I am attempting to help someone out, but if I don't put this stuff someplace permanent, I won't remember what I did. It has to do with setting up archives and sidebars in movabletype. I am using 3.3?? so your results may differ (as may some of the screenshots). Click on the extended entry if you are actually interested in reading any of this, or if you are just plain bored.
When Pete was born in October of 1997 it was a real shocker. Not that she was born, but all that we had to go through.
We had gone in to the doctor's office to get the wife an ultrasound, and they noticed some weird stuff on it, so wanted us to go down to Northside and have one there. Originally we had planned on birthing with a midwife in Carrollton rather than being in a big hospital.
We got down there and they wanted to do an internal ultrasound. Apparently there was way too much fluid. Long story short, it broke her water. The wife ended up giving birth the Pete at Northside hospital, and apparently things weren't looking too good. For awhile they weren't even sure that she was going to live or not. It was all pretty damned scary.
Some of the details are pretty fuzzy now, but that could be that I just woke up too. I may add to this when I get home from work this evening. My wife has posted about tthis before and probably remembers much more.
Anyway, They decided that the thing to do was move her to Scottish Rite, which is across the street from Northside. Had the wife's water not broken at Northside Hospital and given birth to my daughter there, if they had moved her at all, it would have been to send her down to Columbus. It is extremely unlikely that she would have lived at all.
If I remember correctly, the surgery itself too somewhere around eight hours. We were on pins and needles all day. I don't remember ever having been so scared or worried at any point prior or since then.
A portion of her small intestine had never opened up, so everything was trying to go back the other way. She was full of myconium. They ended up taking out about ten centimeters of it, and they moved some stuff around that was in the wrong place.
She ended up being in Scottish rite in the ICU for 40 days or so. When we brought her home, it was still on monitors. We had to feed her every couple of hours, as the amounts she was getting were so small. She still had tubes and whatnot hanging out of her when we brought her home as well. It is just amazing to me that she is living a normal healthy life.
In 1998
This is her at one or so.
.JPG "011_10 (1).JPG")
With her NEW little sister (at that time)
Halloween 2002
2006 Softball Season. She is playing again this year. Practice has already started but I think we have a couple of weeks before the first game.
The Scurvy Dogs!
What's up with the spam? It goes through periods of time where I am receiving one thing, and then another. I just deleted about 50 emails that were "returned" from other servers for contain 'viruses'. I have seen these before. Usually it will last for a week or so, then go to something else. I hate email spam.
I ran across this on someone's blog first thing this morning, and I cannot remember where. If you had it posted, leave me a comment and I will put your link here. What can I say, sometimes I'm a dumbass. Memory's the second thing to go, so they say. I can't remember what the first one is though.
The point.
Oh yeah. The point is Shutdown Day is March 24th. Can you do it? Can I do it? I am certainly going to try. I think that is right smack in the middle of my vacation, so I can spend the day doing yard work. Or sleeping. Maybe sleeping a 24 hour drug induced sleep is the answer. That's about the only way I can do without my computer for a 24 hour period. Even hanging on the beach down at the Redneck Riviera I carry my camera, cell phone, and iPaq so that I can blog. No blogging. No gaming. No posting ads. No nothing. Living life because I can.
Damn, it really sounds sucky. I'll be on the computer until 12 AM the night before and back online at 12 AM the next morning probably.
It could be worse. I could be in China receiving electric shock therapy to 'cure' me.
Updated 3:47 PM - Now I remember. I saw it over at Michelle Malkin's site.
One thing I set up when the Boy was first starting to get online was a watchdog program so that I could monitor his Internet usage. There are just too many pedophiles and other bad folks out there not to, not to mention the fact that just going to his game sites he can pretty much access any type of porn he wants.
It is particularly important for me to watch what the girls are doing. RePete is still young enough that the only thing even remotely close to computers she gets is playing on my iPaq, but Pete is online quite a bit, at least an hour a day and I want to be able to track what she is doing, but not be intrusive about it.
One way for me to take care of the internet monitoring is with SpectorSoft computer monitoring. It allows me to know every single thing that they do on the computer. Spector Pro records emails, chats, MySpace activity recording, even key logging. That way if they join a site without my permission, I have the passwords and can get in and see what is going on.
My children's safety is just too important for me to leave to chance, and if I have to feel like I am spying on them to make sure that they are safe, so be it.
Just woke up from my nap. I managed to get about an hour between phone calls and Pete getting home and asking if she could go out and play. My wife calls the girls Pete and RePete, and I am tired of calling them "the oldest girl" so am adopting it. RePete is still sleep, but I will be getting her up shortly so that she will sleep tonight.
