I've been thinking of you, Matthew… lol!
Ok, so it's an xkcd comic series… pretty funny.
Or you could just go to part one and hit the 
Recommend checking out this Mozilla Minefield alpha. It's fast. Download link here. Cheers!
I got my Sansa fixed up on Sunday. What was happening is that only the ring would light up when I turned the thing on and I had to "reset" (really a forced power off, it seems) to get it off. I was advised to drain the battery, charge it, and then see what happened. I did, and same result. Some more talk online informed me that the daughter card may have come loose. Over the span of two days I got it all the way open (part of this took over two hours on IRC and a video from someone on there… how nice of them), disconnected the daughter card for sure, and reconnected it. I plugged my Sansa in on USB and the wheel came on but it seems the player turned off. I put the battery back in and tried again, this time presented with a blessed SanDisk logo. Whoooo-hooo!
I had intended to start hacking my Sansa after the warranty had expired, but I figured that I might as well start then since I had been poking around on the insides of the thing. I downloaded the alternative mp3 player firmware Rockbox and installed it on my Sansa (it keeps the original firmware on, too). And, wow, Rockbox blows the original firmware away in most areas. Very very customizable and supports plugins, which you can use even while you're playing music. These plugins fall under the categories of Applications, Demos, and Games. And yes, you can even play Doom.
One could say a lot about this election. I'll try to keep my thoughts concise, but we'll see what comes.
First of all, one thing we can certainly be sure of in America is there is a reason why this place is so messed up: we reap what we sow and we sowed sin. And now we have a mess. Go figure.
The other thing we can be sure of: we can should repent, and there's no time like now (alright, well… earlier, actually).
But these issues do have realities, specifics and not just generals; meaning there are certain problems.
On the presidential candidates--
Neither Obama nor McCain are, in my opinion, an ideal person to be leading our nation. I would vote for McCain if I could, but I don't think he's perfect. His healthcare plan is expensive enough, I'd say. And his mortgage idea is also another staggering amount, following up on the recent corporate bailout. And frankly, we deserve someone like Obama, but I pray that God will be gracious to us.
Barack Obama is in fact, the most liberal senator in our nation at this time. This is based on his voting record, I would believe, but I'm not sure. In any case, even if he was the most perfect candidate in every other way, I cannot support a man who condones the murder of our unborn. It's murder, plain and simple, and I don't support those who support murder. His other policies aren't that great either; his healthcare keeps with the socialistic trend the US has been seeing. I have to give a McCain a point here… well, at least a partial point; his healthcare plan is more market based, which is good, because the government shouldn't really be involved in healthcare at all… so let's wean the American people off of it. On the other hand, though, McCain want to give tax cuts so people can buy their own insurance. Good or bad? It's not direct healthcare, but I don't know, their might be rules on what you could do with the money you save… I really don't know.
The US and world economies, healthcare, and environmental issues certainly might be hot button right now, but they are not the only issues (and I got issues with those issues anyway.. lolz). Some of the more important things to me right now, though, are easing off with governmental control, a huge reality check on environmental issues (as in, stop the idiocy, please!), and big black and white sin issues like abortion and homosexuality. A candidate who will state his intentions, hold a Biblical and conservative view, have some backbone, and not cave in to political and public pressure is one that would get my vote. And the presidential candidate that fits this description is not Barack Obama. But it's not John McCain either. Still, it's ignoring our duty to not vote and not take a stand. My ballot would have a bubble next to John McCain not because he's perfect, but because he best represents my beliefs as a Christian.
I urge the people of America to vote according to their convictions, not their feelings.
In the tradition of Grand Stream Dreams, I bring you our very first Linkfest.
Boston.com - World Series game could be delayed for Obama pitch - You might have heard that Barack Oboma had purchased an half hour time slot on at least some networks to promote his cause. Clever of him. But possibly delay the World Series? It's only by a few minutes, I know, and I'm not a big baseball fan… but still, let's hope people get mad at him for this…
Fox News - Obama Ads Invade Video Games - Obama billboards show up in Burnout Paradise on Xbox Live… hmmm… ok… I didn't know their were ads, but hey, I suppose if they pay for them… but a little weird anyway.
Newsweek - Who Are the 10% Who Think U.S. on Right Track? - A viewpoint on who actually thinks things are good. Meh. Not extrememly persuasive.
Schlissel's blog - Some of My Best Friends Are Sarah Palin - A good post about Sarah standing on what she believes and representing us as Christians… and being us.
LA Times - Greenspace blog - Bottled water not so pure - Really? I would have never guessed…
PC World - Microsoft Sues DHL After Train Dumps 21,600 Xboxes - Ummm… ouch? Not good, DHL.
Ars Technia - Revenues rise as Google says hard times will drive business - Woot for Google! They seem to be doing pretty good as the world economy melts down… that's my kind of company. Kinda like our local banks: they are still going strong since they've invested wisely (read: with discretion… *cough* Citibank et all *cough*).
MercuryNews.com - Q&A with John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla - Pretty good interview. Nothing ugly. Lilly thinks Chrome isn't exactly competition… it's just Google helping Mozilla out with their mission: making the web a better place. I like that Firefox slogan, by the way: "Take back the Web." Pretty sick. Anyway, also some stuff on Firefox Mobile, of which alpha versions are coming soon.
Sioux City Journal.com - Senator's lawsuit against God is tossed out - This feels like it should be on the Drudge Report, but, LOL, what were you thinking?
redemption in a blog - Optimize Firefox’s memory usage by tweaking session preferences - If you're a heavy heavy tab user in Firefox, you might take a look at this if things have been slowing down.
