsin; attended US Air Force jazz band concert; visited Busch Gardens theme park, rode four roller coasters.
• May 30 - Marched in Memorial Day Parade with marching band.

Okay, the list was short, but alot happened.

Now I must prepare for finals this week. I should have gotten started studing this weekend, but I grabbed the the wrong biner on my way out of school Friday. So that rules out doing the Algebra review packet which is due Wednesday or Thursday. I could look over my binder from First Aid(which I took home) but there isn't much content there to study.

I'll be busy Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

A year at SillyDog

2005-05-16T20:50:00.000-04:00

Today marks my one year anniversary of joining the SillyDog701 Meaasge Centre. In that one year time span, I have to say that I have expanded my knowledge of computing greatly, especially in the field of Gecko-based web browsers, which the SD701 Message Centre specializes in. I have also met alot of new people at the form. I really feel that the SD701 community is one of the best on the 'net.

So, I take this opportunity to say thanks to all the staff and members at the SillyDog701 Message Centre for what I have learned about technology in the past year, and I hope the next year will be as enjoyable as the past year.

Thanks.

Mozilla Suite 1.7.8; Mozilla Firefox 1.0.4 releases

2005-05-12T15:38:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, the Mozilla Foundation released Mozilla 1.7.8 and Firefox 1.0.4. Both releases fix "Code execution via javascript: IconURL" vulnerability. Mozilla Firefox 1.0.4 also fixes several vulnerabilitys exclusive to Firefox.

MozInfo701 has more information and download links to Mozilla 1.7.8 and Mozilla Firefox 1.0.4 in their article "Mozilla Firefox 1.0.4 and 1.7.8 suite released."

An enjoyable birthday

2005-05-03T21:23:00.000-04:00

Well, today is birthday. It really doesn't feel like my birthday, and I don't feel any older. But I did get a new Nintendo DS game, "Super Mario DS" and I got a few new shirts. But, eariler tonight, my parents, sister, grandparents, and I went out to eat at a restaurant. Then, we came back home, and later ate some cake.

An old Netscape 6 theme

2005-04-25T22:07:00.000-04:00

Well, yesterday, on one of my random visits to Netscape's FTP server, I came across folder full of old Netscape 6 themes. This really wasn't a suprise, as Netscape must have a place to host it's themes located on the now defunct "Netscape Theme Park" site. Looking through the various directories within the folder, I had recognized most of the themes there. But one theme had caught my attention as one I had never seen before, and that was the "Fog City" theme. After a further look at the Theme Park site, especially the Netscape 6.2 theme page, I found a small preview of the Fog City theme. Although the preview was a small screenshot, I thought the theme looked very interesting. I then did a Google Image search to find more picturess of the theme, but found no screens worth looking at. I was wondering if this theme had ever been updated since early 2002. I found the Netscape 6.2 release was the last ever release of theis theme. There had been an effort at Mozillazine's forum to revive this theme and make it compatible with newer Mozilla releases, but the thread has been dormant for over a year, and the theme had never been updated.
So, now it's today. I decided I want to look at the Fog City theme clocer. I went to install Mozilla 0.9.4, which is the browser Netscape 6.2 is based upon. The theme should work, right? I installed it, I get a 'this theme is not compatible with your version of Mozilla' message. Great now I have to install a 25 MB+ Netscape 6.2 package. Thankfully, I remembered about SillyDog701's small Stand Alone Netscape 6.2 packages. Once I had the 8 MB Stand Alone Netscape 6.2.3 package installed, I went to install the Fog City theme. The theme had been sucessfuly installed. I closed Netscape 6, restart it(as needed to switch themes,) and Netscape loads. What I see next is the Fog City theme. It was one of the best Netscape themes I'd personally seen. I liked the theme alot.
If Fog City were still being develpoed for current Mozilla releases, I may be using the theme today.

Full Sized Image.

My past week and a half

2005-04-18T17:17:00.000-04:00

Well, I haven't updated this blog in over a week. I've just been unusually busy this past week.

What's happened? In somewhat of a chronological order...

• A trip with the band to New Jersey and New York City.
• Attend a friend's birthday party.
• Start swimming in Physical education class, in school.
• Visit an amusment park, and wait over an hour and a half in line for one roller coaster, after the ride had broken down.

Well, in short that's been the past week for me.

As I am writing this, I'm waiting for my download of the Firefox CD to finish, for the second time. The first time, I accidentally closed Mozilla's download manager with only 30 seconds remainig in the download. Yeah, I was mad.

My new toy!

2005-04-04T20:47:00.000-04:00

Well, eariler tonight, I went out and bought a Nintendo DS portable gaming system. I made the decision because I mainly wanted to replace my original arctic Game Boy Advance that I got almost three years ago. But, also, many of my cloce friends at school currently have a DS, or are soon going to have one. Some of the things that appealed to me with the DS is that you can wirelessly play games with others nearby. This will come in handy for me during those long study hall preiods that I have on Mondays and Thursdays. The DS also has two backlit LCD screens, one is a touchscreen. I really think I will like the backlit LCD's, since my original Game Boy Advance had no internal source of lighting.
After returinig from the EB Games at the mall, I almost immediately opened the packageing, and I found a few documentation booklets, the "Metroid Prime Hunters" game, a AC Adapter/battery charger, an extra stylus, a thumb stylus, and the DS console itself. I carefully removed all the padding and packaging inside the box and removed the DS from the bag. Then I opened up the clamshell design of the DS, pushed the power button, and the system came to life. I was then presented with settings to set the language, enter my name, set the time and date, and fianlly my birthday. I then restarted the DS, inserted the "Metroid Prime Hunters" game, included with the DS. Played for a while. Then I played the game, "Asphault Urban GT" which I purchased seperate from the DS. Then I tried a few Game Boy Advance gmaes which also play in the DS.
Currently, the DS is sitting in the kitchen charging it's internal battery.

A pain in the neck

2005-03-29T19:13:00.001-05:00

For some reasion, my neck hurts whenever I turn my head to the left. I'm not really sure why, but somthing like this has happened to me about four of five years ago. It is a pain in the side of my neck, and only occurs when my head is turned to the left or my head is leaned back very far. It started to happen today, right as I was leaving school. I'm not certian to what is causing the pain, but I am thinking it is attributed to one of the following. About a week ago, my mother bought me a new, puffy pillow, to replace my old, flat pillow. Last night was the first night I started using it. I'm thinking that I may have layed incorrectly on the pillow, causing the pain in my neck. The other possibility is that I had physical education today fourth(last) peroid and I may have streached somthing in my neck then. But neither of the two explanations above sound too good. Besides, wouldn't I have felt the pain, if it had been the pillow, when I woke up this morning? And today in physical education, the only things I did was: a three minute run around the gymnasium, and I played badmitton since we had free-gym and we could whatever we wanted. Both activities weren't too straining, so I don't that has anything to do it. Hopefully the pain will disipate in a few days, like what happened a few years ago.

In other news, it appears the Trebuchet font has been installed on my computer. Everything in my blog is now in the Trebuchet font as oppoised to the Tahoma font. This is strange, since I never recalled installing Trebuchet onto my PC...

Three Mozilla releases

2005-03-24T08:59:00.000-05:00

The past few days have been busy for the Mozilla Foundation. There have been three major software releases from the Foundation to fix various security related issues.

First off is Mozilla Suite 1.7.6.
Mozilla 1.7.6 is the first release since it was announced that the Mozilla Foundation would discontinue development of the application suite. Mozilla 1.7.6 is also the first major Seamonkey release since 1.7.5, in December. Release Notes.

Next is Thunderbird 1.0.2.
After it was announced that Thunderbird development would skip a 1.0.1 release, focus went to the 1.0.2 release. This is the first Thunderbird release since the 1.0 Milestone last December. Release Notes.

Finally released was Firefox 1.0.2.
Firefox 1.0.2 focused on fixing some bugs that have have not been fixed by the sucessful 1.0.1 and 1.0 releases. Release Notes.

It is stressed to users of Mozilla products to upgrade to these latest version, as they all fix major security vulnerabilities.

A simple question...

2005-03-22T22:26:00.000-05:00

A simple question that I asked yesterday, may have turned "big." Not in the answer, infact that was very short and to the point. To what am I refering to?

