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Spain night -
As always, we had a great time Saturday with Michael & Susan and Tom & Estelle, although the dining experience itself left a lot to be desired; we'll be scratching that one off our restaurant list. Marge was under the weather, so she and Frank couldn't join us this time, unfortunately. It was such a nice day out that we had shut the heat off and opened the windows for awhile. Later that night, when everyone started complaining how cold the house was, we discovered we had never turned the heat back on -- sorry! Emergency afghans kept us from shivering until the furnace came up to speed again.
Friday night's dinner at Carino's was a better choice, food wise. We joined Cheryl & Eric, their friend Pam and their three daughters for dinner and bowling. I'm starting to think it might be time for a new bowling ball, a 15-pounder instead of my old 16, and made of the newer materials designed for today's lanes. I borrowed Eric's new ball for much of the evening and found I did much better with it.
—Mike @ 15:05
Happy Leap Day - The chances of being born on Leap Year Day is about 1 in 1,461. Of course, there's even a web site devoted to Leap Day, sponsored by the Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies. And finally, here's an explanation of why we have Leap Years.
—Mike @ 12:55
An example of why it's important not to use the same password everywhere - In our mailbox yesterday was a brochure from a company we had never heard of before, along with an invitation to go to their web site because they had pre-established login accounts for us, for our convenience. Printed in plain sight were our new User Names and Passwords which, much to our surprise, matched the IDs and passwords we had previously established on another site. After several e-mails and phone calls, we found out the new place was affiliated with another outfit we had registered with a year or two earlier. This was obviously a flagrant violation of their own published privacy policy. We received many apologies, and removed our subscriptions from both places. But what if those printed, available-to-anyone passwords had been the same ones used for something important? It was an amazing breach of privacy, given people's general concerns about such matters lately.
—Mike @ 17:55
Spam fight gains steam - There may be hope yet for us spammees. A grass-roots movement to improve the SMTP protocol that governs e-mail traffic is gaining acceptance, and its lead developer hopes to get fast-track approval by the Internet Engineering Task Force to make the emerging framework a standard.
—Mike @ 17:34
On final approach - The Cassini spacecraft remains on target to enter orbit around Saturn this July 1, and has already begun sending spectacular weekly pictures of the ringed planet.
—Mike @ 14:23
Faster than a speeding bullet - High-speed air travel may not be dead after all. Two U.S. aeronautics agencies are experimenting with ways to eliminate sonic booms over land masses.
—Mike @ 15:10
Fresh brewed news plus stewing views - That's the motto of a site called memeorandum. Monitoring the hot stories, and providing links to who's saying what about those stories on the 'net, it's an interesting cross-section of opinion. The most-linked-to stories bubble up to the top of the page, which is updated hourly. Find out what folks are yacking about right now. [Thanks to Carl for the link!]
—Mike @ 14:59
Hybrids are hot - What do you know about hybrid vehicles? Here's an interesting site from a PBS show on the subject, complete with video clips of people's misconceptions and celebrity owner interviews. (Thanks Carl -- nice to have other hybrid owners feeding me information for a change! :-)
—Mike @ 13:50
3D Reconstruction of Mars - You won't need the silly 3D glasses for this set of photos... nicely done. [Thanks, Bonnie!]
—Mike @ 22:52
NJ to research Stem Cells - The first state in the nation to finance stem-cell research, New Jersey will set up a $6.5 billion institute, hoping to attract the best scientists in the field. California may be right behind.
—Mike @ 20:56
In the spotlight - While walking downtown to that new Japanese restaurant I mentioned a few days ago, we passed by the county courthouse, and were amazed at the amount of satellite transmission trucks and TV paraphernalia left there for the for the ongoing coverage of the Jayson Williams trial taking place right here. It's very odd to see CNN people on our streets in the afternoon, and then to see the same report aired that evening. Our sleepy little town doesn't often get such notoriety. You can never tell what juries are thinking, but the latest news from the trial isn't looking very good for Williams.
—Mike @ 18:02
Live TV on cell phones - Now, there's an idea that just might take off (or not). Either way, here it comes.
