Random Stuff

I can't believe I've posted nothing since Feb. How sad. I have so much to say and so few words to say it in... No, that doesn't sounds right... In any case, on to some favorites rants and pants.

I'm still struggling to set up my homebrew personal digital video recorders. Now I understand why people pay big bucks for a HD TiVo or other such beast. But then how much would I learn doing that? Seems as though the journey is half the fun, or in this case, maybe most of the fun. My current attempt has been based on Mythdora and I have much of it working. Yet there are still some wrinkles, so I'll try updating it one more time, sigh.

Kelsey and I just got back from a trip to Europe. Well actually Kelsey only saw London and I went on to Rome, Madrid, Brussels, and back to London. We had a blast. I'm sure Kelsey has some more info on her blog.

A word of warning. PLEASE USE SPYWARE SCANNERS. It seems as though almost everyone I know has had one or more run ins with spyware, malware, adware, etc. While we were in London, two young ladies from Spain were down in the hotel office trying to get one of their laptops back in usable condition. It apparently had been completely infected with adware and the like. You can prevent these things from getting out of hand. Please make sure you run programs like AdAware, Spybot Search & Destroy, etc., at least a couple of times a week. And run 2 or 3 of them, not just one. If you don't, it's simply a matter of time before your computer WILL be infected.

Finally, I'm having a blast with my new phone, a Cingular 8125. This device is convergence device meaning that it is not only a phone, but runs Windows Mobile 5.0 and can connect via IrDA, Bluetooth, GPRS, and WiFi. So you can talk and browse the Internet and drive all at the same time. Well, just kidding about the driving and browsing the Internet. Even the hard core multi-taskers should probably avoid that combination. At the moment I'm just trying to find all the cool software that's available, and trying to figure out how to connect my laptop to the Internet via GPRS when I'm travelling and not near a hotspot.

More l8r...