Yesterday(Monday,) I had asked a question on Asa Dotzler's(a Mozilla Foundation staff member) web blog. My question was about the Firefox Win32 zipped builds. I simply wanted to know if there would be a zipped build for upcomming Mozilla Firefox 1.0.2 release.
There had been a release candidate of Firefox 1.0.2 out for a few days. But, I saw one thing missing from Mozilla's FTP server, a Win32 zipped build. Upon clocer inspection I found there hadn't been a zipped build, of Firefox, for a week(since March 14.) I found this strange, as the Mozilla Foundation normally releases zipped builds of all releases, and nightlys. I went to Asa's blog to get a better insight to why there hadn't been any zipped builds in a while.

My comment in Asa's blog:
"But, I have one question with the Firefox 1.0.2 candidate build...
Has the Mozilla Foundation discontinued the zipped Windows builds of Firefox? I can't seem to see any zipped Windows build of the Firefox 1.0.2 candidates. The latest Win32 zipped version, according to http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-aviary1.0.1/ was on March 14. The reasion I ask this, is because I find using the Firefox zipped builds much easier than dealing with the installer. Will there be any Win32 zipped build soon, or is one planned for the final 1.0.2 release?"

Shortly, Asa had a responce:
"Billy, yes, we're no longer shipping zipped builds for releases."

Since my question yesterday, I have posted about this once, at the SillyDog701 Message Centre. Since then Mozilla 1.7.6 and Thunderbird 1.0.2 had been released(more on those later, sometime.) Apperently, there were no zipped builds of Thunderbird, as well as Firefox.

I came to realize today that this had become "big." Well, for example at MozillaZine, in the Thunderbird 1.0.2 release article, numerous members had asked about zipped versions and then the link to Asa's blog, where I had asked my question, had been been posted.

Today, I was doing a Google search for "Firefox zipped" for some research(I'll describe later), and Asa Dotzler's blog is the first result.

Now to my research, as described above...
Since it appears that there will not be a zipped build of Firefox 1.0.2, I plan to make my own zip version. How will this be done, I'm not too sure yet, but I have a five day spring break comming up to "hack" together a zipped build. It will proabaly be based on the March 14 zipped build, which is the latest Firefox zip avaliable.

My school's computers

2005-03-18T15:58:00.000-05:00

It seems every year my school buys new computers. They always seem to be replacing the old machines with new ones. But one thing my school never seemed to do, until this school year, is upgrade the existing computers. So currently, my school has many different makes of computers in the computer labs and the classrooms. For example, some of the PC's are new this year, with fairly decent specs(Celeron 2000MHz+), and they even have LCD displays sitting on top the desktops. But some computers are aging, such as the ones that were upgraded from Windows 98 SE to Windows XP Pro. At least the Admins are aware that running Windows XP on older hardware can be straining, so XP runs in classic mode on these machines. Then there are the computers between the old and new. They are new enough to have run WinXP, but are lacking on their hardeware specs. A perfect example is in the Library, where I meet every Friday for my club period, Challenging Internet Activities. The club consists of basically playing online Flash games. The Library computers can handle these types of games, but not as well as the newer computers. Then there is the software... Every computer in the school now runs Windows XP Pro SP1 and they all have Office XP installed. The only bad part of this is that the computers have Win XP SP1 installed, not SP2, which adds security features to the OS and a popup blocker to Interent Explorer. Today in my club, I encountered at least seven popup windows, Using IE, in a timeframe of less than an hour. I was shocked at how annoying popups have become, espically since I use Mozilla based browsers that have very good, built in popup blocking capibilties. I would like to see XP SP2 installed, or better yet, a Mozilla based browser would be excellent.

Anyway, I managed to get a screenshot of the "About Windows" dialog from the computer that I was using in the Library. I was especially suprised to see that 256 MB RAM was installed on this particular computer.

End of the line for the app suite

2005-03-11T16:41:00.000-05:00

On Thursday, the Mozilla Foundation made a formal announcement that official develpoment would stop in the intergrated Mozilla App Suite. In essence, this means, that there will not be any final Mozilla 1.8 release, or any other releases past that created by the Mozilla Foundation. The last version of Mozilla Suite, codemaned Seamonkey, will be the Mozila 1.7.x series. This could have serious implications on applications that use the Gecko codebase. Also, for the countless users of Seamonkey and products that use it's code such as Netscape 6/7 and Beonex, including myself, there will not be any new versions. At least the Mozilla Foundation will continue to support the Mozilla 1.7.x branch for some time to come, and release any updates, it needed. Infact, Mozilla 1.7.6 is planned for release in the comming weeks to fix some security related issues that have come up since the Mozilla 1.7.5 release last December.

What a few days...

2005-03-08T22:10:00.000-05:00

Wow, the past few days, namly today and yesterday, have been tireing. Yesterday, it was one of the warmest days this winter, the temp. was cloce to 60 degrees F. So, my dad and I decided ro go on a bike ride. We had gone on many bike rides around town last fall, but I hadn't gone riding since late December(I think it was on new years eve) so my dad told me we were going to do an easy route; not many big hills. Well we went out in the late afterenoon, and it was still pretty warm outside, so I ventured off with only a long-sleved t-shirt. We started off, and right near the begining of the route we went down a long, steep hill, and according to my dad's speedometer on the bike, we hit about 25 MPH. Of course, now that we had gone down a hill, he had to eventually go back up another hill at some point. Now we were in town, where it is fairly flat, and it was a pretty easy time riding. Now we had to get back home, to we had to go back up... The choice was to take a short, but fairly steep hill, or a long, winding, not-so-steep hill. I shose the long, winding, not-so-steep hill, proabaly a bad mistake. By this time I had rolled up the sleves on my shirt. It was near the end of the ride, and I had tired; the hill felt like it would never end. Finally, we had navigated our way home so I decided to have some fun, so I want as fast as I could petal down the street, and I decided to run into a large snow bank that hadn't melted yet. Well, I guess I didn't have enough speed, and I hit the pile of snow and crashed my bike. I'm certinly glad the ground was very soft from melting snow so I didn't get hurt. But it was very fun. I went inside the house, cooled off, and took a nice semi-clod shower, which felt nice... Later in the evening, I was running through the kitchen(I proabaly should't be doing that) and I had my trumpet home, and the case was on the kitchen floor(it proabaly shouldn't there be also), and I hit my small toe on the side of the case. It hurt so badly. But I totally blame it on myself... So today, we have physical education in school, and I was hoping that we didn't have to run becase my toe still hurt. But to my luck, we had to run. Nine minutes of running, infact. We proabaly got off worse than the class the day before, because they went outside and only had to run one lap and walk one lap around our tack. We had to run inside the bacause the weather drastically changed from yesterday to today. It snowed today. Fourtinally, my toe didn't hurt as bad as I thought it would, and I acutlly did the most laps around the gym than anyone else in the class in the nine minute preiod. But after the run, I felt bad, I was exhusted, and drinking a large amount of water didn't seem to help either. Well, now it's late and I think I may be off to bed shortly, but that may be difficult becase of the very high, and loud winds blowing outside, proabaly in excess of 30 MPH.

Mozilla 1.8 Beta 1 is out

2005-02-28T16:49:00.000-05:00

The Mozilla Foundation has released Mozilla 1.8 Beta 1. After going through an extensive alpha cycle, for over six months, Mozilla 1.8 has finally reached it's first beta release. A second beta is expected before Mozilla 1.8 is branched. After a few days of testing this release, it seems to run very smooth. One of my favroite things added to this release is "* Various bookmarks menus were made middle-clickable." This feature has been in Firefox for some time, now it is also in Mozilla Suite.

More information and download links are avalable at this thread at the SillyDog701 Message Centre.

Firefox 1.0.1

2005-02-26T11:14:00.000-05:00

In typical fashion, I am reporting the latest Mozilla.org releases about a day or so after the fact of that release. Firefox 1.0.1 was released on Thursday, and I report the release today(Saturday) in my blog.

Mozilla.org has released Firefox 1.0.1 to fix a few bugs ans security issues that have arised since Firefox 1.0 was released in November. There are no new features in Firefox 1.0.1, only small fixes. It is recomended that all Firefox users upgrade to Firefox 1.0.1 as soon as possible to take advantage of the latest fixes. For users of the Mozilla Application Suite, an updated version is expected shortly which should fix the security issues that Firefox 1.0.1 fixed.

