Mike and I skated Brighton's new skatepark today. This park is super fun. Street course, and two good size bowls. Skate on over to sk8colorado.blogspot.com and check out the pictures.
This week's new web service is timelope.com. It's a new Firefox plugin that keeps track of your browsing history publicly or privately. I'm trying it out at work, and I'm digging it so far.

I'm still using StumbleUpon, so who knows if I'll keep up with the timelope. You can check out daily worky browsing here
The summer season of E5 RHML has come to a close for my team. We were eliminated in the playoffs by a team we've beaten three times this season. It was an interesting game to say the least. We had nine players, and the opposing team had nineteen. Yeah, that's not a typo.

All in all it was a suprisignly tight game, ending with a score of 4 - 3. While I'm bummed we were eliminated in the first round, I did have two assists, and a goal, so I can't be too upset. Especially since I scored my goal from behind the red line.

It was late in the third, and we were battling down low, way low. I was in the corner and tried getting the puck into the mess in front of the net. What I ended up doing was deflecting it off of the other team's defensemen. It was an amazing shot. I took down one of their men, and scored at the same time.

That just happened!
Tonight I worked more on a fun distraction than my current project. It's the Where we do what we do site, and it's awesome! Any new web2.0 bloggy project that has more pictures than words is automatically cool in my book. I would like to thank JBone from wiretree for hipping me to tonight's distraction.

Surf on over and check out my office.

I've been completely slacking on posting to the site. It's nice finding fun new sites to get me going again. Speaking of new sites, I'm checking out a new web sharing service called Dropbox. So far it's pretty cool. I haven't made this a part of my daily routine, but I can see this service being very useful when floating between offices. The only part I don't like is the public sharing url format isn't something that I can remember. This may be configurable, I just don't know yet. Here are some random pictures I've uploaded so far, have a look.

8 / 1 / 8

That's right, I'm dropping a slight site tweak today since I missed the May 1st reboot.

This tweak isn't exactly what I had sketched out, but I'm still happy with it. I really only gave up on two ideas : Part of giving up on my middle scroll bucket was the effort involved with the DHTML, and possible headache for site visitors. I don't think I have site visitors, but someday I might, so better safe than sorry.
Another reason for giving up on my two ideas was everybody's favorite web browser - IE. Internet Explorer likes to do things it's own way, so the height detection was sort of a pain. The drop down menu hotlink navigator idea was scrapped because of IE's popup blocking. No worries, I actually dig the html hotlinks better anyways.

So the 8/1/8 tweak adds a header and footer bar. The header now shows the random quote machine ( formerly just in the title bar ). The footer bar way at the bottom of this page now has some hotlinks for your enjoyment. I don't think this it the end all be all for this site, but I like it better than my first "design".
Just got home from my hockey game and I had two firsts tonight.
  1. I was the first shooter in the overtime shootout
  2. I lost the puck before making it to the blue line. FTL!!!!

Wow, talk about a super fubar-a-rino. I've never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, done that before, ever.
Nobody wanted to go so I just skated up and was going to take the first shot, but I'm an idiot.

On the plus side, we still won. Now my cold streak is really ice cold, as in subzero.

I really need to get my act together and start off ice training again. Pre kid I ate, slept, and breathed hockey. Now I just flat out suck most of the time. Oh well, no reason to cry over spilled hockey puck. But it's going to take a lot of producing for my team to overlook my shootout drop pass.

FAK!!!
Too excited not to share this one -- www.SK8FACE.com

Signed up with tumblr. The big bubbly theme was more than enough for me to sign up.
-- ericfickes.tumblr.com
It's finally happening after 20+ years of skateboarding. I'm getting my very own mini ramp. A friend of a friend gave it to me, and all I had to do was drive down to Castle Rock and pick up the pieces. Tonight was quite an experience. Here's a quick timeline of the activities.



So this UHaul truck was easily the most terrifying vehicle I have ever driven. It's not even worth going into details. I'm just happy Mike and I made it home alive. The ramp pieces are all laid out in our extra parking space next to the house. Hopefully all the local hooligans will stay clear.

So yeah, I finally met my new neighbor tonight. I've been meaning to go over and introduce myself, but I suck at being neighborly and social in general. Anywhos, it was pretty classic. I see him turn the corner in his truck. He rolled by the back of the UHual, rolls down his window and asked me the classic new neighbor question.

"Does that thing have a good bumper on it?"

Talk about a totally classic first line. I confirmed the bumper was good and new neighbor guy proceeds to casually tell me he's got a Shift Loader ( some sort of alternate name for a Bobcat ) and chains which would pick up the truck. So at this point I introduced myself. Now we know each other.

So I walk over to his house and he drives around the corner in a bobcat. MY NEIGHBOR OWNS A BOBCAT!!! Damn, talk about freaking awesome. And to think I consider myself sort of macho because I play ice hockey.

Long story short, here are the highlights of tonight ( I'm tired of typing and it's late ).
  1. New neighbor is freaking awesome
  2. UHaul is no help at all
  3. Castle Rock is far away
  4. I will be skating my own mini ramp in two weeks
  5. I'm not macho or a writer
Well this is a sad moment. I just listed my 2007 Subaru STI Limited on Craigs list.
I'm all about the little details. If you know me, you also know that I'm easily amused. Something I like about OSX is it automagically shows the PCs on my network in the Finder's sidebar. Makes sharing files really easy.

Anywho, the other night I was explaining this to Jenn and noticed a little detail that I want to share. Check out the PC icon that OSX uses.

I like an OS that has a sense of humor.
Looks like Internet Explorer isn't that bad after all. I'm working on a ColdFusion8 file importer, and Firefox3 is really sucking at rendering the form. I've been tweaking, cfflush-ing, and all sorts of tricks to no avail. For giggles I tried the same script in Internet Explorer, and the form renders about twice as fast, if not faster.

The large test file I'm working with has just over 20,000 lines which means my confirmation form has just over 20,000 lines. I'm going to keep banging on this wall until I think of a clever way to get this file imported and into a manageable form.

IE may have won this battle, but Firefox3 is still my daily browser.
While wearing my ColdFusion8 pants tonight, I found something that really pisses me off. Cold Fusion's CFSCRIPT doesn't support the ternary operator.
Seriously?!? WTF?!?

I chased my tail trying to figure out an IIf alternative to determine if an index in an array is defined. Tried all sorts of variations with no luck. Guess I'll be adding this one to the to learn list.