—Mike @ 14:34
A handset for two worlds - "Even as Internet-based telephone services gain ground, most people still use the conventional telephone network and regular phones. An inventor working for Lucent has designed a phone handset that can switch back and forth between the two technologies. The handset, patented by Charles Byers of Aurora, Ill., comes with a switch that allows a caller to switch manually between making a call over a standard telephone network or over the Internet, according to the patent filing. The system can also select the best option automatically, to 'route the call via the more advantageous communications link,' Byers wrote." [NY Times]
—Mike @ 14:08
Au revoir - to HBO's Sex and the City, which aired its 93rd and final episode tonight. I'm very glad I got involved watching this series the last couple of seasons. Real quality stuff; we'll miss the gals. It was one of the best series-closers we've seen since the end of M*A*S*H.
—Mike @ 21:52
IRV - In the wake of this morning's announcement by Ralph Nader that he's running for President this year, people are already up in arms again about the spoiler effect his candidacy is likely to have. He's not my choice for President, but when questioned on today's Meet The Press about the spoiler effect, Nader actually had a good response:A spoiler is a contemptuous term, as if anybody who dares to challenge the two-party system and corrupt politics and broken politics and corporate power is a spoiler. Come again? See, these people are well-meaning people who agree with us on many of the issues, but they're hostages to an antiquated Electoral College winner-take-all system that blocks all the way to excluding candidates from the debates, blocks any kind of voices, any kind of competition, and we've got to fight that. You can't just fight that from the outside the way the Center for Voting and Democracy is. You've got to fight it from the inside as well and that's what I'm trying to do and I hope millions of Americans will agree if they want fresh ideas, new ideas, solutions, but above all, if they want to become, in Jefferson's term, "participators" in our democratic society.This is excellent publicity for one of my pet projects: the Center for Voting and Democracy and Instant Runoff Voting as a fix for the spoiler effect. IRV guarantees the winning candidate is elected with a majority of the vote, not just a plurality. Spoiler candidates would be a thing of the past because if the candidate you vote for is eliminated due to nobody having a majority, your second-place vote is counted instead, in an "instant runoff" election. It's an idea that would help to ease the extreme polarity our nation has been experiencing on many major issues lately. Read more about it here.
—Mike @ 18:00
"Seinfeld, set to music" - is how the Star-Ledger once reviewed the play I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, and it's a good description. My former office-mate saw it on Broadway several years ago and said it was hysterical. I didn't feel like going into the city to see it, but this weekend it came around to our local community college theatre, and we enjoyed it very much. It's a musical about men & women, their relationships, dating, marriage, kids, life and death. Funny and poignant at the same time; we definitely recommend it. I also ran into another former co-worker, Dwight and his wife Jill, at the play — it was good to catch up with him during the intermission.
—Mike @ 17:33
Water-free urinals? - Not a story that's flush with excitement, but apparently someone's invented them after a 3 or 4 year effort. [via Dave Barry]
—Mike @ 12:41
Places I've visited - Here's an interesting online service that automatically generates a US or world map, based on where you specify you've visited. For example, here are the maps of the 40 states and 10 countries that I've visited so far:
Create your own visited states or country map, or write about it on the open travel guide
—Mike @ 15:18
A couple of new George photos -
brazenly stolen directly from Kevin's 2003 scrapbook [Thanks!]
—Mike @ 14:44
Where do you want to go today? - Sometimes you want to search the whole worldwide web; sometimes you just want to find a pizza place close to home. Google's new Search by Location experimental service helps you focus your search on a specific geographic location. Just enter an address, or a city/state, or zip code. What a great idea! [Thanks, Mace!]
—Mike @ 13:00
Wassup? - Wasabi! That's the name of a new downtown restaurant that we walked to this evening. We had some sushi, soup, salad, and I had a plate of sauteed spinach in garlic (one of my favorites).
As we were finishing up, the restaurant next door to ours suddenly had smoke billowing out from its electrical panel, so the fire department came with sirens blaring, and ordered everyone to leave the nearby stores, as they were going to turn off the power to prevent a fire. We had just finished and paid, but everyone else had to leave. I think they probably got off without having to pay anything, regardless of where they were in their meals. (If we had delayed just two minutes, we probably would have too, but I'm actually glad we paid the bill first, since they're a brand new restaurant, probably need the cash, and we'd like to see them succeed.) So that was our Friday excitement for this week; hopefully there was no permanent damage done.
—Mike @ 23:13
"To a certain degree, pain is an act of imagination." - Did you grow up hearing the words "It's all in your head" whenever you whined about some ache or pain? Well, it turns out there's some truth to that. According to this report, there are brain pathways that allow our thoughts and beliefs to directly change our physical and emotional experience.
