Naked Dave's thoughts on the new RIMBoy.com design. If all goes well, for the few of you out there, anchor's away. Use the source Luke. Let it guide you thru the ways of RIMBoy.com. Hopefully this satisfies a few people. Then again, a good anchor or two would have helped out in the past. Enjoy.

I'm T-minus packing before departing for a day to wonderful Jasper Ga. Looking forward to downing some chocolate chess pie. It's been a trying test of will power not to break into the two that are in the freezer. They shall soon thaw in a glorious manner to the delight of my mouth. Yeah baby.

I'd also like to take the moment to inform you, the readers of this site, that my brother told me on the phone the other night he bought a Neil Diamond album. Niether this site's maintainer nor Spiffy Pants approves of this purchase. Let it be declared that under no circumstances is it ever appropriate to either purchase or listen to Neil Diamond. Cameo's in movies are also verboten, no matter how short of an appearance. Like Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond is a plague that cannot be allowed to multiply. Please join me in this fight.

Made up Band Name of the Day: We'll figure it out when the time comes

Yes folks, the unthinkable has happened. That's right. A fresh new look for the holiday season. With any luck we'll have this layout for a good 3 years. Please enjoy it while you can. I actually broke down and broke a few of my own personal rules in the process. You should feel priveledged.

Note, if you still want the same old RIMBoy layout funk it's off on the right. As you can tell, I've kinda gone with an "album theme". How original. If you really must know, I more or less listened to Radiohead's OK Computer, Weezer's Pinkerton, The Jesus Christ Superstar Cast Recording (Disc 1), Les Miserables Disc 1 (The black and gold 3 CD set), DC Talk's Supernatural, and Ben Folds Five Rockin' The Suburbs while working on this new layout. Note, you should not read anything into this other than it's just what hit me that I was in the mood to listen to. I probably won't listen to the DC Talk album for a good month at least. Too many messages start seeping in.

Note, no one was harmed in the making of this new design, contrary to what the pict at the bottom would convey. This design brought to you by the new Dr. Teeth and The Gimp editor. Who says free software is crap?

Made up Band Name of the Day: Jesus Miserables

It's been a busy week. I've spent a fair bit of time mired in the abstraction that is Drupal, seeing Al Franken speak and enjoying the waning days of summer.

Al Franken spoke in Nashville Monday night. I've read his book and have always enjoyed his work on Saturday Night Live. I came into the talk with mixed thoughts, Al makes good points in his book. On the other hand, it appears that Franken can run either hot or cold when it comes to speaking. He did not disappoint and gave a good talk. What struck me as very odd was how little, if any opposition was there. I did not hear anything that could be construed as a boo or jeer, even when Franken was speaking not so politefully about those in charge. It felt good to be surrounded by that many people in support. If the opposition is so large though it stands to reason that statistically speaking, there would be some. It's not like it was cost prohibitive like some sort of campaign fundraiser. Then again, maybe those in opposition could not face up to the truth. What was odd was the fact that Al Franken and Tipper Gore, who was in attendance, were friends. Tipper, the same person behind the PMRC, the group responsible for the Parental Labels that have caused so much grief for the likes of Frank Zappa (a label was slapped on his all instrumental "Jazz From Hell"). Likewise, Franken, who found himself in a battle with Fox arguing that his use of their supposed trademark was done as satire. Politics do in fact make strange bedfellows.

I spent the better part of the week working on the new and improved NashvilleAPRS website. Hopefully sometime before the new year the new website will go online. Ideally, in the next week but I won't get my hopes up.

I took a jog on Friday since the weather was nice. I had to quit because my left leg started bothering me. Overall I felt good at the end of the run and woke up with a little soreness the next day. Thankfully no shin splints pain. It may be the last run I get in for awhile.

On Saturday, I gave Rick a ring on the phone. The idea was to go pawn shopping looking for something resembling a good deal on midi capable music instruments. We ended up finding a bunch of other stuff, mostly over priced. We did find a Tandy 1100FD laptop for $10. Apparently it was one of the first sub $1000 notebooks and was one of the first for its size. Deskmate and MSDOS 3 on ROM. The question is, what does one do with one if they buy it? It's limitied to a 720k drive, but only does 640x200. I suppose there are some APRS applications that can be done with it.