Something that has always bugged me about CF is the lack of documented CFSCRIPT usage. All I really want is a document that says how to use CFML in tag land, and then how the same functionality differs in CFSCRIPT land. I have found lots of CFSCRIPT code out there, but still haven't found good documentation on this yet.

I just need to get deeper into CF8.
Here are some highlights from today.
  1. I've come to grips with downgrading my automobile. sniff...
  2. I received a totally sweet error message from Eclipse
  3. Fletch made the Mile High Music Together website

And now for the pictures
Super helpful Eclipse error message
don't know what I'd do without Eclipse's help
Fletch from Music Together class
strummin with the Fletcher!
I need to start off ice training again. Tonight I could have had a hat trick, but screwed the pooch. I beat the goalie on a deke move and lost the puck right before the backhand. Then I hit the post on an empty net. On the plus side I did score one goal, and the team won, so it's not all bad.
This email from amazon is funny to me. We suggest Flex books and Pampers. Yeah, I'm definitely a dad now.
Today is national go skateboarding day. Mike and I went to the Commerce City Skatepark to see the Independent skate team demo. Turns out they showed up earlier than advertised and we didn't get to see anybody. Wack stamp for Independent. We did however roll over to the Denver park and skated the bowl for a few hours. Good times.

Trying out the acrobat.com document preview functionality. With acrobat.com you can upload a document, convert it to pdf, and then host a preview on your site. The document below was just a jpg converted to pdf.

One of the things I like about Burnout Revenge is that some cars sound like the cycles of tron. I know I've heard a few random TRON-esque sounds while playing the game. I love it.
Something else I've noticed is random disappearing cars. I'll get into a tight situation, and the car I'm battling will disappear. It's weird but funny at the same time.
If you haven't seen it yet, Adobe has launched a beta of their version of Google Docs called acrobat.com. It's looking pretty sweet. Besides being free, creating PDFs out of uploaded documents was enough for me to sign up.

It's really cool seeing Adobe launching new services like this using Flex. I'm also digging the clean and simple dark theme they've got going. Something that stuck out to me was this organic call out style menu.

I remember working so hard to make web applications mirror common desktop applications. For example, check out the forum at WebFX. Be sure to view that site in IE. WebFX has been around since web1.0, doing some amazing DHTML work.

Anyways, I like seeing new takes on common form elements like this. It gives me hope that web application interfaces won't be such a buzzkill in the future.
So I'm watching Flight of the Conchords the other night and I almost lost it when I saw this.

Yeah, it's the Footloose montage. FOC is on my favorites list now. Really, it landed on my list after watching the Business Time video, but this montage sealed the deal. I also like it because the shorter dude reminds me of an old skate buddy that I lost touch with.

Matt Makarow, email me dude!
Tonight I watched a sweet Ben Forta tutorial on Adobe TV - Build a ColdFusion-powered Flex application It was a quick walkthrough of a Cold Fusion wizard built into Flex Builder. Pretty freaking amazing that you can created a Cold Fusion driven Flex application all in a wizard. Surf on over and watch for yourself.

DotNet makes web services wicked easy, but this takes the cake for me.
Added program icons to my air fart machine. At some point I need to get the auto update built in.
David Realeyes hooked me up with a killer reference website today -- gotapi.com
< ADOBE AIR >
I'm stinking up the internets with my latest Adobe AIR application. You can download a free copy over at ifartair.com. Have a download, let me know what you think.

If you don't have AIR already, download it here.
< /ADOBE AIR >
Here's something most people don't know about web development. Internet Explorer is a huge time suck because it renders webpages completely different than other browsers. The table below shows a show of a website I'm working on right now. The three good web browsers, Firefox, Safari, and Opera, render the page as expected. The most popular browser, Internet Explorer, pads all the images and essentially breaks this site.



Four hours later, I was able to smack enough html and css for IE to render properly. You can see the results over at South Georgia Quail Unlimited. The site is not complete, but it's up and works.
Today I hooked up with an old friend on facebook, and found cool feature. I was giving my buddy the url to Fletch's site, and facebook sucked it in and attached it to the message automagically. I saw the page blink for a split second so I figured there was some web2.0 running, but I had no idea what it was. Here's what it looked like. This is a really cool feature.


Here's another reason why you should love Flash. Make sure you click through this site enough to go through at least one pop up book. This is some seriously amazing 3D work. Word on the internets is that this wasn't made using Papervision3D. However it was made, it's crazy.
The Eco Zoo

Flash Haters scoreboard
Flash1
Haters0
I scored my first goal in the RMHL tonight. Tonigh was also my first 10:30 pm weeknight game. We played at the ice ranch which is an amazing facility, but it's also 35 miles from home. So during the weekends I don't mind the road trip, but late weekday games are a little rough.
Three more skateparks have been added to my colorado skatepark blog, Boulder, Superior, and Walker-Branch.

I really love the Boulder park. The Walker-Branch park is pretty cool, and tucked away off of Colfax. The Superior park is pretty laughable, but still fun.

Skate on over to the blog and see for yourself
I think Commerce City is my new favorite skatepark.
  1. Crazy fun clover bowl with an almost full pipe capsule
  2. Sweet plaza semi circle street course
  3. The cement is smooth and not slick
  4. It's not too far away
  5. The local kids aren't thugs like another park I skate
  6. IT HAS LIGHTS!!!

The skatpark is located in a brand new city park. Basketball courts, Bating cages, Baseball field, the whole shmear. I was wondering how the local non-skating kids would be like. The kids that watched us skate the bowl where really nice. Hopefully this won't turn into a thug playground.
So when I was putting on my protective gear, I had a fun little chat with a local kid. Starting with question one from the little kid skateboard book.
"What kind of board do you have?"
And before I could answer he followed with.
"Did you get it at Wal-Mart?"

This is when I realized the local kids would be just fine. So I told him I had them made by a company in California. That's when I got the "Nice. Those are good!".

That was probably the best chat I had tonight. Suprisingly, I talked to three or four different kids tonight. And it wasn't to say
"

WTF?!? SERIOUSLY?!? MOOOOVE!!!!

"
And the other memorable thing was they listened to me and Mike. Most little kids like to sit on the coping with their legs hanging down into the ramp. This group of kids walked right up to the coping. And get this. We asked them to step back just a bit and they all moved back immediately, without hesitation or jive talk.

After they stepped back, I had a conversation with them about their skateboarding uncle from Albuquerque. It was nice not being harassed by under parented kids at the skatepark.
I just said that.
Hotrod gives 110%!!!
Today was cloudy for a change.
Man, I need another week of just to catch up.
I've been off the radar for a while. Got back from DC late friday night. That was a good trip. I've been chainsawing all day today so this is going to be brief. Here are a few highlights from the last few days. Thought I had more, but I just can't remember right now.
Made it to D.C. tonight. Ronald Reagan airport is pretty sweet compared to Dulles. It doesn't have that 60s wing style, but it is a lot more modern and has a Metro stop.

