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My Almost-daily Journal |
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| I love trying out new things, especially when it comes to internet technology. I never really kept a journal, but it's something that I've always wanted to do. Now, everybody will get a chance to look inside my twisted, and somewhat-warped mind.
I've also subscribed to Audio Blog, so a few times a week, I'll leave actual voice blogs. Very cool! XML Newsfeed Archives
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Thursday, April 10, 2003
The Dell Axim Fetish Like I said last night, ya gotta love those newsgroups, specifically alt.binaries.warez.pocketpc. I spent the last few hours downloading from that newsgroup like a mofo. I have more apps than I could possibly ever use on my Axim in a lifetime. Most of my time was spent loading some of them to the handheld, and the rest of the time was spent playing the awesome games. Newsgroups and the Exploitation of Intellectual Property Rights Incredible that newsgroups still exist today. It's one of those mediums that mostly power-users use. What's even more amazing is how these newsgroup servers still exist, and why the government hasn't shut them down. Who needs Napster, when you can pretty much get ANYTHING and EVERYTHING right from newsgroups. I still believe in "giving back", so if I like something, I'll usually buy it. The History of Newsgroups Newsgroups are one of the oldest uses of the Internet. Many years ago, when computers really started taking off, some Duke University graduate students realized they could dedicate computers to distribute "information" for all to enjoy. Thus, the birth of the bulletin board system (BBS). Many different BBS's were created at this time for many different platforms (IBM's, Commodore's, Atari's, etc.) People soon found that all they had to do was dial into an access number via their modem and log onto the BBS of their choice (usually a local number). Peter even ran a BBS. Ask him about William B. Hackenson. I got a ride to work by the Secret Service one fine summer morning. :) During this time, people not only wished to communicate with other local users, but also users from all over the world. Hence, the birth of BBS mail forums. Users would dial-in to their local BBS and post their messages to the appropriate group or person. At a certain time, the host BBS would dial into a hub computer elsewhere and upload it's message to be distributed to the appropriate locations. This is how users could talk with others from all over the world. It also tended to result in high phone bills for the host computer systems since they usually had to dial long distance to dump the messages to the hub computer. University subsidies, anyone? I even remember while at Michigan Tech in 1987, connecting to Gopher, and trying to use U. of M.'s dialout modems to post to BBS's at home. Newsgroups and Usenet Snatched from: http://www.stereophonicsweb.com/ams/newsgroups/index.htm In 1979, a couple of Duke University graduate students connected some computers together to exchange information with the UNIX community. At the same time, another graduate student at the University of North Carolina wrote the first version of the software used to distribute news. This network, called Usenet, grew into a voluntary, cooperative exchange of news feeds, eventually evolving into electronic discussion groups. While there are some places that charge a fee for the news feed, Usenet continues to reflect its origins as an academic project designed to distribute information freely to anyone who wants it. Usenet newsgroups are transmitted through through UUCP (a fee-based system) or NNTP, a more common and free method of transport. The news feed can be held on a system until a sister site calls up and gets it, or as is increasingly the case, direct connections remain open between sites at all times, sending news out to other nodes on the Net as soon as it is received. Each system administrator decides which newsgroups will be carried on the system. Since newsgroups take up valuable hard drive space and transmission bandwidth, administrators may choose not to carry some hierarchies at all. The Internet carries many kinds of resources, of which Usenet is only one. Usenet is also carried on networks that are not part of the Internet. posted by Dino at 1:12 AM Wednesday, April 09, 2003