In the process of trying to get to a thrift store on Main Street, we drove by the Salvation Army on 1st(?) St. in East Nashville. I originally spied the place a couple of weeks before, it's down the street from the location of Phreaknic 7. Upon entering we found an old air organ much like the one my aunt used to own. We found the record selection. Lots of Lawrence Welk and Mitch Miller. We found a few gems though. Rick found some learn German albums. I found a Billy Gram album unopened from his "Euro 70" tour. Found a few campy albums with organ music, and not the Hammond kind. There was one Hammond album that was really scratched up but for $1 was too hard to pass up. I also came across a recording of "Automatic Music Instruments". It feature some instruments restored by Don Elbers who after some research appears to continue this work to this day. An excellent recording despite the pops of some very old instruments.

I also found an album that was recorded in Nashville called Hootenanny and American Ballads. I've not been able to find out much about the album, it does not list who played on it. What caught my eye was the rendition of "Don't Think Twice". It was pretty good though I'm going to have to figure out how to make a good dub sans the skips. It skipped like crazy.

Overall it was a good Saturday. Rick suggested that since it was so nice we throw a couple of brats on the grill. It was a fitting finish to a beautiful Nashville day. As I write there's a storm front moving thru that's promising to drop the temps anywhere from 30-40 degrees. Fall/Winter might finally be upon Nashville.

Made up Band Name of the Day: The American Record Scene

Question. If you're going to create this great abstraction layer, do you have to abstract out the ability to do useful things that you otherwise could do without the abstraction layer?

Thank-you, drive thru.

I've got other stuff to post but I really want to get this other BS done.

Made up Band Name of the Day: Interactive Spout Recovery Unit

Word.

Wonder if he had some sort of Heathers like fight. Maybe the cut came after he crashed thru the coffee table?

Big Fun indeed.

Made up Band Name of the Day: Teen Movie Fanclub

A dangerous sight
Digital sigs aren't tight
Computing in a digital Vietnam.

With apologies. I caught this piece of news and in particular this item jumped out:

" The software maker said it asked for a traditional paper-based verification process in order to help eliminate fraudulent claims and to keep specific vendors from attempting to cash in on the settlement."

There are multiple ways to look at this statement. First and foremost, as the article points out, M$ wants to make this as painful and convoluted as possible. After all, they're the ones that have to pay out the money. Second, there are companies that handle this and deal with these types of things on a regular basis, with fraud prevention part of their job. However many fulfilment companies are paper based, very rarely do you get to claim a rebate online. It's to their advantage to make you fill out that form which they're betting on you not filling out. This is in part what M$ hopes, provided they use a fulfillment company. Like everything else they'll probably handle it themselves and figure out a way to profit. Third, this proves that M$ would appear to not trust their own digital signatures. They have every right to believe that. If I were a business owner I would not trust my companies fortunes to their products. It would appear that they cannot either.

What is particularly bothersome in the claim is that it comes on the heels of the computerized voting fracas that is playing out. Several researchers have pointed out that the system is insecure. Of course, the companies producing these products on Microsoft operating systems claim that adding a paper trail would be cumbersome and create new problems. It sounds to me like Microsoft thinks they need one.

Made up Band Name of the Day: Road Hazzard

Yet another bizarre episode of The Brak Show (starring Brak). If you missed The Family Guy you really missed out. I normally don't watch the show. No reason in particular, the few times I caught it I found it entertaining. It's just not one of those shows that I go out of the way to watch though. Last week Cartoon Network hyped the upcoming episode, apparently it was a little to racy for Fox (imagine that). Apparently it was a little edgy for CN too and they edited it slightly (I've never seen the original, so I have to take their word for it). Needless to say, the show went a few places that yeah, I could see why it would not play in Peoria. It was still pretty funny though. It also looks like CN is changing up the schedule (again) but for the better. 10pm CDT starts the festivities of their shows that don't suck.

I've made a change to the right of the site, I gave the Webcam it's own section and added a CGI to tell you right off the bat whether or not it's worth following the link (ie, if it's on or off). I finally got my webcam back up and running. It was a victim of sorts of the remodel at the office.

