Special Bob's Blog

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Posted on December 17, 2007 by Special Bob

The Good is that I’ll be going home Thursday, and hopefully the weather will be decent for the ride home.

The Bad is that I’m here now, and most of the friends I’ve made here have gone home. Good for them I realize, but bad for myself, and I can be selfish at times like this. I hope to meet up with you all again, and inside I know I will.. I have to.. it’s part of my future and I know it… good times, better times even, are yet to be had here in good old Norman. Special shout outs to Special “K” (aka Tall B ) and “MadDog” Mark, both from the Pacific Northwest, and also to “GQ” Jeff of Michigan, and Keith of North Carolina. Thanks also to Randy of San Diego, Ron from Boston, and Jay from New York. You all have made this potentially horrible trip to OK more than tolerable. Some even, in some ways, unforgettable. Thanks to the ice-storm, probably unforgettable for most anyways. Fortunately, most of Norman and OK City has their power back now and things are back to normal….or so it seems at least.

The Ugly… 4 more days… need I say more?

I did my laundry today, that was exciting… but more so was getting the website of my close friends pet motel “online”, despite much work to do, I finally have them online at www.wagsmotel.com . Check it out and send me critiques… lots more to do.. working on it seems painfully slow.. as I’m really not very good with graphics.. trying to get the main graphic just right….at least how they want it… I’m learning as I go. This weekend I also created a new blog, which eventually will take the place of this one…. there isn’t anything there yet, as I need to pick out a “theme” for the blog. Something I really don’t want to do.. but must be done. Right now it’s got the generic theme that all wordpress blogs have, and I really need more than that…..cuz I’m special… Anyways, you can bookmark for future reference if you want, it’ll be located at www.specialbob.com/theblog/ . As I said nothing there right now.. but soon this blog will be. I have to move because this blog won’t let me do the things I want to with it, and running wordpress myself will allow me to do whatever I want with it. Not sure what I’ll do with this one yet, maybe I’ll keep it for personal stuff, and use the other one for business / website stuff…. we’ll have to see.

Had a great Mexican dinner at a place in town tonight with 3 guys from class… it beats the food in this joint… and I am totally stuffed still… and that was hours ago… Spent the rest of the night playing trivia on tv’s in the lounge/bar with Chris and Clare from Michigan…. it killed a few hours at least… now it’s bedtime… and more evil school tomorrow. Such is life.. I coulda been a ditch digger instead…..

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What a wild weekend!!!

Posted on December 9, 2007 by Special Bob

NOT!!! No wild weekend for me… this place is worse than a ghost town. It doesn’t help that the temperature is about 29 degrees and there are icicles hangin off everything. Nope… not a wild weekend out in the wild west this week. I must have wandered around this hotel a dozen times yesterday and other than maybe a dozen people eating at dinnertime, I think the most people I saw were about 6.. and that includes the lobby, dining area and the lounge… Guess everyone had a rough week at classes.

Friday night was ok, tho, as I was able to dispose of a few beers with some of the guys from class. It isn’t the worst class of fuddy duddy’s I’ve been in. Saturday I woke up to get my hair cut at 9:30… for those that don’t know it, The hotel has a new salon/hair shop down next to the gym, close to the North exit doors of the building. And I was surprised to find Edaa, who was formerly the hotel’s hottest cleaning lady, is now the beautician/barber for the place. Those who may not remember her by name will definitely remember her as the babe out at the pool who was there on weekends with her daughter, and of course, that everyone couldn’t help but admire her beauty (that’s “stare at” for you thick headed ones). Ahh Yes, Edaa has a new career and I expect everyone to go get your hair cut, your beard trimmed, your nails painted, or whatever floats your boat, and remember to tip her well!! No cheap bastards!

In my free time, I’ve been helping a friend transfer his newly established domains, to godaddy.com for webhosting. However, attempting to transfer, is more like it. Since the original domains were purchased through Dynaserve.com, and we are trying to get them to transfer to godaddy.com, we are finding it is incredibly complex.For future reference, I have to recommend going with Godaddy or 1and1.com ( I use 1and1.com) for the purchase and hosting all in one, because at this point we’ve gotten an authorization decline to move at least one of the 2 domain names, based on a minimum time limit agreement or something or other. I’ll be calling dynaserve to try and stgraighten it out tomorrow during business hours. Hopefully I’ll have nice things to blog about, otherwise, expect me to rip into someone!