I fixed the code at the bottom of each entry that shows the time of my posts. It is supposed to say "Posted xx minutes/days ago by Richard". Half the time it works, half the time it says 31 days ago, and in the case of the one that I have dated for 11:59 PM tonight it says 30 days ago. It's a big pain in the butt is what it is. I just used the code from the default movabletype template for that.
I don't know what it is, but once you have been in ANY kind of tech job, you are the free tech support person EVERYONE wants to be friends with. I actually did tech support for a few months in between running restaurants and working in our corporate office for a provider that contracted out to about 35 different ISPs. I also spent three and a half years in support for about 300 desktop users and about 850 remote locations. Four of us worked in the IT department. Every once in a while that could really become a headache.
Last week one of my waitresses that has worked with me for several years was asking me a question about her computer, one of the others was in there with her husband. They quickly asked "Do you work on computers?". "Yes, but I charge $50 an hour". They quickly shut up. Hell, $50 an hour is CHEAP. A couple of minutes later the husband asked if I could look at his TV. Now how the hell would I know anything about televisions. Mine quits working, I buy a new one. There's the fix for that little problem.
Anyway, one of the other managers called me up a few minutes ago. He is an end user with no clue. That's OK, sometimes they are easier to deal with than the guy that THINKS he has a clue and doesn't want to listen to you. His Internet connection to Bellsouth is down, so I walked him through checking a couple of sites, then pinging a couple, as well as himself just to make sure TCP/IP was installed then ended up telling him to reset his modem, router, and computer and if it didn't work to call Bellsouth since that's what he is paying them for. I don't mind helping out, but once that ten minute mark hits I start getting frustrated and they need to deal with someone else that they are paying, not me.
...my computer just rebooted in the middle of doing the last post. Luckily Zoundry auto saves the posts, at least through the last complete sentence or something. When the system came back up I got one of those "Microsoft Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown" messages. The details were:
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Which I though was funny. No BSOD, just a message that tells me that I got one. I will have to run a scan of my hard drives while I am at work. That hasn't happened before, so I am not really sure what is up.
Don't forget, submit some questions today and I will do the webcast tomorrow. I have split my off days up, have to work this morning and evening, but I will be home again tomorrow.
...a couple of posts ago I gave a link to Dreamscapes or whatever it's called. It lets you use ANY mpeg as your desktop background. Right now I have it set to use the one where my daughter is chasing me with an ax at Wal-Mart. Pretty shitty video for that big of a screen since it came from my cell phone, but that gives an idea of what it's capable of. I will have to fool around a little bit more with this. I have some video that I imported from my Sony video player that I might want to use as my background. Very cool, but it is fairly distracting too.
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Microsoft just released the Windows Dreamscene Preview as part of the Windows Ultimate Extras that you get if you are running ultimate. In conjunction, Stardock released Dreamscapes. If you have a decent video card (and you pretty much have to if you are running Vista Ultimate) then you can have animated wallpaper, and all the work is done by the video card, so it's not using much of your cpu resources. I am running it here, and was going to take a video and upload it to youtube, but it looks like Brad Wardell, the CEO of Stardock, already has. Here is the video, it kind of gives you an idea of what it does.
It's a very cool program You can download it at stardock.com and find some cool free backgrounds over at wincustomize.com
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I've added the blog to the Technorati listing, will start posting here soon.
So I have to get up early on my day off. I have been shorthanded all week, so one of my former employees agreed to work four nights for me, provided I supply transportation. I am not a damn taxi driver, but I figure if given a choice between working 3rd shifts all week and picking his ass up it's a no-brainer. The girls are home sick with me today, one with pink eye and the other with a cold, so the three of us picked him up and took him home.
I had to go by the bank and make a quick deposit. I am used to filling out the deposit slip before I leave the house, then sticking everything in an envelope. Not anymore. When I got to the bank (which is closed at this time of day) I went around to the ATM and discovered it had slightly changed. You put in your card and tell it what you want, but then you insert your bills and checks and it scans them, totals the deposit, and then spits back a receipt with the scanned image of the check right on it. Very cool.
This doesn't seem like a very big deal, but gadgets excite me. That was just too damn cool.
We are back home now. The girls are messing around with Valentine cards because you have to start them off early to turn them into good little consumers, right? Either way it gives me the opportunity to blog for a little while and maybe surf some of the sites that I haven't had the chance to over the weekend.
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Cross-Posted at http://www.shadowscope.com a couple of days ago
Several months back I was emailed asking if I would do a review for
BTV. Actually it may have been closer to a year, I don't really
remember. Now that I have no internet connection, I figured this would
be the perfect time.
You can read the entire review in the extended entry.