Matasano Chargen - Detecting Anonymizing Proxies - An interesting blog post on detecting the use of a proxy server. Technical and hopefully helpful illustrations. A good read. Edit, October 24, 2008: The link is still 404, but I looked up the Google cache. No pictures, I'm afraid, but it's better than nothing.
I got up around 5:00 AM today… it felt like the middle of the night. We left around 5:30, bound for the city of Fruitland, Idaho, which is quite close to Ontario, Oregon. I think we got there at about 11-something, our time. Fruitland and Ontario are in the Mountain Time Zone, which is an our ahead of us.
After a relatively brief wait in the front room, I went back into a room and got asked some of the usual questions (allegories, prescriptions). I got x-rayed too… kind of interesting, I stood sort of under/inside the machine, bit down on this thing, put my hands onto a couple of bars, and closed my eyes. The machine, scanned around my head to get a complete view of my teeth. You could see the wisdom teeth pretty well in the print, and you could see my eye sockets, too. A little creepy…
After that, Doctor Hillam came in and had a consultation with me and the parents. He told us what to expect after the surgery, what I could eat, what to do, and what not to do. He said it was the perfect time to get them out, and I agree. It's a four day weekend, which means time to recover and do homework, and I still live at home, which means people to take care of me. =^)
Anyway, after the consultation, I went to the lavatory, and then went to the surgery room. The nurse, or assistant, or whatever she was, who was in there, hooked me up with some monitors: blood pressure, heart, and some sensor that went on my finger which I do no know the purpose of. Mom suggests that it may have been a blood sugar monitor.
The doc came in and I got hooked up with an IV. Either before or after that, I don't remember which, they gave me oxygen through the nose. I think my vision might have started to go a little weird after they started pumping the sedative… but I don't remember. In fact, it was sort of dreamy after that… and then I slowly woke up in the recovery room. I was a bit dizzy, and my vision a little messed up. After a while, I pulled on my sweater, and a while after that, I walked out to the car with Mom. I think I looked OK compared to some poor girl who walked out shortly after we arrived in Fruitland.
Anyway, I'm on Vicoprofen right now, have an icepack strapped to my head (check out the Facebook pics, LOL), will be taking antobiotics, and doing mouthwash.
I personally am not not a huge fan of Firefox 3's default theme, at least not on XP. There are, of course, tons of themes out there, and quite a few now available for Firefox 3.
Winstripe Modern does an excellent job of giving the Firefox 1.5 look. Quite classy. Available for Linux and Windows. One or both might work for Mac, but I don't know.
[Update: July 3, 2009: I have updated to Firefox 3.5. Winstripe Modern is not compatible, and the author states he has no intention of updating it. It might work with a hack, I don't know and I don't want to try. Because I found something I like better: Winestripe RealFox, rarin' and ready to go with Firefox 3.5. Rock on classiness!]
[Update: July 5, 2009: Unfortunately, Winestripe RealFox is Windows only at the moment. However, the developer said on Mozilla Add-Ons that he is working on making it work for Linux, which is good news. In the meantime, here are some 3.0-up alternative Winestripe type themes to pick through. Good luck.]
[Update: September 2, 2009: Wanting a bit more modern functionality with the classic look, I've now switched to StrataStripeStripe, which I like a lot. It's marked as experimental at the moment, and I really don't know what OS compatibility is like right now, except that there was a report in the reviews from the ninth of last month that it didn't work in Vista. Hope it works for you if you like it and cheers!]
Firefox 2 also had a theme that was, in my opinion, better than Firefox 3. Firefox 2, the theme, reloaded has resurrected the theme. It's not perfect, though. One of it's most glaring shortcomings is that checkmarks do not display. So, am I working offline? I can't tell, unless I actually try to navigate to some pages. Arg. Also, somehow it doesn't seem as tight as the original theme. It could just be from views of Matthew's eye-candied Firefox 2 theme (he used an extension for it… I don't remember what it was called, though), since I had been using a Firefox 3 Beta for a while before 3.0. But I did use Fx 2 for a while after I reinstalled Windows in June… hmmm. Whatever. Theme appears to be for all OS's.
Simple Green was a theme I used back in my Firefox 2 days… It looks like the Netscape Navigator 8 theme. I checked today, and yes, there is a version available for Firefox 3. Sweet!
In case you haven't heard about it yet, Google has released a searchable index of the web in 2001. In other words, it's like searching Google in 2001. And you can view the old pages from archive.org Internet Archive. Gnarly.
Why am I getting nowhere on my case?
It's CDS, not XCP.
Let me elaborate.
My Switchfoot CD is protected with Cactus Data Shield, not Extended Copy Protection.
Now how did that happen…? I see that the Wikipedia article on the album mentions that some copies of the album were protected by Cactus. Ok. Why didn't I figure this out sooner?
A Google search led me to this page, which mentioned CDS-300, which struck a familar note with me from browsing the CD. Aha.
Alright. Hopefully I should be able to fix it with this new knowledge, and some helpful info from that page. And then I'll post on what happens, some summary information on this stuff, and info on how to avoid or fix the situation.
If you use Vista with Aero enabled, this one's for you. Using the Glasser extension and some Stylish styles, you can get an effect much like IE 7 with Aero. It looks good, too. Maybe better than IE 7.
Sigh. The royalty rates didn't go up, and Apple keeps on selling the tunes.
Other news: Nintendo shows off the DSi. It launches in Japan on the first. Hmmm… it has a web browser… this should be interesting.
And… watch the VP debate if you can. We don't have live TV, so it's a no go for me, but if you do, hit the tube tonight.
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