—Mike @ 21:59
More powerful than a locomotive - Version 2.0 of Password Safe is now available for download. Among the changes are the ability to export your password list to a text format, and to view all the entries in a collapsible tree format (much better for organizing large collections). It's a great way to keep track of all your IDs and passwords.
—Mike @ 15:55
The biggest Internet event ever? - That's the way it's shaping up, as the hit count for the Mars rover missions has already surpassed the 6.5 billion mark, a number greater than the total population of planet Earth, with hopefully many more months of coverage to come. Go JPL!
—Mike @ 14:44
Anyone surprised? - A group of influential scientists is claiming the current administration repeatedly misuses or distorts scientific findings to suit its political agenda regarding the environment, health policy, nuclear weapons and industry.
—Mike @ 06:32
di-dah-dah-di-dah-di - For the first time in anyone's memory, a new character has been added to the 160-year-old Morse Code system: @
—Mike @ 08:38
Upsadiasy! - The number of allowable words in Scrabble is being upped by about 8,500 and will include duh, upsadaisy, qi and za. Now that should help my playing a lot!
—Mike @ 19:24
That's one monstrous crater! - The Mars Express orbiter has returned this view of the Caldera of Olympus Mons. Click to see the high-res version... mon o mon.
Another full weekend - including dinner and 50 First Dates with the movie group (I thought it was fabulous, but not everyone was as enthusiastic), bowling with Eric, Cheryl and Renee (I didn't do as well this time out, but I managed to stay on my feet for a change), our mid-winter family dinner and birthday celebration for the twins (pictures coming shortly), and the ~20th annual Valentines Day meal with Bob & Angie (a Sunday brunch this time; nobody can quite remember exactly how many years, but it was delicious).
Sunday afternoon, I took the cordless phone and headset out to the car, gave a call to Carl in Michigan, and we reviewed some of the intimate details of the Prius options. (He especially liked the fact that it understands about 300 voice commands, so now he can talk back to his car ;-)
—Mike @ 12:28
BlogLines is cool -
and now you can subscribe to this blog with it, by clicking this button.
I find BlogLines is a great way of removing subscriptions from your e-mail stream (and with so many interests, I have a LOT of subscriptions coming in). This way you can go see "what's new" when it's convenient, in a compressed format, without the constant interruptions of messages coming into your inbox (and it helps not to be spreading your e-mail address around to so many places too).
—Mike @ 23:15
Virtual traveling - It doesn't compare with the real thing, but this large collection of 360° QTVR panoramas from places all over the world is definitely fascinating to explore!
—Mike @ 22:44
And now - we resume our regularly scheduled programming, already in progress.
—Mike @ 17:37
Guest Blogger - Mike has graciously offered to give me some “rant space,” so I promise not to embarrass him too much. At lunch today (where all the world’s problems seem to get discussed and solved – if only SOMEBODY would just listen to us!) the subject somehow turned to kids and computers. I expressed the opinion that our children (and perhaps their parents, as well) are rapidly losing the ability to communicate on a personal level. E-mail and IM substitute for live conversation. My daughter would rather wait for one of her friends to log into IM so she can ask her a question than to call her on the phone and ask her "in person." And I can almost guarantee you that you, me, and everyone we both know has, at one time or another, had a real-time e-mail conversation with the person in the next cubicle. We, as a technically-oriented society, are losing our ability to communicate and relate on a personal level with those around us. And I don’t ever remember talking with 6 people at the same time on the phone while I was in school, yet she can carry on multiple simultaneous IM sessions about different topics without even missing a beat! I just don’t get it!
When my daughter asks how to spell a word or what it means, I give her that time-honored response; “Look it up in the dictionary!” She thinks that means http://www.dictionary.com. I don’t think she’s ever seen an encyclopedia, much less used one (and don’t think I haven’t tried!). Her librarians are named Jeeves and Google. And when she does “talk” with her friends (on IM, of course) her “English” is littered with phrases like “brb,” “bcnu,” “mayb,” and “ctpos.” Last I checked I was pretty sure all the keys on the keyboard were working properly! And she uses smiley face symbols that I’ve never seen before! Sometimes, if you squint real hard and tilt your head at a 38-degree angle, you can almost make out what it looks like - maybe. What happened to using FULL WORDS when communicating? I just don’t get it!
