Congratulations, Marc! Your IQ score is 120!

This number is the result of a formula based on how many questions you answered correctly on Emode's Ultimate IQ test.

The even better news is that at Emode, we've taken your IQ test one step further. During the test, you answered four different types of questions — mathematical, visual-spatial, linguistic and logical. We were able to analyze how you did on each set of those questions, which allows us to shed light on the way your brain uniquely functions.

At the same time, we compared your answers with others who have taken the test, and according to the sorts of questions you got correct, we can tell your Intellectual Type is an Inventive Inquisitor.

The first thing we can tell you about that is you're equally good at mathematical and verbal skills and have a thirst for learning through experience. But that's just scratching the surface.

Find out more about how your brain processes information and where your intellectual strengths lie in your personalized, 15-page IQ Report. It's ready right now!

Marc  

If you ask me, the mainstream media has generally dropped the ball on its' coverage of the war. I don't even watch the news about it anymore. I know our people will do the job and I don't need to hear the spin people like Peter Arnett or Geraldo put on it. In fact, I've been getting most of my reports from The Command Post. Most of these other media outlets have been treating this war like it's a football game, and frankly it turns my stomach to watch the talking heads.

But, if simple stats are you're thing and you want to avoid the hype, this site's for you.

Posted by: Marc  

Just shoot me...  
Monday, March 31, 2003 6:51:55 PM EDT

Alright, I've really been negligent now. Another week has gone by without a single blog here. I really should at least be horsewhipped for that. I'm not sure what has happened to me recently, other than I've felt kind of overwhelmed with certain aspects of my life and a couple of new projects that I've undertaken. I've felt like that guy at the circus that gets 25 plates spinning on the top of sticks and he has to keep running to each one and getting the momentum going again. But I let the blog plate crash to the ground and I apologize if you've wasted a trip here recently. I was going to blog this weekend, but my ISP moved my server to a new location over the weekend and it took it a couple of days to propagate through the DNS servers. It's now back online however, and so am I.

Posted by: Marc  

Home  
Monday, March 24, 2003 7:20:12 PM EDT

Wow, I didn't even realize I went a whole week without blogging! I really didn't have much time to actually, I was in NYC all week last week and was pushing 15 hour days there. I got a lot done, more than I was expected to actually, which is good. It was a successful trip over all.

I took the new Powerbook with me and it was a real help because one of my tasks was to set up a couple of wireless networks and the Apple was very handy for testing them out. I definately like the machine. It's easy to carry and it holds just about everything I need to take with me too. Greg, from My Life As A Fischer left a comment on my last post about warchalking which I hadn't heard of until then. I thought it was a pretty cool idea, but I didn't notice any sidewalk markings in the city. It would be fun to find some though.

I got to spend a day with Howie and Scott, owners of the Center For Digital Imaging in Manhattan. I got a lot out of that. I think we'll be working together quite a bit in the future and I'm looking forward to it. Those guys are real pros in the Apple world and they especially know their stuff when it comes to imaging applications. It's good to have a couple of guys like that to fall back on when I have questions about these Apples. Although so far, I really haven't had too much difficulty with it. It's just a slightly different paradigm that I'm still getting used to.

I should have more time now too to get back to my regular broadcast schedule here on the blog. Once again I apologize for disappearing for so long!

Posted by: Marc  

The Inevitable  
Monday, March 17, 2003 10:47:04 PM EDT

Looks like were going to war. I guess GW gave Saddam one last out, but it seems pretty certain to me (and probably everyone else) that he won't take it. I hate to see us, or anyone else go to war, but it just seems like this was inevitable. Diplomacy obviously has it's limits. I just hope now that it's all over quickly, with a minimum of casualties.

I'll be travelling for the rest of the week, so posting will remain somewhat light, but I will have internet access so I'll try to get at least something posted up here once in a while. I've been way too negligent in that department lately. I just seem to be juggling an awful lot at the moment. It happens though and it should slow down soon.

Posted by: Marc  

Making Movies  
Friday, March 14, 2003 5:13:05 PM EDT

I bought a digital video camera a couple of years ago. It's the highly acclaimed Sony TRV900. I've accumulated a number of videos that I've shot with it and decided to give the new Powerbook the acid test last night - A start to finish movie DVD.

