I've been juggling quite a few different tasks and projects over the past few weeks. Some technical but most are just random personal things. I haven't had much time for blogging or even maintaining my website due to other priorities. But what adds insult to injury is having to keep up with the idiots on the internet. In the past few weeks I've been slammed with spam email, spam blog comments, bot attacks, script kiddies and just plain stupid wannabe hackers.

It just occurred to me that I started using email almost exactly 10 yrs ago. Being the compulsive weirdo that I am, I actually have them all saved. Why? I have no clue. I guess I'm prepared for when my (future) child will ask me one day: "Dad when did you first have email?" ... Wow 10 yrs. Man have things ever changed. Once upon a time, I would sit and wonder: "

I saw this in the newspaper and I thought it was pretty funny. Go to Google Maps and get directions for 2 major cities that are separated by an ocean. Say for example New York and London. Try it for yourself. Pay close attention to how Google recommends you cross that ocean. And of course don't forget the disclaimer: These directions are for planning purposes only. You may find that construction projects, traffic, or other events may cause road conditions to differ from the map results.

So in 1997 I was excited to get a 14.1" Sony Trinitron monitor. It worked at a pristine 800x600 SVGA resolution (and I could push it to 1024x768@85Hz, rare for the time). However that was only for my main computer at the time, a 166Mhz AMD K6 (sorry I couldn't afford a Pentium MMX). So the rest of the 286's and 486's at my house (all second hand) were running monochrome (remember Hercules?

From Microsoft's own website. In order to run Windows Vista in any other mode than Home Basic (i.e. no effects, and with removed functionality) Microsoft recommends the following: 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor 1 GB of system memory 40 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space Support for DirectX 9 graphics with: WDDM Driver 128 MB of graphics memory (minimum) Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware 32 bits per pixel DVD-ROM drive Huh?