White Days

Well, I've been informed by some folks that I've recently been slacking off on my duty as a blogger. As we've recently acquired some new recruits to blogging, I suppose I should be setting a good example. So, during my long drive home yesterday, I tried to come up with a few things I could rant about. Here's what I came up with.

First of all, driving home after the weekend stinks. I like my job and I know Liz likes hers, too (when she's not in Austin), but why couldn't Rochester be 30 minutes from Clintonville? After a long drive home, I was welcomed to the treat of shoveling my driveway, as we got about 2-3 inches of snow over the weekend. Joy.

Let's talk politics for a moment... I haven't said much about politics since the election for a couple reasons. First of all, I'm generally not very active in politics. There's a reason we have elected officials - so they can worry about politics for us. I'll sure bet they don't concern themselves with how I connect to a SQL database from my J2EE app. (The correct answer is "through JNDI" for any of you that were actually wondering.) However, a conversation I was having this weekend made me think. My sister mentioned that, since the election, she's simply stopped paying attention to politics (as have I, and I assume plenty of others, too). It's to the point where I feel like "Geez...Bush is in office again, what good things can be in the news for me to see?" Now that Powell, who was the only one that I liked from that administration is leaving, I really have nothing to look forward to. Therefore, I simply don't look. I live my isolated life in Minnesota and hope the World isn't suffering from nuclear winter come 2008. Of course, if no one is paying attention to politics (except the Rupublicans, of course), Bush is going to run unchecked and do whatever he pleases. Honestly, the man reminds me more of Stalin all the time. I've never really been "scared" for the future of the US, but I am now.

Ranting aside, I had a nice long weekend at home for Thanksgiving. Food was great, seeing family was grand. I'd like to say I now weight 10 pounds more than I did prior to the weekend after eating my own bodyweight in turkey and stuffing three times over, but, alas, tis not the truth.

We crashed at Nate's new pad on Saturday and had a thoroughly good time doing so. It involved lots of sitting around, playing video games, watching football, and eating. What could be wrong with that? Nate's place is pretty nice - certainly all a guy needs when he lives alone. The sparce furniture is a little comical, but oddly familiar to my apartment in Green Bay. When you get married, women fill your house and men empty the fridge. I think that's just the way life is.

Anyway, enough blabbing from me for a while - I need to save something for the rest of the week so I don't get in trouble again.

Take care, all.

Dave's Blog

Hey folks - the world-famous Nate screwed up and gave me the wrong link for the world-famous Dave's blog. (I don't know that it was really his fault, but I can't possibly blame myself, so Nate will have to do.)

Anyway, here's the link to Dave's new blog:

http://www.bloggerdaveblogger.blogspot.com

Enjoy.

They Just Keep Comin' Out of the Woodwork

Yet another has jumped on the bandwagon as we now have another blog available for your time-wasting pleasure. Dave Meyer (hereafter known as "Dave" - sorry, he never developed fun nicknamed like "Big Daddy Tron" - Dave always worked so well) created his own blog full of insight and ponderings. If you have three tenths of a second, you shoud give it a read. ;)

By the way, here are my current Thanksgiving weekend plans, for anyone that is interested.

• Thursday, November 25 - Leave Rochester in the early morning for La Crosse, to see Liz's family for Thanksgiving lunch at her aunt's house.


• Thursday, November 25 - Leave La Crosse in the evening, headed to Clintonville where we'll be staying at my mom's place.


• Friday, November 26 - Day-After-Thanksgiving lunch at my mom's.


• Friday, November 26 - Day-After-Thanksgiving dinner at my sister's (with my dad). My second giant meal of the day, but I hope to be up for the task.


• Saturday, November 27 - No plans. Hoping to check out Nate's place in Appleton.


• Sunday, November 28 - No plans. We'll probably head back to Rochester in mid-afternoon, but that's all we have lined up.

So, there you have it. That's what we'll be doing this week. If I've missed something, shoot me an e-mail or something.

I need to pick up Liz at the airport this afternoon. It'll be nice to have a wife again - I always look forward to being married again. I think I'm getting too old for the bachelor life.

Lizzy's been rather upset with work lately. She has to travel to Austin a lot and she doesn't like that much and the new work she has, which she'd much rather do, keeps getting pushed off for other things. Hopefully, things will start getting better soon. Sooner or later, this last project has to go away...right?

