Chosen by God?
I have heard in several occasions, and read quite a few times, that President George W. Bush believes he was chosen (appointed) by God to be our President. God, supposedly, wants nothing but well being for us all, right? Then I would like to know what Mr. Bush is doing to end the killing, abuse and hunger (among other things) from places like Central, South America and Caribbean, Africa and great parts of Asia.

Some say God acts in mysterious ways. Boy, I am about to believe it! ⌘ Read more

Changes
Changes are coming soon. After a couple of years with the same patched interface I am about to a) have it right and migrate it to WP 1.5 or b) asimilate an existing WP template and start fresh. The advances behind WP 1.5.1 are way too attracting, I am not going to wait any longer.

So, should you tomorrow (or next month) come and find things completely different, do not fret. I am changing things around… [once again](https://collantes.us/2003/05/11/things-are-changing-once-again/ “Things changed back th … ⌘ Read more

Musical batons and other memes
I hate the “Musical Baton” and any other type of Memes (Friday’s craps, “This or That” imbecile lists, etc). Just do a quick search at Google and you will know what I am talking about. ⌘ Read more

Single sign on
Since I am going to start migrating all my web logins to a single sign on approach (using Chris Zarate SuperGenPass), I think the best way to start is by saving the bookmarklet I will have to use over and over. There is a Greasemonkey version available, which has much more features than this bookmarklet version. I will use the latest because it works with all browsers.

The bookmarklet is: Single Sign on.. Drag and drop it on you … ⌘ Read more

Shameful website
Have you ever tried going to the U.S. website for Kenwood? Kenwood, you know, that audio equipment, transceivers maker, etc? Go look! They ought to be ashamed! ⌘ Read more

PGP Corporation Decadence
Recently PGP Corporation released their latest version of the PGP software created by Phil Zimmerman and made famous by millions of users around the world (me included). I wish I could say such latest release is great, but I can’t.

The new PGP Desktop 9.0 (or 9.0.1 beta as of this writting) come with a few new “features” and lacks of a few others that any old school PGP user might notice right away. It also comes with it fair amount of bugs and programming slopiness. The … ⌘ Read more

Your Privacy at stake
Something very infortunated has happened and I want to encourage you, and the people you know, to help amend this by signing the petition and emailing your elected officials as soon as possible.

The NTIA, which is the telecommunications and Internet arm of the Department of Commerce, has disallowed private … ⌘ Read more

I am still here
It has been a while since I came to talk. I am afraid this time I will not talk much either. Between work, family, a game (I used not to play any game at all. Now the whole family has been playing Toon Town for almost 5 months. Give it a try, it is addictive! :-) ) and a few personal projects I had had little time to come here and chatter. But I am still here, I will come back. I want to upgrade to the latest Wordpress, I want to change a few things around. Davi … ⌘ Read more

Adsense presence
I few of you might have realized that I, finally, got approved on Goggle’s Adsense program. Two years ago I applied, with the hopes of becoming rich. I was very naïve and I was denied participation. Recently I applied again. I did it mainly for two reasons: I love Google. I can not deny I am in love with it. Everything that Google has offered so far is of my liking. Secondly, I wanted to offer my skimish audience related links to sites and/or products that could … ⌘ Read more

Sex is everything
For spammers –and others–, that is. Other than the trackback attack that a good group of people including me received recently, sex related spam seems to have doubled as the year increased by one. And all comes down to this: human beings are a bunch of sex driven machines. Take it or leave it. We all like it, enjoy it and are driven to it in a multifacete … ⌘ Read more

Beware!
There is a flu strain going around. I am not sure of how vast its geographic coverage will be, I just know I caught a drop –or a bucket– of it here in Orlando, Central Florida.