I took the Metro tonight after seeing the mega cab line plus signs about extra fuel charges. F that noise. I miss riding the train, so tonight's trip was pretty fun. Well, except having my luggage and half ton laptop strapped to my back. My back hasn't hurt from a backpack since college.

Speaking of my XPS. I received an "OH MY GOD!" when I removed the beast from it's home to go through security. Just what I needed. A computer diss from an airport security guard in Denver. Nice.

Anyways, after my good time subway ride, I had a leisurely stroll from the Dupont Circle station to Hotel Rouge. On the way to my hotel I passed a few interesting buildings. This list is not in order, and not completely accurate. I know I'm not rememberring this correctly, but it was still cool. I spoke with a well dressed frenchman who gave me directions. Totally awesome accent, and really cool dude.

So I finally make it to the Rouge and was told they don't have a room for me. Just what I needed after a long day with no sleep. The good news is they refunded tonight's stay, and are putting me up at the Palomar Arlington. The possible bad news is I have to cab it back to the Rouge in the morning, then hope to make it to the Webmaniacs conference in time for the 8:00 Adobe Keynote. I hope they have a nap session I can attend.

The Palomar is pretty sweet, and the concierges have been super friendly. Considering I didn't make it here until after 11:00, I was expecting some attitude. Especially considering the first person I saw after getting off the elevator gave me a big look up and down, then the stink eye.

Suck it biznatch, I'm here on business.

Anyways, the rest of my evening went ok. I had a $20 sandwich which had black olive funk on it. Not cool. Then I locked myself out of my room putting the tray outside. Lucky for me I had only taken off my shoes and hat. All in all it was a fun evening. DC is so awesome, and I haven't seen anything yet.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....................
Looks like Hoss isn't the only one playing good hockey right now. Check out this sweet Canada beating goal from Ilia Kovalchuk.


Ok, now I'm pumped about next season. Got a feeling we're going to see a Russian Captain.

< PHP_CODE >
Here's a quick way to do redirects via PHP. I threw in the try / catch because some virtual hosts redirect before getting to your site. By that time you can't redirect again since content has already been sent to the browser. Either way, this one works for me both locally, and on my host.

get this code
</ PHP_CODE >
My team lost, but so did the Flyers. I think it's a fair trade.
< SUCK IT MICROSOFT >

Dear Microsoft,

WTF?!?!?

After installing XP Service Pack3, I can no longer install IIS.


My machine has multiple copies of each file the component wizard is asking for, and it won't accept any of them. Check it out. Six versions of staxmem.dll. Nope, no dice. Apparently these six just aren't good enough. And if these are the wrong versions, WTF?!? I got them from Microsoft.


I would like to point out that I had .net2, IIS, and Visual Studio 2005 up and running smoothly prior to the SP3 fubar. I had uninstalled IIS and W3SVC temporarily to cutdown on extra unused services. I was also sick of who knows what windows services turning IIS back on.

I'm positive there's some ridiculous windows explanation for this, but I just don't care, and I'm not wasting anymore time on this. I've already lost an entire evening doing the uninstall - reinstall - uninstall - windows update - reinstall dance with no luck.

Speaking of windows update, I was forced to install security updates for office programs I don't even have installed. Currently I have a bare bones word and excel 2007 setup. That's it. Windows Update refused to install .net2 until I installed security fixes for Publisher and Outlook. Shared functionality or not, that's just unacceptable in my book.

If only I had a large enough vocabulary to explain how completely irate I am over this. I'm done with this mess. No more defending MS. Not even over the xbox360.

I do love my 360, but keep in mind it was defective as soon as I opened the box. My 360 was just like all the others with the Red Ring of Death. It was fixed for free, but keep in mind I dropped close to $400 on a game system that I had to immediately return for an entire month.
Ridiculous.

If I could afford it, I'd buy a Macbook Pro this weekend. Something I can afford, and will be doing is porting my only asp.net project to php for it's next version. That's right, the next version of Fletch's site will not be using .net.

< /SUCK IT MICROSOFT >
Someday it would be sweet to be invited to TED
Today was a double bonk.

  1. I found out I didn't complete the setup of my Google Analytics
  2. The Penguins lost to the Flyers

I fixed my problem. I hope the Pens fix their's on Sunday.
Tonight we watched Blue Harvest. Pure genius.


You must see this.
Today was suprisingly productive for a sick day.
  1. We finally got DirectTV again
  2. Dropped off our comcast cable box
  3. Found a new car jump video for the blog
  4. The doctor said my sick has peaked and I'm on the mend
  5. Added Lightbox2 to Fletch's picture page
  6. More pictures and videos were added to Fletch's site
  7. Installed XP SP3
  8. I'm officially giving up on Microsoft
  9. Checked the tire pressure on my tires
  10. Took Fletch for a ride in the STI
  11. Penguins beat the Flyers 4 - 1
That's about all I can remember at this point.
Be sure to surf on over to Fletch's site and check out the updates.

Here's a classic father and son moment
it sucks when mommy and baby are sick
I played the first game with my new hockey team tonight. Man it felt so good to be out there on the ice again. I'm really rusty, but needed to take it easy anyways. The last two weekends I played in drop in hockey games and tweaked my right groin. I'm like the Lehtonen of adult league when it comes to pulled groins. On the plus side, I usually only miss a game at most, and not most of the season.

I'm just too much of a bone head to warm up properly, and work on conditioning off the ice. The groinage is a bit sore, but I'm ok with that. Going into tonight's game, I honestly didn't think I'd be able to complete the game. I had to leave last weekend's game early for fear of really tearing it up. My groin was pretty bad this past week at work, but it survived tonight's game. Alright......

So here's something totally weird and unexpected. I'm watching the Flyers Penguins game on VS, and I hear Fugazi's Waiting Room being played at Melon Arena.

WTF?!?!?!?!?

When the hell did Fugazi become stadium rock? I mean seriously. Fugazi, at a professional sporting event that isn't skateboarding or something outside of the mainstream.
I mean, it'd still be weird to hear them at the XGames. At least there I wouldn't be completely shocked.
Seriously. Fugazi. Well, at least it's a good professional sport, and not something like footbal, baseball, or basketball. And depending on how you look at it, ice hockey is actually less popular here in the states than Fugazi is.

