June 30, 2005

Presidential Salute

This is an amusing short video of our good ole president doing what he does best: showing the world his IQ.

Click here to watch it!

Cattle Baron turned Philanthropist

As many Cattle Barons do, I've decided to get out of the business and become a Philanthropist. I have been going back to doing normal things in the game like questing and killing monsters, but any time I someone begging for food or free stuff, I give them some money. It makes me feel good that the fruits of my labors can do someone some good. Never-you-mind that I made that money by buying at lower than the market price! I have 114,000 gold in the bank. Now that I have some money, I am going to work on upping my fishing again. I harpooned Tuna for the first time last night. Get your mind out of the gutter; I meant I went fishing again. I still have a couple people who want to sell me hides, and that's OK. I will need some income now and again. [smile]

Sunglasses and Bren

Arrrrghhhh! A guy at work made me so maaaaadddd today that I wanted to just punch him in his preppy little wraparound sunglasses. Ohh, I could have just stomped on his big toe. Jerk!!!

Now, on to something more fun. I sent some Bren pics from my camera phone over so that I could put them in my blog. This is from a fabric store where Jen was browsing and Bren and I were sitting on the floor goofing around.





Suffice it to say that he liked the Ducky material. Me too!

June 29, 2005

Crack the whip

I'm at work this morning, and sleepy but not too bad. It's a good day. Have had 1 of the 3 productive and really engaging meetings that I've ever had working here in the last almost 8 years today. Prior to today, the count was 2 productive and really engaging meetings ever. :)

I'm listening to:


Sogno
by Andrea Bocelli
Sogno consists entirely of new compositions, much of which are deliberately skewed toward the pop audience whom Andrea Bocelli was well on his way to earning in the spring of 1999.

Goatee

A lady today says to me "Hey Darrell, is that a Fu Man Chu or a Van Dyke?" HUH?!?!?!

Since Memorial Day I've been sportin' a goatee (not that kind of sportin' les) and it's a lot of fun.

I don't know what either a Fu Man Chu or a Van Dyke is, however. I dind't even know goatees had names!!!!!!!!

Runescape update: 45,472 gold in the bank. Cow trading is beginning to take it's toll. This is becoming work. I can't type fast enough! Hv strtd to abbrviate evryting in game. I sk. :(
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. But I love the thrill of making a big sale!!!! Sold 310 to one guy tonight. My fence must have been picked up by the white knights (aka the police in RS) cuz he's nowhere to be seen since that night...oh well!

[zombie] Muuuuuuuuuuust sleep!

(intentianally didn't close ZOMBIE tag...zombieness doesn't end these days. I'm going to have to have an intervention soon. Hahahahahahahaha.) [falls out of chair asleep]

June 28, 2005

Funny Xbox remote package

Oh, here's something else funny. That Xbox remote I bought came and works fine. In fact it is a miracle machine. Check this out!



Lies!!!
1) Not innovative at all - an exact copy of the Microsoft one
2) It has no function keys, and what the hell is facile?
3) There's no pass-thru. That's BS.
4) I wanna know how!!!



More lies!!!
1) It takes AAA batteries.
2) I'm not even going to list all the grammatical problems on the obviously poorly translated imported miracle.

I can't believe this little Xbox remote can do all those things! And what a bargain!!! I love it though. Now I can watch movies on my Xbox!!!

I'm an addict, baby!

Click to enlarge
But I don't want to quit! It's so much fun!
I just sold 348 more hides that I've collected over the last two days and made 34,800 gold. Gawd!

June 26, 2005

Runescape Cattle Baron

Oh my god, I'm officially a RuneScape Cattle Baron!


Bessie and Clara Bell - Moo! Moo!

Well, there no such thing in the game, but the proof is in the pudding. I was running around in the game, and really, I was almost to the point of saying "I can't find anything fun to do." which is sad since there's so much to do in the game. Well, I went to a new town in the eastern desert and didn't find much of interest. It was quiet but at least it was new. I explored the place and surrounding area, but couldn't go more south as it was a members only area. So, I swung back thru town on my way back to the verdant west. I happened to pass by the bank and it was pretty busy with people buying things and selling things. That's what happens at banks since everyone goes the for sure. Yellow text, Cyan, Wavy, Flashing: you name it. It's was almost overwhelming. It was overwhelming! The computer slowed down because there was so much activity on the screen. While I was there, I just happened to see someone buying cowhides for 100 gold each. Holy Moly!!! (I should say Holy Cow!) Cowhides are the easiest thing to get next to chicken meat!!! So I asked him how many he needed. He said as many as I could get! Woo Hoo! The cow field was close and I knew what was necessary to get hides. Cow Luv! Oh, no, no that's not right! Actually cow fighting. So, I put on my matador hat and hauled butt to the cow field. I made two trips with 27 each from cows I had fought and theeeennnnnn, I got smart! OMG!!! I took all the money I had in the bank (4000 at the time) and I started buying hides from others in the field, as well as picking up the occasionally freebie that no one picked up after doing the deed on the cow. So, I went all around the cow field yelling "Paying 50 for hides! Fast Cash!" AND THEY LOVED IT!!!!! People were flocking to me to sell the previously worthless hides. At least I thought they were worthless. At Level 5 (I'm 24 now) I would have busted a freakin capillary trying to sell em at that price. SOOOO, I ran back and forth and back and forth buying hides at 50 and banking them. I had two regulars getting me hides and meeting me closer and closer to the bank to sell each time. I couldn't just tell them to come to the bank or else they might see that I was the middleman and everybody knows that the middleman's only function is to be cut out. So, buying at 50, selling at 100. I did that for probably about 175 hides. So, let's do the math here: 175 hides * 50 gold each + (20 toll at the toll gate per round trip * 6ish roundtrips) = 8870 spent. Round that to 9000 spent in "acquisitions". I'm selling em to my "fence*" for 100 gold each, so 175 hides at 100 gold = 17,500 gold. I have that and more in my bank now.