Hey I guess I’m about blogged out for now.. other than 4 hours prancing around Oklahoma City going to different flea markets yesterday, the place is pretty boring… so I guess It’s a good time to add content to the website. Catch ya laters.

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Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh my!!

Posted on December 4, 2007 by Special Bob

There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home….etc etc.. Yeah yeah.. I am NOT wearing any ruby red slippers and because of the blizzard goin on “at home”, I think I’ll just stay down here in the land of OZ or wherever the heck this place is. The temperature got up to over 70 today and I didn’t even need a jacket..whoo hoooooo. Lions and tigers and bears are no where to be found either Yipppee.

Workout and Feeders and Weightwatchers oh my. So I spent the morning in the gym, for the first real workout in all the years I have been down here. Not a strenuous workout, but for me, a workout nonetheless. I biked and I lifted some weights….enough to get heavy breathing and sore legs, but nothing that was “too much” thankfully. Then the excitement in class today was of course Our feeder alignment on this stupid machine I am supposed to be learning… I did pretty good, although first time through on the test something went funky and it kinda burped on me. 2nd attempt went smooth as silk. Then came weight watchers… I weighed in and found out their scale here declared I gained 1.6 lbs….. which may or not be true… here they weigh you by the tenth of a pound… back home they round it to the nearest 1/2 pound, and always round down I think… so were I still at home, on the same scale they may have recorded me as only gaining 1.5 lbs… Hey gotta look at every positive I can. I did meet a nice girl there who at least was nice to chat with while waiting for the meeting to start. Beautiful too, I couldn’t help noticing, but even if I were single and young, I’d think she was way out of my league. She didn’t look like she should be at weight watchers, maybe she lost the 5 lbs she set out to lose already, who knows. But what was interesting was that she was in college, and in fact she is going to OU set on her way to get her law degree… now anyone who knows anything about me knows, that the word “college” has my interest these days… and it wasn’t bad enough this girl had looks, and youth, and brains.. but she has her degree in business and working on her law degree… must be nice. Yeah I’m jealous.. sheesh

Anyways, tomorrow might have some good news. I can only imagine what right now, but I am getting to bed early enough Maybe my workout tomorrow morning will be twice as good as todays.. hasta la vista bey-be!

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Booooring

Posted on December 3, 2007 by Special Bob

The first day of classes are always so boring it’s pitiful. Staying awake is like the hardest thing to do. It’s not the instructor’s fault, in fact, considering the same ole same ole topics of safety, rules, lockout tagout, and simple startup / shutdown procedures, the instructors in this course seem to be lively enough, and fun enough, that it was actually tolerable. But having an outgoing and fun personality isn’t enough sometimes, at least not when the material you’re dishing out has been dished out to most of the students several ( several several even ) times already in the past. But it was expected. In fact, this blogpost was expected. I certainly didn’t expect to be writing what an awesome first day of class I had. Although if one of the instructors was a sexy female goddess that liked to tease the hell out of her students….well that would have been nice to blog about. Such is the imagination of a guy 1400 miles from his wife. It’s better the instructors are male and not frustrating the class members for the dreaded weeks ahead.

Didn’t do anything online tonight with the website, however I did download wordpress, and plan on moving the blog to the main website, if I get it working right while I am down here. I found this great podcast at http://jjandthekids.com/podcast/ which by chance is called “WordPress Installation Podcast”. And to give credit where credit is due, I heard about it on the Mike Tech Show Podcast found at http://miketechshow.com . The best podcast out there, in my opinion. Anyways.. thats it for tonight.. I am sooo exhausted…hopefully tomorrow is more exciting. Talk at ya later!!

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Someone has to do it!

Posted on December 2, 2007 by Special Bob

So here I am, back in good old Norman, Oklahoma. My summer home, but it’s not quite the same as being here in summer. I just arrived today, a few hours ago, and by chance, I got a room overlooking the pool. It’s all covered up, as are the jacuzzis. It’s just sad. Not my favorite time to be here, but someone has to do it, and hopefully the time I would have otherwise wasted consuming adult beverages by the pool, I can spend on learning to do some things with the webpage, and losing a few more pounds too. Time will tell. I weighed myself as soon as I got here. According to this scale I was 387 pounds. I’ll track my progress over the next 3 weeks. My goal while I am here is to lose 15 pounds, which will make me 372. Watch out!