Oh yeah, go Penguins!!!
< GOOGLE MAPS GEOCAHING >

Here's a simple Google Map Geocaching query example. Enter an address or zipcode to retrieve a KML response. I threw this together to help lookup latitude and longitude for addresses. This info exists in the <Point> node towards the bottom.

This is what I was trying to ajax up the other night.

ericfickes.com GMAP GeoCaching example

Enter address or zipcode  

Load sample in a popup
Direct Link to geocaching sample


< /GOOGLE MAPS GEOCAHING >
This weekend should be big for us. Jenn is running a race tomorrow morning, and my first hockey season in Denver starts Sunday. Oh, and Jenn's first mother's day is sunday as well. Good times.
Gmaps is so cool, but so complex.
Tonight I tried to write a javascript widget for finding the lattitude and longitude of an address using Google Maps Geocoding service. The challenge here was to build this widget without using Google's geocoder.getLatLng() from their api. Sounds simple enough, but it wasn't.

First I went the AJAX route, but for some reason my XMLHttpRequest object never returned anything. Plus, it just seemed to undefine itself. No idea.
Next I went low tech and posted the geocode address query to an iframe in the page. I was using the iframe's onLoad event to parse iframe.contentDocument. No luck here due to cross domain security. I had to use netscape's UniversalBrowserRead to make the google request via a local file, but it didn't have any effect on parsing results out of the iframe.

I know I had my post url correct since it always returned in the iframe, or even if I just put it into the address bar. Oh well. Now I won't get enough sleep tonight, and I'll have yet another unsolved mystery to add to my technical deficit.
Today was definitely a monday.
Jenn and Fletch are both sick. My groin and right foot is jacked. Milo puked on the bed. And this was all before work.

Going to be early tonight.
The great Hossini and the Penguins sealed the deal today.

LET'S GO HO-SSA!

clap.... clap.... clap clap clap

LET'S GO PEN-GUINS!

clap.... clap.... clap clap clap

LET'S GO HO-SSA!

clap.... clap.... clap clap clap

LET'S GO PEN-GUINS!

clap.... clap.... clap clap clap

Finally finished game 4 Wings vs. Avs from thursday night. Damn, talk about some hockey ownage.
I can't believe I missed the May 1st reboot. It was written down on my whiteboard, then I erased thinking I'd never forget it. Yeah, it's 5/2 now and I missed it. Crap. Maybe I'll make next years.
Adobe announced the Open Screen Project today. This sounds really exciting, but we'll see where it ends up. I've been wanting to get into this sort of embedded web style development ever since I heard about bmw using flash for an in car display.

Tonight I posted new videos to Fletcher's website. Fletch is on the verge of standing by himself. Now that he has outgrown that baby lump phase, he's growing like a maniac.
Turns out Rock Band is actually fun. I played RB for the first time tonight. Mostly just on drums which was kind of weird. I found myself getting into that video game trance. As long as I stayed with the song I was good. If I got off once, I was gone for another few bars.
LAME has it's genre list hard coded into the app. Seriously? I can't even comprehend why that would be. I need to dig a little deeper.
Otherwise, I'll probably just use id3v2 to put in my own genre.
Two skateparks from Golden have been added to http://sk8colorado.blogspot.com/.
These two are small and quirky, but they're suprisingly fun.
Just found a cool slideshow feature of flickr. Here is my Flickr photostream.
I'm crossed between upgrading my flickr account now, or leaving it one big mess. Let's try mess for a while.
Look into preloader, IProgress.
My todos have overflowed onto the internets.

So I finally got the latest beta of Firefox 3. The browser homepage is pretty awesome. I suggest you fox up you browser.
Tonight's panorama comes from a room at the Beau Rivage in Biloxi Mississipi. I was there for a bachelor party a month before Katrina. Pretty sweet view of the Atlantic.
A new-ish quest begins tonight, THP8 for the 360. I've been really bummed about not being able to clear the xbox version, so I upgraded.
No thanks to my crapped out xbox.
I'm done with my original XBOX. I can't believe Microsoft can't put out a device with an optical drive that lasts longer than a few years. My original Playstation still works. I have plenty of older optical drives in a desktop I built a long time ago.

Guess I'll just have to play my 360.
Skated the Green Valley Ranch skatepark today. No thanks.

I also skated Westminster for a little bit. I love the Westminster bowl. It's the closest bowl to me with pool coping.
Pictures of both parks are now online over at sk8colorado.blogspot.com
Fletch and I had our cranky times synchronized. In the morning after seeing Dr.T, and then right before bath time.
It's pretty wild having a mini me.
I just noticed that Lipsum.org has banners now.

Lipsum is one of my favorite web tools. On demand greeking. Love it.
We received some awesome snow today. It was like living inside a snow globe. All the trees and bushes look like frosted mini wheats. Still not enough to get a snow day though.
On the plus side, it will probably be hot and sunny this weekend.

While doing some much needed Fonz research, I found this gem.

So this is something I never dealt with back east. Yesterday was in the mid 70s. Today was in the low to mid 80s. In fact, I just got back from the skatepark and it's still in the 70s right now.
The weather report is calling for snow tomorrow and thursday. How awesomely crazy?

Remember Twiki from Buck Rogers?
So I used to play in the Midget Farmers. I weaseled my way into the band on guitar. Then switched to the funk side a little bit later.
When I joined the band we had three guitarists. When I hopped the train to funky town, we had two bassists. We played the A-Team theme as well as a few other classic covers.
One song missing from the cover list is the dueling banjos song. I can't believe we never did that, especially with two bassists.
. Speaking of the Midget Farmers, James posted the motherload.


Saw this today. Pretty bad. Check out some of the worst web designs ever.
Today I got to drive Fletch around for his afternoon nap. I was really excited about this because I was going to go get some Kolache Factory. Turns out they don't have a drive thru. So now I get to drive around endlessly trying to find fast food I'd actually eat.

The sun made this sunday drive quite a challenge. Every other street that I would turn onto would put my precious in directly sunlight. My life is an RTS.
< XBOX >

I go through phases with my toys. Right now I'm really big into Tony Hawk's Project 8 for the XBOX. I've already been through this game once, but I'm starting over with a new skater.
I have two new goals with this second trip through THP8.
  1. Complete 100% of the game
  2. Skate more like a real person

I will be clearing 100% of each area before moving on to the next. This means every single gap, and a score of sick in every goal. I'm a little suprised how many modern video games don't expect you to complete 100% of the game to win. So this time I'm going to play THP8 old school. Complete it all.

