Good Bloody Morning

I cut my finger last night. I was chopping an onion when the knife slipped and sliced into my middle finger right beside the nail.

The nice thing about using a good, sharp knife is that you don’t really even feel it when you cut yourself. I washed my hands a few times, wiped the blood off of the cutting board, threw away the bloody piece of onion and went on about my business.

When I was done Paige put a band-aid on it for me. She’s sweet like that.

I took the band-aid off before I went to bed and everything seemed fine. This morning I went through my morning routine, all the while keeping an eye on that cut. I thought about putting another band-aid on it, but why should I? It looked like it was nearly healed at this point.

Then I reached in the closet to get a pair of pants and felt a strange throbbing sensation at the tip of my finger. I dropped the pants and saw red. The blood had already dripped down one leg of the pants and on the waist where I grabbed them. I thought about wearing another pair of pants, but I had to clean these up regardless. So, I put band-aid on my finger, cleaned the blood off my pants, and was only about 15 minutes late for work.

So if you see me today and notice blood stains on my clothes, that’s why. It has nothing to do with me going crazy because some idiot asked another stupid question. I promise…

America’s Ketchup

I know I said no more political stuff, but I couldn’t resist this:

The leading competitor not only has 57 varieties, but has 57 foreign factories as well. W Ketchup comes in one flavor: American.

See the insanity for yourself at W Ketchup.com.

I guess this means I won’t be eating french fries at Ben and Paula’s house anymore…

Back in session

The new school year is in full swing now. I’m teaching a computer science class this year which is a lot of fun. I don’t know anything about teaching, but that’s OK because the students don’t know anything about programming. I think I’m learning just as much as they are.

The only downside to the class is the time: 12:00 – 1:00. I miss coming home for lunch every day. I’ve been eating lunch in the high school cafeteria from 11:30 – 12:00 this week. That’s “A” lunch for those who care. It certainly brings back some memories:

I stood in line for about 29 minutes one day just to get one of those terrible, rectangular pieces of pizza. Just as I sat down to inhale it, a fight broke out right across the table from me. One guy grabbed the other guy and threw him on the table, you guessed it, right on top of my pizza. I carried my tray back to the lunch lady and she gave me another pizza. I ate it as the bell rang and everybody else walked out.

Our work order list is finally back down to about 5 pages and most of the major projects are taken care of. I actually took last weekend off from work. Prior to that I think I worked 21 days straight. Hopefully now that things are settling down I can back into the routine of updating this site. I’ve got tons of pictures and stuff to put up here.

Not dead, just busy

I’ve realized that no matter how long I leave this site alone, it will never update itself.

That’s the next project I’m going to work on: Weblog software that generates and posts random updates every few days. I’ll be richer than Bill.

Anyway, school starts Monday. I guess I should start preparing for the class I’m teaching…

Free iPod

I’ve seen this mentioned on several other weblogs. There are lots of reports that this actually works. So, I’m taking the plunge and trying it out for myself. Here’s what you do: Go to freeiPods.com, sign up for an account, complete an offer, then get five other people to each complete an offer. After that, they’ll send you a free iPod.

This is obviously some kind of pyramid scheme, but what the heck. Some people have actually received free iPods from this site, so I might as well try it. I’ve invited a few people to sign up for this and help me get an iPod. If I didn’t think of you when I was filling out the form, you can sign up as a friend of mine by going to this link – http://www.freeiPods.com/default.aspx?referer=7271022

The offers are things like signing up for an AOL account, joining the DVD club, etc. I think the best one is the eBay account. All you have to do is sign up for an account and bid on one item. I used my e-mail address from work and then bid $1 on a new iPod. There’s no way I’ll win it, but the only requirement to complete the offer is one bid. So that should be it.

I’ll post updates here so everyone can see how this works out…

Two Weeks

What happened to this place? It’s been over two weeks since I put anything up here.

It’s strange because lots of things have been happening lately, but I just haven’t bothered to post anything about it on the site. Some stuff I can talk about (like our trip to Hot Springs, the fact that Geoff is in Germany right now, or the 80 foot trench we dug in the backyard), and other things I can’t talk about (like… nevermind).

I’m finally starting to get caught up at work and I think we’re through with our backyard for a while, so hopefully I can get back to my usual schedule of almost daily updates. I’ll also say that I’m tired of the political stuff. I think it’s time for more pictures of family and friends. And, of course, some full on geeky posts.

Check back soon. Thinks should start to get interesting again…

More Gmail

I guess this is kind of a continuation of yesterday’s post… I have one invitation to Gmail to give away. So, if you read this site and you’d like a free, 1 GB e-mail account, then either e-mail me or post a comment below.

This would be perfect for someone with a silly Yahoo.com account, like for example progrock_nutball. Let me know if you’re interested.

Gee Mail

Scrivs over at Forever Geek is giving out an invitation to GMail to anyone who links to his site. Since I visit the site daily and enjoy the content. I’d be glad to link to it.

If you’re at least a little bit geeky, you’ll probably enjoy his site. He covers news on several different topics like Gadgets, Programming, and Open Source. Lately, he’s been reviewing a lot of Anime. I haven’t watched much anime since Robotech (back then we still called it Japanimation), but some of the new stuff looks interesting.

At least they didn’t say “hackers”

Here’s a bit of a warning for all of you Internet Explorer users out there. CNET News has an article up right now called Researchers warn of infectious Web sites. In it, they discuss two flaws in Internet Explorer that could let someone take over your computer. The difference this time is that you can get infected just by browsing the web. Here’s the meat of the article:

…online organized crime groups are breaking into Web servers and surreptitiously inserting code that takes advantage of two flaws in Internet Explorer that Microsoft has not yet fixed. Those flaws allow the Web server to install a program that takes control of the user’s computer.

And in case you’re wondering why your computer is running so slow and you’re getting so many popups, this article addresses that, too:

Earlier this month, an independent security researcher found an aggressive advertising program, known as adware, that installed itself onto a victim’s computer via the same two flaws in Internet Explorer.

Nice. At this point you’re saying to yourself “It’s OK, I have antivirus software!”

The group also pointed out that the malicious program uploaded to a victim’s computer is not currently detected as a virus by most antivirus software.

Ouch. So what’s my advice? Simple, don’t use Internet Explorer. Go to http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ and install Firefox.

Firefox is the best web browser I’ve ever used. It’s a great way to avoid all of the flaws in Internet Explorer and at the same time introduce yourself to some open-source software.

Remember This Date

History was made today.

Scaled Composites became the first private company to launch a manned craft into space this morning. Mike Melvill piloted SpaceShipOne 62 miles above the Earth’s surface to the edge of space.

He experienced three minutes of weightlessness. While weightless he opened a bag of M&M’s and watched them float around the cockpit.

After that, he landed successfully back where he started in the Mojave desert.

You can get all of the details in this CNN.com article.

Things like this restore my faith in humanity.