*This is not illegal or against game rules, just shrewd business on my part, thank you very much.
Fence is a term that I think is funny and in no way indicates law-breaking, impropriety, or other
nefarious or otherwise unlawful action. :p

Fence also wanted all his hides tanned, so to speak, so he's giving me 500 plus 100 hides per time and I'm going to the tanner and paying him 1 per hide to tan them. Then I get to keep the remaining 400 gold as pay. What a deal. Fence says he has 3000 to tan. Both he and I (and I would assume others) are working to gather and tan. I had to get off the game at 6:30 this morning because I was so tired. It's been years since I stayed up all night playing a game. My rear and shoulders are reminding me today that I really shouldn't be doing that...

I just went on for a sec and noticed one of my big suppliers was on so I msg'd him and said that if he could get me 250 by tonite, I'd buy them all and give him a 1000 gold bonus. He was only too happy to do it! If he's smart, he'll find someone to buy them from at 25 or even 40. It just depends on whether he has money to invest. He might just get em all himself. Who knows? Who cares?

The thing about all this is that I think I could make a successful business in real life if I just had startup money. I mean this is the way the world works - buy low and sell high! Everybody knows it. So, if I could just get some seed money, I wouldn't have time to play RuneScape any more because I'd be so busy making real money. Oh, I can just imagine. Real world has lots of other complications though, so I think I'll stick to RuneScape for now. Hey, there's no health insurance for my employer to pay in RS. Oooops, correction, he's not my employer - I'm an independent contractor doing business as BLSH Cowhides. :) ROTFL at myself. [goes to sleep] [*snore*] [says in sleep "buy low, sell high]

June 21, 2005

Misc Stuff

Yesterday I won an eBay auction for the Xbox remote that I wanted. $10.78 - what a bargain. The brand name ones are 30 bucks at Wally World. This non brand one will suit me just fine, I think.

Played a little RuneScape last night. Love it, Love it, Love it. [Zombie] I'm so tired. Must go home on time and play more tonight. [/Zombie]. I met the top, top player the other night: saibot 0330. He dropped some junk after leading about 15 people around the world for many minutes. Junk to him - treasure to us little people.

Bought strawberries for 98 cents. (I just went on an internet quest for how to type the cent sign; didn't find it, but did find http://www.charlieanderson.com/centsign.htm) I haven't eaten any, but that was a good price. Also at the same time, here's a little annoyed sound at Wally World - I saw a large endcap display for fresh cherries, at $2.48 per pound. I picked up a bag and thought, "Gee this is awfully big for a pound." Sure enough! Right on the scale - two pounds. Do you know how few people actually weight the prepackaged bags of cherries? I'd say I'm the only one anywhere to not automatically assume that it was a 1 lb bag. So, most people will think they're spending two forty-eight when actually they're spending closer to 5 bucks. I also surmise that most people don't pay a lot of attention when they are being checked out and won't ever know. So here's a raspberry to walmart for misleading cherry selling. On the other hand, the price for a box of strawberries sure was good, so maybe the people who get screwed on cherries are subsidizing my cheap strawberries. Thanks people-who-don't-pay-attention! How about all those berry references? Haha!

That's my rambling for today. Now I need to get some work done.

Sympathy Card

I have a friend whose mother passed away recently, so I sent her a sympathy card from http://www.jacquielawson.com. The friend is a young lady of maybe 22 or 3, and I was really touched by her email back to me. It has more feeling than I'd expect from someone of her age. It just goes to show you that stereotypes are rarely accurate and that a person's true feelings are still well able to be expressed by writing. I think that this shows that the old art of skillful writing is not dead.

Here's a [slightly edited] version of what she wrote to me:

I got your card and I wanted to tell you I really appreciate it. It's so nice to know that even at the [schoool] people are thinking of me. I'm not quite certain how the news arrived there, but I am glad that it did. I hope your summer is going well, Darell. Surprisingly, mine is improving. I'm begining to realize that people do care about both mum and me. All the support has given some light to this situation. To see how much one person meant to everyone; friends, old neighbors, high school friends, family from both sides, and co-workers (mine and dad's). When we had an Irish wake the night before the funeral, so many people came. Even the ceremony had a lot of people. Mum was a fighter 'til the end, I'll say that much. Being religious and all, though, I know she's not really gone. She's still here. Heaven's all around us, so who knows, maybe she's standing right next to me.