I chose a video that I shot last year of some friends of mine whose band was playing at a party. The video is roughly 50 minutes long. My camera has a built in firewire (as does the Mac) and I plugged it in and started iMovie on the Mac. iMovie saw the camera right away and all of it's camera controls seemed to work fine. I told it to import the movie, which it did without any complaint. I noticed that it ate up somewhere between 8-10 gigs in the process too! Once the video was imported into iMovie, I added a few scene transitions and then told it to export the movie to iDVD. iDVD then opened up and I built a pretty spiffy animated menu, complete with soundtrack, using one of the many built in templates. I also added a still frame shot from the video to this menu. Once that was done, I was ready to burn the DVD using the Powerbook's Super Drive. I told iDVD to burn and after a few moments it told me that it would take approximately 130 minutes to do. This seemed like a long time, but that time also included the codec rendering, which is only necessary once. Subsequent burns of that DVD will take far less time. I left the computer alone to do it's thing. When I came back a few hours later, it reported that the DVD was done and it had ejected the disc.

I put the newly burned masterpiece into my home theater DVD player, which is an older Panasonic A-110. Due to its' age, I didn't know if it would even be able to read this disc. I was pleasantly surprised when my fancy little menu popped up on the screen though and it looked just perfect. I watched the entire 50 minutes looking for dropped frames, artifacts and / or out of sync audio etc. and found that it had burned absolutely flawlessly. Nary an error anywhere!

So it appears that the Powerbook has no trouble at all capturing video and, using Apple's iLife applications (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD) that came with with it, you have everything you need to quickly and easily make great looking DVD productions. My experience actually equaled the hype for a change...imagine that.

Posted by: Marc  

The Apple Arrives  
Wednesday, March 12, 2003 8:53:52 PM EDT

Sorry for my light posting the past few days. I've become sort of overwhelmed with a couple of new projects (which I'll discuss later) and I just haven't had much time to write. Not to mention, I have a brand spanking new toy to play with!

My new Powerbook arrived this morning and I promptly broke it out. First impression? It is without a doubt, the most beautiful computer to ever come across my desk, and I've seen a lot of 'em. It's a piece of artwork. Even the the box is slick. My hat is off to the designers of this Powerbook line of notebooks. They did a fabulous job. Everything you need is there, all the ports, connectors and drive bays, and all are incredibly well integrated. I especially love the slot fed Super Drive. I've always hated the cheap tray that pops out of most laptop CD players because they are so fragile and you've got to have the room for them to pop out in the first place. Nice touch.

After several minutes of just admiring the beauty of the thing, I plugged it in and turned it on and started the setup process. Getting the thing up and running was much quicker, more streamlined and smoother than a typical Windows install. Impressive. When OS X popped up on the screen after just a few moments, I was smiling ear to ear!

I ordered this computer with integrated Airport wireless capability and have a Linksys wireless access point that ties into our network in my office. That network in turn is tied to the internet via a T1 line. The Apple immediately could see the access point, and had an excellent signal, but for some reason, it couldn't aquire an address from it in order to go online. I pretty quickly discovered that it was because it was on the wrong channel and it was a straight forward process to correct the problem. I was online in just a few more moments.

I spent a good part of this afternoon updating all the software that came with it to the latest versions, which was very simply done via OS X's software updater. It will go to Apple's web site and automatically tell you what updates are available and offer to download and install them for you. Microsoft's operating systems will do that too, but I definately like Apple's approach better. It was painless and quick.

After updating it to the latest version of OS X (10.2.4) I loaded Virtual PC on it too (with Windows 2000) and it loaded beautifully as well. The computer now runs Windows 2000 AND Apple's OS X. Tell me, how cool is THAT?

Over the past several years, I've converted many of our company's applications to all be accessable via a web based front end, and today I realized that that was a great decision. Because after solving the secure server issue from last week (solved by upgrading OS X and using the Safari web browser), the Macs now have no problem getting the data, formatted as it was intended to be. SimCat itself sprang from much of that work.

I can already tell that I'm going to love this computer. I don't think the learning curve will be bad at all for me, but I do realize that I'm going to have to still accomodate some PC incompatibilities in the future. I'm not too concerned about it however, because so far I'm very much impressed with what this new computer has shown me.

Now I just have to come up with a name for her.

Posted by: Marc  

Will I Become A Switcher?  
Monday, March 10, 2003 9:17:38 PM EDT

I mentioned earlier about the sudden urge among our management to start incorporating Macs into our previously all PC network. I think the catalyst for this shift is that we started an imaging project last year in one of our offices, archiving photographs. It was initilly set up by a couple of consultants who happen to also be imaging experts and are well versed in the Apple's capabilities in that area. They've also been a real pleasure to work with. Given Apple's excellent reputation in the imaging world, we all agreed that that would be the right way to go for this particular project. Not that it couldn't be done on a PC, but honestly the Apples really can do the job better.