BeyondTV
is a PVR application that runs under windows. It allows you to watch
live television, rewind, pause, record, and fast forward it just like
you would with a dedicated hardware solution. It allows you to schedule
shows and have them recorded, both single shows and movies, and entire
seasons based upon whatever criteria to give it. Only new ones, only
repeats, whatever you want. Just like a dedicated hardware solution.
It also supports multiple tuners, unlike a dedicated hardware
solution. Yeah, you might get something that will record on two
channels, and you can always buy two or three Tivos, but that is a pain
in the rear unless you have a serious setup down in your basement with
some sort of logic controller running it all. BTV supports multiple
tuners out of the box.
Currently my PVR server that was hooked to my television is down, so
I am running it on my personal TV. I actually own two licenses as well
as Beyond TV link, a client. I am using one of my server licenses, and
occasionally the client license. Both of the other main PCs in the
house are wireless, and I have experience serious lag problems using
BTV Link on wireless, so it is rare that I will do anything with that
other than administration.
Here is the main screen from the BTV UI. Click the thumbnail for the full size pics. As you can see from the screenshot, 
there
are several options to choose from. You can go into your library of
previously recorded shows (or ones that you have manually added
yourself), watch live TV, see what's playing, setup new recordings,
change settings, listen to FM radio if your hardware supports it, and
exit the screen. The DVD burning plugin is a separate purchase that I
am testing out. I haven't decided whether I want to use it or not. It
is nice to have for the wife and kids because it makes it simple to
burn a movie to DVD, but I can do it myself using the Divx converter or
Nero.
Here is the Library Screen. 
As
you can see, with the girls here, we watch a lot of Barbie stuff. The
newest version of BTV has considerably sped things up in the library. I
have a fairly large library of movies, and it used to take anywhere
from 30-90 seconds to load. That doesn't sound like a lot, but when you
are sitting on the couch twiddling your thumbs, possibly with guests
that you are trying to impress with your geekiness, that's a lot of
time. This loaded considerably faster than previous versions. Up toward
the top, where it says 'All', you can change the view (not shown) to
'By Series' and 'By Folder' as well. Very handy for me. I don't do a
lot of TV watching. I like a few shows, Lost, 24, Battlestar, the
Sopranos, but I am normally at work when they are on. I also like to
record kids movies, because when they are young, they have the tendency
to watch the same thing. Over. and Over. and Over again. I must have
seen John Wayne in the Green Berets (not exactly a kids movie) 5000
times by the time my son turned five.
Since my main server is down (actually it is my computer that
permanently hit the waste bin, I just took my HTPC and put it on my
desk) I will want to watch the shows from this season eventually. What
I may do is record some of them to DVD and watch them that way, as I
hooked my old DVD player back up to the television when I took the
computer.
Live TV is pretty cool. Here is a screen shot of the Live TV screen. As you can see I am watching Sci-Fi. The 
Incredible
Hulk is on right now. Quality TV at it's finest. Just below is the
screen that pops up when I hit the "info" button on my remote, or click
the screen with my mouse.There are various options aside from showing
the current channel and show. The little clock icon in the upper right
hand corner or the "A" button on my remote brings up the guide showing
what is on. This is the same selection that you can also pick from the
main menu. The screenshot of the guide is shown below. What you CAN'T
see is that since my video card is pretty decent, the guide is actually
transparent and I can watch TV through it while I am browsing for
something else. For a channel surfer like my wife, this was a must. She
flips channels all the time, so being able to do that AND keep watching
is quite a bonus. The screen size is configurable. Right now it is only
showing one hour. When I have it hooked up to my television I have it
set for three. If you have a wide-screen, you can set it for whatever
you want that is comfortable for viewing.
One of things that BTV does NOT have that I really wish they would
add is picture in picture. Right now I have three TV tuners set up in
my system. When I had it hooked to the TV I use four. One hooked to my
Motorola cable box, which BTV controls with a serial cable, two hooked
to regular basic cable, and the fourth was hooked to my VCR so that I
could take my videos that are sitting in my basement and slowly copy
them onto hard drives. I have a lot of really old VCR tapes, and some
home movies on video tape that I have been saving here as the video is
not going to last forever.
As you can see in the earlier screenshots, there is a TV icon in my
system tray. It is normally the only thing running. BTV runs in the
background and I only bring up the interface itself when I want to
watch TV. It even has a web server running, so
I can schedule recorded shows through that from my PC, or even
remotely. Snapstream offers remote recording setup through them if you
have purchased BTV at no extra charge and you can set up BTV to pick up
remote recording instructions when you want, so if I am out or on a
trip I can log in from my iPaq and tell it to record something, and BTV
will do so.