More information and download links are avalable at this thread at the SillyDog701 Message Centre.

Has it been that long?

2005-02-21T21:45:00.000-05:00

... since I have been to a movie theatre? I just realized it has been almost about four years since I have been out to a theatre to see a movie. I remember going out on President's Day(February), 2001 to see the movie Cast Away at the local theatre. If I remember correctly, I did't even really want to see the movie, but my mom and sister drug me along to see it. I haven't been back since. I just haven't had the desire to go out and see any movies. It may be the high admission and refreshment prices when going out, or there isn't any movies out that I want to see right away, that I can't wait to come out on video.

Early

2003-07-11T09:10:00.000-04:00

I'm up early this morning, why, I don't know...

New Blog

2003-07-10T22:05:00.000-04:00

I'm creating a new blog. It is empty now, but will probalay get full.

"Bowl-a-Thon"

2005-02-05T02:29:00.000-05:00

As I type this, it is around 2:30 AM. About fifteen minutes ago, I returned from a local bowling alley. Why? It was a fund rasing activity, the "Bowl-a-Thon," for my high school band so we can raise money to go on our annual band trip. We were at the bowling alley from about 10:00 PM through about 2:00 AM. I am not a very good bowler, and my highest game score was 89 in about seven games. I need to work on consistency, for example, one frame I rolled a strike, then next time, I roll a gutter-ball, then I rolled aother strike! I only get out bowling about once a year, so maybe that's the reason. I had a very good time even though I am not a very good bowler.

Snowfall

2005-01-22T22:52:00.000-05:00

Today was the first measurable snowfall in Southern Pennsylvania this winter season. Sure, we had a small dusting of snow eariler in the week, but that didn't amount to much. Upon waking up at about 8:00 this morning, I glanced out the window, and noticed it had already started snowing. It snowed through the day until about 3:00 PM when the snow slowed down, and eventually stopped. Then, later in the evening, I shortly ventured out into the approxmaly 10°F temperatures to take a measurement of the snow with my ruler. Accodring to my unoffical measurements, we got approximately six inches of snow, on the low end of the 6-12 inches of snow forcasted for the region. Tommrow, the main problem will proabaly be blowing and drifting snow with winds between 25 and 35 MPH.

Skinning K-Meleon 0.9

2005-01-21T23:24:00.000-05:00

As some may know, K-Meleon 0.9 was released a few days ago. K-Meleon is a lightweight Gecko-based web browser for the Windows platform. K-Meleon has a very simple skinning system consisting mostly of Bitmap images. And I decided that I wanted to venture in to the application skinning world, so I wanted to try skinning K-Meleon, which would seem simple. So, I was off... I started with the default theme in K-Meleon 0.9, Phoenity. It is already an excellent theme which orignated on Firefox, then was ported to K-Meleon and made the default theme in 0.9. My goal was to do the opposite, port the Firefox default theme, Winstripe to K-Meleon. As far as I knew, this had not been done in the past. Than with the Phoenity skin folder copied to a back-up location, I started making screenshots of the Firefox 1.0 toolbars, lots of them. After I got all of the main Winstripe toolbar buttons copied, I then pasted the Winstripe buttons on top of the Phoenity theme for all of the buttons that had a Firefox/Winsrtipe equal. So far, I have fully skinned history.bmp, layers.bmp, and mainbar.bmp. Partilly skinned are gohot.bmp, gocold.bmp, layerwindowcold.bmp, layerwindowhot.bmp, mailnewscold.bmp, mailnewsnot.bmp, and mainbarhot.bmp, mainbarcold.bmp. The last two, mainbarhot.bmp and mainbarcold.bmp are K-Meleon's main toolbar, and all of the visable parts are skinned. This was also the first element to be skinned. So far, some items are not even skinned, but I will proabaly do so shortly. This theme is unfinished, and not even at alpha-quality, but it is usable.

Below is a screenshot of my current progress in porting Winsrtipe to K-Meleon.

As you can see it is much unfinished. Open is K-Meleon's main window and History wuindow, which is fully skinned.
Full size image.

I may continue porting Winstripe to K-Meleon, providing I have any time to do so soon. Although it may never get finished.
If you want to try this skin, or have any other questions, please feel free to contact me.

Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 6 Released

2005-01-16T18:18:00.000-05:00

Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 6 has been released.
MozInfo701 writes:
"Al has reported that the sixth alpha release of the upcoming Mozilla 1.8 application suite is now available. This may be the final alpha release of Mozilla 1.8 before development finally moves on to beta and subsequent versions. Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 6's release notes do not yet list what changes have occured to the software since the release of the last alpha in November, but a rough change log is available containing over 400 entries."

Mozilla 1.8a6 Release Notes
Download Mozilla 1.8a6

I will get around to testing Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 6, eventually.

Happy New Year 2005

2005-01-01T22:37:00.000-05:00

My first blog post on the first day of the year:
I want to wish everyone a happy, healthy, and safe New Year 2005!

Subtle changes

2004-12-27T16:01:00.000-05:00

Today I decided my current template for my blog was getting a bit messy, so I cleared the template and reselected my previous template, in effect, starting over. I then readded the "Get Firefox" button to the side, and added some small links to "Other blogs I read," at the bottom of the blog. Another new thing, I have added XML Feed. There is an "XML Feed" link at the bottom for this. Also, the blog is now XHTML 1.0 Srtict.

Christmas and Mozilla 1.8a5...

2004-12-26T16:04:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas (a little late). Yesterday was Christmas, and I say I had a good time. On Friday, Christmas Eve, we went to a pary at a family-friend's house of my parents. On Christmas, my grandparents(on my mom's side) visited in the afterenoon for lunch, then in the evening we want to my grandparents(on my dad's side) house for dinner. I got lots of clothing, and my big present was an Xbox gaming consol. I got the following games for Xbox: Need For Speed Underground 2, Burnout 3, and NASCAR 2005, Chase for the Championship. As you can see, I enjoy racing/driving-type games. I also got a second controller for Xbox for playing multiplayer games.

Now, on a totally unrelated story, my test of Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 5 has ended. I made the desision on a bug that keeps crashing 1.8a5 at exit. That's the only problem I have run into with the alpha, but it was big enough to discontinue use. I will now be testing and using Netscape 7.2, and Mozilla 1.7.5, the latest stable Mozilla version.

Netscape 7.2 and other stuff

2004-08-29T16:45:00.000-04:00

Netscape 7.2 has finally been released after waiting all summer for it's release. Sorry for not repotrting it when it was released, I have been very busy lately with band canmp, and school starting soon. Netscape 7.2 is based on Mozilla App Suite 1.7.2, and was releaced on August 17, 2004. It has the expected Netscape/AOL addons, and a new Netscape toolbar, which has a Netscape search box built into it. It starts and renders faster than previous Netscpe releases. It is a good release, but I am sticking with Mozilla App Suite 1.7.2 for now.
Image: Netscape 7.2

Updates... New Mozilla Releases

2004-09-30T22:34:00.000-04:00

Well, it has been just about a month since an update here, so here is an update...
I have been very busy lately with school, sudying, and marching band this past month, I almost forgot about my blog, but not completly. There have been 3 major Mozilla.org releases recently, since my last update, Mozilla 1.7.3, Firefox 0.10 (1.0 PR), and most recently, Mozilla 1.8a4.
Mozilla 1.7.3 was another maintance release to Mozilla 1.7, providing some security fixes.
Mozilla 1.7.3 release notes
Mozilla Firefox 0.10 (1.0 PR) was a much more of a major release, adding new features and fixing bugs. Firefox 1.0 final is expected to be releaced sometime in October.
Mozilla Firefox 0.10 (1.0 PR) release notes
Mozilla 1.8a4 is another alpha milestone, with new features such as "Mozilla's pop-up blocker has been greatly improved in Mozilla 1.8a4." With at least one more alpha expected, according to MozillaZine, Mozilla 1.8 final may be realased until next year.
Mozilla 1.8a4 release notes.

Testing Mozilla 1.8 Alpha5...