But everyone who works on those computers has become hooked on them now and they want to use them for their daily drivers, meaning a lot more integration with our PC based networks, which is my responsibility. So now it's time for me to become intimate with them too. I decided this 1Ghz Powerbook will be the appropriate machine for my education, as it's pretty much configured the same as the ones I'll be supporting. I decided on a laptop over a desktop since I don't carry any laptop at the moment and could really use one. Most of the things I need to carry are Office based which is also on this machine and for the few PC applications that I'll need, I put Virtual PC with Windows 2000 on it as well. Photoshop 7 will round it all out.

I'll give a review once I get a chance to play around with this bad boy, which should be here in a couple of days and I can't wait to check it out. I wonder if I'll become a switcher. It sure seems like a lot of other long term PC guys are suddenly being seduced by these new Macs.

I'll let you know...

Posted by: Marc  

Look Who I Found!  
Saturday, March  8, 2003 2:45:38 PM EDT

I went down to the liquor store today to get a gallon of Jack, packing heat of course, and guess who the new proprietor is?

Posted by: Marc  

One Way Rider  
Thursday, March  6, 2003 7:57:31 PM EDT



Not all of my email comes from spammers thankfully. Today I got an email from one David Lee Mayfield, patriarch of a family of bluegrass musicians called One Way Rider. Even though he's never met me, he politely asked if I would mind linking his band to my music links. I was pleasantly surprised by this because he doesn't realize that I've actually seen his band and liked them! Anybody who knows me at all knows that I'm a huge music fan. I like basically all genres, but my favorite is probably Bluegrass. I suspect that David came here on a search for one of the many Bluegrass artists in my music links and figured why not ask? Well, good for you David, because not only are you folks good, but you're also from my home state, two qualities which just bought you a link my friend!

They've got a very interesting story, completely aside from the one behind their bus, pictured above, which once belonged to the Father of Bluegrass himself, Mr. Bill Monroe (in addition to many other well known bluegrass musicians). They've got a lot of talent and I think I just might go pay them a visit next month at a gig they'll be doing in Mansfield, not far from here.

So, without further ado, give a big warm welcome to One Way Rider!

Posted by: Marc  

Idiotarian Spammer  
Thursday, March  6, 2003 7:19:53 PM EDT

I've got some spammer, who apparently harvested my email address from this page (that's gonna change quickly), and he's really got his head up his ass. He is, without a doubt, the dumbest spammer I've seen so far. He's using either a very poorly configured bulk emailer or it's buggy as hell, because it's sending me 10 messages at a time, complete with detail enough to track him down. Every message is the same (a make millions at home with your PC scam), with the only variants being the "from" field (always from some different girl) and sometimes from a different host. He's been sending me roughly 25 messages a day all week.

I'm thinking I might sue the guy. Seriously. I can tolerate a little bit of spam, but when you start sending me 25 emails a day, you're just asking for trouble. I've cross checked all the domains that these spams are coming from, and they are all registered to the same guy. Verisign provided me with home address, telephone and his personal email address. I thought at first that I might write a Denial of service hack to make him seriously nauseous, but have started thinking that suing him would be the better alternative. You see, we have a brand new law here in Ohio that allows an email recipient to sue for up to $100 per instance. So far this week, this guy alone has sent between 50-75 emails to me, which equates to 5,000 - 7500 dollars. I figure, I'll just give him a little time to rack up his bill a bit before I take action. I'll post his details later, as I don't want to tip him off via google by posting his domains or name until I'm ready to prosecute. It should be interesting...more to come.

Posted by: Marc  

Carnival of The Vanities (episode 24)  
Tuesday, March  4, 2003 7:09:54 PM EDT

Acidman informs us that he's got the 24th iteration of the Carnival of The Vanities all ready for our perusal.

Looks like a good one too. But then again, aren't they all?

Posted by: Marc  

An Eye for an Eye?  
Tuesday, March  4, 2003 5:00:11 PM EDT

So now that we infidels have captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed I find myself anxiously wondering what types of tactics might be employed to extract information from the man. Anxious not because I fear for his well being. None whatsoever. I'm anxious because I'm hoping the interogators won't go too easy on him.

Remember that this is (by Islamofascist decree) a so-called religious war, so I'm thinking maybe a little eye for an eye here, like some good old fashioned "Christian martyr style" persuasion.

Posted by: Marc  

What kind of racist are you?  
Monday, March  3, 2003 12:49:43 PM EDT


You're A Vestigial Racist!


