Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Essential Software for your Treo 600, Mid-2004 Update

To get the most out of your Treo 600, these additional software packages are necessary. This is an update from previous posts.

mLights – Allow you to control screen backlighting and keyboard lighting intensity and hours of operation.

mVoice – Turns your Treo 600 in a voice recorder and .wav player. (You must upgrade your Treo 600 OS to the latest version in order to use this software.)

PowerRUN – Enables your Treo 600 transfer and run .prc programs from your SD Card.

Skinner – Change Dialpad and Favorites skins. Software is included that allows you to create your own skins.

Treo shortcuts – Enables you to program the Phone and Power buttons.

Adobe Acrobat Reader for Palm OS – Enables your device to view PDF files. The package also has a program that allows you to print from several programs to a fax machine, among other things.

pTunes (Pocket Tunes) – Plays MP3 files from SD Cards. You can install various skins to change its look too.

QuickOffice – Open, view and edit Word, PowerPoint and Excel native formats.

Snappermail – POP3 email software that handles file attachments. This software package also includes a program for handling and creating ZIP files.

VeriChat – Enables you to chat on AOL, Yahoo, MSN and ICQ instant messaging all at once. It also allows you to keep these IM sessions open on standby 24/7.


Additional software that will enhance your Treo 600 control, but aren’t useful on a daily/weekly basis.

Filez – This Palm OS file manager lets you view all the individual files on your Palm device and SD Card.

Batterygraph – Tracks battery statics, such as battery status, settings and usage. It displays details on a graph.

Monday, June 28, 2004

Friends

Miriam cooked dinner for my g/f and I on Sat. Tasty pasta. Very good.

Monday, June 21, 2004

Weekend Report with ...

Blink and No Doubt were a lot of fun. My g/f and I had a great time! I do get a kick out of the fact that they both did they ol' Let-Me-Here-You-Make-More-Noise-Than-Those-Other-Cities routine. The Blink 182 set was pretty long...maybe even too long. The No Doubt set was a little too short. A little strange, at least for this area where No Doubt is a bit more popular. Either way, the Shoreline was packed!
No Doubt did do some midset set changes and put on a fairly artsy show. Blink wowed the crowd when drummer Travis rose out of the mid audiance platform playing as hard as ever.
I ended up with one t-shirt for each group. I was a little disappointed they didn't make a combined tour t-shirt. I guess that's so you'll have to get two t-shirts if you want something from both groups.

Friday, June 18, 2004

blink 182 and No doubt tomorrow!

Seems like forever since I got tickets for the blink/no doubt show. I'm pretty excited about goin.

Monday, June 14, 2004

link

downloadme
downloadme too

Logitech spyware

In the recent past, I’ve battled such masterful spyware foes as myseach and apropos. To my surprize, the latest foe turned out to be Logitech. Logitech installs include a spyware known as Backweb. Though this little spybot isn’t nearly has dangerous as the likes of mysearch, it was just has hard to get off my system. I literally had to jet through my registry looking for the strings “backweb” and “logitech” in order to remove all references to this insidious spyware. In addition, I had to ascertain the difference between legit Logitech software, and their backweb references.
I started off my disabling the active backweb service from the Windows Task Manager. Then I found and deleted the directory containing the backweb software. Of course, it was looking all legit by being a subdirectory of the Logitech directory. Then I hunted through the registry as noted. There were over 30 references in the registry that had to be removed. When I rebooted, I had error messages because of the now broke links. I dealt with those.
Now backweb is no longer on my system, but I dread the idea of updating my Logitech drivers for fear it will reinstall its spyware.

