Just wanted to update my blog letting everyone know that we made it down to Tampa/Bradenton just fine today. 9 hours in total... very little construction, no traffic jams, and no rain.
Tagboard got back to me about the Install on Demand popups and they said that they have removed them, so I'm putting my tagboard back on my blog today.
** update: I've removed my Tagboard and it stopped, so that is what's doing it. Working on a solution... **
Here's a free computer tip:
Never click Yes on any of these Security Installation Warning boxes when they pop up while you're surfing the web... unless the Company listed is Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia, or Sun Microsystems (if you're installing java). If you're unsure about another company and you want to email me, I'll dig up what I can and let you know... but MOST of these Install on Demand things are some form of Spyware. Below is an example from a company named CPM that is coming up on my blog for some reason:
I think it's most likely coming from Tagboard.. the company that runs my message system on the left. Very annoying. Just click No on that screen when you visit my Blog... I'll work on getting rid of it.
If you have clicked on it, try running Ad-Aware. If you don't have an icon on your desktop for Ad-Aware 6, follow this link to obtain a copy: Ad-aware 6 from Download.com | 1.7 mb
If you do have Ad-Aware 6 on your desktop already, run it and right above the Start button in the program is a link labeled "Check for updates now". Click that and then click 'Connect' and see if there are updates. After the updates are done, then click 'Finish' and go back to the program. Click 'Start' and then 'Next' to start scanning.
When the scan is complete, right click in the Results window and choose "Select all objects" and click 'Next' to remove.
How does a team in Omaha get shutout in the opening game, score 35 runs on 47 hits through the next 3 games, and then get shutout in their 5th game against the team that shut them out originally? And by a pitcher who threw 7 scoreless innings in only his second start of the season?
I slept in until 10am, played some free pool with a great lunch at Baileys, Carolina beat the holy hell out of LSU 15-4, and Christina and I went to a beer tasting event at the Flying Saucer. All in all, a decent day.
The beer tasting was pretty cool. They had a guest speaker who was the 'beer guy' for Flying Saucer and one of the original founders of the chain of Saucers. He talked about the 6 beers we were trying that night. They also had a selection of breads, sausages, cheese, and fruit like grapes and apples at each table. It was quite an interesting event. Most of the 'Beer 101' info about the brewing process I already knew, so that was boring, but I did get to try a couple beers that are hard to find in this country. Ones that Flying Saucer doesn't even carry. The last beer was called Young's Double Chocolate Stout. I've had other chocolate stouts that have been awful (Rogue Chocolate Stout is nasty), but this beer was amazing. They even incorporated the beer into the desert that was served after the last tasting. It was double chocolate stout flavored ice cream served in a chocolate shell with a couple of sugar covered blackberries. The entire event and spread they did was beyond what we expected and ended up really nice. I'm glad we decided to go now.
Damn... USC lost their opening round game again this year. Last three seasons we've went to Omaha... first round opening game results: 11-0 loss, 8-0 loss, 2-0 loss.
At least it's getting better?
Seriously though, we faced what might be the best pitcher in college baseball and he went the complete game unfortunately and threw 14 strikeouts. Coming into that game in his last 10 outings he was 10-0 with a 0.39 ERA. Simply unconscious.
The game did look fantastic in HD though so that was nice with people over. We had a good time... would have been better had we won of course.
We play again tomorrow afternoon against LSU on ESPN2 at 2:00pm. Can I have a win for my birthday?
Christina and I used my Mr. Beer homebrew kit today and the little 8.5 quart keg is sitting there fermenting right now. 7-8 days from now I'll bottle it and we'll try it a week or so after we get back from Florida. It's probably going to taste awful, but hey, we're trying I guess.
That's a small panorama of the server room taken this morning with the cell phone. The rack now has 5 servers in it. That's why there haven't been any updates this week... it's been pretty busy. They are all Windows Server 2003 standalone servers, though the bottom one will be the sole domain controller in our only MS domain soon. We just have to prep the active directory database on the Win2K server currently running the domain before we can replicate everything to the new one and ditch the old one. All in all, the room is looking pretty sharp. It'll look a lot better when we move to our new building and we have an actual server room on a raised floor in a climate controlled, chilled room. Until then, this setup will have to do I guess.
The top two are a web server and SQL server for storing data from forms that research participants fill out online. The next two in the rack are the same setup only for another grant and research group. The bottom one is for the group that sees Speech and Hearing patients at the Clinic out on Forest Dr.