What Kind of Racist are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Posted by: Marc  

The Peter Principle  
Saturday, March  1, 2003 2:56:35 PM EDT

Dialogue at a Taco Bell Drive Thru speaker today:

Cashier (in a slightly foreign accent): Welcome to Taco Bell, may I take your order?

Me: Yes, I'd like 2 steak soft taco supremes and a bean burrito with red sauce and onion.

Cashier: Ok, that's 3 soft tacos, anything else?

Me: No, I wanted TWO STEAK soft taco SUPREMES and a BEAN BURRITO WITH RED SAUCE AND ONIONS.

Cashier: Oh, ok 2 steak soft taco supremes and a bean burrito without red sauce or onion then.

Me: No, I DO want the red sauce and onions.

Cashier: 2 steak soft taco supremes and a bean burrito with red sauce and no onion.

Me: NO, I DO WANT RED SAUCE AND ONION! Bejus.

Cashier: that's $4.47, please pull forward.

He probably spit on my burrito.

Posted by: Marc  

TGIF  
Friday, February 28, 2003 8:07:56 PM EDT

Wow, I had a rough week. Today was the worst by far though. Fridays are always bad, but this one took the cake. I was doing tech support all day (my least favorite part of the job) and I was on the phone almost the entire day. My company has offices scattered around the country and I support all of them. We have somewhere around 100-125 PCs and several servers. Lately though, my bosses (I have 4) have all begun some weird love affair with Apple Powerbooks and iMacs. They are all telling me how wonderful they are and how they are ready to dump their PCs and laptops. That's all fine and well, but they expect ME to support them and I have absolutely no Apple experience whatsoever. You would think that I'd be pretty nervous about the security of my job at this point, but in reality I'm not. Not at all. In fact, I'm getting a bit peeved that they expect me to support them when I've made it absolutely clear that I know nothing about these Apples.

I told them that they've got to buy me one if they expect me to be able to support theirs. I can't tell them how to fix something I know nothing about after all. You see, all day long I was trying to troubleshoot why two of these new Powerbooks loaded with OS X could not play nice with one of our secure servers. They couldn't log on to our system. Hmmm, I thought, I thought these were supposed to be trouble free wonder toys! Whattup? Well, not knowing anything about them, I had to do some extensive googling and think I finally found out what the problem is. It seems that several people have reported that OS X doesn't like to talk to a self signed secure server, which is what I have. You don't really need to know what that means at all, because I'll give you an analogy. It would be like an American going to France planning to spend a boatload of money having the vacation of a lifetime only to find that the locals (who could really use the infusion) get snooty because the stupid American can't speak the language. To which the American says, "well piss on you then, I'll take my money elsewhere."

The server (PC) has boatloads of data, but the Mac doesn't trust it...go figure.

At least I convinced them that it's time to buy me a Mac...and I'll put some english on it.

Posted by: Marc  

Hey Kids!  
Thursday, February 27, 2003 8:43:49 PM EDT

We all know how hard it is to choose the perfect sidearm. But it's especially tricky if your only a 5 year old and you're looking for something that you won't out grow. Well, never fear, help is here with the shiny new Side Arm Pick-O-Matic.

Just remember kids, have fun, but don't go puttin' your buddy's eye out with it.

Posted by: Marc  

How Much Is Inside?  
Thursday, February 27, 2003 8:17:27 PM EDT

Ahhh, the question mankind has been asking himself since he first crawled out of the primordial soup. Well, maybe not quite that far back, but nevertheless, you've probably asked yourself at some point or another "How much is in a Chevy Trailblazer?", and no, the answer is not 1 yuppie and a 6 pack of Sierra Nevada. Or how about how much is in a million dollars? Am I Right? Sure I am.

Well, you can find the definitive answer to those and many more perplexing questions of quantifiable objects if you look here.

Posted by: Marc  

Finally, a reasonable alternative  
Thursday, February 27, 2003 7:47:21 PM EDT

PETA members always strike me as people that are completely off their rockers, but this story almost gives me hope that I might have jumped to conclusions. Here, they actually offer up a plausible alternative to that which they rail against.

Posted by: Marc  

It's a very sad day in the neighborhood...  
Thursday, February 27, 2003 12:47:09 PM EDT

Mr. Rogers has died. Goodbye and thank you Mr. Rogers, you were a wonderful role model for millions of young Americans and you will always be remembered.

Posted by: Marc  

Jim Hinde  
Wednesday, February 26, 2003 9:38:31 PM EDT

I linked an old friend of mine's website to the Music links tonight. I didn't know he even had one until a mutual friend told me last week. He's a genuine Seattle troubador, with a long history picking a guitar, standing in front of the Starbucks at Pike Place Market plying his trade.