The Good News Got my Dell Axim yesterday! What an awesome gadget! It uses Microsoft's Pocket PC OS, which integrates seamlessly with the big boy OS that 99% of us use on our main computers. I used a Palm OS handheld for about a year, and it was a little limiting. Plus, this Axim uses a 400 MHz Intel processor, which is as powerful as a main computer I used 1.5 years ago. Very sweet. Also, Excel and Word documents are easily created via the Axim, and transfer nicely into the larger full-blooded app. I'm looking forward to exploiting this little device to its fullest. Peter has a second GPS peripheral that he's going to let me try, and I'm looking forward to playing with that. The Bad News Stardate: 08.01.02 I started getting surprise visits of black carpenter ants in the summer last year. I have no idea where they came from. Perhaps they liked the low rent that I offer. Their visits were scarce... perhaps one a week. They were executed on site. Startdate 12.26.02 I bought a face cord of wood since I had exhausted my cache the prior winter. I mainly bought the wood for ambiance for my annual Christmas Party. Like a dumbass, I kept about ten logs next to the fireplace. I'm assuming that this is where the carpenter ant apartments were located. Stardate 02.02.03 The carpenter ant frequency has increased to about 4-10 per day. I have no idea where the fuck they're coming from. Each one gets executed: either with fire, decapitation with a knife, or chemical warfare. Ant traps are set all over the house. The ant traps dont' work on carpenter ants. They prefer to get their added dose of calories from either the garbage or foodstuff Josh leaves in the sink (he's the antithesis of a "tidy" human). At this point, I feel like burning down the house. Stardate 03.20.03 Chemical warfare... The house is doused with ant neurotoxins in every possible nook and cranny. Danielle and Josh protest and complain of jaundice, fever, tremors, and shakes. I don't budge. If I see an ant, it gets doused, along with its trajectory and place of origin. My kitchen floor now has a nice sheen, due to the constant application of pesticide. Stardate 03.26.03 The ants take notice of the kitchen eviction and now can be seen congergating more in the family room. I find several under the sofa armrest, and immediately begin freaking out. The armrests get doused. The couch gets moved and turned over on itself. A few more stragglers are found behind the couch. They are all executed and/or tortured. I also do an inspection under the sink, as well as behind the stove, dishwasher, and refrigerator. No dwellings found. No town meetings. Where the fuck do they live? Stardate 04.01.02 Weather is nice, so I go outdoors and prune some of my roses. I also clean up leaves around the house, and get the homestead ready for spring. I arm my sprayer with Diazanon (a garden pesticide that kills all biological dwellers) with a concentration that is three times the recommended dosage. The entire periphery of my home is sprayed. I spray so much, I fear that the groundwater is in dire straits of contamination. The entire periphery of the house is "muddy" with Diazanon. I also notice about 20 carpenter ants crawling around the periphery of the house. Their future is unknown, but I can tell you that they won't be doing to much "bang-bang-bang" anytime soon. Stardate 04.03.02 Carpenter ants have not shown up inside the homestead. I feel that the Diazanon perhaps did the trick. I'm finally feeling that these fuckers got the hint, and moved on with their lives. I finally feel some inner peace. Stardate 04.09.03 Damn them all to fucking "hell". I find a motherfucking carpenter ant taking a stroll in the bathroom sink! How the fuck do they make it into the bathroom!! Son of a bitch! This one doesn't get executed. This one gets tortured. I took a razor blade and cut off his fucking legs... all of them. I placed him in the middle of the kitchen floor. Hopefull the other ants will get the hint, since ants are pretty intelligent for their size. If I see another ant, I'm calling Orkin. I'm sure they'll want to tear up my kitchen, as there's probably a colony making a salad bar out of my 2X6's used for the flooring. I weep at the possibilities of destruction these cock-sucking, motherfucking carpenter ants can leave in their wake. posted by Dino at 9:55 AM Tuesday, April 08, 2003
Figured out the limitations to the Blog code. It is pretty limiting. Oh well. I'll just use this gay as hell template for now. posted by Dino at 2:20 AM Nightlife Part 2 Been having a little problem with the templates. Just checking to see what they look like with multi-day posts. posted by Dino at 1:34 AM Nightlife Like everything I touch, I just "gotta try" something new. Blogger is no exception. So, I installed Blogger, posted one entry, and now I just installed a different "template". This template is the good ol' dinofilias.com template. There were a great deal of templates available from Blogger, but why limit myself? I'm all about exploitation and customization, right? So here it is... Blogger-Dino Version 2.0. I don't know why I'm most productive after 11:00PM. Perhaps