We're up to 15 total servers if you count the little personal web server I use in my office. 14 official servers though.
Not a lot else is going on... worked out again last night so I'm sore today. Too many curls... my forearms are feeling it.
Carolina's first game in the College World Series is tomorrow. Matt and Misty and Brian and Debra are coming over tomorrow to watch the game (ESPN or ESPNHD - 2:30pm). Go Cocks!
One other cool thing... everyone at USC got a 3% raise. Sure, it's not a lot, but I'll take it. They are trying to make up for state employees not getting a raise the last 3 years. Of course, then they go and don't approve any merit raises this year again. Go figure.
USC won their Super Regional yesterday over East Carolina in two games (best of three series).
Matt's parents had an extra ticket because Misty didn't feel like going, so he called me and I went. Great game. Carolina came back from 3-2 down to win 5-3.
Next stop is the College World Series in Omaha, NE. 4 of the 8 teams heading to Omaha are from the SEC and the last time USC played a bunch of SEC teams in one place (2004 SEC Tournament), we won it all. Hopefully we can add National Champs to the title this year too.
Setting up a couple of new servers today. One is pretty bare bones, the other is a P4 3.4Ghz with 4GB of RAM and about 400GB in a 4-disk RAID5 setup.
Not sure what they're going to be doing with it yet though.
The picture's from my cell phone, hence the poor quality. However, a lot of the noise was removed by a great program I found recently. It's called Helicon Noise Filter and it's available here:
It's free and if you have any digital photos that have noise in them (low light shots, etc) you can run them through this program and it'll work wonders on them. The only thing I didn't like is that the default Save quality from the program after it's done is Best Quality. It generally makes the size of your image files increase a good bit. You can go into the Preferences and change it to perhaps 75% of the Quality, but I'm not sure what that would make the image look like since I haven't messed around with that yet. Overall, the amazing reduction in noise in many shots is worth dealing with that one oddity in my opinion.
Working out again tonight (Mondays and Thursdays)... just in time too... the soreness was just starting to go away.
Okay, Nicki's always posting quizes on her blog, so I get to post the ultimate quiz... a personality test. Christina was bored at work this afternoon and started taking a couple of these. I'm not sure how accurate they are for everyone, but they're fun to take. The Myers-Briggs tests are pretty common out there. I know a few people who know their 4-letter result already from taking the test previously.
ENTJ - "Field Marshall". The basic driving force and need is to lead. Tend to seek a position of responsibility and enjoys being an executive. 1.8% of total population.
Well, yesterday began what will be a long, hard road ahead of me.
Matt, Dave, Christina, and I went to the gym on campus yesterday. So needless to say, I am just a little sore today.
I realized how bad it's gotten though when I started working with the freeweights. Always so much harder than machines. Oh well... you have to start somewhere. We're going to go after work on Mondays and Thursdays for around an hour to an hour and a half depending. Hopefully by the end of the summer, it'll make a difference.
I figure since we'll be cruising around on Lake Murray here in about a month or so when we bring the boat back to Columbia I should do what I can to try to get in shape.
Anyone placing wagers on how long it lasts before I quit?
It's been a while, but we finally got another win last night. We won 9-5 against the 0-9 (now 0-10) team in the league! Hey, a win is a win. That's the team we had our only two real wins against this year. However, the season's over now and our team finished just out of last place in the league with a 3-7 record thanks to the one forfeit game mid-season. It's disappointing, but we were a consistant pitcher away from winning probably 4 more games.
The next season starts off in early August and I think a lot of the same people who played this season are going to be coming back, so that will help. Teams get better when they play together longer. With our record the league may drop our team down to the lower group on the competitive scale... who knows.
We had two extra guys there again last night so I came out after 4 innings. I had one actual error out in the field where a ground ball bounced up a bit on me... I got a piece of it and it bounced up by my right shoulder so I just reached back, grabbed it in mid air and threw it to first but by that time the guy was down there already. Frustratingly short basepaths in softball. But, still an error on me for not fielding it correctly I suppose. Offensively I went 2-2 with a single, a double, no RBIs, and 3 runs scored. Two of the runs scored came while pinch running for our pitcher Brian since he was out there hobbling around on a bad knee. Not sure if the runner gets credit for those runs or not, but I think they should since I did an awful lot of running around out there in 4 short innings.
I think for next season I'm going to teach Christina how to score a game so we can keep better stats and take into account errors, fielder's choice plays, sacrifices, etc. Sure, the stats won't look as good, but it'll be more accurate.
