It's been a while since anything was updated on this site. I was finally able to get my act together long enough to load up some new pictures as well as some new music. The pictures are from Halloween and the semi-annual Pimps and Ho's party. Still need to get the ones from the holidays up there, but first I need to get them off the camera. The music is from Jeremy and Dana again. Some jams from September and the other from the beginning of December. Good stuff.

If you didn't know - Microsoft's Windows 98 has come to the end of it's life cycle. You can verify this by checking out Windows Desktop Support Life-Cycle Wizard A good question would have to be which is better:
- 5 years of commercial support, then you're out in the cold
or
- A lifetime of community support ?? Good riddance Windows 98..

Here was a little piece of Christmas cheer a week or so late. It's the classic Twas the Night before Christmas except it's written in legalese. Totally cracked me up.

This one goes straight out to my Dad! There is an article over at Popular Science titled Microcystalline in 30 Seconds. It talks about how they whipped up some ice cream in about 30 seconds with a little LN2. Sounds tasty to me!

We managed to all get on the short bus and head out to Bock Fest again this year. Plenty of pictures in my picture database . The Schell Brewery once again put on a great event.

Wired has an interesting article on the state of IP laws in the US. We are approaching an interesting time in the computer industry where we must carefully weigh the rights of large corporations to intellectual properties against the stagnation of the industry as a whole. The article is called The Eagle Is Grounded

A little AP news blurb decribes how Microsoft and RSA are teaming up to increase security on Windows by requiring the use of a SecurID token to log into a machine. It makes me think of putting a titanium lock on a cardboard box and calling it secure.

OnLamp has a cool article on Python Server Pages (psp). I had not even heard of this and I'm supposed to be a Python guy! Guess I need to crawl out from under my rock once in a while. Looks like it has some really neat features that would make templating a web site very easy. Not enough of a cool factor to rewrite this site quite yet, but I could probably be pursuaded.

Finally had the chance to see the acclaimed Mystic River last night. Excellent acting and direction. The plot was so cliche and transparent it was almost unbearable. I felt very much akin to Servo and Crow from the old MST3K days. Poking fun at the film as it plodded along.

Found an awesome MXC site on Yahoo! groups. The MXC Yahoo! Group has some great quotes and the "move" database which is my favorite. I will start laughing at the mere mention of a Full Willing Participant. If you have not seen MXC on Spike! yet you will have to check it out. Completely mindless entertainment is sometimes the best.

With all the hullabaloo about illegal music downloading I was pleasantly surprised to find out about http://www.magnatune.com/ Magnatune . Their slogan reads We're a record label. But we're not evil. They have high quality streaming audio of every artist and every song they offer. Half of anything you pay for goes directly to the artist. Downloads of the music are offered in multiple formats and you can download as many of those formats as you wish for the same price. That's the bulk of the cool stuff. Now you won't find Britney or whoever on this record label (thank the powers), but there is a lot of interesting music. I particularly like the material in the http://magnatune.com/genres/jazz/ Jazz and Blues section. Purchased Cypress Grove Blues by http://magnatune.com/artists/jag Jag and have been listening to it while programming all day. Great music in my opinion. Good info all over the sight about why the founder decided to do what he did. Good stuff and well worth supporting in my opinion. Goes back to the broken business model of the recording industry as it stands today. Here is somebody with a new plan. I like the plan. I also like the music.

Dave sent me this link for Lac Sergent in Quebec. For some reason it hit a chord in my funny bone and totally cracked me up. I think it's mostly the goofy picture on the front page. On a side note I wonder how much this screws with search engines having Sergent's link to Sergent's that are not really related.

After two months my wheels finally arrived. Threw some rubber on there and away I went. A little rough but Josh totally helped me out. Now the real work can begin. Posted pictures in the database as usual. Thinking about setting up a special Vette page just for all that related material. Still pondering.

Was having problems with innacurate temperature display on the old girl. Picked up a new temperature sending unit at Napa and looks like it will work after only minor fussing. Need to get the correct connector and should be good to go on that end of things.
Was able to complete the first oil change. Need to get a real jack someday soon.

Josh and Jeremy met me at the http://www.autoswalk.com/jun222428anm1.html Back to the Fifties car show sponsered by http://www.msra.com/ Minnesota Street Rod Association . It was well into the cool factor on the giant scale of neat. There must have been about 10,000 cars there. We were lucky to catch half, probably less. I tried to take a picture of every Corvette I saw, but there were even way too many of those. It was definitely a great time. Just needed more of it. Time that is. Took a ton of pictures. Will get them posted on the site someday.

