I'm inundated daily by links; links from family, friends and people I havent talked to in years who only send me links. Sometimes though, there's a particular topic I'd like to randomly surf on. For that, this handly little program is perfect. I'm generally really squeemish about installing new programs on my machine, but this one is worth it and it hasnt caused me any trouble so far. The idea is just another implementation of social networking like tribe or myspace. It brings people together based on their linking. With stumbleupon, you dont have to write lengthy blog postings like this one. You just click on the toolbar and you're done. If the page has never been stumbled upon, then you write a one-liner to give people an idea what its about.

Ever checked out a One deal a day site? Here are a couple of them.

This is a really good source of info on these and many other deal-a-day sites.

Star wars pole dance.

A hidden camera show where they post the subject's girlfriend as a stripper.

Dumb but cute chick.

A hooters waitress serving beer in a slightly unusual way.

A guy surfing this crazy wave.

They're doing a play of Debbie Does Dallas in San Francisco.

This sitehas some really cool illustions.

This site has pictures of some cool transparent screens.

If you haven't heard or seen a parody of this audio then you should, it pokes fun at us funny little monkeys.

Fremont is doing a major overhaul of its Centerville district. It should be done by Fall of 2007. The Fremont site has a write up on it along with some really cool images of what the site will look like.

I'm not sure why it's so hard to find a nice solution to storing all files we seem to accumulate. I have a laptop, its my primary personal machine. So when I use it, I can be anywhere in the house, if I'm in the house at all.

Over the years I've collected a lot of crap and I don't have room on my tiny laptop hard drive for all of it. Just the pictures I take alone would fill up the little drive in a matter of months. I mean, I shoot about a gig of pictures just about every time I pull the camera out of its bag and the drive on my laptop is only 40G. So it makes sense to keep the pictures somewhere else. I don't want to have to juggle CDs every time I needed a picture so I decided to put them on a USB drive. In fact I have several USB drives all of which I keep connected to a USB hub. When I want to use the drive, I plug the USB hub into my laptop, turn on the drive I want, and I'm up and running.

The problem is, it's inconvenient to connect the drives. I keep them near my desk. So if I want to use them, I need to use my laptop on my desk. I would much rather plug the drives into my network and access it from anywhere in the house. They make devices like this, called a NAS (networked attached storage) but they're expensive. Before I get one it has to fill a couple criteria.

• It has to cost less than $200.
• It has to support FAT-32 because I may also want to connect the drives directly to Linux machines, windows 98 machines, etc.
• It has to support WIFI, because I don't want to run a wire from the drives to the WIFI hub.
• It can't require specialized software on the client machine because it seems stupid to have to do so when there are already perfectly good ways of doing this. The more software I load the less stable my machine becomes and I would rather avoid that altogether. Also, it's unlikely they'd support Linux and windows 98. I want to access the drive using windows file sharing as if it were being shared by another windows machine.
• The device has to be energy efficient and quiet.

I could, I suppose, just plug these drives into another machine that I keep on all the time. I just think that's a messy way of doing it. I do in fact have an old laptop that I use for this purpose. I have some other drives and when I want to get to them I turn on the laptop and access the drives over the network. The problem is, it's an old, really slow laptop. I could replace it with a new PC but I don't want to have to pay $500 for a machine that I only use to share drives. Besides it wouldn't startup and shutdown nicely and it would suck up a bunch of electricity.

This NAS challenge actually ties into another one I have which is to find some way to make these files accessible through the TV so that people could flip through an album with a remote control. There are products out there available now. They're called PVR's (personal video recorders). The problem is that the popular devices, like TIVO, don't let you plug in extra USB drives. The more expensive PVR's that cost over $1000 are more flexible but too expensive. I suppose I'd be willing to throw down $400 - $500 for something that handled my network storage problem AND my PVR problem but I don't want to have to spend so much effort that I become an expert at it. I just want a clean simple solution.

I downloaded some pictures from a friend's phone and I thought I'd share the how-to. She has a Motorola v551 with service from Cingular.

This assumes you have Bluetooth working properly. See comments below for more info.

1. On your XP machine, right click on the Bluetooth icon in the taskbar tray bar (the section in the lower right hand corner) and select "Receive a file".
2. On the phone select the image in the list of images, press the menu button and select "copy".
3. Select a destination for the file.
The file should transfer to your XP machine.

If the file doesn't appear in the destination, repeat steps 1 and 2 and choose a different location. I had problems copying to my U: drive for some reason. When I chose my desktop it worked flawlessly.

I tried this on another friend's Motorola v710. The phone had the same menu options but the functionality was disabled, when you selected copy, it displayed an error. I believe this has to do with Verizon blocking the functionality.

I use a BELKIN F8T003 Bluetooth USB Adapter. It cost $27 from CompUSA. The thing works without a hitch. When I plugged it into the machine it found a driver already installed with the OS. I didn't have to install any additional software to get the basic preinstalled Bluetooth stuff from Microsoft working. I did install the Nokia PC suite because it lets me browse my Nokia phone just like a regular hard drive and because it has some cool tools for syncing with outlook, etc; but this software is not necessary for basic file transfer with the Motorola phones. Additionally, the Nokia software doesn't seem to work with the Motorola phones; I suspect they have their own handy dandy software package.