My second goal is to skate in THP8 the way I'd skate in person. So more flowing style, and less robotron. Project 8 is definitely the best THPS yet. The realism really helps with this goal.

These two goals are proving to be harder than I thought. At the same time though, I'm startinig to find lines as well as spots that I haven't even thought of before. Good times.

< /XBOX >

Tonight we watched Boston College school Notre Dame at the Pepsi Center. I haven't been to that large of a college hockey game before. I really expected it to be wild, or at least exciting. The last five years at Philips Arena has really spoiled me. At Philips we always had excitement, but the team was also crappy. Tonight was quiet and well behaved, but we did see two pretty good teams. It was cool seing all of the die hard college hockey fans from all over the nation. Just thinking about what a killer road trip this must be for them. Good times for all.
Today I watched the 50 greatest comedy sketches of all time. Well, I really only watched the Argument Clinic and the Ice Ice Baby sketches.

Tonight, Fletch and I practiced our wrestle faces. His training is going well.
The dangers of being a tv reporter.


Dr.Who theme song, by Delia Derbyshire
I received my fyre TV box tonight. A report and pictures are in order but I can't tonight. I've been fighting with my network and head butted a pipe in the basement.

That pipe came out of nowhere. I was just walking to the door, minding my own. I'm pretty sure that pipe concussed me.
Frozen Four championship game this saturday. We're going to be there. Make sure you look for us on ESPN.
Two cool things from today.
  1. The Orange Box - Portal trailer
  2. KAZE TO DESKTOP screensaver

The playoffs are on and my team is out. Big suprise. This season I'm routing for the Capitals.
I don't have much interest in the west, but the east is going to be great. I'm hoping the next round will involve birds from the east.
So iTunes gave me the following error message today.
"iTunes cannot run because it has detected a problem with your audio configuration"
At first I thought it was related to that totally ridiculous sndvol32.exe problem. So I fixed that windows flaw and tried again.
No dice.

After a quick google, I found this kb article from Apple. Their solution is to uninstall and reinstall QuickTime.
Yeah, I'll be sure to do that right away.

Since I remember upgrading itunes a few days ago, I decided just to open Quicktime and see what happens. I mean, I never run QuickTime, so maybe there's a config step or two that never completed.
So I fire up QuickTime and it does in fact continue configuring.

At first I received a blank popup, but just clicked OK. After that process completed, iTunes opens just fine. I've never seen this before, and hope it helps somebody out.

Later today I skated the Commerce City skatepark. I love the bowl there. It's so freaking fast!!!! I've never skated a bowl with a capsule before, it's crazy. To top it all of, they're putting up lights at the park. This brings the lit skatepark count up to three; Denver, Longmont, and now Commerce City.

My last big accomplishment of the day was sweeping out the garage and assembling the hockey goal. It felt good sweeping out the remaining gravel and dust from the winter. I'm pumped about the goal as well. Now I need to start practicing again.
I learned something new about kids today.

They never look where they're going.

We went to Clement park today for some family get out time. It was my first visit to the playground as a dad. Four freaking kids almost t-boned Fletch while he was swinging.

A baby.
In a baby swing.
Are these kids on dope?!?

So I watched one of the bouncey balls after a near collision and saw him land face first in the grass. The kid just sat there for a while, then got up and did googly eyes and ran around in circles.
Hopefully I can take this lesson back to the skatepark.
No more elephant in the room.
Today's best domain name is destructoid.com
I'm officially fighting the wireless home network battle. We've been surfing at dialup to ISDN speeds when we're lucky.
This weekend I moved the wireless action upstairs without any noticeable improvement in surfing. Tonight I jacked my laptop directly into the cable modem and hung out at speedtest.net until I was certain it was faster. Unbelievable. My best test was 15MB down and 1.4MB up.

Now I'm tweaking and squeeking the wireless N router.
On network, no internet.
On network, slow internet.
No network.
RESET.......

Back on with router set to defaults, scary times, but online again. Now that I'm back on the internets, I have netstat running to listen for intruders.
Here is tonight's favorite nestat switch combo.
netstat -a -b -n -o 30
Drop to the command prompt and check out all the goodness. For more, checkout netstat /?
I fell for two April fool's jokes today.
  1. Google's custom time
  2. YTMND.com was dead
The Google thing didn't take long to figure out. However, I didn't figure out the second until after I sent out a mass email.
Hopefully the second email I sent admitting I fell for it will soften the replies tomorrow.
Too bad we don't have Leprechauns out west. Don't forget. It could just be a crackhead in a tree.


I just want the gold
Today I relocated the NOC closer to the living room. I'm hoping to get some better speeds on the internets now. The last month or so we've been surfing at dial up speeds.

I learned about two new products today. Roka Blue, and Old English. I never knew OE was a cheese spread.
I impressed myself with a perfect parallel park job, first try.
My current tv watching. Heroes from Netflix. Dazed and Confused from OnDemand.

Alright.....Alright.....Alright.....

Photoshop Express is out, and it is awesome. This may be the coolest Flex app I've seen yet. Props to Adobe!
Fletch scored a poop hat trick tonight.
  1. In the diaper
  2. In the toilet
  3. In the tub
I finally got to take Ash snowboarding. It was her first trip and we had a great time. I'd have to say she is a natural. I took her up a blue and she made it down just fine. No back flips, but nothing broken either.


Here's another shot of Ash buckling up at the top of the Mercury Super Chair.

I'm really digging making panoramic shots out of my camera phone pictures.
Always wear sunblock
Always wear sunblock

Always wear sunblock

Always wear sunblock

Always wear sunblock

Always wear sunblock

Always wear sunblock

Always wear sunblock

Always wear sunblock

Always wear sunblock
Always wear sunblock
Ah yeah, 3 day weekend.
Just finished watching Die Hard 4. That was almost funnier than Semi-Pro.
< LOLCAT >
I heart LOLCATs. I'm totally and completely a dog person in real life. On the internets though, I'm all about some LOLCATs.
The big reason I love these pictures is that they're all so believable. Think about all the times your cat tears out of the room from a dead stop or even resting? Or how about the cuddly purry time that gets cut short just because.
I'm starting to think that LOLCATs are really just the secret lives of cats. I know it sounds bananas, but think about it.

  1. You always find cats in crazy mission impossible type positions.
  2. I can totally see cats saying those sorts of quotes
  3. What else do you think they're running off to in such a hurry?


Now that you know this, send me your LOLCATs. Here's one for the road.

< /LOLCAT >
I started writing a flash image rotator tonight. The rotator was suprisingly easy to whip up. However, for some reason flash isn't parsing my xml config file properly. I guess now is when the real fun begins.