I ran into a couple of people I know already. One was someone I haven’t seen in many years, that I used to work with. Nice to see them both. I haven’t hit the Gym yet, but I plan on it in the morning. My class doesn’t start til 9 AM…gives me some workout time and eating time… hmm Will I gain weight or lose? Dang…decisions decisions.

Something I learned about today listening to podcasts on my trip down, was a new Linux distribution I’ll have to try out, and from the sounds of it, everyone should. It’s based on Kubuntu ( my favorite ) but allows you to easily click and add all the codecs and such that alot of normal Linux distros don’t come with. It’s called Klikit-Linux and can be found at http://www.klikit.org/ . I am sure I’ll check it out and review it while I am down here, and add it to the Linux page on the website.

I have already changed one thing on the website, and that was long overdue, but I finally removed the Black friday Websites from my Shopping page, which you can find at http://www.specialbob.com/shopping/index.html . Dave from work can stop complaining now.

I guess thats about it for now, I need to find something to eat. I should be able to blog everyday while I’m down here, and hopefully edit the website each day too. Check back often. 🙂 Laters, ya all (Thats oklahoman talk for “Bye”)

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Ready for Norman, Oklahoma once again….

Posted on November 30, 2007 by Special Bob

I just finished packing a little while ago and I expect this will be my last post until I reach good old Norman, OK. I have been working on some website ideas, but nothing major. I expect to be doing a bunch down there though.

Weight Watchers was good to me… I lost 2 more pounds, according to their scale, which puts me at 42 pounds. Not bad Not bad.

I was one of the nuts that went out at Midnight on black friday, and I got a few good deals, but not the main things I wanted, such is life. I would have had to go out about 5 PM Thanksgiving day to get what I wanted the most I guess.

Well thats it for now, we’ll be seeing ya from Norman. Hasta la Vista Baby.

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College for Dummies??

Posted on November 20, 2007 by Special Bob

Yahooie!! I am now, ( as of 2 minutes ago ), registered for a Program Design and Development course at the local community college. I’m excited, to say the very least. I will be taking an evening course thursday nights from 6 – 9:40 pm. Ya see, I spent some time in the Navy, and took some pretty grueling courses to become an electronics technician, and reactor operator, in the Naval Nuclear Power Program. However, I have never spent a day in college. And I can say, for the rest of my life, that I at least got in before I turned 40. ( Yep I am 39, just barely made it ). In a word, Yahooie!!

As for the Diet, well, weigh-in was tonight, and in the last 2 weeks, I lost 1 and a half pounds, which makes my overall total 40 Pounds, Yay for me. Yahooie!! even.

On the website I haven’t done alot, but I did add a bunch of stuff to the Links wiki, of stuff I need to add to the page, and even more stuff I need to investigate, review and decide if I want to add… at least I’ve done something!! yeah!!

Last but certainly not least, I have to remark on the Crossloop team. ( www.crossloop.com ). I attempted to use the crossloop program over a remote desktop connection, without realizing how it’s working underneath, and it didn’t quite work out for me. Not a big deal, as the software is still the best thing since Moses parted the Red Sea. And I can’t blame crossloop for the problems I had, as it makes sense that 2 Virtual Private Networks running currently, probably won’t perform as expected. I didn’t, however, expect to get 2 emails from the Crossloop team, following up on the problem I had. I just have to say Kudos, Great Job, and I hope these guys make millions. Thanks Crossloop team.

Well thats it for now. Do me a favor and check out the crossloop software, it is awesome. Laters

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Techy Stuff (Finally)

Posted on November 17, 2007 by Special Bob

I know it’s been a while since I actually posted anything techy here, but today I can catch up, at least a little. Within the last 24 hours I’ve done a few things that one might consider a little geeky, so now I get to share them with you, and hopefully inspire others to get a little geek on too.

Before I get into the geek, check out my shopping page for Black Friday Ad Sites, I just added them tonight. Check them out at http://www.specialbob.com/shopping/index.html . Now on to the Geek!!