Now this sucker is not like any other. At least for me it isn’t. This one blocks your nose and lungs and converts you into a phlegm dispenser machine. It gives you pain in all your joins (joins, not loins!), head and eyes. It will take your appetite away, it will give you flatulence. It will not let you sleep and it will bother you w … ⌘ Read more

More on VoIP
Last year I wrote about Lingo and recommended their VoIP service. While I was not that off on that “review”, I have changed my mind long ago and decided not to keep the service. I got a lot of emails from people wanting to try and/or get the service and they used my email for referral. As a result, I got a lot of free Lingo service, but I called them at the end of December to cancel for good (something they told me they did, but I still have the service, … ⌘ Read more

Good bye MMIV. Welcome MMV!
And here I am, to wish good byes to 2004 and to greet 2005. The year 2004 was a heck of a year, too many things to write in just a couple of minutes. Just one true thing, everything we—the Collantes’ family—did go through was worth the journey.

So, 2005 starts and with it my often erratic and/or pedantic ramblings. To all a prosperous, peaceful, hopeful, fruitful 2005. Just love one to each other, everything else comes after. ⌘ Read more

Taking a break
For the very first time I feel like taking a complete break from the weblogging world. I have gone away in the past, but it was never as permanent as I said it would be. Today, for once, I feel I can really do it. That is, break away for a longer time than the previous. Reasons? Just tired, just need more time with my growing kid and family in general.

Whatever reason is, I am taking a break. Will I be gone long? Will I come back tomorrow? Hard to tell. I am not that interesting of a read to start … ⌘ Read more

Quiet time
It has been a quiet time here. But quiet here does not means it has been so everywhere else. It has been stressful, it has been painful. It hasn’t been easy. Whoever once said –or wrote– that life isn’t easy wasn’t lying. But as uneasy as it might get, it is worth living it.

I will be back, right after Jeanne has passed. ⌘ Read more

Remembrance

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Today, three years ago, a group of animals belonging to the human race decided to take away thousands of innocent lives by destroying the Twin Towers (see World TradeCenter). Let us not to forget how stupid they were, how criminal they were, how non human they were. L … ⌘ Read more

Three in less than a month
There hasn’t been that much movement around here –on the weblog, I mean–, since hurricanes have kept us busy during the second half of August and the first of September. First Charley, then Frances and now Ivan. The stress level of people around is pretty high, so is their worry. There is a saying, you know, “three and you are out!”. Everyone I know, whose house or properties have been undamaged, is … ⌘ Read more

A hell of a week
It has been a hell of a week and continues to be so. KM has been the whole week (and still is!) sick. Sick to a point that kept me home all those days. Kim and I have been very worried and needless is to say that our days hasn’t been fun one’s, to say the least.

To top it off, now we have got Frances, the hurricane that is, about to slam on us. Are we unprepared? Yes. After the week we had had we do not need anything else, honestly. I just hope it will stay category 2 or less… or that it … ⌘ Read more

It is the Marketers fault!
While reading my daily doses of irrelevant information on Slashdot today, I saw that “ _…The UK Advertising Standards Authority has upheld complaints that Microsoft misled consumers by running advertisements claiming Linux is 10 times more expensive than Windows…_” While they did not lied, they forgot to mention that the … ⌘ Read more

Gmail invitations
I have 6 Gmail invitations that I will give out to anyone who writes a sincere comment about the use it will give to such account, if given. I have been using Gmail for a while now and I can assure you it is a great service, addictive indeed. It is not all about the 1GB of space that Google gives with it, but the excellent features and blazing speed. You can read more about Gmail on the Gmail Support Center. I also [wrote](https://collant … ⌘ Read more

Google’s Doodles
Google is well known for altering its homepage logos to commemorate a special event or Holidays. They have done it since 1999 —at least, that is the earliest documented year.

This year Olympic Games are not an exception. Google Doodle VIII celebrates the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Below is a loc … ⌘ Read more

More on Lingo
A while ago I wrote about my plans of dropping BellSouth for a VoIP provider called Lingo. At that time I also wrote that I would come back and write a review about it. Well, this is not a real review –I really do not know how to write one– but it contains my experiences with Lingo voice over IP (VoIP) service, so far.

