I was watching television earlier this evening and the President and CEO of the American Red Cross was asking for monetary donations. I donated some money and encourage everyone else to do so. It’s very easy to do it on their web site.
https://www.redcross.org/donate/donation-form.asp
It’s the least anyone can do to help the situation in New Orleans, being that the entire city is being evacuated.
I did a search on IceRocket for my name and found this little gem on MSN Spaces.
Apparently, I’m Asian and I like to do naughty things to dogs. Woof!
he is the most revolting animal known to man and he is breeding in mans best friend, our dogs.
Well, as they say in show business, all news is good news!
This past weekend ended the first ever Indianapolis Fringe Theatre Festival.
For those of you who don’t know anything about fringe theatre, it is essentially comprised of unjuried theatre festivals that happen all over the globe. A lot of the performances tend to be on the short side, with people going from one performance to the other.
I was able to see the following performances.
I look forward to next year’s festival, which will hopefully be much bigger.
Title: Mom & Dad
Uploaded By: mattbarton77
We celebrated my father’s 59th birthday today at the Cheeseburger in Paradise on the south side this afternoon. It was one of the few times this year where everyone in my immediate family was together.
After we finished eating, Mom decided to start throwing those little card coasters at everyone. We ended up having a bit of a fight (a fun one), and I’m sure the people around us thought we were insane, but we had a good time.
Trying to figure out what to do for Mom’s brithday coming up in October.
Update: I’ve finally created a set of pictures from Dad’s birthday party.
I’ve moved the hosting of this site over to my friend Andy’s hosting service.
While getting things switched over, I also upgraded WordPress to version 1.5.2, which is the latest release. Nothing new, but just a lot of bug fixes and enhancements for plug-in authors.
Ping-O-Matic is down. Can’t even connect to it. Hmm. That makes me sad! I think I’m going to have to find another ping service for me and there here blog.
Update: I’ve switched to pingoat which seems to be much faster and can ping just as many sites, if not more, than Ping-O-Matic.
I was alerted to this little gem by Jason C.
Condoleezza Hairdo Alert System by Princess Sparkle Pony.
Enjoy!
I decided to take on the role of organizing a meetup for Flickr fans here in Indianapolis.
When: Wednesday, September 21, 2005 @ 7:00 PM
Where: Rathskeller Restaurant @ 401 East Michigan Street, Indianapolis
Check it out.
I don’t usually make blog posts about items in technology news, but I feel inclined to share with you all at the moment.
Windows 95 is 10 years old today! Wow, and stuff!
I remember my father installing it on his 486 back in 1995, shortly after it was released. It was a competitive upgrade to Windows 3.1, and had to be installed from a bunch of 3.5″ floppy disks. Those were the days when software was not normally distributed on CD-ROM.
It was a matter of months afterwards that I had my first serious relationship and started learning the Macintosh on a brand new PowerMac 7200 that belonged to my boyfriend, which lead me down a long, windy path to where I am today.
Isn’t that meaningful?
Update: To commemorate the birthday of Windows 95, eWeek has an article up called From Melissa to Zotob: 10 Years of Windows Worms. It’s a good historical read of the big worms that have hit Windows over the last several years.
Title: telephone
Uploaded By: pkeleher
So, I’ve finally decided to ditch Vonage. The service itself has been pretty good, but I’ve been disappointed with my inability to contact their customer support and the totally crappy Linksys WRT54GP2. The damn thing doesn’t work well, at all. There’s a constant squelching noise on the line, which one can supposedly fix by shorting out two wires on the second phone port, and the wireless service just plain sucks, especially if you enable WPA. It is a huge pain in the ass to work from home and have the wireless constantly conk out.
After geeking out with friends and attending a TechPoint discussion, I decided to roll my own Asterisk server. I signed up for a BYOD account with BroadVoice (which has great rates) and installed Asterisk@Home on an old, spare computer.
While trying to get everything working, I found that my Linksys WRT54GP2 was causing problems with incoming phone calls. A call would actually come through to Asterisk and ring my extension, but the other end of the phone call would get a busy signal. Removing the WRT54GP2 from the network solved the problem. I replaced it with an old NETGEAR MR814, which works just dandy, for now.
Asterisk@Home is a pretty decent distribution and the configuration files are invaluable, but I am not a fan of Linux and would prefer to run Asterisk on an already-built FreeBSD server. Once I move the configuration to Marklar (my main server here at home), I will proceed to put pfSense on the former Asterisk@Home system. I’m going to need some good QoS to make sure that my phone calls remain clear, and I’d like to have 802.11g access again.
I also need to order an IAXy, which is an IAX (the native Asterisk VOIP protocol) gateway that will allow me to connect a regular telephone up to my BroadVoice account.
At some point, I think I’ll post an article with my configuration files so that others can easily get BroadVoice and Asterisk working together. It isn’t that hard, but I had a difficult time figuring it out because there’s a lot of outdated informatin out there, so I think I’ll try to do my part and contribute to the community.
My old roommate Tom moved out about a month ago. He bought this very adorable little house in Fletcher Place right next door to his boyfriend. So, now I have a mostly empty basement, extra bedroom, and unused bathroom that I’ve been unsure how to utilize, until recently.
My friends Tony and Jason are going to come live with me for a while. They need to save money because they have both switched jobs in the last couple of months and aren’t making as much money as they did in the past. I could use the extra money, too.
We’re the bestest friends ever, anyway, so I think this will work out okay. I’m especially interested in using my living room again, since they’ll bring their television, stereo, and sofa. All I have down there now are tables, a love seat, and a swivel chair. This will surely be an upgrade.
The Zoo
My company had the annual Summer picnic this past weeked at the Indianapolis Zoo. Everyone met at the office first before making their way to the picnic, so we could show off the facilities.
Once getting to the zoo, Jake (my nephew) and I made our way to the “Waters” pavilion which had penguins, polar bears, sea lions, etc. Definitely one of my favorite exhibits because it is very well air conditioned.
We then made our way to the tent area where everyone was eating. They served the usual picnic specialities: hot dogs, burgers, potato salad, and chips. After indulging ourselves, Jake and I went with Tom and Lara to see the penguin show, which was kind of cheesy, but okay. We then checked out the “Deserts” pavilion and saw all the snakes and lizards. Very cool.
The only disappointment of the zoo outing was that we didn’t see White River Gardens. This is my fault, mostly, because I sort of forgot about it, but I’m going to have to check it out sometime on my own. It’s supposed to be really, really nice.
Downtown Carriage Ride
Per her special request, I took my friend Michelle on a carriage ride through downtown. She was interested in an architectural tour of the one mile square, and we certainly saw enough to give her a good idea that I”m a total dork. Of course, she’s the one that asked what the state house was used for. Good times.
After the ride we spoke to the driver about the horse for a while and then went to the local chocolate cafe and got some ice cream. She had peanut butter fudge and I got chocolate almond. Her’s looked good, but I think mine was way better.
It seemed that everyone at my 10 year high school reunion was a little unsure if they wanted to come, and I think everyone who had such thoughts decided that it was worth it. And it was.
I had a lot of fun reconnecting with old friends. I also met some poeple, for the first time, who I never knew. Being that I came from a class of 848, it is no surprise that there were folks I hadn’t met. If I wasn’t in some kind of extracurricular activity or class with them, we probaby never knew each other — just one of the many faces one sees in the halls in a big high school like mine.
As much as I hated high school, I’m glad I went, and look forward to the next one.
