Many years ago, I was just starting to learn all things "Web".  I had been designated the "Webmaster" of my office mostly because I was the only one who really knew much of anything about HTML or the WWW. One day one of my co-workers informed me of this awesome technological advance that had been made in the way that the Internet worked (he was dead serious).  It was something that one of his Professors had just told him and apparently he believed it. He told me that all you had to do was type in something like "Yahoo" into the address bar on your browser and you would be taken to Yahoo.com.  Ok, I'll admit that this was about the time that the "www." was becoming a bit less required when typing in a URL, so maybe he just got his wires crossed. I told him that it would never happen (ok, maybe it will someday but this was nearly 15 years ago) and that he or his Professor didn't understand fully how the Internet naming worked.  Even I knew at the time that you had to have a Top Level Domain in order for the addressing to work properly. He insisted, so I told him to show me. which he tried to, unsuccessfully. In fact, I just going to "Yahoo" in IE7 and it still didn't take me there. Maybe I'll try again in another 15 years.

I've been recently having some strange computer problems.  My Task Manager was all kinds of goofy.  It would continually spike to between 95% and 100% usage even though I wasn't really doing anything with my computer. I also had some Chinese characters that would display in the address bar on occasion.  I searched all over the Internet looking for a solution but was never really able to find anything concrete.  I also constantly had at least one msiexec.exe running and at times there were many of them running.  The would regularly pop up to the top of the CPU usage and I wasn't fast enough to be able to cancel them. I originally thought that it was a virus or spyway, etc. (and it could still be) but I noticed a strange trend that put me on a path to removing it from my computer (I hope) and maybe this will help others. I tried several virus and AdWare/SpyWare scanners but they never found anything, which was perplexing to say the least. I have an HP OfficeJet J6400 Series printer, which I bought several months ago after the death of my 5610xi.  I liked the 6400 series because it was network capable and it allowed me several options that the 5610 didn't. One strange thing that I found was that whenever the 6400 was turned on, the conditions I've described would be present, but when I turned it off, things were much better though they didn't go away completely. I hadn't used it for anything other than printing, but recently started using it more and more for scanning.  While doing all of the virus/spyware/adware scans on my desktop I needed to user the scanner on the printer so I installed the software on my laptop.  Everything worked great, until I went to use IE on my laptop.  Previously I did not have the problem with the Chinese characters in the address bar but after installing the HP Solution Center software it suddenly had the same problem as my desktop. This got me to thinking, because as I was trying to work with my desktop it was having problems with the HP Solution Center.  It wouldn't install properly (always throwing an error regarding the registration of flash9b.ocx) and sometimes it wouldn't even run at all. I continued poking around trying different things (this type of computer problem is not my forte).  In the end, what I ended up doing was completely uninstalling all HP printing/scanning software on my computer using the Uninstall utility that HP has on their site, then upgrading Flash to the latest version and reinstalling all of the HP software.  I also upgraded the Firmware on the 6400 series. It appears to have corrected the problem that I had at least for now.  I have no idea what was going on or if I've even correctly solved the problem, but if this can help anyone who may be having the same difficulties, then I'm happy.

It has been a long and grueling week.  For once, it's not because I've had to put in mega long hours at work.  In fact, work has been pretty even keeled lately, which has been nice. No, this week was the week of Scouting in my household and I'm exhausted at this point. Since Tuesday night I had something Scout related going on every night/day until Saturday.  It all started with a Flag Ceremony at the local school board meeting on Tuesday, our normal meeting night on Wednesday, Roundtable (which I teach at) on Thursday, a camp out on Friday, and the Scout-O-Rama all day on Saturday. Throw all of that in with the regular crazy weeks around my house and things were a bit more crazy than normal.  I'm thankful that this week is behind us. One of the best things about the week is that I finished up all of my Wood Badge tickets on Wednesday.  It feels great to be finished.  Looking back on what I've been able to accomplish over the last 11 months, I'm amazed.  Not in my own ability but in how everything managed to come together. On our course it was mentioned that completing your tickets is a lot like completing 5 Eagle Scout projects.  I'm much more inclined to believe them :D I'll be receiving my Wood Badge beads in a couple of weeks and will be sending our invitations (well most likely an email invitation) with the event details soon. Now I just have three more "tickets" to complete for University of Scouting.  One of which will be complete in the next few weeks, the other in September and the third by the first week of December.

How is it that I can keep my Hotmail account inbox, which I've had for about 10 years, cleaned out and yet I can't keep my home computer desk organized?

Usually the Desktop on all of the computers that I use are full of icons everywhere.

I've never been one to use the My Documents folders, so instead I just dump everything onto my desktop. Then every year or so I clean it up and delete most, if not all, of them. So imagine my surprise when I get this pop-up on my desktop this morning.