When something works fine there is very little to tell. The … ⌘ Read more

A busy week
It has been a busy week. On Monday classes will start and, as you can imagine, a lot of things are left to the last moment on a Campus. It is also true that Murphy’s Law applies as well on that final week: if something is going to go wrong, it will certainly go wrong. If you are thinking Microsoft Exchange you are on the right track.

You see, when I installed Exchange 2003 I swear I installed the Enterprise version. Of course I did not; I guess Windows 2003 Enterprise Server got me confused. Running th … ⌘ Read more

Veteran of Charley
Mother Nature, just as humans, changes her mind. That is the case of hurricane Charley. All forecasts read that Tampa, FL would be the one beaten by him but Mother Nature, with it’s natural (no pun intended) ambivalence made a twist and brought it directly near Fort Myers, and then to us in Orlando, FL.

Needless is to say we had winds. We had winds all right. Actually, we got everything: homes, commercial buildings, trees… all destroyed. And we got no power, no cable (and Internet) and … ⌘ Read more

I am a virus, open me!
The history repeats itself. No matter how many viruses get to their inboxes, no matter how many times you tell them not to open those attachments, when all logic and common sense are just yelling “delete!”, they will open it.

Virus and trojan makers/scripters will always succeed. Antivirus companies will always be behind (even for a few hours/minutes) and make tons of money. As long as my type of user exists there will be a future of revenues on that field and a headache for the r … ⌘ Read more

Small catching up
Last week was a busy week. The Exchange server went into ¾ full production and, yes, it crashed. For the first time I had to recover the PRIV and PUB databases and the server wasn’t been on production not even a week! Oh boy…

I got the Lingo gateway (VoIP gateway, that is) and the quality is excellent, while reaching their technical support is close to impossible. When I finall … ⌘ Read more

Dropping BellSouth
Our VoIP gateway shipped yesterday and it should reach us around August 3rd (Tuesday). We are going to try Voice over IP technology and service, from Lingo. The reason why? Save money. Lingo VoIP service is $20 for unlimited long distance for US, Canada and Western Europe. Very –very– competitive fees to the rest of the world. And you get all the other goodies (caller ID, call waiting, return call, *69, voicemail, etc. [See more](https://www.lingo.com/guWeb/ … ⌘ Read more

Way too early
I woke up at 7:00 AM today, perhaps a bit earlier. The same thing happens every weekend, I cannot sleep as I wish, my internal clock just wouldn’t stop buzzing. So here I am, reading my favourites blogs and news sites, while feeling stressed about Monday (or should I say Sunday night?) morning changes at work. It is the weekend, for God’s sake! I shouldn’t be worrying about anything in the future related to work. I wish it was that easy.

On Linux I know, after years of experience, things work o … ⌘ Read more

Flipping the switch
Next Monday (August 2nd) we are flipping the switch from the old reliable Linux based email system (Sendmail, Washington University IMAP/POP3) to a relatively newly deployed Microsoft Exchange 2003. Needless is to say that we – TRC staff– all have been busy wrapping things up to minimize the impact. But things –bad things, unexpected things– are bound to happen. It is just a matter of t … ⌘ Read more

Where and what you eat…
While browsing the “Orlando Sentinel Express” I found the section Restaurant Penalties, which I never saw before –well, it is true that I do not browse the Sentinel Express everyday.

From that section, two restaurant violations caught my eye:

Giovanni’s Restaurant & Pizza, 2140 S. Chickasaw Trail – “…several five gallons pans of pizza and tomato sauce also were found without covers in the walk-in cooler. Raw whole shell eggs were found stored above pr … ⌘ Read more

Shredder and Eggroll

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Kent assumes the personality of a different cartoon character — or hero — every day. He seems to shuffle between Ninja Turtles, Batman, Danny Phantom, Robin (from “Teen Titans”), Jackie Chang and others. He has even been Spongebob Squarepants! Needless is to say we — Kim and I — are always the bad guys.