I'm sticking with the B&W Connectix Quickcam that's been running it ever since I set it up. It's hooked up to an old Mac IIsi that's sole purpose is to run that camera and the software that makes it possible to serve up an image. The camera for its vintage is pretty good quality. In fact there's a whole group of astronomers that have modified theirs to hook to their microscopes. The results are pretty amazing considering limitations. The cam does a good job of handling the varying light quality and the picture is reasonably sharp, especially compared to some of the cams available today. Some of these cams need a floodlight pointed at the subject to make it look good. Lighting for the cam is above my head pointed towards the computer (and thus in part, towards the cam) and the glow of the monitor on my face.

The original purpose of the IIsi, aside from running the cam, was to provide an ADB feed to the AppleVision monitor that I had hooked to the original Dr. Teeth. When that monitor went I replaced it with the swanky Dell 1702FP. As a result, the dual purpose of the IIsi was lessoned, though I still wanted it for a cam server. Since the new Dr. Teeth is a wind tunnel and the servers have their own hum I decided to mount the IIsi under the desk. And so I did. It's hanging upside down, a testament to my ability to use angle irons for just about anything.

At some point I'm going to detail the setup that drives my cam. It's pretty convoluted but it seems to work pretty well. Not bad for having a setup with next to nothing invested. And thanks to the creator of WebCamToo for putting out some great freeware. It's nice to keep this old hardware chugging.

I found out tonight that a video capture card I purchased several years ago and that I've tried to unsuccesfully sell at several Dayton's appears to be supported under linux. With any luck it will become part of a project to setup a webcam overlooking some local railroad tracks. It's been my goal to get a feed of some sort from the Nashville area. It looks like it might finally come true. With any luck I'll have that up and running before I know it. I don't believe that setup will be B&W though. I'd like to get some color, which would totally rule.

Life with the new Dr. Teeth is going good. I'm loving having Mozilla at home for the first time. I hooked up an Epson Stylus C42UX that Ken gave me before departing. A couple points and clicks later and it was shooting out pages. Color me impressed. I upgraded Jen's Mac to OS9.1 She needed it for some programs she wants to use. The upgrade looked like it went alright. Not bad for a $20 Dayton special (darn near new in the box) and a couple hundred dollars in upgrades (G3 upgrade, HD, memory, and video card).

Made up Band Name of the Day: SuperMac and the PC Sidekicks

I've begun the transition to the new Dr. Teeth. At least I think I have. Dr. Teeth is the main workstation here at 1 RIMBoy.com way. Dr. Teeth is also the band leader of the Electric Meyhem, the house band on the Muppet Show. It's only fitting that the new system get the name of the one it's replacing, the one being replaced will get a new name accordingly.

The new system is a little more updated than the dual 266 it's replacing. It's a dual 850 with 512 megs of ram (incentive to upgrade at a later day I suppose). It has a sorely needed CD burner and a CDRom drive that does not suck. In addition, it has a BTTV card for video capture (MythTV here I come), Firewire card (additional storage) and will eventually have a SCSI card so I can hook up a SCSI scanner, DAT drive and some other assorted devices. All in all, a major upgrade for one of the key systems here at the office. Oh yeah, it's also running a slightly updated distro in RH7.3 w/ XFS. I'm having some problems getting the DVI to work. I'm using the ATI drivers but I'm thinking about grabbing the latest version of XFree and see if I cannot get it to work properly. It's not like I need the 3D support, I never game.

Made up Band Name of the Day: Bowling Green Machine

It's been a grey day today. Payback for having beautiful weather this past couple of days. My stint of living in the server room at work is nearly thru. There are days that I really hate computers. These past two weeks more or less have saw that hatred. The good news is that the stuff at work is shaping up quite well and is not nearly as bad as it could be. On the otherhand, the new DrTeeth is not shaping up so well. I really want to get that system online. I'm tired of the old version of Mandrake I'm running and the equally ancient web browsers. Likewise, I'd really like to use the DVI connector to my flat panel before DVI goes out of style (hopefully no time soon, but it will happen at some point).

They made me get a tenanus shot for work today. I don't recall the last time I had one and hey, a free shot is better than one you pay for. Thankfully I did not get it in response to fear of tetanus. Just wanted to make sure I'm all good to go for work. Yeah, who knew being a sysadmin could be so dangerous.

Yesterday I finally got the papers that say I can put up an amateur radio repeater. There'll be more details when it comes time.

I found some left over Halloween candy in the main office today. They told me to take it and quite a bit of it I took. I've got a good buzz going right now. Thankfully nothing on the level of when I eat too much Spree. I really have to watch myself. As much as I crave the round discus of sugar, low blood sugar is never fun to have.