This Bill Cosby rap song is classic.

If you liked this version, there are plenty of others on the internets.
I heard about a new animal on Top Gear last night. It's a Honey Badger.
< QUOTE >
The Honey badger or ratel is a tenacious small carnivore that has a reputation for being, pound for pound, Africa's most fearless animal despite its small size. It is even listed as the "most fearless animal in the world" in the 2002 Guinness Book of Records. Tales of their fondness for honey and the foraging association between the Greater Honeyguide and honey badgers have reached almost legendary proportions. Despite the wealth of fireside stories and folklore that surround them and their extremely wide distribution, honey badgers are still relatively unknown and seldom seen. Recently (1996-1999) a field study of honey badgers in South Africa revealed more in depth information on their social life, breeding and feeding behaviour, and dispelled some of the myths. Work on honey badgers continues with current projects including genetic research and the "Badger-friendly" initiative.
< /QUOTE >
- honeybadger.com
This is sort of funny.
We saw Semi Pro today. Loved it.
I don't miss tornados, but I do miss Atlanta.
Today I watched videos about a creepy gnome, a flashlight gun, and a new dance about riding Marta. While these are all pretty funny, the best of friday came from wikipedia.
If you check out the wikipedia entry for Error, you will see this picture.


This is just too funny.
I remember going through an Oracle 8i install a while back and it taking all freaking day. Tonight I downloaded and installed Oracle 10g Express in less than an hour.
I love me some internets.

FletcherVision is in place, but now it has been integrated into Fletch's website. Now you can see his pictures and videos on one website.
Jenn just updated the pictures and I found a new favorite. Here I am with Fletch, working on our next big hit. It's a little Bossa-Ska-HipHop-Lullaby, with some funky bass lines underneath. That's what Flectch likes to dance to.

I like to rap while skate, just like Ill Mitch.
I am big respect fan for long years time.
I love Full Throttle, but this may be my new energy drink of choice.
Check it out, a mashup that I actually dig.
Jenn and I went to betanightclub.com
It's pretty cool working somewhere that has their own nightclub.
FletcherVision is now open for giggles.

http://youtube.com/fletchervision
< PHOTOSHOP >
Quick and dirty panorama action in Photoshop CS3 Extended.
Here's how to make a panorama picture in under five minutes using Photoshop.

  1. Take some pictures
  2. Open Photoshop Extended CS3
  3. Click File > Scripts > Load files into Stack...
  4. Select Files from the Use: menu, then click Browse to locate your pictures.
    Select all of your pictures and click Open.
    Be sure to check 'Attempt to Automatically Align Source Images', then click Ok

  5. Let Photoshop do it's magic...    
  6. Now you've got your pictures all laid out and ready to be smacked.

Oh yeah! Your pictures laid out panoramic style in under five minutes.
< /PHOTOSHOP >
The novelty of snow has worn off. Christmas Town has closed.

Here is the first Dangermouse I was into. That mouse had a sweet ride.
Somedays I just need a little reminder.

Case of the mondays, then excused of my Jury duties. Good times.
Today was snow. Yesterday was sun and snow.

I rode Keystone for the first time today. Man that was fun. Well, except for the bouncing down the mogules on each major body part. The views and weather were amazing today.
Today I Laughed Out Loud, and I was inspired by Frankie. Tonight I WD40-d a sqweeky door. Man that stuff is good. Now I need to wd40-ize the rest of my doors.
Here's some place you may have seen me before.


< FICKELCHOOK >
So we're watching tonight's Thrashers game, and Jenn summed up the wickedosity of Eric Perrin's shootout move.
"You know what that move is like? It's like the Karate Kid doing the crane kick. Can't stop it. There's no defense"

Classic!

< /FICKELCHOOK >
I miss Trader Vics. I can't wait to check out the new TV in Vegas.
The Commerce City Skatepark pictures are now live on http://sk8colorado.blogspot.com/.
This is my Colorado skatepark blog. I've been slacking on this one and will work on getting more parks on there.
Colorado has 100 or so public skateparks, and my goal is to hit all of them.
Today I skated the new Commerce City skatepark. That park is so much fun. I'll be uploading pictures sometime this week.

I also learned that features from ImageReady have been integrated into Photoshop CS3. Yesssssssssss! Now there's no reason to bounce between programs to created animated gifs. Unleash the fire!!!

Today was the first time I've been on my skateboard since November 3rd. The session was fun until I made it to my car and received a parking citation. What a bunch of crap.
It appears that I need to start using Joost again. Today's Joost email mentioned What's Happening. That's enough reason for me to get my Joost on again. I was running Joost when it first came out and I was travelling. I really dug the interface, but didn't like the fluff and commercials.
Two sites worth checking out.
At work today, I was in four meetings. One of which ended up being held on a couch. It was a code review session with four dudes crammed around a laptop.
I can't remember ever having road trip flashbacks at work before. Unfortunately nobody took a picture, so I had to recreate the scene from memory.
I found another new favorite show on HD tonight.
FutureCar
It's a look at auto design for 2030.
The new bass fund starts tonight.
Today was a good documentary day. I watched Helvetica, a film about the said font and typography. I love typography which made this film pretty enjoyable. It's cool getting the history behind such an everyday font.
I sat in a new 08 STI on friday. I wasn't impressed. There are bits and pieces that I like about the car, but overall it's too weird.
Picked up Burnout Paradise today. So far this game is pretty intense. It tooks me about two weeks to really "get" Burnout back in the xbox days. Now I think it's going to take about two weeks just to be able to place in any event in Burnout Paradise. This new version is pretty amazing, and not just minor improvements over the last version.
I'm thinking the flu is almost gone. Today I actually remember something good I saw on the webs.
Frankie shared this gem with me today.
I'm happy to report I feel like crap! Which is about ten times better than I've felt since Sunday.

I got the new Carvin catalog tonight. Let the drooling begin. I have that exact same giddy feeling from 96 when I bought my last Carvin.
Tonight I'm charging my new ipod with my new xbox360. This is the best video game console ever. Now I just need to get some better games.
I started a windows theme pet project. Trying to get a darker color scheme going. This project should go pretty quickly since I'll be dogfooding it.

download here
So I went to the doctor today and found out I have the flu. This definitely explains why I've felt like crap since sunday. The doctor asked if I got a flu shot this year. I said no because I forgot. Later I found out both Jenn and I got flu shots back in November.
The doctor told me that even if I got a flu shot this year, "they're not working as expected". Obviously I know nothing about the flu, flu shots, strains of the flu, but WTF?!? Why get a flu shot if in three months you're going to get the flu?