it's because this is the time that everybody sleeps, and I'm at pure peace with myself: no phone calls, nobody to interact with... just me and my exploitive brain. I'm not even sure this is going to work. I hope it does. This just opens up another avenue for me... another window into the makeup of Dino Filias. I know I'm getting philosophical, but in my mind, this is my attempt at immortality. Deep, huh? My picture and video archives are the only physical evidence of my existence. But what about my thoughts? Sure, there are some of my twisted thoughts on structured discussions via my bulletin board. But what about unstructured thought? This is it! I'm excited about the possibilities. I'm almost embarrassed to publically expose my thoughts... makes me feel a little nekked :) Oh well. I'll try it out for a while. My own little online journal. posted by Dino at 12:42 AM Monday, April 07, 2003
Intro: Just installed Blogger to my server. Figure I'd check this out and try blogging, in addition to my normal sarcastic evangelism on dinofilias.com. Why not? Everybody else is doing it! I also changed the blogger file from blogger.html to index.html. This will let people go right to dinofilias.com/blog. I also created a seperate blog account on the server. This will prevent anyone hacking into the blogger website from having access to my root files. OK. This is pretty cool. I don't see much difference to this than just posting to www.dinofilias.com in one of my forums. I guess there's nice things about Blogger Pro, though. They have a service that lets you call a specific number, and leave a message to your Blog! That message gets converted to an mp3 file, and it gets posted on your Blog. Now THAT is cool. I'd like to see something that lets you send photos via the phone. General News: So let's see what happened today... it was pretty non-eventful, if you consider 3"-6" of snow in April, a non-eventful day. I got to work at 7:30 AM. Around 8:30AM it looked like a total white-out squall. It was pretty impressive. I almost wished that it wouldn't stop snowing, at its peak intensity. I love the snow. Work News: Decoma, Mopar and Chrysler were slow today, since most everybody has probably at home. There was an ice storm during the weekend that crippled Oakland County. There are several friends that have not had power since Friday night. Some were told that they wouldn't get power restored until this following Friday. Sucks to live in that part of Michigan. Me... I'd eat that shit up... just looking for an excuse to buy a generator. It must be hard on families with children, though. Personal News: Danielle got her dream job within Valassis as a Targeting Analyst! She finally gets to use her BA in Marketing. She's been doing production stuff during her last few years there, which will probably end up making her more of an asset for her team. I'm very happy for her. Filias Consulting News: Dino Filias, DBA Filias Consulting I finally got my DBA as Filias Consulting. Peter registered that name at Macomb County, so I just registered it in Oakland County. I took the DBA paperwork and opened up a business checking account at Comerica. Supposedly, it's supposed to be free checks and no service charges for a year, but I got hit with $77 for checks and a $10 service charge. I can't wait to go in to have that reversed. www.TechTau.com I worked a little bit on TechTau.com during lunch, fixing some layout issues that I still have to iron out. That UBB has been totally customized (hacked), and there's still more to do. I also created a funny "techtau.com" magazine cover, depicting some of the ironies discussed at techtau.com during March. It's getting more and more members. I'm glad the Alumni are embracing it. www.MulligansGolfCenter.com Still haven't received my $800 from Mulligan's Golf Center. That SOB said he'd pay me a few weeks ago... check was in his hand, apparantly. I told him to just mail me the check. Haven't heard from him in weeks. www.FourSeasonsGolfCenter.com Royal Oak Golf Center, Oasis Golf Center, and Four Seasons Golf Center, have become prime customers. They pay on time. They don't complain if I'm ever late with my promises (which is hardly ever). And they're very open to new ideas. I ended up creating an email html template for them to use with Microsoft's bCentral service. Funny, though, Mike Ashley must be on vacation because he hasn't responded to my emails that the template is complete. www.glcement.org Worked on Great Lakes Cement Promotion Association website on Friday. All I had to do is just slice up the layout I created and upload the html. Took me a few hours. It's still not 100% pretty, but it's a start. That's all for now. I think that's plenty of writing for my first blog. More later... posted by Dino at 7:15 PM |