Well, time to go now. I’ve ranted enough. My Outlook pop-up window is telling me it’s time for a conference call. Not to worry, I’ll still be able to check my e-mail, download a file, work on a presentation, and review the news headlines while the call is going on – don’t want to waste a minute. When I get home I’ll need to check my personal e-mail. Oh, and I need to burn that music CD for the kids’ talent show next week. That’s OK; I can do it while downloading headers from my UseNet feed. I need some quick information on intrusion detection, but I hear the Gartner and SANS sites have some good research, so I won’t need to trek off to the local library. (Where is our local library, anyway?) Time is short, so I’ll have to transfer the home movie from my video camera to my computer while I’m helping my younger daughter with her homework. Maybe Mark (my next-door neighbor) will be on IM so I can see what happened at his doctor’s visit yesterday…
I don’t know what’s happening to our kids today. Where do they get this lifestyle from? I just don’t get it!
Thanks for the space and time, Mike!
Steve
—Stephen @ 16:19
Today's guest - Steve has asked for some rant space, so he'll be posting something interesting in this space, I'm sure :-)
—Mike @ 15:44
Going local? - Due to strong sales of the Prius hybrid here, Toyota is contemplating adding a US manufacturing facility by 2006.
—Mike @ 10:43
Making 'H' - Making ethanol from corn could turn out to be an environmentally friendlier and cheaper way to produce hydrogen for fuel cells.
—Mike @ 06:35
An elegant finishing touch -
With our first dinner party in the refurbished dining room coming up this weekend, sheer burgundy scarves around each of the three windows have provided the final window dressing we were looking for. Thanks to all for your suggestions!
—Mike @ 00:00
A star is born - or, at least an extra. As I mentioned, my sister-in-law Crys appears as an extra in this weekend's debut of HBO's Iron-Jawed Angels. Last night she got to see a preview of the movie, and she wrote up this description of the experience, along with some history and thoughts which she was kind enough to share with everyone. If you're looking to spot her, she says to "look for me in a street scene when she spies the purple hat, another street scene and the part when Alice Paul is sitting on those massive steps and she's talking about whether or not Angelica Houston is really a female or not. 'Has anyone seen her naked?' I believe she is saying near where you can see me, but don't sneeze, it's quick!"
—Mike @ 12:48
AIM carefully - Be very careful about clicking on links in your AOL Instant Messenger. Make sure you are actually talking to your "buddy" and not just a program running on his/her computer. Check out this article for more information.
—Mike @ 12:44
Back in the day - about a year ago, when Fox News was foaming at the mouth to invade Iraq to get at all the WMDs, Bill O'Reilly was one of the chief foamers. Yes, Saddam had to go, and a few of us kept begging the administration to let the inspectors finish their job and build an international coalition first, so we wouldn't get stuck with cleaning up the mess, but no such luck. We were branded as being unpatriotic, of all things. Now, it seems that O'Reilly has apologized and said he was wrong. Oops. Too late. Billions of dollars, hundreds of lives, but he's sorry. Well, alrighty then. Don't get me wrong — I'm glad he's apologized; it's the honorable thing to do. But good grief, man, where have you been?
And he's also now "skeptical about the Bush administration". It reminds me of back in the 60s, after a scathing CBS special on how the Vietnam War was going, when Lyndon Johnson said "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the nation". [Thanks to Mace for the link.]
—Mike @ 23:49
Up 'n Atom - For those who are playing around with News Aggregators, I've established an Atom-compatible syndicated feed for this blog, at http://monetafamily.org:8000/mgaston/atom.xml — so far, so good. We'll see how it goes.
—Mike @ 12:35
How do hybrid cars work, anyway? - Anytime you hear yourself asking a question about how stuff works, just go to HowStuffWorks.com! [Thanks, Mace]
—Mike @ 10:29
Breathing easy - With the on-again, off-again phaseout of snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park on again, guides and visitors to the nation's favorite national park give it a hearty thumbs up. So do public health professionals and retired National Park Service officials. Conditions for snowshoeing and cross-country skiing are wonderful, according to the reports. And the use of snowcoaches as an alternative to private snowmobiles is on the rise, promising even better business in seasons ahead.
—Mike @ 00:07
BugMeNot! - Now here's a useful idea. Tired of constantly having to register for a password just to access news sites or other silly little things where you don't care about maintaining your own ID and password? BugMeNot allows you to use previously used IDs and passwords that others have "donated" to the cause after going through their own registration efforts. If there's not already an ID and password for the site you're interested in, donate one yourself! Very cool. [Thanks, Bonnie!]