I don't like being sick.
We finished watching Zodiac tonight. Usually I'm all over comedys, but this movie was pretty awesome.
Today I did a few things I haven't done in a while.
  • got a fever
  • changed a poopy diaper
  • got my skates sharpened
  • went on a family walk
  • picked up another loaded mouse trap
  • started installing XP on my new desktop for the 10th time

On the plus side, the evening has smoothed out nicely. I even got hipped to a new site by Wizzle.
http://ffffound.com/
Here are a few nuggets from ffffound.com
I went snowboarding at Breckenridge today. It was the first time I've been on my snowboard since last year when Frankie and Kellie came out to visit. It was also the first time I've been on any board since I injured myself back in October. I may try the skateboard tomorrow.

Today is the two year birthday of my camera phone picture blog. I've been having a lot of fun with this project, and I'm a little suprised it's been two years already. I'm suprised by the age because I've had blogs on blogger since before Google bought them. I don't have any blogs that I've kept up with as well though.

Here are a few pics from Breck today. It was crazy windy today.
Here's an interesting project cooking over at Google, Social Graph API. I've been wondering what's next in social networking. I need to read up on this, but not tonight.

I waxed up the snowboard tonight. Ah yeah, tomorrow is going to be fun.
The Thrashers lost tonight, but I'm ok with it. They played an amazing game, and there were some good fights. My favorite was Boulton vs. Cowan. Eric Boulton is Cowan 2.0 to me, so this was the ultimate throwdown.
I updated my camera phone picture blog tonight.
This is a fun side project, but I don't update it as much as I would like. I take plenty of camera phone pictures, it's just a slow process.

Check it out here --> http://thefixpix.blogspot.com/
I found my new favorite phrase. "ReadYourMind-Libs". Think the opposite of Mad-Libs, and turn that into a email editor for a mobile phone. When I send messages longer than 'ok', my phone is all like:
"did you mean this?" . . .  "did you mean this?" . . .

My superior partner informed me I could disable this feature, but I realized something. It's kind of fun in a low level, who's quicker than who, showdown of the texting brains. It's usually a tie....

Bravo Krzr

Here are tonight's attempt at my new masterpiece "Santa's BBQ".




<javascript utility>
Here's a personal project that I started but haven't finished to my liking yet. I have dubbed thee Javascript Foreacher. It's a simple Javascript DOM inspector utility / widget. Currently this is only a stand alone html page, but it is still quite informative and simple to use.
Something that I find useful about this page is loading it up in different browsers, and comparing the differences. Back in the web1.0 days, I always explained browser DOM and rendering differences through an analogy between Word and WordPerfect.

"Just as Word and WordPerfect are both word processors, they still render the same documents a bit differently"

I have found this to be a pretty safe analogy for web browsers, even in today's web2.0 world of standard compliance.
At some point I'll get around to figuring out how to snap this into an existing page to make this a real utility. Until then you can check out the foreacher in action right here.


</javascript utility>
Today's highlights
  • Beatport released their instructional video on how to get music into the store
  • I received my repaired Xbox360
  • The Thrashers beat the Sabres in the shootout

I'm really excited about the Beatport video. I've been around the internet longer than youtube, and this is the first viral video I made it into. I guess better late than never.

Tonight was the first night I came home really wanting my xbox back. I've been pre-occupied, and not really worrying about it. Not so much tonight though. Boy was I excited when I saw that white box sitting at the front door. Funny thing is, I've plugged it in and verified it works, but I haven't actually played anything yet. Looks like another sleepness night for me.

Tonight's Thrasher's game drained me, like the old school games did. No Kovy, made me really wonder how the game would go. The last time the Thrashers saw the Sabres, they went home feeling shame. Tonight, was a really emotional and tight matchup. If I was at Philips tonight, there is no way my voice would have made it out of the first period. My favorite part of the game was obviously Eric Perrin's game winning shootout goal. Holy mackeral he pulled a move straight out of a magic book. I scanned around to see if anybody had uploaded that clip yet, and couldn't find it. Let's just say I've never seen this move, and I want to learn it more than any shootout move I've ever seen.

How to get your music on Beatport


Here's a .mov version of the video

We got some snow last night which made this morning's commute both fun, and slower than usual. Tonight's commute was Atlanta style horrible. I never figured out what was going on in town, but I'm guessing it was some sort of event at the Pepsi Center or, maybe just a side effect of the snow. Anyways, I snapped a few photos that I thought were cool.
You know you're busy when you only find one cool thing on the web.
I probably saw other cool stuff, but this is the only one I can remember.
CarType.com
I've been using MySQL's Query Browser long enough that I'm actually digging it. My favorite sql editor of choice is still MS's Query Analyzer for SQL Server 2000, but I'm coming around on MySQL's Query Browser.
Found my new favorite music channel tonight MHD. Tonight's concert was the Gorillaz Live From Harlem. That would have been a fun show to be at. If for no other reason, just to see Dennis Hopper in person. It was also great seeing De La Soul again.
New rule : Never say anything about your newborn sleeping through the night. As soon as you do, you're jinxed.
Got some highlights from this week, then some HTML trickery that I just amazed myself with.
  • Fletch is almost sleeping through the night :
    I don't want to jinx him, but he's really starting to get his snooze on. Which is surprising considering he's cutting his first tooth.
  • Baby Dos and Don'ts :
    Finally, a parenting guide I can understand. That site is pretty comprehensive, but they did miss one sign, which I ended up documenting myself.
  • I wrecked my neck :
    I'm not sure how I did it this time, but I'm 99% sure I slipped a disc in my neck, or just beneath it. My neck has been in some serious pain this last week. It's at the point now where the muscles are all swolen up to protect my neck. You can bet I'm getting back on my weekly Dr.T visitation schedule.
  • NHL 08 All Star Game :
    So far this year's all star game in Atlanta, has been pretty fun to watch. The NHL robbed me and Jenn of our chance of attending it back when the league was locked out. That was when Atlanta was supposed to get it originally.
    Last year's All Star Game was a total snooze fest. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's game. Tonight's Young Star's game was a blast. I just hope Kovy owns it.
  • Jury Duty :
    Thursday morning I'm driving to work and I saw an Obama 08 bumper sticker. Obviously this is everyday, but what struck me as odd, was that I have absolutely no idea what's going on in the world of politics right now. In fact, I've been so deep in code that I forgot there was even an election coming up.
    As this train of thought moved down the tracks, I remembered I wasn't registered to vote here in Denver yet. At first I wondered why, then I remembered I didn't want to be caught for jury duty.

