Zixar

Okay, the Monolith imparted the knowledge of toolmaking to the ape in the opening sequence. The next time we see it, it's on the Moon where scientists have just uncovered it. It sends off a radio-squeal to Jupiter, so the Discovery is built and sent out to investigate, but only HAL knows what they're being sent to investigate. The quandary of having to conceal information to the crew drives HAL insane. Anyway, there's this HUGE Monolith near Jupiter (which is news to Bowman) and after disconnecting HAL, he goes out to explore it. Just as the first Monolith triggered the evolutionary change in the ape to move it on towards humanity, when Bowman touches the big Monolith he is accelerated onto the next stage of human evolution, apparently. Much of this is explained in the sequel, 2010. When the Leonov is dispatched to find out what happened to the Discovery, the crew finds out that there seems to be life in the ocean under the ice crust of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. Which just sets the stage for the Monolith to help its evolution along by detonating Jupiter into a new star. Weird, yes, but still a pretty good story. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

okay, I know I'll pay for it in the morning, but I stayed up and shot about 100 raw frames of Mars tonight. Some look pretty good, so I'll wash them through the deconvoluter and try to post some tomorrow. Didja see it? :)--> (it'll look the same tomorrow night, too... :)--> ) The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Go out about 11pm local time. You should see it fairly easily unless there's a big tree or building to the southeast. I'll try to get some pics... The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Kathy: It wouldn't have mattered even if you weren't high...that movie is hard to explain sober. :)--> The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Steve: Don't worry. This is really Robert Duvall's movie, and Costner dials back his own hamfactor quite a bit. It's worth seeing. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

My apologies, Jeff. Sorry I jumped to the wrong conclusion. Sudo: VisualRoute's the easiest way to do it, but I'm sure you could find out the same stuff by using Windows' tracert command, or looking up the main domain info on one of the naming service sites. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

I ran it through VisualRoute, and sure enough, the server's in Indianapolis, IP address: 206.53.239.116. It's an http server running Microsoft IIS/5.0. Jeff, what would the harm have been in telling us it's a CES site in the first place? I don't think anyone would have cared one way or the other, but it just seems kind of underhanded not to mention it up front. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

I have a strong suspicion that this is Jeff B. from the old Waydale, who works for CES now. Not that there's anything wrong with that... The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Oh, another thing. Disable the Indexing Service in XP unless you frequently have to search your whole hard drive for files. Letting the search run longer when you need it is better than having the Indexing Service constantly sucking at your CPU and hard drive. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

If you want to make ZA an option, there's always XP's built in ICF, or Internet Connection Firewall. It was, however, written by Microsoft...take that as you may. If you have an external cable modem or DSL modem that connects to your computer via Ethernet cable, go down to Best Buy and get a Linksys router for about $60. It doesn't matter if you only have one computer hooked up to it, other computers on the Internet can only see the router, not your computer. Most of our friends got hit with the MsBlaster but all of our computers were safe behind the router's firewall. You may have to tweak it to spoof your computer's MAC address since broadband companies usually lock an account to one specific network adapter's MAC address. If your broadband adapter only hooks up via USB, though, a software solution is your only option, unless you purchase another cable/DSL Ethernet modem. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Yep. You can just call it "Spare Fonts" or somesuch. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Go to Start/Programs/Startup and see if there's anything in that folder. There's things you can really skip loading at startup like: --FindFast --Microsoft Office taskbar --Instant Messenger apps --Graphics card GUIs --Fancy Printer control panels etc. Another thing that is a total time hog is the number of Fonts you have installed in your Windows/Fonts folder. Every single frickin' font in there gets enumerated at startup, so if there's a bunch in there you hardly ever use, move them to a holding folder and reinstall them when you need them. There are programs on the net that can help you with eliminating startup hassles like MagicTweak. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Arrgh. It doesn't look so good for the Zixen now...we may not make it. I'll post here if I have to cancel our reservation so someone else can grab that cabin. Rats. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Chas: You might just want to replace the whole thing. There are several motherboards out there now that include good-quality graphics, sound, and networking all built-in so you don't have to futz around with installing expansion cards. My current favorites are the ones built on the nVidia nForce2 chipset, like the ABIT NF-7 series. On www.mwave.com they have the NF-7 for about $85, an AMD AthlonXP 2600 processor for about $90, and 512MB of DDR333 memory for about $80. Throw in a generic case with at least a 300-watt power supply for another $60 or so, and use your existing hard drive and CD-ROM to start, or spend another $110 or so to update those as well. The only thing you can't get cheap is a new copy of WindowsXP Home. You're just going to have to let Bill bite you for $90, but this time, it's actually worth it. Building your own computer nowadays is very easy. If you know what you're doing, you can have it together in an hour. If not, it can still be done in an afternoon. If you buy one of Multiwave's motherboard bundles (motherboard with installed CPU and memory, tested) then all you need is a Phillips head screwdriver. The motherboard only goes into the case one way, you screw it down with 6-8 screws. Then, the power connector from the power supply snaps in, and there's only 1 way for it to go, too. The little connectors for the case lights (power, harddrive, etc.) can be tricky, but it just takes patience. Each drive, (HD, floppy, CD) connects with 4 screws, and their cables are also 1-way only. Just make sure your main hard drive is on the "primary" IDE connector and is set to "master" instead of "slave". (If you're transferring them from an old computer, just make sure they're hooked up the same way to the new one as they were in the old one.) Put the case back together, hook up keyboard, mouse, and monitor, and flick the switch. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Rafael? You coming? The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