I met Jim Hinde back in my horse shit shoveling days, working a job in a stable while still in high school. I worked with his wonderful wife Janet at the time (actually, they were still dating then). He's quite a character and is a talented storyteller, with or without music. Above all he's a thinking man's man, and always entertaining.

How can you not tap your toe to something like this? Go check out Jim Hinde.

"if it's brown flush it down. If it's yellow, let it mellow" - sign over Jim's toilet years ago.

Posted by: Marc  

Some Young Guy  
Wednesday, February 26, 2003 7:53:46 PM EDT



My name in Chinese. I might have it tattooed on my forehead.

What's yours?

Posted by: Marc  

Progress  
Wednesday, February 26, 2003 7:50:26 PM EDT

I made some progress on the commenting system last night. It's going to be a little trickier than I thought though because my ISP for Quitthat.com will only allow me to use PHP and MySQL (same thing MT uses). I don't really want to go that route, since I'm not all that proficient with PHP yet (one of these days *sigh*). So I'm thinking of hosting my comments on another server (the one that hosts SimCat). If I do, it'll open up even more possibilities for adding some dynamic content to the blog in addition to the comments. I'm kind of excited about it actually, but the comments are the most important thing for the moment. Haloscan is still down...ugh.

Posted by: Marc  

Haloscan  
Tuesday, February 25, 2003 8:03:36 PM EDT

Once again, my comments have been down for most of the day (Thank you Haloscan). I'm getting pretty tired of it and decided that tonight I'm going to start work on my own commenting system. SimCat needs that feature anyway. Until that's ready, I'll leave Haloscan in place and I apologize if the comments aren't available from time to time (or every friggin day). There's not much else I can do about it for the time being.

By the way, I noticed Haloscan is getting under the skin of The Bitch Girls too...heh, I'm sure were not the only ones.

Update: Apparently, I'm also not the only one contemplating writing my own commenting system.

Posted by: Marc  

When will it end?  
Monday, February 24, 2003 8:07:15 PM EDT

I don't know about you, but I'd say this pathetic and annoying posturing by a wannabe Hitler is just another attempt to buy more time.

So let's all syncronize our watches and give him the time. Do we all agree on what time it is?

Posted by: Marc  

Puritan Police  
Monday, February 24, 2003 5:42:20 PM EDT

KENT, Ohio -- A woman in northeastern Ohio may have done too thorough of a job with her snowman -- or snow woman, to be exact.

Crystal Lynn says police in the town of Kent told her she had to remove the breasts from her snow woman after someone complained. She says she didn't want to do that, so instead she draped a tablecloth around the shoulders.

The snow woman was too busty to be covered by a shirt. Lynn says the police officer made her feel as if she'd be arrested if she didn't cover up her creation.

But police say that's not true. They say it was simply a neighborhood dispute, and that no charges were necessary.

Now I realize that people have all kinds of differing perspectives on the whole public nudity issue, but come on folks, get a grip already! (Did I ever mention that we have psychos living right here in Ohio?)

UPDATE: Oh wait, they've got 'em at Harvard too!

Posted by: Marc  

I liked the movie...  
Monday, February 24, 2003 12:26:10 PM EDT


Which Trainspotting Character Are You?

Posted by: Marc  

That old trick never works...  
Friday, February 21, 2003 5:22:28 PM EDT

The incident occurred Monday afternoon on Nash Road. The driver of a red-and-black van pulled up to a group of four or five Amish girls walking home after class and asked the girls to come over, Hiscox said. The girls started toward the vehicle after seeing what appeared to be an Amish girl sitting in the passenger seat.

As the girls got closer, they realized the passenger was actually a man dressed as an Amish girl, Hiscox said.

The girls fled and the van took off. An Amish man on the street chased the van but could not get a license plate number, Hiscox said. It was described as an older-model van.

Yep, we've even got our very own psychos right here in Ohio.

Full story here.


Posted by: Marc  

Search engine queries  
Friday, February 21, 2003 08:54:04 AM EDT

From the quitthat.com logs...

Ok, whoever came here looking for buckeye illegal national championship dvd was either a disgruntled Hurricane fan or he was looking for bootleg of that awesome game. Fess up, which one was it?

And what's up with blogs demonstrating underwear? I'd like to oblige, but it seems to me that if you need a demonstration of how underwear works, you've got much bigger problems than you know.

Perky Nipple? Ok, I did say that one.

I Quit...frenchman?

french war record...I'm flattered to be the #3 authority according to google for that one.

Posted by: Marc