Since three of my four tuners are hardware based, they record in
mpeg format. This takes up a lot of space. BeyondTV has a solution to
this. I am able to showsqueeze each mpeg into WMV or Divx avi format
which saves A LOT of space. You can do this automatically for each
show, but what I do is edit each mpeg and strip out the commercials
completely before I showsqueeze them. I hate commercials. If you don't
have the aptitude or just don't want to edit video, BTV can be set up
to 'smartskip' each show. It detects the commercials really well, and
you can skip them completely while watching. If it is a show that I am
not going to keep after watching I will use smartskip, but if it is a
movie or something I think I may keep awhile, I like to strip them out.
Since I was doing this review, I decided that I would showsqueeze
the last two shows from the current season of LOST, as I have only had
the chance to watch the first two and then burn them to DVD. Here's a
screenshot of the showsqueeze portion of the web UI. Since I didn't
want to wait until my computer was not in use tonight, I decided to
manually start the showsqueeze now.
As you can see in the picture to the right, it is currently using about 65% of my CPU for the showsqueeze, which is not 
giving
me any kind of problem. I also have two browser windows open with
several tabs each, three text editors where I was working on someone's
web site earlier, Zoundry, which is the app I am currently using to
post to my blog (or will be if my internet connection ever comes back
up), Outlook, the BeyondTV main interface, MS Paint, and of course,
Task Manager. In the background I also have Windowblinds, Trillian,
Skype, Logitech Quickcam, The Windows Vista sidebar, Firefly (which is
my remote control that I use for BTV. I may review that another time.
It kicks ass), DesktopX Builder, Windows Defender, and the Quicktime
tray thing, plus whatever services happen to be running. I don't
currently have my HA server running, but normally Homeseer is going as
well.
Showsqueeze is still running, Once it has finished and I burn the DVD I will continue the Review in another post...
Just testing out a new blog posting I found via giveawayoftheday. I stuck the widget for it down in the bottom left of the sidebar. So far it seems pretty cool. It’s called post2blog. It’s a bit different than Zoundry, which is what I have been using, but offers support for flickr, as well as some other stuff.
I can’t find a setting for it to automatically ping sites for me, not sure if I like that or not. There are a shitload of places to ping from this, plus it lets you add more, which is something Zoundry doesn’t let you do. It also includes a firefox extension and a plugin for IE. I went back to Firefox today since I have had so many problems with IE and a memory leak. I tend to leave my browser window open overnight with several tabs open, and Internet Exploder was just sucking up all of my resources.
Here are this morning's web searches. I just woke up a short while ago, so just overlook any typos.
#1 youtube for porn, youtube porn, porn on you tube, youtube of porn. Repeated several times.
I did a search on my site for the same thing just now, and found seven posts that had this. Only one for porno tube, and the great majority of the others are the porncast. Maybe I will change the name of them. I can just imagine what's going through a person's mind as they are looking for youtube porn. Can afford to actually go to a porn site? Damn.
#2 I love living in the city.
From the Fear song. I Love Livin' in the City
#3 Web Fuckers.
Don't know about this one. It's not like I use profanity or anything. Perhaps they were trying to find the NIN song Star Fuckers.
#4 Kindergarter Graduation.
I don't know if I ever posted the video of my daughter's graduation or not. I think it was before youtube but I know I did post about it.
#5 Meedio download.
I used to have Meedio (an HTPC front end) up for download here, but took it down. It's dead software folks, replaced by Yahoo Go! for TV which sucks oh by the way.
#6 2fastlane.
There are a couple of searches for this. I don't have a clue what they are searching for or what the reference is to.
#7 naked goat.
No naked goats here. Try Erin O'Brien's site.
#8 naked amsterdam women.
Now we are stretching things a bit thin here.
#9 Video Detective.
I did an advertisement for this awhile back.
#10 (all in caps) THERE'S A SINISTER FEELING BREWING
Fucking indeed.
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Since I do a little bit of advertising, I am posting this disclosure policy, which will be permanently accessible from my contacts/links section forever. It doesn't mean a hill of beans, but I have been needing to have one online now.
This policy is valid from 05 February 2007
This blog is a sponsored blog created or supported by a company,
organization or group of organizations. For questions about this blog,
please contact rm_blogger@yahoo.com.
This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.
This blog abides by word of mouth marketing standards. We believe in honesty of relationship, opinion and identity. The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post will be clearly identified as paid or sponsored content.
The owner(s) of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers' own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.
The owner(s) of this blog would like to disclose the following existing relationships. These are companies, organizations or individuals that may have a significant impact on the content of this blog. We are employed by or consult with: payperpost.com,google.com,Blogitive.com, Blogvertise.com. We blog about people to whom we are related. The most interesting such people are: Charles Sheehan-Miles. We have a financial interest in the following that are relevant to our blogging: Waffle House,Google,Payperpost,TextAdlinks,Blogitive,Blogvertise.
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