Today he decided he was a Ninja Turtle … ⌘ Read more

Sunday morning rants
As I previously wrote, I believe IE is no match to Firefox. I will tell everyone I know about its problems, I will show those to them if I can. I will praise the goods of Firefox, so everyone I know will enjoy web browsing as much as I am. But…

One thing is not using IE and another thing is not serving pages to those using it. That’s plain wrong. It is like going to a japanese restaurant and have sushi … ⌘ Read more

The worse Web Browser
Not too long ago I was an Internet Explorer fan. The pages I went to looked fine under it, the experience seemed rich. There were no complains. Then I started fiddling with CSS and moving away from tables. I experienced the advantages of the PNG format and I loved it. I experienced functionability I never saw before. I got tired of hearing about major problems and running security updates. I got my eyes opened.

I wonder why it took that long. Perhaps Mozilla Firefox was not that polis … ⌘ Read more

Joined the rest
As you can see, I have joined the rest of the thousands using the drop shadow, centered approach on their websites/weblogs. There are several things I am not sure yet. Different background colour? Should I make the top and bottom with shadow too, with a space at the top and bottom just like it was before? Should I use this opportunity and make the whole interface 800 wide instead of 640 pixels? Decisions, decisions.. What do you think? Also, can you recommend how to re-structure the side “column” … ⌘ Read more

First day
I must admit, before I continue, that I did not exercise last night. At least, not as I had intended. It is my fault, I became lazy and even though Kim pushed me well, it did not worked out. But… I am proud the say that I just walked three miles this morning and, boy, it felt good. I know it is not a sensational “news”, but I wanted to mark the day of my come back. I will be fit in no time. I have to. I must. Next, I will buy a pedometer. Thanks to my friend [Martin](http://www.edulon.co.uk/ “Renaissance Ed … ⌘ Read more

Week recount
Nothing major happened during the last week that I can recall. Someone called me a copycat and accused me of copying another site, which was a totally baseless accusation and hence not worth of occupying more space here. We have been looking —well, Kim more than I— for a pre-school for KM without much success. That’s pretty much it.

I am going to try and do some exercises starting tonight, since the lack of it is taking its toll on my body. It is not only the gaining of fat on certain spots that … ⌘ Read more

The three of us
For one reason or another, we have very few pictures on which the three of us are present. Even today, went I tried to snap one I failed. Don’t get me wrong, photos we have, but none of them pleases us –Kim– to put online for the viewing audience (the very small one we have here).

A couple of days ago I took one photo that I decided to put online, because I like they way KM eyes look and because it represents the priority level in our family: kid goes first, then us.

What’s the “pr … ⌘ Read more

Happy 4th of July!
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Happy 228th Birthday, America!

On July 4th, 1776, we claimed our independence from Great Britain (now United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) and Democracy was born. Every day thousands leave their homeland to come to the “land of the free and the home of the brave” so they can begin t … ⌘ Read more

It happened again
Last Friday family got together in our house and some photos were taken. Well, it happened again, just this time there was no other family around, but the three of us. We were making time to go over the airport to pick Khanh (brother-in-law) and girlfriend up, so I snapped a few photos, from which I have choosen five. It is mainly about KM, but Kim is in one of them, for the first time!

Something bad about the night … ⌘ Read more

In God we trust
It is interesting to find out, at times when some minority wants to have removed “…under God…” from the Pledge of Allegiance, about this —it refers to the Great Seal of the United States of America motto:

The federal courts have held that the motto symbolizes the historical role of religion in our society, Lynch, 465 U.S. at 676, formalizes our medium of exchange, see O’Hair v. Blumenthal, 462 F. Supp. 19, 20 (W.D. Tex.), aff’d sub nom. O’Hair v. Murray, 588 F.2d 1144 (5th Cir. … ⌘ Read more