No, you cannot see the canals on Mars in binoculars, because there aren't any. :)--> You need a good telescope at least 90mm in diameter to see any of the features on the Martian disk. If you see the picture I took of Saturn to the left, under my name, Mars will get to be about that big--in a telescope at 48x. If you just look up at it, it will be a very bright red "star" in the southeast sky at about 10pm local or so. Can't miss it, there's nothing even close to it that is that bright or that red. You can go out tonight and see it if you don't want to wait. To the naked eye, it won't get any bigger than it is tonight, although it will get a little brighter over the next 2 weeks. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

I think it's four Full-size double beds, they don't look big enough to be Kings or Queens. Still, beats the ol' tent... ;)--> The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

It also looks like we'll have a favorable Moon, so I may just bring the big telescope if the weather looks good that weekend... :)--> The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Recall Notice: ============== The "Clinton Presidential Hummer" accessory (sold separately, batteries not included) is NOT a large military Jeep. The manufacturer deeply regrets any confusion this may have caused to the more sensitive of our customers. :D--> The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Latest info: I just called to book a cabin and reserved #7, by the lake, so I'll be there, and most likely Zixette will, too. The nice attendant said that that leaves 5 cabins left open for reservation as of 1:14 EDT today, Thursday 8/14. She said they book fast on fall weekends, so don't wait too long if you want one. She also said that each cabin has a stove, full-size fridge/freezer, and they just put microwave ovens into them. The rate after tax is $137.10/night with a $0.50/person/day park fee. Reservations may be cancelled up until ten days prior, so if you're tentative, go ahead and make a reservation NOW. (They don't charge your credit card until you don't show up, and only for 1 night's rent if you don't.) Call 1-800-471-5295 for reservations. They list the 20th as a "Pickin' and Grinnin'" night, so we may not have the park to ourselves. Bring your favorite musical instruments... The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

The Huntsville airport is nice because of all the NASA facilities out at Marshall SFC, and all the high-tech businesses that have sprung up in Madison. It's by no means a dirt strip, just a small-sized "real" airport. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Even more bizarre, Tampa-Atlanta is $224--on the same plane! I guess the lesson is buy the Huntsville ticket, then don't get on the other plane if you want to go to Atlanta! :D--> The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

Hope: Expedia has Tampa-Huntsville (HSV) and Tampa-Nashville (BNA) flights for $96 roundtrip on Delta, connect in Atlanta. FYI, Zix The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

I think the funniest tweak of Microsoft's nose is that a similar buffer-overrun attack has been found for their Xbox game console. Using it, people can run just about anything on their Xbox, including the Linux operating system, and backup copies of their $50 games. The reason that it's funny is that Microsoft sells the Xbox (which is basically just a 733MHz Celeron PC with 64MB of RAM, a 10GB hard drive, built-in Ethernet, and a great graphics/sound system) at a loss in order to make money on those $50 games. People can buy a dozen Xboxen at $199 each, wipe the hard drives and use them as decent Linux servers at Bill Gates' expense. Best $200 computer on the market! ;)--> The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."

The airports and their rough distances are as follows: Huntsville, AL - 75 miles Chattanooga, TN - 75 miles Nashville, TN - 90 miles Knoxville, TN - 175 miles Atlanta, GA - 200 miles My pick would be Huntsville, then Nashville. Huntsville is a less-busy airport but it's quite nice. The drive from Nashville is over half-Interstate, though. The drive from Huntsville is all US/state highways. The drive from Chattanooga is mostly Interstate, but the airport is small. There's really nothing to recommend Knoxville, but if you can get a cheap flight to Atlanta, Chattanooga is only about an hour and a half north on I-75, then you turn west onto I-24. The fool hath said in his heart, "PFAL is the Word of God..."