2004-12-23T22:44:00.000-05:00

...Mozilla 1.8 Alpha5 was released about a month ago. I just started using 1.8a5 as my main browser. I am going to do large amounts of testing on this over my Christmas vacation. Despite the tag of "alpha", and only two days of testing, I was very suprised at the stability, and the very speedy loading time, and rendering engine of Mozilla 1.8a5. If development continues like this on the Mozilla trunk, Mozilla 1.8 final should be very good, perhaps the best Mozilla yet. I will keep you updated over my vacation...

Mozilla Firefox 1.0RC1

2004-10-31T13:11:00.000-05:00

Mozilla.org has released Firefox 1.0 Release Candidate 1 has been released. This is a testing release for fixing some last bugs before Firefox 1.0 final is released in November. MozillaZine reports,
Firefox developer Asa Dotzler wrote:
"Today we have our first Firefox 1.0 candidate builds available for testing. You can get these test builds from FTP. If you've already downloaded 1.0 PR (the 'feature complete' preview) and you're not really interested in testing and bug reporting, then you should probably stick with 1.0 PR for a couple more weeks and upgrade when we release the official Firefox 1.0."
Rough Changelog for Firefox 1.0RC1
Fireofx 1.0RC1 FTP Directory
Firefox 1.0RC1 Windows Installer
Image: Firefox 1.0RC1

Mozilla 1.7.5

2004-12-19T10:24:00.000-05:00

Mozilla 1.7.5 has been released. The main purpose of this release was to have Mozilla and Firefox on equal grounds in terms of the of the rendering engine used, both now use 1.7.5.

MozillaZine writes,
"Mozilla 1.7.5 has been released. This latest update from the long-lived 1.7 branch contains a version of Gecko virtually identical to the one in Mozilla Firefox 1.0. New features not found in Mozilla 1.7.3 include the NPRuntime extensions to the Netscape Plugin API and undetectable document.all support. This release is called 1.7.5 as that's the underlying Mozilla version that Firefox 1.0 reports itself as being (1.7.4 was skipped in case that number was needed for a security update).

More information can be found in the Mozilla 1.7.5 Release Notes. Builds can be obtained from the Mozilla Releases page or the mozilla1.7.5 directory of ftp.mozilla.org."

Mozilla 1.7.5 Release Notes
Mozilla 1.7.5 Changelog
Mozilla 1.7.5 FTP Directory
Mozilla 1.7.5 Windows Installer
Screenshot: Mozilla 1.7.5

Mozilla Firefox 1.0

2004-11-09T22:51:00.000-05:00

Mozilla.org has finally released Firefox 1.0. MozillaZine is reporting,
"The Mozilla Foundation today released Firefox 1.0, the first major new product release since the Mozilla Suite's 1.0 in June of 2002. Firefox 1.0 is the completion of roughly 2 years of work on the revolutionary new browser, which has raised the Mozilla Foundation's profile greatly in its year of existance. The release follows up the hugely successful Preview Release which had over eight million downloads.

Included in the release is a new start page which was formulated from user research including the home page poll taken here. Futhermore, the release will feature over a dozen localized builds released at the same time as the main English build, a first for the Foundation. In coming days, the Foundation expects at least a dozen more to be available.

Builds are available from GetFirefox.com or from the FTP server and release notes are also available. Support is available in our Firefox Support Forum and you can discuss the release in the other Firefox Forums."

Firefox 1.0 Release Notes
Firefox 1.0 FTP Directory
Firefox 1.0 Windows Installer (4.7 MB)
Firefox 1.0 FTP Mirrors [1] [2] [3] [4]
Screenshot: Firefox 1.0

Netscape Browser Prototype

2004-12-12T22:35:00.000-05:00

On November 16, SillyDog701 reported that Netscape will be releasing a new web browser based on the popular web browser, Mozilla Firefox.

"SillyDog701 received message from Netscape/AOL. Netscape is currently looking for testers for testing and providing information for new browsers. The new Netscape browser will be based on Mozilla Firefox."

Here are my first comments on the Netscape Browser Prototype:
After all of about three weeks, I finally managed to run the Netscape Browser Prototype on my system, despite having previous troubles, mainly with the installer. My first impressions of the Prototype were mixed. I don't really like the default theme, Aluminium, that is being used. It reminds me of a green-tinted version of the Mozilla Suite/Netscape7 modern theme, with worse buttons and widgets. Also the tooblar is very cluttered by default, with News feed tickers, weather feeds, and a whole bunch of other buttons that I went ahead and removed from the toolbar. The Customize Toolbar has changed somewhat from Firefox. You can drag and drop buttons onto toolbars, but the buttons are orgizinized in to tabbed catagories. Also strange is that the throbber is now in the top left corner of the screen, as opposed the the right. The Menubar is also placed in a strange position, at the very top of the window, between the titlebar, and window conrtols for Close, Minimixe, ect. Tabbed browsing also is very extensive in the Prototype, with options unseen in Firefox. Also each tab has a close button. There is also a "New Tab" button on the tab bar, similar to Netscape 7.2, which is also one of the features I have been wanting Firefox to implement on its browser. I haven't uesd the "Display as IE," feature as of now, and don't plan to. If I want to view the page in IE, I will open IE. While digging through the Options there are more options to choose from than Firefox. Differences from Firefox I noted are the very extencive Tabbed Browsing section, Site Controls which I find confusing, and a Form/Passcard manager. In preformance of the Prototype, I noticed it starts up slower than Firefox, but rendering it is on par with Firefox 1.0, Mozilla Suite 1.7.3, and Netscape 7.2. I think the Netscape Browser Prototype is a good start, but needs many inprovements before it goes final.

The browser is only avalable to download for those that applied in the now closed Netscape Browser Prototype Group at Netscape.com.
Discussion at SillyDog701 Message Centre
Screenshot: Netscape Browser Prototype, version 0.5.6+

Firefox 0.9

2004-06-15T15:50:00.000-04:00

Firefox 0.9 has been releaced by Mozilla.org. Although I have been using it for only one day, that isn't enough time to test it throughly, but my first impressions were Firefox is still unfinished. The reason why, it is still pre 1.0 relese, and it still has many bugs, but it is comming together. Firefox 0.9 has new features such as the theme and extention mamager. Firefox also has a new theme called Winstripe.
Image: Firefox 0.9
I am also still waiting for Mozilla 1.7 to be releaced, as that is what Firefox 0.9 is based upon.

New Mozilla Releaces

2004-08-06T14:24:00.000-04:00

Mozilla.org has releasced Mozilla App Suite 1.7.2, Firefox 0.9.3, and Thunderbird 0.7.3. These new releaces are to fix four known vulnerabilities in the Mozilla, Firefox, and Thunderbird. While this is all happening, Netscape 7.2 still has yet to be releaced to the pubulic. MozillaZine is reporting a Netscape 7.2 Release Within the First Two Weeks of August, so there still may be some time to wait for Netscape 7.2. Hopefully during all of this waiting time, Netscape is applying all of the Mozilla 1.7.x security patches to Netscape 7.2 to make it a great browser. Only time will tell.

Back to Firefox

2004-07-29T17:02:00.000-04:00

Well it seems a simple clearing of the cookies, cache, history, ect. seems to speed up Firefox 0.9.2 very much. I am happy Firefox is back to how it was. For maintance, I have decided to clear my cookies, cache, history, ect. on a regular schedule to keep Firefox speedy. Speeking of Firefox, 1.0 is getting cloce. The current nightly builds have alot of new things that will go in to 1.0. Firefox 1.0 will be great.
Firefox Roadmap

Switch (for now, I think)

2004-07-26T22:32:00.000-04:00

I have swithced browsers from Mozilla Firefox 0.9.2 to Mozilla 1.7.1. The reasion, Firefox has realy slowed down for me lately, and I wanted somthing faster for my browser. I may look around Firefox's "about:config" to see if I can tweak any settings to speed it up a little. Mozilla 1.7.1 has also been a bit more stable than Firefox for me, also. Firefox is still in beta, so maybe the 1.0 release will be a bit more stable and faster. If I can find a way to speed up Firefox, I will switch back, but for now I am using Mozilla 1.7.1.

Sorting

2004-07-23T15:15:00.000-04:00

Today, I finally took the time to reorginize my Photobucket account to make it easier to find images, and delete some old images. I was wanting to do this for a while, but I never got around to doing it. I reorginized all of my images on my hard drive in to descriptave folders a few weeks back, but never got around to my Photobucket account until now. I hope none of my image links are broken now.

