Derek on Danny's Old Bike

Derek finally got the hang of it late this afternoon and was off and riding on his own. This is the first time he's been able to ride the bike without training wheels. GOOD JOB DEREK!

Our's is White

Lisa picked up her new Hyundai Entourage this evening. We got a really good deal on it from Cocoa Hyundai.

Lisa came home from the hospital today. The kids where very happy to see her and made a whole wall of welcome home, and get well soon signs.

Lisa had her surgery today and all went well. The doctor was actually very happy that all which needed replacing was the ball and liner. This was a very good thing since the alternative was a complete replacement again.

Spam Plant

Ok, this is too interesting not to highlight. Seems this Romanian visual artist has come up with algorithms and computational models to make something out of SPAM! His visualizations are incredible.

The computer image shown here was created by processing the ASCII values found in the text of spam messages. Unbelievable!

More images can be found at his website http://www.sq.ro/index.php

Well, I've finally done it! I've switched 'kit and caboodle' (have no idea what that means) to FireFox. I had been using Maxthon for the longest time because of it's great tab interface, but recently pages have been taking a very long time to load or locking up all together. I think this was in large part to certain sites using combinations of ActiveX and Flash and the way Maxthon handles that. It got so annoying that I decided to see if I could get the tabs in FireFox to function the same way as Maxthon (Maxthon was much more configurable initially).

I'm happy to report that by downloading the Tab Mix Plus extension I was able to get just about all the functionality of Maxthon in to FireFox's tabs. It was quite a bit of work as there are tons of options but seems to be worth it so far. The browsing experience is much faster and more reliable now.

Other benefits of the switch are some really useful utilities built in to the Google toolbar, one being a Spell Checker for forum posts like this one... how I lived without this I don't know!

So if you are interested in trying it for yourself (Dad, Lisa!) (Ellie you are out of luck until we get your Mac upgraded) look at the menu on the left, down at the bottom for the button called "Get Firefox with Google Toolbar". Things will be much faster and safer for you.

Sinai Peninsula

After finding the quikmaps site I started thinking about some of the other places I've been, and wanted to see if Google Maps had them depicted. I searched all up the coast line of the Sinai Peninsula (the maps are very detailed), however I could not find the basecamp that I stayed at while in the Army.

I was stationed North of Sharm El Sheik somewhere, I don't remember the name of the camp.

I searched all over the Internet to find a mention of it but didn't find anything. I did however find a site dedicated to the Multinational Forces and Observers. It's located at http://www.mfo.org. I was surprised to see that it is still in operation.

I was looking at our Netflix account today and noticed we've been members for about 6 years now (I think we joined about 1 year after it's initial launch).

Netflix.com is the world's largest online DVD movie rental service, offering access to 60,000 movie titles. They generally provide one business-day delivery and provide free, prepaid return envelopes. Their "no late fees, no due dates" online movie rental model has enabled us to always have movies 'on hand' to watch whenever we want.

In looking at our rental activity over the last 6 years it breaks out like this...

• We've rented and watched 417 movies
• That works out to about 70 movies per year and 6 per month
• With the monthly fee of $19.00 we are paying, that works out to about $3.00 per movie rental

So it seems we are paying about the same as we would from the traditional local rental, but with the convenience of always having movies at the house to watch, and not having to worry about late fees or making a trip to the store.

I highly recommend Netflix, they've provided good service over the years and I feel we've definitely gotten our money's worth from them.

New members can try Netflix for free by visiting Netflix.com.

Found quikmaps.com while surfing the net, it uses Google's map interface but allows you to edit and save maps. The one below is of Ft. Bragg, North Carolina where I spent most of my time in the army.

Click on the little 'plus' sign to see how far you can ZOOM in! To scroll around just hold your mouse button down inside the map and move it around. Click on the red markers to get a description of the location.

Way Cool!

Here I was all excited about ordering online from Sports Authority, saving money by not paying tax or shipping. Well, the baseball bat I ordered on June 13th won't get here until June 26th!

Geez, if I would have known it was going to take that long I would have paid the extra $10 or so to have it shipped 'regular'.

They apparently shipped it USPS Parcel Select which has to be the slowest means of shipping on earth. It's been at the "Sortation Facility" in Ohio for the past 5 days.