Dairy Queen has a new blizzard called The French Silk blizzard. If I could indulge in haiku for just a moment

calories enter
ecstasy ensues within
no frog taste found here

Jeremy pointed me to a very well written piece by Joel called How Microsoft Lost the API War. It's not nearly as drastic as it seems, but does contain quite a few common themes which have been floating around since the creation of The Web as we know it today. Mainly that fat (as in phat) applications are doomed because of the web and it's platform agnostic ways (which of course Microsoft hates). I have always agreed with this point but disagreed with the timeline many have put down. Will I stick my neck out and predict one myself? Hell no! think decades, not years. The article also contains a bunch of good stuff about development and where Microsoft is taking you today. One of my favorite quotes is:
A lot of us thought in the 1990s that the big battle would be between procedural and object oriented programming, and we thought that object oriented programming would provide a big boost in programmer productivity. I thought that, too. Some people still think that. It turns out we were wrong. Good article to read while eating potato leak soup. All good stuff.

Finally got some of the better pictures up from the car show last weekend. I didn't realize I had taken so many pictures. It's all fun right? They are up in the picture database filed under http://thesergents.net/imagedb/categories?cat=7 Events . Too many cars to choose from. A good problem.

Katie and I went to see Spider-Man 2 last night. I have to say it was totally awesome. Even if comic book flicks weren't my thing seeing Sam Raimi 's directing was an absolute treat. A joy in fact. Go back and watch Evil Dead 3 Army of Darkness a few times (or 40 or 50) and then go see Spidey 2. It's too good. And of course there was an appearance by one of my favorite actors of all time Bruce Campbell. All in all a great movie.

Hey.. it's true.

There was a lot I didn't know about oil before Josh sent me this link.
All you ever wanted to know about oil for your BOSS 302 (and your daily driver). Granted it is a little focused on older cars, but there is so much good information from somebody who is extremely knowledgable on the subject. Much to learn. Might have to come back later and read it again. Some of the points might be a little over my head at this point. Check it out!

Couple of items I found to be funny. First in the The Top 50 Worst Guitar Solos of the Millennium. Pretty hilarious and no punches pulled. Hell, Rush is even listed! No one is safe! Will probably at least spawn some good coversations (arguments). Next - not as much funny as interesting. So funny in an odd kind of way. It's Wikipedia's Random Page. Try it out. It's addictive. Fun way to start the morning and learn something new.

Having some problems keeping the router on the wire. For those of you who depend on my server being up please know that I do receive alerts on my cell phone when it goes down courtesy of http://www.mailive.com/ Mailive! . It may take me a few hours in order to get home and reset the router, so please understand that I am on it. The most annoying part about these problems is it seems to happen about this time every year. Last year when this was happening I had Time Warner come out and take a look. They said I was getting intermittent signal interruption. The cause? Weak signal. So the engineer installed an unbalanced splitter to increase the signal going to the router ( decreasing the signal to the tv. The sacrifices we make! ). I thought this had done the trick because we haven't had many problems since then. This month, however, has put me in my place. Keeping an eye on the situation...

After many years (many years) of playing electric guitar I've rediscovered the classical guitar and have found some interesting tidbits to share. Gotta love that Internet thing. To begin with, when picking up music again, it's always helpful to have a http://www.musictheory.net Music Theory site handy. Pretty good job and fun for free. Just something to check out. Watch an incredible performance by http://www.anavidovic.com Ana Vidovic from the http://www.kennedy-center.org/ Kennedy Center . Most amazing. rtsp://rx-wes-sea54.rbn.com/farm/*/kennedy/kennedyg2/g2demand/01072004_1800_MSN.rm Here is the performance stream . I almost forgot. Classical guitar construction is quite an elaborate and time honored tradition. There are so many different techniques that go into building a great guitar. Some people have some http://www.newmillguitar.com/newguits.html different ideas about how to go about it. Really an interesting read about how to get all those pieces of wood to sound beautiful. Some of my other favorite sites include: http://www.worldguitarist.com/index.html World Guitarist - lots of links about classical guitar. http://www.guitarsalon.com/ Guitar Salon - Great site with good articles (the one on http://www.guitarsalon.com/index.phpsite_url=68 rapid tuning was quite interesting) and of course goodies everywhere. For fun look at the http://www.guitarsalon.com/store.php?it=GUCLHAUJUB-02890 Hermann Hauser III . Price? Like the saying goes If you have to ask...