Mozilla Firefox 0.9.1

2004-06-29T10:35:00.000-04:00

Mozilla.org has released Mozilla Firefox 0.9.1. This release is to fix a few bugs before the 1.0 release, and Firefox 0.9.1 has a new default theme again. I like the Winstripe 2.0 theme much beter than the orignal Winstripe 1.0 release.
Image: Mozilla Firefox 0.9.1

Mozilla Security Updates

2004-07-11T10:01:00.000-04:00

Mozilla.org has released security updates for the Mozilla App Suite, Firefox, and Thunderbird for Windows users. Mozilla.org says
"On July 7 a security vulnerability affecting browsers for the Windows operating system was reported to mozilla.org by Keith McCanless, and was subsequently posted to Full Disclosure, a public security mailing list. On the same day, the Mozilla security team confirmed the report of this security issue affecting the Mozilla Application Suite, Firefox, and Thunderbird and discussed and developed the fix at Bugzilla bug 250180. We have confirmed that the bug affects only users of Microsoft's Windows operating system. The issue does not affect Linux or Macintosh users.

On July 8th, the Mozilla team released a configuration change which resolves this problem by explicitly disabling the use of the shell: external protocol handler. The fix is available in two forms. The first is a small download which will make this configuration adjustment for the user. The second fix is to install the newest full release of each of these products. Instructions on administering these changes can be found below."
Link.

If you are using Windows and a Mozilla product, you should install the patch, or upgrade to Mozilla 1.7.1, Firefox 0.9.2, and Thunderbird 0.7.2.

Summer Times

2004-06-23T14:14:00.000-04:00

Summer is a very lazy time for me. I do nothing, unless I have to. Perfect example, my blog. I haven't updated it since last week. Why? I am lazy (and I forgot to). Some news... Mozilla.org has releaced Mozilla 1.7 with some new features, and bugfixes, but just the normal Mozilla 1.x release. And rumors are that a new Netscape 7.2 will be released upon the Mozilla 1.7 branch.
On to another topic...
[rant]I hate AIM 5.5. My sister went and "upgraded" our to the new spyeare filled, bloaded AIM, even after I told her not to. She "upgraded" to 5.5 yesterday after about a year of happily using AIM 5.1. I liked AIm 5.1, it has eveything I needed and nothing I didn't and plus DeadAIM 3.2.1 works with it, it dosen't work with AIM 5.5. My sister went and downloaded the "update", and after she did the computer frooze up. I restared the PC and then I tried to access the Control Panel it frooze up unce again. Another restart. I finally got the AIM 5.5 uninstalled. I then restarted the computer once again and ran Spybot SD, a very good spyware removal program and that removed Wild Tangent, the spyware in AIM that allows users to play games with others through AIM. I finally reatarted my PC installed AIM 5.1 and DeadAIM 3.2.1 (both avalable from OldVersion.com) and now my PC is running like it was, fast, which is good. I recomend any one using AIM 5.5 on the PC to downgeade to AIM 5.2 or lower, and remove AIM 5.5 and all of it's nasty spyware using a spyware removel tool, such as Spybot SD.[/rant]

Bored

2004-06-14T15:08:00.000-04:00

Well, I have nothing to do today, like normal over the summer. I am just sitting on my lazy butt in front of the computer, doing nothing. And I can't go anywhere because my town is boring and there is nothing here to do. I have been checking Mozilla.org for the new releaces of Mozilla 1.7 and Firefox 0.9, which were scheduled to be releaced today(20040614). I have tested Mozilla 1.7 RC3 and it is the fastest Seamonkey build have tested at startup and loading pages, and it was very stable. I can't wait for the final releases of Mozilla 1.7 and Firefox 0.9.

Updates

2004-06-11T12:18:00.000-04:00

Wow, it has almost been a year since an update. I almost forgot I had this blog. Sorry for not updating this for a while. I am happy, yesterday I finally got "invited" to get Gmail. Yay for 1000 MB (1GB) of email. And school ended Tuesday, so summer has unofficaly started for me.

Cable Modem

2004-06-12T14:48:00.000-04:00

My Suscom cable modem service keeps cutting out, and it is making me mad. It cut out twice, one of the times when I was posting in my blog, each time for about ten minutes. Although the cable TV service didn't go out I am still mad. In other news, Google sent me three Gmail invites, but the question is, who will I give them to.

Dont even think about giving them you zen because ...

2008-03-21T07:14:15.669-04:00

Dont even think about giving them you zen because it's very easy to fix, First you have to download the MP3 Player Utilities from: http://www.mympxplayer.org/tool-mp3-player-utilities-509-df798.html then install it. After you install it plug your zen into the computer then open the Mp3 Player Disk manager (It's located in the Mp3 Player Utilities) Then format it, all your songs will be deleted but it will work.

I've never played paintball...

2007-12-15T20:09:41.485-05:00

I've never played paintball...

Nice to have you back.As far as Linksys goes, I've...

2007-12-15T14:55:03.013-05:00

Nice to have you back.

As far as Linksys goes, I've found them to be quite popular among small businesses and some home power users.

The Windows NT client to Lucent WaveLAN/IEEE wireless card had an option to log SSIDs as they were located along with their signal strength and SNR (at the time Wi-Fi was still part networking tool, part hobbyist-type thing). I had been using it with that configuration as late as 2005; the vast majority of routers that I could find on the way home from school were either "NETGEAR", "linksys", or "linksys-g". Very few of them were secured, though that seems to have changed in recent years.

Nice to see you back on blogging. :-)My WiFi was h...

2007-12-12T13:34:17.924-05:00

Nice to see you back on blogging. :-)

My WiFi was hacked once, and I am much more careful this time.

Yes Andrew, it will have Windows Vista pre-loaded....

2007-07-25T19:37:16.745-04:00

Yes Andrew, it will have Windows Vista pre-loaded. Here are the full specs (copy and pasted from HP's web site):

- Upgrade to Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit)
- AMD Turion(TM) 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-58 (1.9 GHz, 512KB+512KB L2 Cache )
- 15.4" WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)
- 2GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
- 256MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) Go 7200
- FREE Upgrade to HP Imprint Finish + Webcam + Microphone
- 802.11a/b/g/n (draft 802.11n) WLAN
- 120GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
- FREE Upgrade to SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
- No TV Tuner w/remote control
- 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
- System Recovery DVD with Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit)
- Microsoft(R) Works 8.0

Also, I found out that since the laptop is a custom order, it wasn't built until Monday. I was given a FedEx tracking number; it was shipped from Shanghai, China and at last check it was in Anchorage, Alaska.

What are the specs of your new laptop, out of curi...

2007-07-25T12:53:34.098-04:00

What are the specs of your new laptop, out of curiosity? I suppose it's a safe bet that it'll be pre-loaded with Windows Longh...er, Vista.

My birthday was relatively uneventful this year. S...

2007-05-03T23:12:57.963-04:00

My birthday was relatively uneventful this year. Since it fell on a Tuesday we went out for Chinese two days in advance.

It turns out that most people don't know when my birthday is anyway; I had somebody (this is no deviation from how he usually greets me, BTW) give me the morning death threat telling me I wouldn't live to see my next birthday. One of my friends actually asked a few days later when it was.

Glad all is going well. I'll be graduating myself...

2007-04-29T20:03:47.950-04:00

Glad all is going well. I'll be graduating myself in a matter of weeks...what happens after that is anyone's guess, though.

Any chance we'll see the 101st post before summer?...

2007-04-23T12:18:55.497-04:00

Any chance we'll see the 101st post before summer?

Congratulations on your 100th blog post. I hope yo...

2007-03-29T19:08:33.098-04:00

Congratulations on your 100th blog post. I hope you can post a bit more often.

I will never understand the logic of AOL: Virtual...

2007-02-04T00:44:44.490-05:00

I will never understand the logic of AOL: Virtually everything they produce under their own name is unusable, and yet they're still around. They were only too satisfied to underpromote and jeopardize Netscape back when the division actually existed, and yet they've revived and dragged the name around (mostly without success) ever since.

