Do you think like me, that the world is turning into a place where reality is almost always somewhere else.
I seems to me, that in these times, it's too easy for people to shun reality by obsessing on the internet, video games or cell phones. We've all seen friends on their cell phones, while walking down the road together, or driving while on their cell phones. We all know people that can't stop talking about the games they've been playing. 
I still think that reality is 
the car your going to hit, the pole you're going to walk into, or knowing you're with someone when you're with them.
But I'm from an older generation.
Its seems more and more families are becoming "remote families", friends are becoming "remote friends", and reality is becoming a "remote reality". My world has become just that.
I'm here, but "here" isn't where my mind is at. Life has become physically disassociated, and its all tied together by communication links and computers. All the non-residents who come here to work, must have it really rough if they are raising families back home.
In addition, computers and comunications are providing
pleasure and controlling our self esteem.
The next generation is going to be far more interesting than mine.

...

That happens to be a very deep subject, there, Jimmy R Cutlar.....

Does FreshUI tweak well for you?

Did you go out to eat corn today?

Howl!!!!

But then again, it NEVER does.
Thats the thing. Waves crashing into the shore, wind blows the roof off, the toilet decides not to flush any more.
We've never been in control.
Its all just an illusion. If something were to come by earth and were to shift the atmosphere just a few miles, we'd die in 5 minutes.
All good things go bad.
Its hard to see, but all bad things go good too. It all works out, and it all works out better. Any change is good. 
If something did shift the atomsphere a few miles, and the next form of life did have bigger lungs (or smaller), then it would all be okay.
What is trying to be in control, is something all around us.
Its small. Its as brutal. It is beautiful. It is designed to take whatever is around it and consume it. Its byproduct feeds other things that are created just like it. In other words, plants eat dirt, and we eat plants. We have the same nature.
Its brutal. It is beautiful. It is simple.
The most important goal in life for any person should have been
Living longer. That should have been apparent when we are kids. Money, luxury, they are all worthless if you are only here 80 years. Our goal, for the next century should be, life extension. We should be creating something that is better than something that is both brutal and beautiful. This entry is -1m.

"Legacy code" often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling. - Bjarne Stroustrup http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_system
I've heard the Legacy Systems referred to as if they came from the dark ages.
The incandescent light bulb is a legacy system of sorts. 
It might be old, but its still here, and its still working. Until there's a really good replacement that people can afford, they're not going away. You can bash it all you want, but if you can't replace it, you're just bashing it.
I put this in here, because, I read somewhere that XP was legacy software. 

Winhelp32.exe wasn't included in Vista. It takes up about 255k of disk space.
The Winhelp32.exe program that comes with Vista takes up 9k that tells you the old help isn't supported because its old.
Help from your existing programs probably won't work!
That means you have to add it from the windows website after verifying your Original Windows Software or copy it over from XP and futz with it to make it work. This seems like a time wasting enhancement to me.
Why didn't they just call their new help software something else?
Is it possible that they couldn't figure out a way to enhance the old help, so they trashed it? hmmm.
I don't like buying a new everything every time I upgrade.
Thats like finding a new wife because you moved.
Its expensive, it takes time to relearn, and the old one worked just find, so why replace.
I think this may be one of Microsofts failings.
I've written oodles of applications with VB 6 and ASP classic.
It would take months to rewrite them for the sake of upgrading to VB.Net or ASP.Net. 
I just hope Vista doesn't go the way of the Windows Millenium Edition.

Mean growl on disposable, blow up furniture. But to each, their own style and taste....

So, you have finally been deflowered, Jimmy. I can't believe you've never heard of IKEA, or been to one of their stores, until this weekend. I went to the Renton store a few times, when I was there in 1998-1999. I went to the Orlando store, with Kevin X Short, last weekend. Why would they want inflatable furniture? Inflatable furniture is pure kaka, broke college student furniture. Long live IKEA....

