Sick of "Happy Holidays"

Mikayla this week came down the hallway of our house and merrily said, "Happy holidays!" I was shocked! Where did my innocent 3 year old learn to be so politically correct? Krista and I made an extra effort to say "Merry Christmas" from then on.

First we X-ed Christ out of Christmas with "X-mas", now we are on to more subtle ways of taking the true meaning out of Christmas. "Happy Holidays" is the phrase that is heard 10 times during each commercial break and it is the phrase that is posted all over the stores. Although, I was happy to see Fry's Electronics IS having a "Day after Christmas" sale event on the 26th.

Well, I wanted to continue this train of thought and blog a really controversial post, but I'm getting a little depressed thinking about it. Christmas Eve is not the time to bog your mind down with what's wrong with the world. It's a time to reflect on the birth of our Savior, the greatest gift ever given.

Look forward to a philosophical blog entry about what's wrong with being politically correct...just not on Christmas Eve ;o)

Merry Christmas!!

The sickness before Christmas

Over the last couple weeks Krista, Mikayla, and Lily have had the flu. I thought I had escaped the 24-hour flu bug, but I was wrong. Night before last I bearly slept and made a couple offerings to the porcelain god. There was an important project that needed 30-45 minutes of my attention at work, so I went in and took care of that and then came home. I slept most of the day yesterday while I battled a fever, nausea, aches, and a headache.

This morning I woke up with little more than a stomach ache. Praise the Lord! This is a busy week at work and Christmas is just a few days away.

Well, Christmas shopping is almost over. I need to brave the Costco craziness after work tonight and then I might have one more stop. The giftcard is a wonderful invention ;o) 

Warning: Infected - Part 2

* Audio download link *

How do I start this one. My goodness. For those of you who missed it, here is the link to my first review of Infected. Read it before continuing.

First of all, I would like to say that I do not hate Martin Sargent. If that is the way my first review came across, I apologize. That is not how I meant it. And, to defend myself a little, I did not post that review on “8” websites, I posted on one. It was intended to serve as a warning to my friends and family, the ones who read my blog, that it is not the type of podcast that they would be interested in.

Now, for those of you who don’t know, Martin called me out in his second episode of his Infected podcast. He exaggerated, called me names, and had a lot of fun at my expense. I don’t care much about that, I actually find it funny that a geek warning his friends of a dumb podcast got so much attention and got under Martin’s skin so much.

He actually read my previous post on his podcast and spent a couple minutes making fun of me and calling me names. I have edited the profanity out of a segment of his podcast in case you are interested. This is probably as close to my “fifteen minutes of fame” as I’ll ever get. How sad, Martin Sargent making fun of me in his podcast that is so profane, no one I know will ever hear it. Kind of ironic.

Let me give a bit more of a reason for not liking the podcast and why I urge you to not listen to it. First of all, humor that is filled with vulgar references and profanity is not something I find funny. I know that the majority of my readers are people who share similar values as I do and don’t enjoy that kind of humor. Second, it is a waste of time. Coming from Revision3, one might think that the content is educational or at least technology related. Martin says that his show is “a waste of time about wasting time surfing the internet wastelands, wasted.” I don’t know about you, but a profane waste of time is not what I am looking for in a podcast.

In episode 2 of Infected, Martin accuses me of posting my “eight paragraph” review on “eight different websites”. Well, he was close – it was a two paragraph review on one website. Maybe this post will be eight paragraphs. Oh, and yes, you can witness audio only content (Wikipedia on “witness”). But, being someone who has studied English at a university level, you would know that, Martin.

I know not everyone will agree with me, some people like a good profane waste of time, but like I said in my first review, it makes me feel infected. It is a huge disappointment to me that Revision3 would get behind such a production. Systm, diggnation, and thebroken are such good shows that it is disappointing that Infected is using resources that could be allocated to better shows.

If you want to hear the edited 3 minute segment of Infected episode 2, click here.