I originally had a ghetto Bluetooth adapter that I picked up dirt cheap that used the Blue Soleil driver. What a piece of shit. The problem is, I guess, that the original release of XP didn't come with Bluetooth software. So, if you get a device for which XP doesn't already have a driver, you need to go out and download the driver. Unfortunately, the people who wrote the drivers packaged them with Bluetooth software. As a result, if the driver you're installing hasn't been updated for the new version of XP, you end up wiping out your existing Bluetooth software. This can effectively kill third-party software like the Nokia pc suite. My advice is not to install ANY third-party Bluetooth drivers. If your device doesn't come with a driver already loaded on XP, toss it and find another. You will drive yourself nuts trying to FIX the damage you do by installing the third party driver software.

I had the honor of marrying two wonderful people today. I couldn't believe how calm the groom was. And it wasn't like he was playing it off, or, if he was, he was doing an incredible job at it. If I was stuck in a room with a bomb that was about to go off, I'd want someone with his temperment trying to disarm the damn thing. I thought I'd include the ceremony reading so here it is. I'll post a pic as soon as I get one.

A Penny

There are presently an estimated six and a half billion people on this earth. It's amazing when you think about it. There are nine zeros there, in case you're wondering. Just to give you an idea of the magnitude of that number, if you were to fill a school bus with pennies, it would take five of them just to hold ONE billion. That amounts to about 33 busses in all.

In comparison, the odds of being struck by lightning over the course of your lifetime are only one in five thousand. In other words, your odds of getting hit by lightning might actually be better than finding your penny in those 33 busses. Still, Ross and Sonia have beaten the odds. Against this seemingly insurmountable challenge, they've found the penny with whom to share their thoughts, their dreams and their future.

Passion

It won't be easy. If their relationship, like any other relationship, were rooted in the wrong qualities it would be an even bigger challenge. Passion; for example, passion can be a fickle companion. One day it finds us unexpectedly and tears us from our warm and cozy sleep. It can be a powerful force, yet where once we felt contentment, we soon find ourselves restless and hungry for more. For passion, like many other things, fades. With its loss we sometimes find ourselves dazed and confused. Like our shiny penny, our passion tarnishes with time and loses its luster.

Love, Trust and Forgiveness

It is for this reason that marriage, was built around qualities such as Love, Trust and Forgiveness. These are the qualities, after all, that builds a solid long term relationship. I have no doubt that Ross and Sonia have passion in abundance, but it is not for passion alone that we find ourselves here today. This is not after all, a celebration of two people's simple attraction to one another.

Unity

It is a special thing that Ross and Sonia have asked us to participate in with them; a union of two distinct people. It is a gesture of their commitment to each other and to their future together.

It takes a village

In the months to come they will bring a new life into this world. Like their relationship, this new child will require nurturing. We have been asked to bear witness to their new life together. We all play an important role in the cultivation of their relationship. Love, like all other human emotions is not without its challenges. We are not alone on this world. We have each other. The covenant we are witnessing here today is a sacred one which we are all party to.

Quotations

My words fall short of the sentiment I wished to convey today. I searched high and low for words fitting enough to commemorate this special occasion and have enlisted the aid of men far wiser than me; men long since dead whose words have not lost any of their impact.

[ECCLESIASTES 4:9-12]
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they are warm; but how can one be warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him.

[TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE by Mitch Albom]
There are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don't respect the other person, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don't know how to compromise, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can't talk openly about what goes on between you, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don't have a common set of values in life, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike. [Your biggest value should be] your belief in the importance of your marriage.

Vows

Who presents this couple to be married?

May I have the groom's ring.

[Sonia's vows]
I Sonia, take you Ross to be my husband, // my partner in life and my one true love. // I will cherish our union // and love you more each day than I did the day before. // I will trust you and respect you, // laugh with you and cry with you, // loving you faithfully through good times and bad, // regardless of the obstacles we may face together. // I give you my hand, my heart, and my love, // from this day forward for as long as we both shall live.

May I have the bride's ring.

[Ross' vows]
I Ross, take you Sonia to be my wife, // my partner in life and my one true love. // I will cherish our union // and love you more each day than I did the day before. // I will trust you and respect you, // laugh with you and cry with you, // loving you faithfully through good times and bad, // regardless of the obstacles we may face together. // I give you my hand, my heart, and my love, // from this day forward for as long as we both shall live.

I now pronounce you wife and husband. You may now kiss your groom.

I went to see Superman returns today. I went to the IMAX 3D showing; what an awesome show. The movie was true to the tradition and I really liked Brandon as superman. Kate was annoying in the typical Lois Lane fashion but nowhere near as annoying as Margot Kidder; what an annoying chick.

There was a scene where they're in the water and things are floating around. I actually flinched when I saw a can heading towards my head. I think it cost $14 but its really worth the extra money. This is the whole point of the theater industry after all, giving us an experience that is far better than what we would get at home. The movie was already available on the net by the time I went to go see this. I wouldn't even consider going to the Union Landing theater, the audience there is so bad its not even worth your time. The Hacienda theater is better but unless I'm going to see a movie as a social event like an opening night or something, then I'd just as soon watch it on my TV at home. There was one parent chatting with his kid the whole time but at least nobody picked up their phone and started talking. Anyway, see superman, see it on IMAX.