Friday, June 11, 2004

Working out

Ok, so it happened, I finally started working out. Strengthwise, I was doing pretty good up until 2001/2002. I was in a couple accidents that really just sapped me of my strength. In the first one, I was rear-ended by a truck while I was stopped in traffic. That messed up my back a bit and started the ball rolling toward desending strength, but I was ok. Almost a year later, I was driving a rental pick-up. The truck had a problem where it would suddenly slip into neutral on its own. The malfunction happen while I was in a freeway entrance on a rainy day. Needless to say, I lost control. The pick-up rolled. It was totalled, and my back got more fucked up. From that time on, I was noticing myself progressively getting weaker and less agile. I've played sports and stuff since than, but I'm really now realizing how little that helped.
Well, that's all changing now. In just one week, I am feeling a substantial difference. The stronger I feel, the more I realize how far I've fallen. It's helping me feel more energized and more satisfied. I've even been hornier. lol Dare I say that I'm actually excited about how much I can improve. It's a rare event for me to use the word excited when referring to myself. I'm a pretty casual, easy going guy.
I've already got a feeling that this is a turning point for me.

Homerism

"I wish God were alive to see this." LOL

Monday, June 07, 2004

Trouble with handling Crime

There seems to be a modern Catch-22 in handling crime. We try to use punishment as a deterrent, but it really doesn't deter. The prisons are full of people that simply didn't think they'd get caught, or simply just didn't think at all. Also, the punishment should fit the crime. That's not to say let's use the ancient eye-for-an-eye standard. The Constitution protects us from that sort of nonsense (usually).
One problem is that the bar for what passes as reasonable punishment has been lowered substantially in the 20th Century. There is somewhat of a reversal of this going on right now, as many crimes now have much higher jail times.
Another problem is that punishment for serious, violent crimes shouldn't be treated as a deterrent, since it's not. We should simply punish the criminal in a way that fits the crime and leave it at that.
Yet another problem is that our prisons are actually considered desirable turf by gangs. They intentionally commit serious crimes in order to get arrested and sent to prison so they increase their membership in a given prison. So, prison isn't the necessarily best way to exact justice. This is where we encounter the crux of this catch-22.
The way out of this problem may to be punish people in a way that directly addresses their motives. There are attempts at this, such as counseling, but that only goes so far. What other options are available?

Friday, June 04, 2004

My Life - Part Two: Talking and Cheeze

When I was a toddler (2-3yrs), I loved cheeze. My favorite was cottage cheese. I remember this time pretty well. I had long since made a conscious decision to hold off from talking just to see how long I could get away with it. Yes, I do remember making that decision. And I remember when it backfired.
When I was about 3 1/2, my mom got tired of the subborn game. The routine we had at the time was that I let her know that I wanted something with just gestures. In particular, I asked for cheeze in this way. She finally used this my desire for cheeze to try to get me to talk. She refused to give it to me unless I asked for it vocally.
After a couple of unsuccessful attempts to break her stand, I finally gave in and spoke. From that point on, whenever I ask vocally for cheeze, she got it for me.
It didn't take long for me to get so tired of cheeze, that one day, I just stopped eating it. In fact, since then, I can't stand cheeze unless it's cooked into food. I eat (and enjoy) pizza, but can't stand even that if it was too much cheeze. I often pick off particularly thick sections of cheeze from my pizza slices. ...and never order double cheeze for me, thank you.
So, basically, as a toddler, I loved cheeze. I learned to talk, and got so much cheeze because of it that cheeze now disgusts me, for life.

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

Enumeration of Same-Sex Marriage

Same-Sex Marriage Essay is a good, quick overview of reasons why it is illegal to prevent same-sex marriage. It even makes a great point as to why even a Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage would be illegal since the Constitution prevents itself from contradicting itself.

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

No trouble this weekend

Sunday, my g/f and I spent the day together. We met up with a friend of hers from out of town later in the evening. We later saw Mean Girls. It was better than I thought it would be. I mean, it’s still about teenager girls in high school, but it was funny and not too sappy. Lorne Michaels produced the movie. Once I found that fact out, I excepted a movie that was going to be more funny than chickflicky. It lived up to expectations.

On Monday, my g/f and I spent the better part of the day preparing for a BBQ at her place for her folks. After all the rushing around, we got the BBQ started at about 6pm. Just in time for her folks to show up at 6:30. The food came out very tasty. The BBQ was surprisingly successful.