Becky and I were getting cabin fever, so we took a ride down to IKEA in Renton.
We'd heard about it from a lady in Target, and she wouldn't shut up about it.
She's probably still at Target talking to us about it...haha.
IKEA is gargantuous furniture store, with a unique personality. 
Most of the stores items are imported, and have a very low price tag. For the smaller items, its like a treasure hunt. 
Once you hike into the store from the parking lot
(gosh, my feet are so sore), you come to an entrance inside a warehouse looking thing.
There are maps showing you the winding paths through the store, and the shortcuts between the different departments. It seems the maps all have the tops facing north, which would be cool if you had a compass, but I found I kept having to turn them upside down or sideways in my mind. That alone will make you feel drunk after an hour of walking. I didn't take the time to mastered it. 
The furniture was incredible for the price.
Most of the items were unusual. From the kitchen to the home office, they had furniture for all the rooms in a house. I think I liked their decorated bedrooms the best...they decorate a small bedroom where everything in it is for sale, even the things on the shelves. You pick up something off a shelf, and find a tag on it that tells you which department its stocked in. You write that down, and find its shortcut on one of the maps.
IKEA is probably the first store I've seen that didn't have isles.
The stores's lay out seems to be designed for you to take your time. I think you are supposed to get lost in it. There are shopping bags everywhere throughout the store, so there's no reason to go back to the store's entrance.
A cafeteria is part of the store, somewhere near the exit.
I liked the idea of going into a restaurant before paying for our merchandise. It just seemed to make sense. Becky had the chicken marsailes plate, which I thought was gourmet. I had the swedish meatball plate, which was like eating a "Hungry Man" TV dinner. The soda fountain had imported varieties on tap. The deserts, well, I forgot what they were called, but they were very good.
Finding the stores exit (and we though we'd seen everything)
Going to the check out registers was yet another surprise. We found a shortcut, went through a wall, and it took us into another warehouse. It was stocked with "As Is" items that were marked down 50%. Normally, thats where I'd start in a store, but we were exhausted, and just wanted to hike back to the truck.
I think if we were to go in again, it would be earlier in the day. It would have made a nice day trip.
NOTE: They didn't have any inflatable furniture, darn it!

Bill Gates' house lies on the east shore of Lake Washington in the town of Medina.  The house was designed by James Cutler and covers approximately 66,000 square feet.
http://www.seattle.gov/html/visitor/gateshouse.htm

And here you thought you just were a programmer! You have architecual talents as well! Not to mention the talent for drinking a good cold beer LOL

I haven't found a way to add an "Edit With" or "Print With" option to the right-click menu in explorer.
What I'm reading so far is, you can't do that.
The "Open with" has moved from Folder Options to:
Control Panel | Programs | Make a file type open with a specific program.
I've been messing with around in RegEdit with no luck so far.

I find not being able to move an arm, specially your main one, ruins your slob day though. You can't scratch, etc. Can't even 3-5-3-5 with the other hand. HaHa... All I want is a constant stream of corn....

Thanks, my dear friend, Jimmy... Even with the Oxycodone, I am having a bit of pain. But managable. Mainly, the worse part is I have not changed clothes since Wednesday afternoon when I left the hospital (it's now early Friday morning), have not not bathed since Wednesday morning. The loss of the use of my primary arm is a pain. Simple things like typing on the keyboard and brushing my teeth is a royal pain.

We've been ghost hunting...and found nothing.
We spent a lot of time going to haunted places. 
But I wouldn't be afraid of a ghost if I saw one.
If one killed me, then I'd be a ghost, and then I could kick his butt right back.
So why would one kill me?
Anyway, I heard there was a haunted lighthouse around here.
I heard it was a sure thing.
Once I get a location, I'm going! YEA!!!

Last night it snowed.
We went out too look at the Universty College. It  had a HUGE stadium.
We ate a hamburger place called Dicks.
The temperature dropped to 29 degrees this morning. There is black ice on the dexter rd. The traffic
is moving 5miles an hr. Jim is at the bus stop and 13 news is interviewing them.
The weather is going to be sunny all this week.

A European fellow asked me what's that funny odor.
I said, I think its maple syrup.
He said, what is it, like a medicine or an herb.
I said, no, its maple tree sap.
I suppose they could have made rubber or turpentine out of it,
but in this case, they added sugar to it, and WE EAT IT ON PANCAKES!!!
He said, you mean it could have been a tire, or fuel, but instead you eat it !
AYup, that we do. That we do.
We were rolling on the floor laughing.
btw- they don't add sugar too Maple
Its already sweet.

I'm now posting my pictures (both thumnails and full image) in the Ads sections. Like most of those pictures, you can click them and see the full size picture, and you can right click the picture to set it as a background.

sounds like things are getting better. how's the work part turning out?