So thanks to Jason I've had a GMail account for a couple of months now. My address is dana.sergent of course @gmail.com . Pretty slick interface with a different idea for filing stuff. Basically they want you to put all your mail in a giant pile ( you start out with a 1 gig quota, if that can be called a quota ) and then use the search feature to find mail later. Seems to work pretty darn well. And fast. Speaking of fast - I was extremely wary of all the javascript at first, which is the whole thing, but have had no problems with any browser I use (Firefox and Safari) You are probably saying "How do I get one of these accounts?". Looks like have finally unleashed the floodgates because I keep getting new invitations as fast as I can give them away. That's right - Invite Only. Once again that is a pretty good idea for ramping up a service like this. Those Google guys and gals!

Today I wear a long sleeved shirt for the first time. Welcome Fall. That is all.

Jer Says: "http://newlisp.org Kind of interesting.
Probably will never have time to play with it. . ." The truth hurts.

Internet Health

From the bookmark archive. Internet Health Report. It's cool to see if "The Internet" is congested anywhere along the line. Don't look at it much these days, but in a geekier time in an apartment not too far away it was one of the coolest things.

Well, for those of us who have been using Miscrosoft's instant messaging protocol with alternative (read: non-Microsoft) clients are going to be given the boot. According to this article they are going to start charging third parties for access licenses. So in the end I believe this only hurts their cause. I will no longer be using their IM network to communicate with friends and family. Not sure what GAIM has set for the future? At least we can't say the industry is boring.

Google does it again.

If you have SMS, commonly referred to as text messaging, on your cell phone you can now send a message to googl (46645) and ask Google a question. It's totally cool. They have a nice help page - Google SMS How to Use. Totally check it out. Ultimately geeky!

The only thing holding me back from supreme dominance on my iBook was getting the Control key in the right spot. After too many years of using Sun equipment and then using my Happy Hacking keyboard the Control key must be where normal keyboards put the CAPS LOCK key. Who uses that anyways? Lame. So in comes uControl to save my day. Now I can have the Control key the way I like. Back to happy hacking.

Big storms last night. We were down from about noon to 7:30pm or so. Looked like my router fried, but it magically came back while I was not looking. The problem was caused by an electrical outage sometime around 11:48am. Wasn't able to get home because of that darn thing we call work. Got home. Reset router. Nothing. Had to open a ticket with Time Warner. They were really cool and had someone at my door in about 1.5 hours at which time the router decided to work again. *poof* The saga continues...

Looks like at least one court is not so fond of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). Ars Technica has a nice little article titled [http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20041026-4352.html DMCA dealt serious blow by Sixth Circuit Appeals Court]. Has a little explanation of what the DMCA is for the uninformed as well as Lexmark's argument and why the http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/Lexmark_v_Static_Control/20041026_Ruling.pdf US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit] decided it was bunk. Good to see there are some in government that have common sense. Update: Found another loser trying to enforce the lame DMCA. This time it was Skylink Technologies that came out on the short end of the stick.

This sort of cracked me up. It's always about the almighty dollar right? Well, not always. So the AP had this story called Bloggers Find Clicks Don't Mean Cash. ie. we don't make money doing this blog stuff. Someday there might be somebody out there who "gets it". Doesn't look like anytime soon.

NPR has a pretty funny story about passing on sayings. The story teller is pretty good and has a great Minnesota accent if you've never heard one, or if you haven't heard one for a long time and miss it, ya know.

As the weather goes, so goes my internet connection. It was raining heavy last night which means my connection to the internet is hindered and all that is hosted by thesergents.net was out for lunch. This damn technology. They are coming Monday to look at line levels and all that fun stuff. Again. Thinking about giving DSL a try again. Maybe after 6 years they can get it to my house. It all makes me grumpy.

Not sure where I stumbled across this one. I think I was trying to figure out a cooler way to tie off the ends of my classical guitar strings when I found this. Knot Review. Mostly meant for climbing, but I thought it was pretty neat nonetheless.

Firefox config fun

If you are not already using Firefox instead of Internet Exploder you should be. Then once you are you should check out About:config Entries. Some cool features that can be enabled/disabled that are not available in the normal Preferences dialog box. Geek out!

After running the Twin Cities Marathon we had to track down our good friend Dave who was running the race. Turns out he was taken to the hospital with some shortness of breath. So we found him got him safely home all good. The only thing missing was his t-shirt from the race. In all the rush he missed out. So does Dave take this lying down?!? Hell no! He contacts the Pioneer Press and they totally hook him up and wrote an article about it! Way to go Dave! Here is the article.