Mainly because my desktop looks like this now.

Or at least it did until I saved these two screenshots to my desktop.  Oh well, some habits never die.

I have a Smart Phone that runs Windows Mobile that I carry for part of my job. There is an addictive little game on there called Bubble Breaker, some of you may know it well. I solved it for the fourth time in 2703 games today. Maybe I need to find something else to do with my free time.

The list of things that I need to do continues to grow. Things that must get done:

1. Fix/Adjust the blinds on every window in the house
2. Paint many walls/rooms.
3. Hang many things on said newly painted walls.
4. Clean up/out my sanctuary...errr....garage.
5. Finish and Paint the walls in the garage.
6. Add shelves and organize the garage.
7. Work on finishing the basement.
8. Finish redesigning/installing the home network.
9. Finish setting up new home Firewall.
10. Finish setting up new home fileserver.
11. Fix damage done to house this winter.
12. Finish Mud Room Bathroom Shower.
13. Finish Mud Room Lockers.
14. Fix broken door knob.
15. Put up fence around yard/house
16. Finish Fountain and Pond in front yard.
17. Put in Flag Pole in front yard.
18. Finish flower beds in front and back yards.
19. (Start &) Finish RV Pad and gate.
20. Rotate tires on all four cars.
21. Change oil in all four cars.
22. Fix nail pops and other various types of wall damage within the house.
23. Caulk the bathrooms and kitchen.
24. Deep clean kitchen tile floor.
25. Setup computer(s) for kids to use while doing homework.
26. Get Truck trailer lights and brakes wired.
27. Get Van trailer lights and brakes wired.
28. Get into MBA school.
29. Finish MBA school.
30. Finish Wood Badge tickets.
31. Finish University of Scouting tickets.

and the list goes on. Here is a list of the hobbies that I would like to take up or do more with.

1. Get a Snake.
2. Get a Motorcycle.
3. Learn to be a better cook.
4. Get a Shotgun.
5. Go Clay Pigeon shooting with said Shotgun.
6. Go Camping (more often).
7. Go Backpacking.
8. Do more Mountain Biking.
9. Pick up Basketball again.
10. Pick up Softball again.
11. Get a Black Powder Rifle.
12. Go to target range with said Black Powder Rifle.
13. Get a 22 rifle.
14. Go to target range with said .22 rifle.
15. Take up fishing.
16. Do more woodworking.
17. Learn to weld,
18. Buy snowmobiles.
19. Go Snowmobiling.
20. Tour the world riding the worlds great Roller Coasters.

As you can see the second list is shorter, so I'm thinking that I should start with that list first, though I think that my wife has other thoughts on the subject.  She may even veto many of the items on the second list.

On any given day, I have my iPod, a laptop and two cell phones within arms length of me.  This also doesn't count the several additional computers that surround me at work and at home.  I'm literally surrounded by technology all day, nearly everyday. I don't think that I'm that extreme, though same may question my thinking.  While I think that technology is great, I believe that it has its place in the world and that too much technology can be damaging. That is why I think that this really is too bad and I think why I enjoy Scouting so much.  It gets me (and my sons) out into nature and away from the TV, cell phones, computers, etc. Sadly entire generations are growing up and not realizing what is literally right out their back door. I really like thisbroadcast, especially what Brother Dahlquist has to say about Scouting. Now if we could just get more Young Men and Young Women interested in the outdoors and nature instead of spending lots of time in front of a video game or the Internet.

As a kid I played my share of video games.  The first game system that I was was a Magnavox Odessey2. We've also had a computer since I was about 8.  We started out with a Bell & Howell clone of the Apple II+, then upgraded to the Apple IIe, then on into the Lisa and Macintosh lines. One of the games that I played a lot was Montezuma's Revenge.  In fact, I even played it at school before computers were as prevalent in the classroom as they are today.  I was a Teacher's Aide in my sixth period class.  It was an English class and my job was to assist a young lady and help her keep up in the class while she was also learning English.  I don't remember exactly which country she was from but it was somewhere in Asia.  She was very smart though and would pick things up quickly (or at least that's what I would tell myself). So as class was starting I'd ask the teacher if this young lady was going to need my help that day in class.  If the answer was No, or at the very least not Yes, I'd high tail it out of class and head straight for a secluded Teacher's workroom, that we had found a way to get past the locked door, boot up the computer and play Montezuma's Revenge for the next 50 minutes.  So I basically got an A in Video Game playing in Middle School. Once we got our Mac, I played Dark Castle all of the time, but since the school didn't have Macs and I was unable to find a Teacher's Workroom, I stayed in class.

Does this make my Apple IIe out of date?