This weekend was pretty uneventful. I worked at the Clinic on Saturday to save myself a day of vacation over the holidays. It was actually nice coming in over the weekend. Downtown is awfully quiet on a Saturday. No traffic, no people, no noise. I just sat in my office with the radio playing and did my work. Not too bad, at all.

So, since I worked Saturday, yesterday was my day off, and I took full advantage of it. I accomplished nothing at all (or awfully close). I played some games, watched lots of football, and ate food. Not the most exciting day, to say the least, but not all bad, either. I did, however, clean the house - I thought Liz would appreciate coming home to a clean place.

Anyway, that's about all for me. You know what our plans for the weekend look like so, if you're going to be around Clintonville this weekend, let me know. Maybe we can hook up for a while.

Catch y'all later (when I'm married again),
Corey

Longwell Must Drive a Stickshift...

Because the man is clutch! Yeah, enough with the remarkably bad sports sayings, but the Cardiac Pack is back with a vengeance this year. First of all, they need to give everyone else a few games head start to begin the season by dropping four straight. Now that's they've given everyone else their, lead, I guess it's time to start playing. As if that wasn't enough, the Packers have taken to making their games as heart-stopping as possible. Let's enter my time machine, shall we? (I built it over the weekend with Liz out of town.)

3 Weeks Ago - October 31st (Halloween): The Packers gather a nice fat 20-7 lead against the Washington Redskins only to have Favre throw an interception in the 4th quarter which led to a Redskin touchdown and a narrow, 6-point lead. No big deal - the Packers get the ball back and can take control. Yeah - right until Favre throws another interception with under 5 minutes to play. Only by the grace of God (and Al Harris), did the wonderfully inept Mark Brunell throw an interception of his own that led to the Packers eventual win.

1 Week Ago - November 14th: The Packers build a "comfortable" lead against the Vikings, leading by as much as 14 points as late at the 13:50 mark of the 4th Quarter. Apparently, this was just too much for the Packers, so they decided to let the Vikings get back in the game, allowing 2 touchdowns in the final 3 minutes of the game. After Robert Ferguson fumbled the ball away on the ensuing kick return, it looked as if all was lost until Ben Steele, of all people, wrestles the ball away from a half-dozen purple jerseys at the bottom of a pile that was probably rougher than Vietnam. Brett Favre then did what he does best and moved the Pack close enough for a 33 yard field goal, which Longwell nailed.

Yesterday - November 21st: The Packers decided to go a different route this week (the big lead thing had apparently become too "cliche") and promptly fell behind 13-10 at the half. Deciding not to rush the inevitable, the Packers allowed the lead to stand until the 4th quarter. A gorgeous pass from Favre to Driver (I don't know if it gets any prettier than that) put the Pack back within scoring distance and, 5 minutes later, Longwell nailed a 39 yarder to tie the game. Then, with the game tied and only seconds remaining, Longwell lined up for a 46 yarder to win the game. Keep in mind, he missed a 49 yarder ealier, apparently for dramatic effect. Careful not to make it look to easy, Longwell shaved the right upright as the ball went in, to extend the Packers winning streak to 5.

So, what happens now? The Packers take on the Rams on Monday night - prime time. Who knows what they'll have concocted for such an audience. I think I might be afraid to watch.

ESPN + Star Wars = Great Commercials

So anyone seen the new ESPN commercial featuring the Star Wars characters? Absolutely hilarious. In case you haven't seen it or, for some weird reason, don't watch ESPN, you can see the spot here. Just awesome.

In addition, if you've got some time to burn, you can take a walk through memory lane here, where you can view old SportsCenter ads. They're always good for a laugh.

Rainy Days

Hey folks. I know it's been a long time since my last post but, what can I say? I'm just lazy. So, let me try to recap a week worth of my life in a few paragraphs.

Last weekend, Liz and I travelled East to the wild world of Wisconsin. We were back in Sheboygan visiting Liz's folks. The Sheboygan Symphony was having a concert so we went to that. Liz's mom wasn't actually playing this time so she was able to actually sit in the crowd and enjoy the concert, for once, rather than performing. It was probably just as well she wasn't up there playing - they had a guest pianist there just about all night and various guest singers so the symphony was pretty much just a "back-up" band. Concerts like that are always great for the audience, but usually pretty boring for the band. This one was no different - great concert. The pianist was superb. His renditions of Brazil and Rhapsody in Blue were absolutely great. (If you're interested, I've got 'em on CD and could get 'em to ya...just keep that on the down low.)