This would appear to be a last-ditch bureaucratic effort at exhuming the corpse that was once Netscape for one more ridiculous trip dragged around the track, long after all the spectators left and moved on. Sorry AOL: The real Netscape 8 was Mozilla Firefox, and the real Netscape 9 is Firefox 2.

I've hated FrontPage since I first used FrontPage ...

2007-02-03T09:01:52.513-05:00

I've hated FrontPage since I first used FrontPage express with IE4 in Hawaii. Now I prefer Nvu for some things or doing it by hand.

I agree with you there man...In my mind NS is dead...

2007-02-03T08:58:34.196-05:00

I agree with you there man...In my mind NS is dead and has been since AOL shut down the Netscape division in '03. Sad.

Congratulations on your new job. I hope you enjoy ...

2007-02-02T00:43:19.493-05:00

Congratulations on your new job. I hope you enjoy your new job.

Now that you've taken Windows Vista for a spin, do...

2006-12-07T20:24:45.660-05:00

Now that you've taken Windows Vista for a spin, do you think there's anything in or about it this skeptical soul might like?

I had to do a senior project in high school as well. I'm glad that's over with, but I'll have to get another one done for college in the (very) near future.

I'd love to be able to build a computer for my gra...

2006-12-06T22:31:49.723-05:00

I'd love to be able to build a computer for my graduation project. Instead we have mandatory community service hours: freshmen through juniors have it easy and only have to complete 20 hours of community service each year. The seniors get to have a mess of a time completing over a hundred hours in their already-crammed schedule.

Personally I prefer Visual Web Developer 2005 to d...

2006-11-21T19:57:50.810-05:00

Personally I prefer Visual Web Developer 2005 to design HTML, and at that, I run it using the source editor rather than the visual designer. Unlike FrontPage, VWD's visual designer is capable of generating standards-compliant XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS 2.1 code, though unfortunately you specifically need to tell it to use standard constructs rather than IE-specific ones in the Options menu.

Visual Web Developer might not be the best platform to learn on either: it auto-closes tags, and pops up selectable dropdown lists for everything imaginable (HTML and CSS attributes, their values, the contents of a directory you're working in, and code references that tell you what type of data goes where). And if someone was clever enough to learn ASP.NET 2.0 at the same time, one can automatically generate over half the site, which (while being particularly useful in production) completely defeats the purpose of learning HTML.

I'm surprised your school doesn't use Macromedia Dreamweaver. Back in 2004 when I was looking at HTML programming courses, most places used Dreamweaver MX as their coding platform, since it was one of the only standards-compliant and powerful designers out at the time. I ended up teaching myself over the course of a few months using Netscape 7.2's composer feature with a combination of the source editor and the WYSIWYG editor.

Congratulations!I've fantasized about having a car...

2006-11-04T23:59:46.283-05:00

Congratulations!

I've fantasized about having a car myself...until the thought shifts to where at WVU I would park it, which always causes the original wish to disappear.

Congrats!

2006-11-03T02:04:23.953-05:00

Congrats!

Nice new logo :-)

2006-10-12T17:44:53.020-04:00

Nice new logo :-)

Poor you. You should see a doctor and get some med...

2006-09-20T23:40:54.080-04:00

Poor you. You should see a doctor and get some medicine.

Nice documentation!

2006-07-06T10:36:47.133-04:00

Nice documentation!

If iPhoto is not photo management software for the...

2006-05-21T21:32:14.740-04:00

If iPhoto is not photo management software for the Macintosh, then what is?

When I opened Finder to put the six or so files in...

2006-05-21T13:19:17.566-04:00

When I opened Finder to put the six or so files into a new folder, I found that the file's icons had been placed ontop each other. Accustomed to a Windows environment, I right (context/control/command/whatever) clicked in a blank space in the Finder window to try to find a 'arrange icons' menu entry. I saw none. So now I was stuck having to root through the folder, trying to find the "stacked" icons, and move them into a new folder.

All you have to do is from View menu Clean Up or Clean Up Selection. That's Finder's View manu.

Personally, I find iPhoto difficult to use, and photo managment near impossible to understand.

iPhoto is not the photo management software for professionals, it's not even a photo management software. It's a tool for sharing photos, making photo books, and adding quick effects.

Happy belated birthday.Antony.

2006-05-14T22:30:41.916-04:00

Happy belated birthday.

Antony.

Congratulations on becoming a licensed driver.

2006-05-14T22:29:28.190-04:00

Congratulations on becoming a licensed driver.

Too bad, you did not have a day off for the power ...

2006-05-01T23:58:28.343-04:00

Too bad, you did not have a day off for the power outage.

Have a good trip.

2006-04-05T19:52:53.253-04:00

Have a good trip.

Josh,Mine is a black one; that was the only color ...

2006-02-12T09:34:21.156-05:00

Josh,
Mine is a black one; that was the only color available where I bought it.

Nice! I bet it's good to have your player back.BTW...

2006-02-12T05:06:21.046-05:00

Nice! I bet it's good to have your player back.

BTW, what color is yours? Before I settled on the iPod mini, I was planning to get one of the blue ones.

It's cool they give you a new one and a newer mode...

2006-02-07T21:32:44.060-05:00

It's cool they give you a new one and a newer model. :-)

This sucks to high heaven! Are you sure you haven'...

2006-01-17T06:30:17.460-05:00

This sucks to high heaven! Are you sure you haven't got a lemon player or buggy firmware? Anyways, good luck on getting your player back up.

so the 90 days warranty is free, and one year warr...

2006-01-13T22:56:47.730-05:00

so the 90 days warranty is free, and one year warranty is not free?

What is that $25 for?

With iPod (and actually all Mac consumer hardware), the warranty is one year (and 90 days free technical phone support) unless you decide to extend your warranty protection with AppleCare Protection Plan. Within the first year (standard warranty), all replacements is free (including postage).

Nice upgrade for US$300.However, a Mac mini is onl...

2005-12-04T00:43:59.943-05:00

Nice upgrade for US$300.

However, a Mac mini is only US$499. :-)

Aren't you lucky. I have no snow.

2005-11-30T00:22:36.893-05:00

Aren't you lucky. I have no snow.

Congratulations on winning Cavalcade of Bands Yank...

2005-11-17T01:20:43.116-05:00

Congratulations on winning Cavalcade of Bands Yankee Open championship.

Test comment...

2005-11-13T23:05:05.986-05:00

Test comment...

We do not tolerate spam in this blog.Thanks, Billy...

2005-10-02T12:21:42.820-04:00

We do not tolerate spam in this blog.

Thanks, Billy.

I don't like Chemistry either. I never did well in...

2005-09-11T03:26:37.486-04:00

I don't like Chemistry either. I never did well in chemistry.

You have a class called "Microsoft Office XP"? That's really interesting...

laughing I Googled "I got my driver's permit" an...

2005-08-03T20:32:09.716-04:00

*laughing* I Googled "I got my driver's permit" and this is what I came up with.
I actually just went in to get mine (all the way over in Coquille, Oregon). I passed the test (we had thirty-five questions; feel lucky) but I don't have my permit, since I had to get a form, and the person from whom I'm supposed to get the form was on vacation, which, I suppose, proves the world doesn't revolve around me.
Not that you care, I'm just rather excited.
Anyways, good luck with your driving. If I hear of any major accidents in Pennsylvania, I'll think of you.

"I'm surprised that a certain someone didn't convi...

2005-08-02T22:51:39.306-04:00

"I'm surprised that a certain someone didn't convince you to get one of these."

:-)

Nice computer! Congratulations.

2005-08-02T22:48:58.736-04:00

Nice computer! Congratulations.

I'm surprised that a certain someone didn't convin...

2005-07-31T17:58:22.856-04:00

I'm surprised that a certain someone didn't convince you to get one of these.

" There has to be a floppy drive somewhere around ...

2005-07-31T16:57:19.650-04:00

" There has to be a floppy drive somewhere around that case. ;-)"

There is. There is a cover, under the CD-ROM drive, which slides down to reveal the floppy drive, and front USB, IEEE1394, and audio ports.

There has to be a floppy drive somewhere around th...

2005-07-31T16:14:00.356-04:00

There has to be a floppy drive somewhere around that case. ;-)

"I don't suppose your new computer had Mozilla Fir...