They keep coming
A while ago I wrote about a spam I got from Nigeria (of course, we all know it could be from anywhere) and how Mr. Tanko lost his Internet connection when I asked for $20. While it is true that before and after that posting I have gotten quite a few other offers of the kind, none of them came from a man in the United Arab Emirates, supposedly. Now, that is not the unusual thi … ⌘ Read more

Friday night photos
As I previously mentioned, last night some family members got together in our home to eat and drink. Oh, and to say good bye to some other family that was visiting from California. As it is normal when family gets together, everything started quite early –5:30PM– and finished around 9:30PM. That simply means that food and beer was no longer available at that time ;-) .

Normally I am the one taking the photos around, taking care of this kids and later on posting things here. Last night … ⌘ Read more

Visitor cleaning
I find it interesting that we –and I know I am generalizing here, so correct me if I am wrong– worry about organizing and cleaning the house especially when we are expecting a visit. I know that we want to give the visitor the best impression possible, but aren’t we “lying” by doing so, just because someone is coming? Who are we kidding? I mean, if we were that clean and organized we didn’t have the need to do the “visitor cleaning” to start with, right?

What it’s even more in … ⌘ Read more

Moved!
I have just moved Collantes.US to the new server. DNS is still running on the old one, but you should be seeing the new pages served on the new server Apache. If you see a note at the top asking not to enter a comment, please do so – that is, do not enter a comment. That server is the old one and it will disappear sooner rather than later.

Expect shaky things around for a brief while. Oh, and I still have Gmail invitations, just in case you might want one. [Get in touch](mailto:david@collantes.us?subject=Gmail In … ⌘ Read more

Screw SPEWS
Recently I found out that my existing server IP—the server I am moving away from—is banned on SPEWS (I am not linking them, Google it and you shall know), because it is assigned to UUnet, which is blamed of harbouring spammers. Following the recommendation of the bounced email I posted on Usenet, asking to be removed, without knowing at that time that it was something out of my h … ⌘ Read more

Short and sweet
Just a quick post, short and sweet, while my wife and kid still sleep and I patiently wait for the ServerBeach people to fix the mess on my server (the other server). Can you believe that I lost connection last night, went to sleep and this morning I found that my IP goes to a Windows 2003 server? Boy, talk about some big time screw up!

I have 15 (fifteen, that is) invitations for Gmail that I am giving out for free. If anyone wants one, go ahead and [email … ⌘ Read more

WordPress and how I did it
This might as well be my last entry completely related or dedicated to WP. I am sure I will mention it here and there in the future, but it would have to be something very important for me to talk about it exclusively in one entry.

As the few of you know, I used to run Movable Type (MT) and I was happy with it. The only thing that always bothered me was the rebuild times, which were getting bigger and bigger and the fact the every comment posted would take from 2 to 5 minute … ⌘ Read more

Just about there
I know I have been writting a lot (well, not a lot, since I am holding down on writting until everything works as I want) about WP and how great it is and how happy I am to have moved away from MT, etc. I have been testing things, getting everything around to look and feel as they did a while back, when MT was still the one in command.

Now, finally, after a few weeks of trying, using the little time I have at home to work on this, I have managed to get the site to look very close to what I want … ⌘ Read more

Brainstorming
Some of you might have noticed that I changed things around a little bit. I am still not decided what to have in here, but the actual interface will do for now, even though at time you might see the “blue” one that I had for quite a while before.

I have eliminated the categories, even though I still use them when writing entries. Tomorrow –or the day after tomorrow– I will be upgrading to 1.3-prealpha, which contains some code to allow clean URI’s across the whole site (with the exception o … ⌘ Read more

Parsing PHP code
I am trying to implement a little hack that will allow the use of PHP code within posts. Since I am the only “author” here, I do not think that will bring much of a security risk. This post is intended to test this hack. I will try the following, < ?php echo(“This hack has worked”); ?> to see if it does the trick. And here it goes:

This concludes this test. ⌘ Read more