Theresa was back in town for the concert. She's doing well, it seems, and will have surgery the first week of December. Liz has some extra vacation so I think she's going to head down there and spend some time with her when that happens.

Badgers sucked, Packers squeaked one out, and my fantasy football team got a big black eye. I think that just about sums up sporting news. Oh yeah, still no hockey. grrr...

The work week hasn't been very eventful. Lizzy is off in Austin again. She has to work over the weekend so she won't get back until Monday. I suppose I'll probably do some work, as well. I have plenty to do at Mayo and a project I'm working on for the guys at Relion.

I don't know what my problem is lately, but I seem to be having motivational problems. I just don't feel like doing anything but, after sitting around accomplishing nothing, I feel quite useless. I don't know. Maybe I just miss Liz.

Anyway, an update about my friends...

Nate is now happily living in Appleton (happily now that he has an Internet connection again). Apparently, he lives beneath a middle-aged interior decorator and beside a cowbay hat wearing stripper. Knowing Nate, that should certainly provide for some excellent stories. He tried his luck with the illustrious Andrea only to find out that the sweet honey is already living with some guy. Score 0 for Andrea, 1 for all the ladies in Appleton that will now feel Nate's charm. :)

Nick seems to be adjusting to life in Chicago. I personally enjoyed his last blog entry. Apparently, I'm not the only one that thinks his significant other is a total hottie. :) I tell you, there are a lot problems in this world that are much worse than that.

I suppose that's about good for me, for now. I should probably try to get some work done...there's that whole motivational problem again. ;) C'est la vie. (I just had to use it, it seems to be the "in" thing to do...according to Nate's and Nick's blogs, anyway.)

Catch y'all later,
Corey

Another Convert Claimed

So I now see that my sister-in-law, Sarah (aka Red) has created her own blog. There's been a lack of recent posts but I'll blame that on too much homework and post-election depression (right, Red?).

Last night was a bit of an adventure. A bunch of our friends came over and we moved that beast of an entertainment center out of our basement and into the garage - a guy is coming to pick it up this afternoon and take it away. What a pain. That thing is just amazingly heavy and awkward so it took 5 of us to get it out of the basement. However, now that it's out of there, our basement seems absolutely huge. Now I guess Liz and I need to get some work done down there and get it finished. I'd like to get it done (or at least close) by the time the extended version of Return of the King comes out - that gives us about a month. We'll probably have a movie night that weekend. If you want to come, consider yourself invited (assuming I know you - I suppose it's "poor form" to invite weird people on the Internet that read your blog even though they have no idea who you are). If you want details, shoot me an e-mail or something - I'll give em out as we get em.

We've got plenty of work to do down there, first, though. We've gotta patch the walls a bit and do lots of painting. We need to get some new furniture (the lighter the better) and I need to get the projector mounted on the wall somehow. Besides working my job at Mayo and trying to get a project done for the guys at Relion (not to mention my time-consuming addiction to video games), I've got plenty on my plate.

So the truck is finally fixed. Drives like a champ now, and it had sure better. Now I'll just hope nothing else breaks on it for a while. I assume we're going to be driving it a lot more, now. It's getting pretty cold out so the Mustang is going to be headed in to storage pretty soon - probably next week. :( As always, I'll miss her.

I suppose that's enough babbling out of me. I've gotta get some work done and then Liz and I are going to get on the road to head back to Sheboygan.

Catch y'all later,
Corey

Incredible!

Hey folks, welcome to another installment of my lovely and riveting blog. (Bet you'd never hear those words together in a sentence...errr...that's "lovely" and "riveting," not "to" and "and.")

Well, I took the truck in to the shop yesterday morning. The thing had been shaking any time I turned left for the last month or so. I took it in a while ago but they couldn't figure out what was wrong so I drove it some more to figure out how to make it all the time. Now that I could get it to shake whenever I wanted, I took it back in. As luck would have it, the power steering was going out so it needs a new rack and pinion system. Grand. Doesn't sound cheap, does it? Well, it's not. :(

The day ended a bit better than it had been going, though. Liz and I went out to see "The Incredibles" last night. Awesome flick. Just hilarious. My personal favorite was Mr. Incredible, fighting with his wife, Elastigirl, about how to get downtown while hurtling along at 120 mph in a van on the interstate. So true, so true. Anyway, if you get a chance to see this one, it's worth the overpriced movie ticket and the popcorn seeds stuck in your teeth for the next 4 hours.