Discovery Park
Discovery Park has a light house.
It also is home to townsend chipmonks, a large variety of birds, and seals love the beach!
The Mongolia bluffs overlook the Puget Sound.
It surrounds the Fort Lawton military base.
Chittenden Locks
Chittenden locks is a link between the fresh waters of the lakes and the salt waters of Puget Sound.
Barges, pleasure craft, an all kinds of boats come through these locks.
There is also a fish ladder there that allows salmon to cross between the waters.
And hey, Canada is just 90 minutes up the road. I can't wait to see if the changes between the US and Canada are as great as the ones between the US and Mexico.
We'll be headed to an Indian Reservation in Puyallup, Wa.
Hopefully we'll squeeze in a trip to Everette.

Something happened in the late 70s and butter clams in Washington become fatally toxic. It has to do with what has been coined, "The Red Tide", which is caused by large numbers of microscopic organisms. Small razor clams don't retain the fatally Paralytic Shellfish Poison (PSP) contained in these Red Tides (which aren't really red, BTW).
PSP is created by A.catenella and is a potent nerve toxin.
A.cantenella is a plankton like animal/plant that can produce its own food and it can swim. When they're dormant, they fall as cyst onto the ocean floor, where shellfish, like clams and oysters (which can filter 8 gallons of water an hour) can scarf them up. See: http://www.tpchd.org/files/library/3f99dac18661fbba.pdf
The clams are here, they're just off limits.
I'm actually happy now, that its not a result of pollution, or over-harvesting.
But I do miss butter clams!

Ya learn smething new everyday!

Decades ago, every bar in Vegas wouldn't be a REAL bar, unless they sold either hot wings or steamers.
I'd visited Tacoma and Seattle a couple of times in the 80's, and eaten some wonderful clams, oysters, and gooeyduks.
Since the 90's, I've ordered steamers in every city I've been in.
It seems that the clams have shrunk.
What happened? They've changed from this to this:
In my quest for the perfect steamers,
I'm just going to have to get a license, shovel, bucket and go clamming for myself. However, if I could somehow use clarified butter and lemon as bait instead, that would be much better.
But with me clamming, and with me being me,
I'd see the little critters in my bucket, think their cute for some stupid reason, and decide to set them free on some better part of the beach. I do that because I haven't seen any critters that I didn't think weren't cute anywhere (nice sentence, huh?).
Plus, I was raised to believe it was wrong to kill anything. Its okay to have someone else do it, though.
So, maybe I can get Becky to go clamming for me. I'll drive. lol.
BTW - This was intended to be a humorous story (you will chuckle...har har).
Gosh, what time is it?

Then we watched the Transformers.
I wish my truck could drive to the store, turn into a robot, and buy milk and eggs for me.
I can't even let go of the steering wheel without it shooting off into the desert.
Good Eats. Great Food. Good People!
Later, everyone went to the Ross Clothing store. 
I'm not sure what kind of clothes, shoes, and miscellanious items Ross sells. It looked like some of their shoes were prescuffed. But me, I could care less if my jeans are used (its not like buying a toothbrush). If the jeans look good, they're in my basket. Who knows, maybe B Pitt previously owned them. I doubt if he was ever size XXXXL though from eating too many tacos though.
I'm still pen shy about writing my notes in here.
You never know when someone is going to take your pen and stab you in the eyeball with it (sick humour, I know). That hasn't happened much, if at all, since I started this site years ago. However, sometimes the things I write in here find their way to the New York Times headlines, which is bizarre.
I'm about as original as bottled water.
Even my dreams are copied and pasted.
When I published LVDude and googled it, I got 'did you mean love dud?'
That clued me in that I wasn't going to be a MySpace.com. I still get nothing when I google the entries in here.
So, how do hackers and evil bots find this site? hmmm.
I wonder how long it takes to ping 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255

You can't get out of it. I like that expression. It applies to Seattle.
I think what makes a place act like a whirlwind
are all of its obstacles and pressures. Here, 11 hours are absorbed in preparation, work, and commutes. It takes me 10 minutes just to get to a bus. Most of the day is gone. If I have to get milk, another 2 hours is absorbed. Free time and sleep become a luxury that necessity erodes. I'm not complaining. This is just an observation.
I missed opportunities to call my friends.
Time was stretched thin. I didn't mean anything by that. Everything happened so quickly.
Friends are your gift in life.
New Years Eve is when you should remember them.
On the other hand, no one called me.
So I guess all is good. Happy New Years!!!
toot toot