—Mike @ 06:27
Published - The article I was interviewed for about the Prius was published today in The Record of Bergen County. (Here's a link to the story; it requires free, quick registration.) I got two mentions, but I think "East Coast visionary", while flattering, is definitely pushing it way too far ;-)
—Mike @ 15:46
News readers - For those who know anything about RSS subscriptions, XML, or news aggregators, check out Bloglines: it's free and it's web-based (no download or installation required). If you're interested, you can learn more about the topic by reading this page or that page.
Nonna's - was the restaurant where we had dinner Saturday night with Mike & Laura. That's not the first Italian restaurant in the area under Egyptian ownership that I've been to, and they all seem to be excellent. Meanwhile, Mike told me that he's about to order a Toyota Prius for himself. Carl's Prius should arrive in Michigan next week for him to pick up. Welcome to the club, guys!
—Mike @ 13:19
Grinding work - It's another first for the Mars Spirit Rover, as it grinds its way into a rock to reveal the interior for further inspection. Amazing what a few software patches can do to restore health to a robot.
—Mike @ 13:02
There's now so much love in the world, we need to limit it - The only other attempt to amend the Constitution to specifically limit a freedom was Prohibition, and that ended up having to be rescinded with another amendment. Another such attempt to limit freedom is underway now, as the current administration wants an amendment to outlaw gay marriage. This will look just as stupid to future generations as Prohibition seems to us today, yet that's exactly what their newest campaign of fear is all about. There's an online petition to Congressional leaders that you can sign that explains some of the issues at hand, and why protecting the rights of all Americans to define their own families is so important. What's next: deny marriage rights to left-handed people, perhaps? After all, we left-handers comprise about the same proportion as the gay population. [Thanks, Bonnie]
—Mike @ 13:31
Green? - The last few days, strange patches of a green substance have started showing through the never-ending snow cover. V tells me it's something called "the lawn", but I don't remember it (hasn't the yard always been white?). Heh — green — what a concept.
—Mike @ 13:09
125, 130, 123 - I seem to have nailed down the consistency part of bowling again; now I need to figure out how to get those numbers back up by 20 pins to reach the average I had 20 years ago. Of course, that was league bowling back then, so I could remember week-to-week the little adjustments I could make to improve the results. Or maybe I should expect to lose one pin per year on average as I age? Hard to believe I used to break 200 once in a while.
Oh, and learn from my mistake and avoid becoming a beached whale writhing on the alley: if you ever find that the bowling lane has a sticky spot just before the foul line, do not attempt to slide through it. Otherwise there's a good chance you'll fly through the air following your bowling ball down the lane, end up on your back with a thud, and fall a few more times before realizing how over-waxed and oily the lane itself is! Not to mention all those sore bruises the next day. (I told you not to mention them!)
—Mike @ 12:00
The Evil Eye galaxy - This unusual Hubble photo released today shows what appears to be a galaxy with a black eye, the apparent result of a collision with another galaxy. Amazing. (Click the smaller image to see a larger version.)
—Mike @ 17:55
Basil Fawlty is alive and well - and charging customers for tap water. Apparently there's no extra charge for the attitude, though.
—Mike @ 12:48
Mars really close-up - In the continuing search for evidence of past water, this is the tiniest look at Martian soil yet. One of the first microscopic images of another planet ever seen, the photo from the Opportunity rover captures an area just over one inch wide.
Meanwhile here on Earth, as of yesterday NASA had recorded 5.4 billion hits on it's Mars mission-related web sites. What did we ever do before the web? It was so difficult for us space enthusiasts to follow these types of stories in great detail because the interest from the mainstream media was so limited. Now, we can go peruse the web sites and pictures anytime we want to get updates. Life is good. And it's gratifying to see so much interest being generated.
—Mike @ 06:46
15 minutes of fame - I got a call out of the blue this evening from a reporter at The Record in northern NJ, looking for a phone interview regarding my experience driving the Toyota Prius. Apparently, the reporter mentioned he was doing an article on the Prius to his friend Joe, Joe happens to be an old college friend of mine, and he remembered that I drive one. I think it went well... since it's one of my favorite talking topics, I managed to sound halfway coherent. Not sure of the publication date; probably in the next few days.
—Mike @ 21:26
Horn tooting - is taken to a fine art in this video clip. That's one horny performer! (Sorry, couldn't resist) [Thanks, Chris!]
