September 2004 Archives
Had an interesting weekend. Colleen was inducted into Westminster College's Hall of Fame for her outstanding basketball career there (Congratulations!). Thanks to Hurrican Ivan, Western PA experienced some of the worst flooding ever which made the trip to New Wilmington quite the journey.
After a day of hard rain Friday, we woke up to the radio announcing flood warnings pretty much every where. However, our initial belief was that the flooding was east of Hollidaysburg, but we were dead wrong. By the time we had driven the first hour and reached Indiana (PA), we reached the first flooded road. 422 was blocked, so we turned around and headed back to Indiana. At this point, we had to decide if we wanted to head south and hit the Turnpike or go north towards Insterstate 80. Fortunately, we chose the northern route because soon aftewards we were informed that the Turnpike was closed. So we tried to head back towards Kitanning, but once we were about 5 miles away, we were again turned back. This time, we headed directly north to New Bethlehem (where I have several relatives buried, by the way). In New Bethlehem, the bridge crossing the Red Bank River was closed and we were turned around yet again.
At this point, it was desperate, we were going to give it one more chance to get to Interstate 80 or else turn around and miss Colleen's induction. I took a look at the map and found a river crossing about 10 miles away in some small goofy-named town, so we hit the back roads and tried one more time. We got to the bridge, and even through it was open, I had some serious doubts about crossing it. Our fears abated somewhat after seeing two other cars cross the bridge from the other direction. So I gunned it across and we made it safely. At this point, I really wish that I had taken out the camera and snapped some photos. The river was amazing, it was only maybe 3 feet from the bottom of the bridge and it had just engulfed some of the small houses high above the river.
We had only one more river, the Clarion, to cross. Fortunately, the bridge we found was very high and we didn't run into any problems at all. I did manage to snap a photo from this bridge, which I will post later. From that point, it was directly north to I-80, and a successful trip to Westminster. So what is generally a 2.5 hour trip took us over 5 hours. We crashed the next night at my parents so to wait for the water to subside. The floods were amazing and after watching the Pittsburgh news the next day, I'm extremelly thankful that we headed away from Pittsburgh when we got turned around the first time. I don't know if I'll ever see anything like it again, but with the way the weather has been changing around here the past couple of years, who knows.
Here are some good pictures and news stories:
The Pittsburgh Channel
KDKA
WPXI
As we all know, FireFox 1.0PR just came out this week. Being that Firefox is a great browser and I've never had any problems with the install, I figured I'd go ahead and install it on my home PC. Bad move.
At first, everything seemed to be OK. But then Firefox just stopped loading. I would double-click, the mouse would turn into an hourglass, and then nothing. I got the same results when I tried safe mode. So I try an uninstall and then reinstall, same thing. Then I uninstalled, and reinstalled version .90 and everything was working honky-dory again, or so I thought! Now Firefox starts up and gives me the "installing extensions" message which never goes away!! ARGHHHH!
I tried deleting the extensions folder, I tried uninstalling & reinstalling again, NOTHING WORKS!
So now, I just downloaded Mozilla and it seems to work well. I'm going to try a few more things, but I think my computer just doesn't want to run FireFox for some reason. This sucks considering how much I love Firefox and dread having to pull up IE anymore.
Note: I installed FireFox on my laptop with no problem, so I"m pretty sure its an issue with this old computer and others should not avoid going with FireFox due to my bad luck.
Stumbled upon a very good nonpartisan web site whose goal is to keep voters informed of the facts:
Check it out.
Thanks to Hacking Netflix for posting this little gem...
Netflix released several RSS feeds for their subscribers. These feeds will provide a method of viewing shipping status, recommendations, etc... without having to rely on email or visiting the site. If you aren't familiar with RSS, visit www.bloglines.com or Google it. The Netflix feeds can be found at:
http://www.netflix.com/RSSFeeds?lnkctr=hnRSS
I watched the new Los-Angelized version of The ScreenSavers today on G4TechTV. It's going to take a little getting used to. The new host seemed likeable even though he was a little uncomfortable behind the cameras. I'll miss Patrick though but I'm sure he is doing well back in San Francisco. The new set looks pretty nice and is considerably larger than the old one. I'm not (and never have been) a big fan of the LAN party stuff they have going on in the show. The new setup looks like a bunch of oversized Rubiks-Cubes that the contestants have to crawl into. But I guess that is why I always record the show on the PVR instead of watching it live, so I can fast-forward past those parts.
Something that has had me wondering lately is when the press says that the "White House" says something, who exactly is that. I always thought it was the president, but apparently I'm wrong. For instance, this article on MSNBC:
"Yet, it was the White House — not Kerry’s campaign — that distributed four memos from 1972 and 1973 from Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, now deceased, who was the commander of the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron in Houston where Bush served. The White House obtained the memos from CBS News, which said it was convinced of their authenticity, and the White House did not question their accuracy. There was no explanation why the Pentagon was unable to find the documents on its own."
and from Fox News:
"The firestorm over Bush's Guard records took a new turn Wednesday night after the White House released memos saying a younger George W. Bush was suspended from flying fighter jets for failing to meet the standards of the Texas Air National Guard."
So, obviously Bush didn't release the memos, but rather "the White House". So does that mean that the physical structure known to all as the White House is able to produce documents or what? Apparently there is a collective group of people who represent the White House, so who are they???
Haven't posted in a while, been busy...
But here are some good links that I've been utilizing over the past couple of weeks:
OpenOffice - Opensource replacement for MS Office
Skype - Free IP telephony software (Works on PocketPCs too)
phpESP - Opensource PHP code for creating surveys, etc...
NASIOC Off-Topic Forum - Great Messageboard to be on.
Fantasy football starts this week, I've been in the same league now for 5 or so years and this year looks as promising as ever. My stars include Rudi Johnson, Tom Brady, and Kevan Barlow, so my team is either going to sink or be awesome.
My buddy G.W. Bush will be down the road from us in Johnstown today trying to rally up the troops. Should be interesting considering that Johnstown is extremelly democratic and the during Bush's tenure, the local economy there has sunken to points even lower than what it was four years ago (which was damn low to begin with).
I'm sitting here in my MBA class thinking about how buying text books has changed so much since I went to undergrad. Back then, we got a list of all the books we needed when we arrived on campus, and then we went to the college bookstore, waited in line for 1+ hours with our list, gave the list to the bookstore lady who then retreived the neccessary books and then promptly overcharged us for them.
For this class I'm in currently, the prof. handed out the syllabus, I hoped on my laptop which is connected to the University's wireless LAN, then searched isbn.nu for text book prices. I found the textbook for about $30 less than what the campus bookstore is selling it for, so I bought it. Now I just have to wait a couple of days for the book to show up on my doorstep. I did this all before the prof. started the night's lecture. Oh yeah, once the class is over, I'll sell the book back on Amazon or somewhere and I'm sure I'll get more money than the pittance that the bookstore would buy it back for.
Just yesterday I overheard the bookstore manager complaining that kids were buying their books online rather than their store and that he just couldn't compete with the Internet. I really don't feel bad for the bookstore at all. After years of raping students on textbooks, they are finally getting it back at them.