The first thing I want to talk about isn’t at all hard to do. I simply burned an ISo image to a recordable cd. In and of itself is a breeze to most, but to others, like a foreign language, and the best part is the cd I created was the Backtrack cd. Before I talk about that, I’ll discuss a few things.

An ISO image is just a file labeled with a .ISO extension, like something.iso . The file contains an image of an optical CD, and using cd burning software capable of burning ISO’s, you can recreate the original CD. SO to begin with i just downloaded the bt2final.iso image file from http://www.remote-exploit.org/backtrack.html . Once I downloaded it I used my favorite ISO burning software, which is BurncdCC, available from http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html . BurncdCC is pretty straightforward to use, I usally just select the ISO image by browsing to it (from within BurncdCC) , then select “Finalize Disk” or something like that, and once in a while I check “verify” ( which just verifies the Burn was successful). Thats it, when I got done I had a new Bootable CD, the Backtrack CD.

The backtrack CD is really designed for people way more geeky than myself. I do, however, want to learn how to use the tools on it, at least more than I know how to now. When you boot your Computer to the Backtrack CD, ( Done by leaving it in the CD Drive when you boot up, as long as your BIOS settings are set to boot to your CD drive before it boots your hard drive), you get the use of a ton of great security tools, over 300 according to the website, which allow people to test their security on their networks. Check it out if you’re feeling Geeky.

The next thing I did, just a couple of hours ago, was download Hamachi, and install it on a couple of my computers, including my laptop. For those who don’t know, Hamachi is a program that sets up a VPN, a Virtual Private Network, between computers over the internet. This allows them to share files and basically do anything 2 computers on the same network can do. Hamachi is available at https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/vpn.asp?lang=en . I simply downloaded the program and followed the directions, at least, until I tried to join theirtest network and was unable to. So I just created my own network, on both computers. Before I knew it, the 2 computers were networked together.

The final thing I did was set up remote desktop. Remote desktop allows you to take over control of the desktop of another computer, from your own computer. I’m no expert at setting up remote desktop, but I just followed the “Help” that my Vista Laptop, and XP pro gave me, and it worked fine. Just a note, Remote Desktop has limitations, like you can’t log in and take control of an XP Home edition computer, but you can use an XP home computer to take control of an XP pro one. Before you try using it, make sure that what you want to do is feasible. I plan on using it only to make an initial connection from my laptop to my Home computer, then run CrossLoop, (Available at www.crossloop.com) to share files and such, because for some reason I can run remote desktop, but can’t seem to browse with windows explorer from my Vista laptop to the xp pro desktop. I can, however, surf the web, and thats exactly what I wanted to do, when I go to Norman, OK for 3 weeks pretty soon. I’ll be surfing from a Hotel, and that’s by nature very insecure, however by using the VPN, logging into my Home PC, and surfing from there, then I can be confident I have a secure connection to the internet. As secure as if I was surfing from home, at least. It works good too, as I am writing this post now from my desktop, but i am clearly typing on my laptop. Sweet.

Well I guess thats it for now, and I am going to finish watching Terminator 3 and hit the hay. Seeyas!

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Go Tigers

Posted on November 16, 2007 by Special Bob

To say I Liked RIT would be a huge understatement. The school is a great school; clean, modern, and obviously a class A Tech school academically. I wasn’t impressed by anything in particular, however the food and eating area was excellent, and the Computer Science House, which is a floor of dorms dedicated to computer science students, was extremely geek oriented, which in my book, makes it awesome. In any case, even a room in a regular dorm would be fine, just to be able to attend this awesome school.

I didn’t make it to weight watchers this week, as work required some overtime from me. Paycheck ought to be good at least, and i get another week to lose weight. I’ve been good on the diet this week too, eating lots of salad, so it should show when I do make it to the scales.

Not alot to report on on the webpage, as I’ve basically been still accumulating more material for it. I expect to do a huge amount in December, as I’ll be stuck in a hotel for 3 weeks in good old Norman, OK. Lately in my free time I’ve been grabbing stuff off the newsgroups. If you know nothing about usenet news groups, then google it, and see if you can get them from your internet service provider. Lotsa great stuff out there, and not all of it is illegal downloads, although there is quite a bit there.

Gues thats it for now, and I’ll hit the bed. Gniters 🙂

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