2005-07-30T18:12:56.733-04:00

"I don't suppose your new computer had Mozilla Firefox preinstalled on it, did it?"
Unfourtunately, no, Mozilla Firefox was not preinstalled, but alot of other software was, noteably Apple iTunes and QuickTime.

I don't suppose your new computer had Mozilla Fire...

2005-07-30T17:31:53.146-04:00

I don't suppose your new computer had Mozilla Firefox preinstalled on it, did it?

I recall (over)hearing somewhere that HP may be looking to start preinstalling Firefox on its machines.

Congratulations.

2005-07-01T22:57:01.103-04:00

Congratulations.

Wow, thats interesting. I am lucky. For the last 3...

2005-07-01T16:38:36.076-04:00

Wow, thats interesting. I am lucky. For the last 3 years (while I was in middle school) there were no new computers or software bought except what was required to keep the network from dieing. Well last year they built a new middle school which cost 16 million dollars. I can understand why because they have a TV in every room. I mean there are so many that even the copy room has it. Any way when this got built, the school system did a MASSIVE upgrade to almost all the technology stuff in one part of the county. The high school got a new phone system and almost all of the pentium 2 computers are gone, being replaced with new pentium 4's. The middle school got all new computers, projectors, networking equipment, etc. I wish the high school would do that. When periods change, the teachers have to put in the attendance on the computer, meaning they have to login to novell. There are about 50 classrooms. Then there are 2 computer classes which login to novell also, so there another 60 computers. Plus the 40 or so in the office and library and laptops that float around you could have 150 people logging in at once easily. Now the network is not properly setup as the load for the two class rooms are on the same router. Normally the internet is down for half of the class period so nothing gets done, because no one want to turn the server off and on. So anyway my schools out so now you know. Interestingly, all of the students share the same username and password and can not save anything to the hard drive.

You are in PA so I guess I can keep driving on the...

2005-07-01T16:03:37.130-04:00

You are in PA so I guess I can keep driving on the road. How scarry, no really its great, I am just joking around. Seriously though, I have driven on the highway before and I am 14, wow your mom or dad must really be uptight to not let you drive home. Anyway good for you!

Congratulations on your permit, Billy. :)

2005-06-29T20:07:53.240-04:00

Congratulations on your permit, Billy. :)

There are a number of ways you can prevent such vi...

2005-06-12T21:48:23.600-04:00

There are a number of ways you can prevent such viruses from spreading. Your checking the link before clicking it was a very good idea, but sometimes, that isn't enough. Due to AIM's ubiquity, it's prone to incoming viruses that can actually be scripted to download and run inside the client.

I started using Gaim around version 0.6. It was bundled with KDE version 2 that I happened to be using on my Linux boxes at the time (and continue to do, for what reason, I don't know). I didn't use it exclusively, because it frequently crashed, and had an extreme lack of functionality. Instead, I used the client embedded in Netscape 6.x and 7.x, which seemed to be a lot safer by nature. I picked up Gaim for Windows at version 1.1, at which time it became much more stable than the old 0.6 releases. But, Gaim doesn't get along with Windows 98, so you may be stuck.

If you were using Windows NT, 2000, or XP, there are other things you can do with AIM to prevent such things from happening. Under those OSes (EXCEPT XP Home), you can configure the permissions to the program. Create a separate user account for AIM only. Give it the permissions to read/write to its own directory, but NOT the rest of the system. You may need to copy some DLL files from your %SystemRoot%\System32 directory. Then, have the AIM program log on to Windows with those credentials (this is done through Terminal Services on NT and through Secondary Logon on 2k/XP). If you do that, it won't be able to run the application to launch any sort of virus. But, since 98 can't do that, you're out of luck.

If you have a non-proprietary (specifically, not HP and HP-Compaq (but not old Compaq) machines) computer, you could always try Linux; otherwise, you're options would be to upgrade to Windows 2000 or XP, or to just have yourself a good time locking down your system as is.

Back to your old primary and intermediate schools?...

2005-06-08T02:15:01.380-04:00

Back to your old primary and intermediate schools? You must be a popular student back then.

Thankfully, I got my finals out of the way two wee...

2005-06-07T18:19:20.613-04:00

Thankfully, I got my finals out of the way two weeks ago, and school ended (for me, at least) one week ago. Yet, I am still at school for the next two weeks. Maybe not at high school, but my old elementary/junior high has called me back to fix computers.

Good luck for your finals.

2005-06-06T10:34:10.706-04:00

Good luck for your finals.

Billy,It is very nice to have you around in SillyD...

2005-05-20T11:48:41.286-04:00

Billy,

It is very nice to have you around in SillyDog701 Message Centre. I appreciate your support and involvement. SillyDog701 is still growing, it's not just a browser discussion venue, but a friendly community as well.

Let's look forward for another prospective year.

Hope you had a nice birthday :-)

2005-05-07T23:25:31.093-04:00

Hope you had a nice birthday :-)

I always considered Fog City to be a nice theme wh...

2005-04-28T23:43:18.830-04:00

I always considered Fog City to be a nice theme when Netscape 6.1 came out. With Netscape 6.0 I used the original Sky Pilot, but that wasn't compatible with 6.1, and I wasn't aware of Sailfish's ports. It would be nice if somebody ported this to Mozilla 1.7 so that we could continue using it, but so much has changed since then, they'd probably need to re-work the entire thing.

Thanks for using Netscape 6.2 Streamline series. I...

2005-04-27T07:41:07.853-04:00

Thanks for using Netscape 6.2 Streamline series. It was nice to know it works well with themes.

Congratulations on your new game toy.I bought an X...

2005-04-09T02:05:27.380-04:00

Congratulations on your new game toy.

I bought an Xbox, but I am too bad at playing games. So, now my Xbox is sitting in my friend's house.

Everybody's got one of these things nowadays. I re...

2005-04-05T21:08:18.773-04:00

Everybody's got one of these things nowadays. I remember a year or two back, I decided toupgrade to the SP model of the GBA to replace my old Classic (yeah, I actually had and used one of those). Personally, the DS isn't high on my priority list, since the SP has had absolutely no use for months now. (OK, my cousins stole it once, and of course I got it back. but that was it.) If I were to buy one, I'd wait for two reasons: they need to make some Zelda that's NOT the awful new "Four Swords" line, which is essentially the chopped-down version for kids, nothing special in those. The second reason would for it to come out in black first, because every console/gaming hardware I have is black. My laptop, PS2, GC, SP (have to love the acronyms), wireless controls, and TV all follow the same color scheme. I'm probably selling the PS2 soon, and if the next Zelda for GC isn't GBA-enabled, the SP as well.

It'd always be a good idea to get an extra $300 on the PS2 if I sell it with the wireless controls, extended (32MB) memory card, heap of games, and all that. The SP, if I sell the only game I have with it (you guess...), and the GC link cables, I might be lucky to make $70. Well, an extra $400 in my pocket makes me $400 dollars richer and $400 more likely to buy a new laptop =)

Of course, I used to have an N64, but my cousins stole it (don't ask me how it got out the door). They did it at a real convenient time, too: I was in 'celebration' of my completed work of Zelda 64. Only took me three years for every single item, ability, etc... to be obtained, and three days for the cart to be useless...

Trebuchet MS is a font Microsoft (used to) distrib...

2005-03-29T22:57:51.173-05:00

Trebuchet MS is a font Microsoft (used to) distribute for free. Have you recently installed any new software (particularly Microsoft software?) If so, this may be how Trebuchet MS made its way onto your machine.

Microsoft fonts can sometimes wind up on a computer in mysterious or unexpected ways. I can remember my futile attempts at trying to avoid Tahoma and Verdana a few years ago...

OK, let's hope we can rule some of this out, all o...

2005-03-29T21:23:39.973-05:00

OK, let's hope we can rule some of this out, all of which I've been suspected of having:

* Migrane headaches: can also cause stiffness, brought on by loud noise, sudden motion, etc...

* Alice-in-wonderland syndrome: Headaches, picture (in vision) will get larger and smaller at undefined intervals

* Benign intracranial hypertension / pseudotumor cerebri: Cerebrospinal fluid backup in the brain, much like brain cancer. This was the real bugger that I had after the above was ruled out; trust me, you don't want it unless you enjoy two years of diuretic therapy! Involves severe headache, neck (and for that matter, body) stiffness, blurred or loss of vision.