    Well, that very night I opened my mailbox, and I've been summoned for jury duty. surprisingly, I'm very excited about this. Not only have I never served jury duty, but I really really really really need a day off. I just hope Judge Judy is presiding.
  • Ken Block is my hero :
    If you don't know who Ken Block is, cruise over to my blog http://jumpingcars.blogspot.com and watch the video he shot for the Discovery Channel's Stunt Junkies.
    Now that you know who Ken is, have a peek at him playing in the snow. Back in the 80s, skateboarding was all about jumping off of cars. Nowadays it appears that snowboarding is all about jumping ON cars.
  • My next bass guitar :
    Oh yes... it will be mine. And believe me, when I get this, you will know I have gotten this. I have not been this giddy about a bass guitar since I bought my last bass guitar in 96.
  • Got Zune #2 :
    No I didn't get a second generation Zune. Just a replacement for my black one that died in 13 days. I haven't had any time to fondle it yet, but I'll tell you one thing. It's the brown one, and it's hot man. All those brown hating fanboys can suck it. Especially since I also own a black 160 GB Ipod.
    Once I get DooDooBrown up and rocking, I'll come back and give you an update ( assuming it lasts at least 14 days that is ).
  • Punched before eating :
    I just noticed that tonight's SNL is the one with Bon Jovi, the Foo Fighters, and the short 'punched before eating'.
    I haven't decided which of the shorts I like the best. Lazy Sunday was an instant classic. Dick in a box, was flat out hilarious. When I first saw punched before eating, I immediately loved the track, but wasn't totally sure until I saw the Jovi Punch. That's about where I wet myself and knew it was another classic.

<HTML_TRICKERY>

And now for some HTML trickery that I pulled off recently.
Challenge : Create a list of checkboxes with one checkbox being read only, but still submitting it's required value with the enabled checkboxes. Keeping in mind this list is dynamically created by the server, and not a static list. A static html list would be cake, but this is a bit trickier.

Problem : You can easily mark an <input type="checkbox" disabled> to give you the visual effect of read only. However, marking any type of form field disabled, essentially negates it from the form. That is, you will still see your form field, but it's value does not get posted back to the server. Therefore, using disabled above, does not solve my problem.

Solution : Create two fields, 1 hidden text field, and 1 visible disabled checkbox. Be sure to assign the hidden text field the same name as your enabled checkboxes. That way when you post back to the server, the hidden value gets grouped in with the enabled checkbox values. While this isn't rocket science, I do think it's a pretty clever solution to a semi tricky problem. I will gladly pat myself on the back, then drink a beer in my honor.

</HTML_TRICKERY>


In case you found the secret Barney Miller reference. This is easily my all time favorite tv theme song.

SNL Punched before eating

SNL Dick in a Box

SNL Lazy Sunday
I took care of our mouse situation tonight. Boy do mousetraps feel medieval.
Today was Thursday, but now it's Friday. Beatport is now 4 years old, and I'm happy to be a part of the <techno_beat>um tis..um tis..um tis..um tis.. </techno_beat>
Ahhh yeah, HTML5 has reached draft status.
HTML 3 is what got me hooked on the internet. When HTML stopped growing at XHTML1, I was sort of suprised. When I first heard about HTML5 being talked about, I was shocked and awed. Now all I can think of is this

I wish this ska dude lived on my street. I'd invite him over every Saturday to sing this song. If he was my neighbor, I would have one clean house.


pick it up!   pick it up!   pick it up!   pick it up!  
I noticed something interesting tonight. Most of the gas stations here sell 91 octane as their super premium fuel. The Sinclair down the road that sells racing fuel ( 100 octane ), only goes up to 90 for the super premium. That just seems weird to me.
Fletch learned to roll from his belly to his back tonight. Baby steps has a whole new meaning.

My current favorite commercial

Take a traiiiiin to Happy Town. WOO WOOOOOO....... WOO WOOOOOO
I did the Netflix instant thing tonight, and it was pretty sweet. My quality rating was the lowest based on my network connection, but I still thought it was better than most of the channels on cable. Plus, Netflix' instant catalog is much better than my cable provider's on demand selection. If I had any quam with this, I think their player should be a stand alone player instead of an ActiveX control. Thereby restricting you to using IE.

Still, I'm looking forward to using this again.
I got two out of three today.
  1. good day at work
  2. mother nature brought the snow!
What I didn't get was a good Thrashers game. The Sabres demoralized the Thrashers tonight ( 10 - 1 ). I think my team peaked when they beat the Wings the other night. Oh well.

A little snow love for you.
   
Today was colder than yesterday, yet still now snow. I don't mind the cold, it's the wind that gets me.
Today was probably the coldest day I have experienced since moving to Denver CO. I was completely betting on getting some snow today, but no luck.

I love watching it snow. Being from Atlanta GA, snow is still a novelty to me. Up until the move, I really only got to experience snow when me and the fam would visit St.Louis at Christmas time. Good times, snowballs thrown at public transportation.

WTF mother nature? Where's all that snow I've been expecting?
The Thrashers beat the Wings 5 to 1 tonight at the Joe! Hossa, natural hat track in the first period. It looked to me as if the Wings were only concerned with keeping Kovy from scoring. Hossa was clearly interviewing for a new job.

We're supposed to get snow tomorrow. Come onnnnnnn blizzard!!! I could go for a vacation day right about now.
I have a crack in my windshield which has spread almost the entire width. This is one thing that's rough about living in Denver. I drove my GTI from Atlanta GA, to Denver CO and didn't have a problem. The very first week I was here, my windshield got hit by a rock.
I feel fortunate that this is only the first time the STI has had a crack. Unfortunately, I highly doubt this will be the last time this happens.
Today is the day my Zune died. It almost lasted one month!! Now it's just a paper weight.
Tonight I packaged up my xbox360 for its trip home. That toy was broke from the get go.
This is good timing however. I need to work on my sleeping skills.
Today's typing excercise started out as a love story about a man and a Microsoft Elite Natural Keyboard. While pondering my next line of prose I finished my fortune cookie from lunch. Confusious sent me a message that read "CHERISH HOME AND FAMILY AS A SPECIAL TREASURE". That's good enough for me. I'm going back upstairs to cherish and whatnot.

Here's what I was going to talk about. Officey stuff, aahhh yeah!!
     
< PHP_CODE >
Here is a simple static php function for generating an html option list for a US state picker.
</ PHP_CODE >