Made up Band Name of the Day: The Bursts of Flavor

As I sat and wrote the 11/3/2003 update I knew I was forgetting the quote I knew was the quote for the update. That quote now being used above. It occured to me on the drive home that I forgot to write about my weekend and then the quote hit me like a busload of Chris Farley corpses (a quote used long ago on this site credited to Something Awful). Anyway, this past weekend was Halloween weekend, as would any weekend would be when Oct 31 falls on a Friday. Or something. Anyway, I realized I left out a metric crappie load of Halloween festivities that if left for another day would surely rot from my brain like the fish from the 11/3 update. So I put it here to suffer bit rot. I figure I'll make a backup or two between now and then anyway. So what do I have to lose?

So let's start with what I dressed as. Me dressing for Halloween does not happen often. Aside from the stuff my parents forced me to wear, in the past I've dressed as Dieter from Sprockets and Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer. Yeah, I'm a geek like that. So this year deciding it was time to be creative, I dressed as Carl from the Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Basically I spent a little time in Target. Unfortunately their jewelry dept did not have "Carl Bling", however their belt dept did. There's really not much to Carl than the Carl Bling. A wife-beater, jogging pants, and some sandals and your the life of the party. As long as there's some buffalo wings.

Anyway, I'm finding people are not hip to Sunday night's Adult Swim. Only a couple people got Carl all weekend. That's OK. I was quite comfortable living the Jersey Redneck life. Jen and I headed over to Jenny and Erik's, friends from MTSU that unlike me persued a career in the music industry. It did not occur to me until the next day, but rather than sit around and tell scary stories, we sat around their table telling scary industry stories, "stars" who must diet only on free-range fish (not from a fish farm), and remembering classmates whose arses should have been kicked. All in all it was a pretty spooky Halloween. I once again was thankful I did not persue a career in the industry. I've never been good at keeping a straight face and given the stories passed around the table I would have been fired from more than a couple of jobs if I found myself in the situation they were in.

After I finally crawled out of bed on Saturday I dropped Rick a line to find out what him and Ali were up to. A very cool "Day of the Dead" opening at the Plowhaus topped off with a party hosted by a guy from work ensured this Saturday night was going to be anything but boring. Especially since I knew the guy from work would be using dry ice to blow things up. It was during this party that a crime was committed though and not in what was blown up. No, during the holiest of greatest hits, that being from the Rev Al Green, the sin of the above quote was heard. Yes, someone thought Rev. Green was UB-40. I busted out laughing immediately... remember what I said above about not being able to hold a straight face? Thankfully I was in the next room over when the crime was committed. I suggest repenting by listening to a Kenny G retrospective. There's really nothing else that can repay a crime such as this. Unless maybe Michael Bolton is involved.

Made up Band Name of the Day: Bragg's Facists

At various points in time, I wonder if moving out of the hole that more or less is Southern Illinois was a good choice. Sure, there's the whole career thing and opportunities I would not have. The music scene is quite a bit better in Nashville when compared to St. Louis. Likewise, once you've seen one cornfield you've seen them all. I've yet to tire of the hills we have around Nashville and if push comes to shove I'm just a short drive away to some bigger hills. Of course, I don't have to worry about living next to this guy. Actually, I'm just glad I don't live in Belleville, where they'd do something like they're doing to this guy. I mean, 60lb Carps?! Holy Crappie batman! I did not think anything could live in Carlyle Lake, but a 60lb fish is like pulling a bag of birdseed up from the bottom of the lake. Granted, there are part of the lake where it's only 5ft deep in the middle. Like all thing BND, I'm sure we're not getting the whole story. Maybe the fish were maybe only 59lb. I'm glad to know that the trash is well protected in Belleville though. Those from the north can say what they want about the south, but I'll take fish stink anyday over people picking thru my trash.

Then again, I found out this guy is performing. For the amazing low price of $20 or $100 to get a backstage pass you too can hear the soul sucked out of all of your favorite songs. I would venture to say he won't be playing anything off of "In A Metal Mood" which might be the only reason why I'd consider going. As I was telling some friends the other night, that album is exactly how a big band metal album should be. It's just unfortunate Pat opened his mouth and ruined the experience.

Word. MacArthur Park as covered by Maynard just came on the jukebox.

Made up Band Name of the Day: Moist Onus