—Mike @ 10:49
Time to vote - No, not that vote. It's time to vote in the 2004 Alties, "the movie awards for the rest of us". Choose your favorite movies from last year in several categories. And oh by the way, it uses Instant Runoff Voting!
—Mike @ 23:02
Dish-washing dog - Do you need to push the Lick Cycle button first?
—Mike @ 15:48
Yellowstone on Mars? - According to this article,"Opportunity's landing site might be unusual just as Yellowstone National Park is on Earth. Perhaps the now-barren landscape was once was peppered with hot springs, scientists speculate. And these warm watery areas might have served as an incubator for life.Gotta love it.
'We're very interested to know if this region could have been like Yellowstone, with hot springs, so we'll be looking to see if there are other minerals in the area such as those at Yellowstone,' said Joy Crisp, project scientist for the Mars Exploration Rover Project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory."
—Mike @ 12:20
E-display technology - Here's an excellent video showing details of those paper-like computer displays I posted about a few days ago. They're made almost entirely of flexible plastic.
—Mike @ 06:29
Observation du jour - With all the bean dip, chili, hot wings and who-knows-what being served at SuperBowl parties nationwide last night, the place you most want to avoid today is the rest rooms... phewwwwy!
—Mike @ 12:14
Ed - This Friday's episode of Ed on NBC, where he finally gets married, was filmed in my old home town of Bergenfield NJ at the Old South Church next to Cooper's Pond. It's one of the oldest churches in the area. Cool! [Thanks, Carl!] I read this will probably be the last season for the show, too. The opening sequence of the streetscape was filmed in downtown Westfield NJ. The exterior shots of the bowling alley were taken in Northvale NJ, and the exterior shots of Carol's house are in the Rivervale area in Bergen County. I've seen all of these; NJ will miss this show when it's gone. Of course, there's still The Sopranos on HBO, which has even more NJ shots.
—Mike @ 12:00
16 months later - The HBO film Iron Jawed Angels in which sister-in-law Crys plays an extra will finally be broadcast this month, on Sunday the 15th. From the looks of the trailer on that site, it should be good!
—Mike @ 06:34
Sunday photos -
On our way up to have dinner at Phil's new place and visit with the critters-in-law (only two of his six pets are pictured here), we decided it was close enough to the lake house to stop by and pay a brief (and cold) winter visit to see how the place was surviving the winter...
We just finished the eighth coldest January on record for this area, and snow was still thigh-to-knee-deep up at the lake. The lake itself has been long frozen over. We don't get up there nearly often enough in winters to experience the beauty, solitude and quiet there with all the glistening snow and ice.
—Mike @ 00:07
Roll with it - Here's an update story on the progress being made in developing flexible "electronic paper". With advances like these soon to hit the mainstream, it won't be too long until we see futuristic full-color wall-sized displays!
—Mike @ 22:57
A long, long time ago -
(over a quarter of a century ago, to be precise.) I came across this old photo in an album last week, and thought it would be a hoot to post. Back in my days at Seton Hall in the early 70s, I was the board engineer and news announcer for a popular weekly program of Polish music called Polka Party. About five years after I graduated, I vaguely remember going back to visit the show during some celebration. I forget the exact date, but the show's producer, Marie, asked me to do a newscast for old time's sake, and there was a news photographer there for whatever the occasion was, so this photo got published somewhere. (This was obviously during my skinny days! ;-)
—Mike @ 22:47
Using MS Outlook? - Then check out this free, open-source spam filter plug-in, called SpamBayes. I've been using it for a few days, and it's much better than previous generations of spam filters, including the improved filter built-in to Outlook 2003. It comes with no pre-set rules; it learns completely from what you've classified as spam in the past, and how you classify incoming messages going forward. Once it's learned, it never makes a mistake. If it's not sure, it places the messages into a folder called Junk Suspects, awaiting your final determination.
—Mike @ 14:51
Project complete -
The new carpeting arrived a couple of weeks early, so the new dining room is essentially complete. The only other thing we're still contemplating is possibly window treatments of some kind (any suggestions?) We're very happy with the results: no more peeling wallpaper, the new chair upholstery, the darker wall color, the newly installed lighter-colored window trim, baseboard and crown molding, and brass switch plates (not pictured).
—Mike @ 14:08
Who's your candidate? - You can find out by answering a few questions in this Presidential Match Guide to see who comes closest to supporting your own views.
—Mike @ 13:23
More? - There's additional reading available in the Archives.
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