The Death of Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer is dying. Personally, I am glad to see it go. Yeah, I know that estimates say that IE still has like 70% market share, but a year ago it had 91%. That's a 20% drop in 12 months. Firefox however has grown significantly. My visitors are STRONGLY Firefox users. 70% of the last 400 unique users use Firefox.

Why Firefox? Security, tabs, extensions, and live bookmarks.

Security: New IE flaws come up all the time. Yes, there are Firefox security holes too, but very few people target Firefox - they target IE, because more people use it. Eventually this will change when IE goes below the 50% market share mark - I give that 2 years TOPS.

Tabs: Browsing with tabs has changed my life. I couldn't go back. I always have my Google homepage up. Keeping all the pages in my browser in one window using tabs is amazing. If you haven't ever browsed with tabs, go download Firefox and try it!!

Extensions: Unlike IE, Firefox is very open to configuration and development. There are thousands of developers writing extensions for Firefox to improve the user experience. I use the Gmail Notifier, IE Tab, All-in-One Gestures, BugMeNot, and del.icio.us. There are thousands of these extensions that do almost anything you could ask for. They check your mail, let you use mouse gestures to close tabs, go back or forward in page history, give you a weather report in your menu bar, etc..

Live Bookmarks: Any RSS feed can be a Live Bookmark. Your most recent stories Dugg, Slashdot, CNN, your del.icio.us bookmarks organized by category! I love it!

I know IE is easy because everyone has it and just about every web page is designed to be seen by it, but if you haven't tried Firefox, I encourage you to try it. Did I mention it has built in pop-up blocking?

E-mail or comment if you have anything to add or any questions.

Faces

Tonight we attempted to shoot Christmas pictures of the girls. It didn't go so well. Mikayla was great, but Lily is teething with a fever and not cooperating very well. Of the photos I shot of Mikayla, I liked one of them and a couple more were "okay". But, I had a lot of expressions that I wanted to share. I made the image above out of those expressions. My favorite in the top right. Krista posted the good shots on her blog. I hope to get better shots soon - with BOTH the girls :o)

Online Poker Revisited

I have been enjoying online poker again lately. One memorable run of cards was very fun:

I was holding poket kings and raised pre-flop. I was re-raised and followed with a re-raise. I was playing limit, so re-raising it up like that only put us each in for about 4x the big blind. The flop came giving no straight or flush possible and no ace - we both bet like crazy. The turn had an ace and he only called my bet, didn't raise with it. At that point I thought, "He's playing like he has MY hand. Or maybe QQ." The river was another blank and we raised it up. Cards flipped and we both had KK. I couldn't believe it. We split the large pot and I just laughed.

The very next hand I was dealt poket kings again! "This is perfect," I thought when I saw it. Playing online is a lot harder in many respects, but mainly in tells. You have so few things to pick up on by another player. One thing that stays the same with online play or real life play is players going on tilt (someone playing recklessly because they are frustrated for whatever reason). I raised like crazy hoping that the other people would think I was on tilt from the last split pot. With 3 of us in, the flop came K K 9 with two hearts. The other guys did most of the betting at this point - raising it up as far as allowed with limit. I just sat back and grinned. The ONLY way I could lose would be if someone had pocket aces and the turn AND river brought aces, or if someone made a straight flush. The turn was a low heart, making a flush possible. Everyone bet like mad! The river was a blank and more betting like mad. We finally turned up cards and of course, I had quad kings to win. My opponents had an ace-high flush and a full house, nines full of kings. I couldn't have asked for a more perfect setup to bring chips my way. I was just glad I was holding the quads, not the full boat or the flush.

As for my blog, I am sorry for the delay in posting, but I have been having a hard time thinking of something worth while to post. I know, alot of you are thinking, "That's never stopped you before!" And you are right.

Well, today is Lily's birthday - she is 1! Happy birthday Lily! I'm sure Krista will have a post today with pictures.