Of course, there's a very good chance that it could have been brought on by the way you were sleeping. Everything above this paragraph is just (the very paranoid) me talking...

Well done, Billy.You asked a very good questions.

2005-03-28T12:25:58.436-05:00

Well done, Billy.

You asked a very good questions.

Update:I have created a working Firefox 1.0.2 zipp...

2005-03-23T18:42:25.673-05:00

Update:
I have created a working Firefox 1.0.2 zipped build. I have tried two methods, both of which seem to work.

If anyone's interested, here's what I did for the first time:
1. Download the Win32 March 14 Firefox 1.0.2 nightly build; unzip the file.
2. Download the official Firefox 1.0.2 installer; install the file.
3. Search both the unzipped and installed directories to find matching files.
4. Copy matching files from the installer and insert the files into your unzipped archive.
5. Zip the files.

There is another way of making a Firefox zipped version in which I have tried, as well.

If anyone's interested, here's what I did for the second time:
1. Download the official Firefox 1.0.2 installer; install the file.
2. Navigate to the directory where Firefox 1.0.2 is installed.
3. Copy the "Mozilla Firefox" folder.
4. Paste the folder to a new location(e.g. the Desktop.)
5. Zip the folder copied folder.

The second method is a much cleaner way of making a zipped version. The first method is much more involved.

I'm not exactly sure if the above processes will work for everyone, but they both work for me.

Don, that sounds very interesting, but I don't thi...

2005-03-23T16:07:10.060-05:00

Don, that sounds very interesting, but I don't think I have skill, nor the time each day to do every nightly.

I was thinking on a much simpler basis...
My idea was that I could install 1.0.2. Then, I'd see what files from the installed version match files from the March 14 zipped version. Then I'll copy the files from the installer to the zipped version.
It proabally won't work, but we'll just have to wait and see.

BTW, I'm installing Firefox 1.0.2 as I type this.

I'd bet that you could make a good service out of ...

2005-03-23T10:21:43.243-05:00

I'd bet that you could make a good service out of making ZIPped builds of Firefox available to the public, perhaps, the nightlies. Yeah, I know, it would be torture to do it every night (with the nightlies), but I bet it's possible to hack up a MS-DOS batch file to do something like this:

1. Tell it to initiate uninstaller for current Firefox build on your computer

2. Tell command-line FTP client to pull the latest build from the latest-trunk folder for Firefox

3. Tell it to initiate the installer

4. Tell command-line ZIP utility to ZIP a copy of what was just installed

5. Tell command-line FTP client to upload the ZIPped build to your server

This might not be the easiest thing to do, but it is possible. Take a look at Michael Hendy's Autofox.sh: for the most part, that's doing something very similar. Besides, UNIX shell scripts and MS-DOS batch files, although the former can do much more, are quite similar.

When I was in high school, the computer systems te...

2005-03-19T21:24:43.206-05:00

When I was in high school, the computer systems tended to vary in specs. When I started out in 1999, there was a mix of Pentium MMX-based Compaq Deskpros from 1997 with about 64MB of RAM running Windows 95 OSR2, slightly newer Pentium II-based Compaq Deskpros with about 64MB of RAM running Windows 95 OSR2, and a scattering of brand new Pentium III-based Compaq Deskpros with about 128MB of RAM running Windows 98 SE. Plus there was this one odd room of generic 100MHz 486 systems alternatively booting between Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and some Windows NT "Terminal Server" thing.

By the time I graduated four years later, the room full of 486s had been upgraded (to new Compaq Deskpros running Windows 98 SE, unsurpringly enough), but otherwise there had been a low computer turnover. Almost all of the Pentium- and Pentium II-based Compaqs that had Windows 95 had been "upgraded" to Windows 98 SE (no improvement), and there were some new computers (concentrated in a brand new lab and in the library) with Windows XP. The "Deep Freeze" setup on the Windows XP machines was messed up, however, and we couldn't save any work to the network drive!

I assume that Internet Explorer is the only browser they bothered to put on the computers at your school. When I started high school, the machines had IE 3 or 5 on them as a matter of course, but we were instructed to use Netscape Communicator 4.7 instead! Unfortunately, this stipulation faded away, and after 2000 they didn't even bother putting Netscape on any new or upgraded computers.

It is easier to buy new machines then doing the up...

2005-03-19T01:34:36.456-05:00

It is easier to buy new machines then doing the upgrading, at least for the paper work for the funding.

All of the PC's we have are Celerons.Don, I wish i...

2005-03-18T19:31:59.443-05:00

All of the PC's we have are Celerons.
Don, I wish it would be that easy to gain admin access on my school's computers. The admin is network-wide. Also, each student must login with their own username and password to gain access to school's network. By doing that, we can get on any computer in the school and have all of our saved files accessible. There's real visible way around the Novell username/password dialogs, even when we were running Win98.
Next year I will be taking Microsoft Office XP classes, and I think the classes will take place in one of the computer labs with the newer PC's.

Well, you've got more of a decent setup than we do...

2005-03-18T18:57:17.436-05:00

Well, you've got more of a decent setup than we do here, by far. Currently, most of the school is running 2000 Pro. I think that maybe five computers in the entire school run XP at all, and those that do are running XP Home, not Pro. Those would happen to be the newer computers that we got preloaded with XP. All the other machines are either P2s or P3s, with the P2s running 98SE and the P3s running 2000 Pro. The average machine only has about 64MB of RAM anyway.

There's only one exception to this rule, and that's my principal's PC. She gets to have the 3GHz P4 processor, 17" flat screen monitor, XP Pro, and 384MB of RAM. How do I know all that? I'm the entire school's fix-it source when it comes to the computers. That's good, because I have the admin password to just about every machine besides the principal's. Everywhere else, the admin password is exactly the same, and the PCs in the classrooms don't run 2000 or XP, so you can just click "Cancel" to the login prompt and log in with full access.

I've had quite a few experiences like this before....

2005-03-09T16:54:51.170-05:00

I've had quite a few experiences like this before. I remember, way back when I was maybe six or so and started riding a bike, I decided to do the same, except I ran into a pile of grass, not snow. From what I remember, I landed on cement, not snow. But, this was a long time ago, so I can't remember every detail.

I do stub my toe on a lot of things, even stairs, so it's not too uncommon for it to happen anymore, and only in a few rare cases has it dragged on over a few hours. But, that's why it's good to have a clarinet and not a trumpet -- the case is too small and light to hurt yourself with, unless you decide to pick the thing up and whack yourself silly with it (which I have never done, since I'm not that crazy... yet...)

The wind has been blowing alot here as well. The only real problem with the wind, is that whoever planted the trees around my neighborhood didn't have any plans for them falling down a hundred years later. In the past five years, I think three trees have come down in various places. There's a huge one in somebody else's backyard, which isn't good, because it's leaning right over our house under its own weight.

Yeah, alot did happen. Luckly, today it has calmed...

2005-03-09T15:47:09.050-05:00

Yeah, alot did happen. Luckly, today it has calmed down. The wind has stoppedblowing but it's very cold out now. My foot is somewhat better, I can put most my weight on it now, and it hurts less than it did before.

Wow! That's a lot of things to happen in a short ...

2005-03-09T14:07:58.343-05:00

Wow! That's a lot of things to happen in a short time.

I hope your toe is feeling better.

Well, you're not the only one. I haven't seen any ...

2005-02-24T20:15:31.753-05:00

Well, you're not the only one. I haven't seen any this year, and I think I saw one last year. As a matter of fact, I can't even remember which one that happened to be...
Personally, if there's something decent to be seen, chances are I can just get it on HBO or PPV or something like that. Plus, it's not against the rules or anything to bring your own junk to your theater at home (whether it be huge like a cinema or 19" like mine).

Bowling and band are like, 2 of my favorite things...

2005-02-20T19:26:57.886-05:00

Bowling and band are like, 2 of my favorite things ever.

We're getting the same up here in Massachusetts. A...

2005-01-23T12:45:22.076-05:00

We're getting the same up here in Massachusetts. At least you didn't have to have somebody tell you that it was snowing...

I don't know how much snow we've received, but I do know that if I want to measure I'll be using a yardstick, not a ruler, seeing that all the cars around here are just about buried. I think they're saying around 28-38 inches around here, although other counties are getting 40+ inches...

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