Something else that is entirely too true, although it shouldn't be, is the latest issue of The Onion. For those of you that don't know what The Onion is (that would probably be just my mom, but in case Nate has gone into a mental lapse of drastic proportions, this might be a good refresher), the Onion is a satiristic newspaper which I believe is based in Madison, but I'm probably wrong about that. Anyway, the article "Nation's Poor Win Election For Nation's Rich" seems entirely too true to be in The Onion. *sigh*

Besides that, anyone think this whole offensive into Fallujah is just ridiculous? What exactly are they trying to accomplish? Originally, the plan had been to send in 10,000 US troops along with 2,000 Iraqi troops to root out 5,000 to 6,000 insurgents. However, the latest reports say that there are only 1,200 to 3,000 insurgents in the city and the one they really want to catch, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has probably already left. I wonder why that is? Maybe it's because the plans for an offensive have been on the news for the last 3 weeks! Any Iraqi with half a brain would have left the city knowing that 12,000 troops were moving in - we're not talking about the Alamo here, folks - these are folks that want to shoot at you from behind civilians, not stand and fight an overwhelming force.

Honestly, I think Bush decided that he needed another decisive victory to garner support so he told everyone, "Just go bang on the garbage cans real loud until everyone leaves and then we'll waltz in, there won't be many casualties, take the city, and we'll be great military geniuses. Woohoo! ...mmmm....Doughnuts.... Then, when these folks crop up elsewhere, we'll just do it all over again and we'll be perpetual heroes without ever accomplishing anything!"

Yeah, so I'm probably quite off-base, but that's just what I think of the whole mess. And, since this is my blog, I guess I can spout off about whatever I want, including the utter dominance of 5'10" Drew Brees.

Anyway, that's enough of that. I'm outta here.

Corey

Dang Phisherman!

I have to hand it to some folks - they can get pretty dang creative about getting things out of you. Most of you have already heard of "phishing." In case you haven't, here's the rundown.

You get an e-mail message that comes from what appears to be a legitimate source (your bank, amazon.com, in this case, service@paypal.com). The e-mail tells you that, for one reason or another, they need some information from you regarding your account. You then follow the link in the e-mail, enter your account information, and they've got ya. Now, you've just freely handed your vital information to someone else.

Sadly, I almost fell for one today. In my defense, it was done remarkably well. The e-mail was made to look as if it came from PayPal (an online service to pay for items bought through ebay) and they did an excellent job, at that. Sure, it's easy to spoof an e-mail address to make an e-mail look like it came from support@paypal.com, but it's a bit more involved to actually have the e-mail contain the "look and feel" of a real e-mail from PayPal support. Additionally, it was so much like a legitimate e-mail that it made it past my spam filter and into my Inbox. This one claimed that they had detected some irregular behavior in my account and required me to log in to my account by following a link.

So, at this point, I thought to myself...irregular activity? Well, for as long as I've had my PayPal account, I've never bought anything more pricey than a $40 video game. Maybe a couple CD's here or there - you get the idea. Well, a couple months ago, I bought a new projector for $1000+. I suppose that might be seen as irregular activity. Sure, their e-mail is a little late regarding it, but it's still plausible.

Well, their scheme's downfall was 3-fold - some of it my doing, some of it someone else's. When I opened the e-mail in G-Mail (Google's e-mail service), there was a big note across the top that read, "Warning: This message may not be from whom it claims to be. Beware of following any links in it or of providing the sender with any personal information." Apparently, having someone read your e-mail can be a good thing. :) In case you don't know about G-Mail, it's an e-mail service that has a catch - the service reads all of your e-mail and looks for keywords. Based on those keywords, ads are displayed to you that go along with what your e-mail is about. So, supposedly, if someone sent you an e-mail about a camping trip, you'd see ads for Coleman lanterns or some such thing. It sounds annoying, but I've found the ads in G-Mail to be much less obtrusive than the ones on other e-mail web applications. Apparently, they're putting that e-mail reading capability to good use. G-Mail noticed that this e-mail was asking for personal data and threw up that warning just to get me on my guard.