-M


Isn't that something? :~)

June 20, 2005

Very Cute

This is cute. I've heard about this "miraculous improvement" in a sick twin, but I don't know if it was an isolated incident or if it is a commonly seen occurrence.

Maybe some medical student out there could weigh in on this...

June 19, 2005

3 reports printed

I've finished printing all 3 of my credit reports (about 40 pages total) and am going to look at them tomorrow. I'm going to do a brief review of each and tell which one I think is the best.

On another note: Drat, I just lost an eBay auction for an Xbox DVD remote, which I want/need. Oh well! There are many others.

June 18, 2005

No Strings Credit Report

This is a new federal law: you have to be given 1 free credit report from each of the 3 big agencies once per year. In the past, they were required to give you on if you were denied credit, but now they have to provide one free per year just for the asking.

I am in the process of printing out my Experian report right now. I am also going to print the reports from the other two. I decided to print all three at once to compare them, but I can see the benefits of printing one every 4 months instead...

https://www.annualcreditreport.com/ is the site.

I checked their security certificate to make sure it is not a scam site. They have the same certificate company that I use, VeriSign, and I know how hard it was for me to get a VeriSign certificate. I trust that this is a legitimate site. They asked for a ton of identifying info, but not my email address. That's good, no extra spam on top of the hundred or so I get a day.

June 9, 2005

JenH.org up

We're finally beginning to get things sorted out over in the JenH.org data center. :)

Her site should be available again, but some pages may not display properly or at all. I thought it was better to put it back up on the net mostly fixed so that her visitors would be able to see at least the most recent stuff.

More repairs upcoming!

June 8, 2005

JenH.org down

UPDATE: JenH.org is up. See this.

JenH.org is down due to problems with the Internet Connection on her server. Since all the pictures on my site are hosted on her server, my pictures are not displaying either.

I'm working on the problem, and hope to have it back up by the weekend.

Sorry for the trouble!!!

-DH

June 6, 2005

A good funny

This is from my friend Fred. What a font of forwarded humour.

A man appeared before St. Peter at the pearly gates.

"Have you ever done anything of particular merit?" St Peter asked.

"Well, I can think of one thing," the man offered. "Once, on a trip to the Black Hills out in South Dakota, I came upon a gang of high-testosterone bikers, who were threatening a young woman. I directed them to leave her alone, but they wouldn't listen. "

"So, I approached the largest and most heavily tattooed biker and smacked him on the head, kicked his bike over, ripped out his nose ring, and threw it on the ground."

I yelled, "Now, back off!! Or you'll answer to me!"

St. Peter was impressed: "When did this happen?"

"Just a couple minutes ago."

June 5, 2005

Router

Doh! My Internet connection is really acting up. I think it's my Linksys Wireless G router. I am going to upgrade the firmware and hope for the best. If that doesn't fix it, I'm switching to Earthlink.

June 4, 2005

RuneScape

My friend Aurelia just told me about RuneScape. It's a cool (and free) online RPG done all in Java. http://www.RuneScape.com.

http://www.zert0.net/ seems to have a lot of info on the game, but I'm not sure if it a fansite or somehow part of the game...

Fun, but takes a long time to do things. Guess that's good!!!

Pictures from Larry

Here are some nice pix from Jen's Grandfather. I can just imagine sitting on the banks of the Guadalupe river...






Click for BIG versions
Sound from http://www.flashkit.com/soundfx/. Press Escape to cut it off. ^_^

IE Maximized

I'm always annoyed by Internet Explorer opening up in a small window, even after I repeatedly set it to maximized before I close it. Today, I got fed up and did some googling. Here's what I found and it solved the problem:

One of the most aggravating things about IE is that it won't always open full screen. The fix is easy! Right click on your Internet Explore shortcut and click on properties, select the shortcut tab. Select run, click on the dropdown menu and select run maximized. Click Apply, OK and that's it!
(from http://www.marthas-web.com/internetexplorer.htm)

Now, I use the launch bar IE icon, and you can do this process on that, but I don't think you can do it on the one in XP's start menu or the default one on the desktop. If you just make a shortcut to one of those, I think you can edit the properties of the shortcut and use that.

I also have what I consider to be the convenience of conveniences: an icon to open a new, blank IE window so I can quickly type in a site without having to wait for my homepage to come up. I create a shortcut to IExplore.exe (which is located in "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" for me) and then I make a minor change in the shortcut properties. In the target box, add about:blank to the end so that you have

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" about:blank

If you combine this with the maximize trick above, you get a beautiful, empty window to take you anywhere you want to go. You could also put a URL there, I guess, but there are other ways to do that that may be better than this.

I'm just happy as a clam now. Thanks, Mahhhtha's Web!