Based on the fact that G-Mail has already alerted me to the danger, I looked very closely at the e-mail. Rather than simply following a link in the e-mail, I opened a brand new browser window and logged in to PayPal.com. Everything looked ok - no notes about account problems anywhere. Then it hit me. I logged into PayPal with my old e-mail address (myrealbox.com) and this e-mail had been sent to my new e-mail address (gmail.com). Sure enough, PayPal doesn't even know about my new G-Mail account. Mystery solved - this e-mail was a phraud. Bastards!

I don't know why I felt the need to share, but I did, and you bothered to read it all. I'm very sorry for you. All of you. So what's the moral of the story? G-Mail good. Spammers bad. Keep that in mind. :)

Peace.

Corey

A Quality Waste of Time

Hey folks,

I stumbled upon a good way to waste some time online today - a "uber" scientific IQ test. It consists of 30 questions or so and can be found here. You can take the IQ test and, at the end, they'll have you register an account to send you your results. When you're done with that, you can see your score and they'll try to sell you some individualized profile. Bah to that, I say! But, at least they give you your score and a little info about it. I doubt this is the most scientific of IQ tests in the world, but it was a nice diversion, nonetheless. Curious about my score, I found this site that discusses IQ. My sister probably finds all of this stuff funny and rudimentary but, for those of us less psychopathically gifted, we like our simple diversions. :)

Anyway, I thought I'd throw it out there in case you'd like to waste the next 15 minutes or so of your life. :) According to their test, I scored a 138. I guess that means I'm smart enough to sit in front of a computer and write in my blog. :)

Yay Team!

Sigh.

Time to Get Busy

Yeah, I'm disappointed that Kerry didn't win the election, but not really surprised, either. What's done is done. Unfortunately, now I have 4 more years of a middle-east mess, deteriorating foreign relationships in Europe and listening to that oaf and his little demon of a sidekick, Rumsfeld. For now, I have more pressing matters - like the fact that the NBA has started and, with hockey on strike, I can only hang mercilessly onto what's left of the NFL season before SportsCenter is just too painful to watch. I can just see the hours of Stephen A shouting HOWEVAH! IT'S CRAAAAZY! coming on now. *sigh*

On the other hand, I have loads of work to keep me busy in the near future. My job at Mayo is certainly keeping me occupied. With the way vacation is set up here, though, you have to accrue it over time. Well, starting so late in the year, I don't have much of a chance to accrue much before the holidays. So, all in all, I'll have 2 days of vacation built up by Christmas. *sigh again* I talked to my manager here (well, kinda my manager, but that's a different story) and she said that I can flex a few days. That means that I can work some weekends between now and the end of the year and then use those days as vacation. So, based on that, I believe I'll be working a bit of extra time so that I can be home for the holidays.

Besides that, Relion came up with a new project they want me to work on. I was hoping to get started on Monday but I ran into a problem on my home computer and couldn't get going. Last night were the elections so I didn't get to work on it then, so I guess I'll be starting tonight. That project should keep me busy (in my free time) for a little while, as well.

On top of that, I still need to finish my website and my next article for that online journal is due on Sunday. I guess I should probably stop wasting time on this blog and get to work.

In unrelated (yet hilarious) news, Nate has started his new internship in Appleton. You can read all about it in his blog, but it reads more like a soap opera and his epic quest to get it on with the amazing Andres than a journal about work. It's certainly worth a read (Check it out here.) I'm starting to think I might need to pass Andrea a note to let her know what's going on - we technologically advanced enough now that I can do that by e-mail, right? I'd hate to have to drive all the way to Appleton just to pass it to her under the desk...maybe if I had her put her computer under the desk...geez...I hope she has a laptop. ;)

Well, I've spent too much time writing in here already. I suppose I should get to work. If anyone knows how to implement a message driven bean that interfaces with Java messaging service in WebSphere Application Suite Developer to process and asynchronous request, drop me a line. Apparently, I need to figure that out. *sigh once again*

Later y'all!

Do Your Duty, Damn It!

So, have you gone out to vote yet? If not, you better get going - polls are open for another 4 hours or so. Liz and I were at the polls this morning around 7:30 before we went to work. Lines were pretty short, but I've heard stories of long lines around town. Hopefully, none of you will have a problem waiting around.

So, in case you'd like some insider information about the election and the results, I'd suggest checking out this Knock Out Site. It's got everything you need to get you through election day.

What are you doing still reading my blog? Get out there and vote, dang it!

And Just When you Think You Can't Hate Them More...

You get stuff like this out of Keyshawn Johnson and this out of TO. Geez...I'm starting to like Stephen A. Smith compared to these guys.