For Trillian, I found a cool MSN Messenger type skin. Makes Trillian act just like MSN. I switched over to that skin because I was sorta tired of hearing the ole AOL sounds throughout my online experience. I think I’m going to show this one to Mike. He seems stuck on MSN. I’ve tried to persuade him to use Trillian…since he does have an AIM account.
By now, everyone really should be using Trillian for their instant messaging experience. AOL is so old and antiquated.
That computer I’m trying to fix? Well apparently the hard drive is defunct. The repair utility on Windows 2000 has said that twice. I can take a hint. So I’m off to find a cheap hard drive. The friends told me that they can’t afford to fix it now. However if I can find a really cheap hard drive….I just might donate it. Its for camp use. Besides. It looks like a decent computer. I’m sure it could roar if I could get it working.
So its Best Buy time in Tennessee. Or maybe Staples or Office Max since they are closer than the Rivergate location of Best Buy.
I’m also going to look at webcams. Those are cheap too and it is sorta cool to see friends online… The problem is that I only know a few people who use them. And Marie Pickler never let me see her on the webcam. What’s up with that?
And the kids seem to be bugging me already to see the retreat video. Specifically that lame basketball game. Amazingly they’ve asked me to put it on this website. They don’t seem to understand bandwidth constraints. Somehow these kids think I can punch a few buttons and magically the basketball game will appear here in Real Video. No so, grasshopper. During the filming of it, I was thinking “They’re using up all the tape on footage of a game no one will want to watch.” But apparently not. Me thinks I’ll put it in the VCR to show to the kiddies. It’ll be a big hit for the first minute or two, then we’ll have to fast forward through most of it. Me, I filmed good stuff. Interviews. Rolling down a hill. I wish I could have gotten the sunrise, but alas, I never woke up that early.

Tried installing Mozilla browser 1.3, but after the install it won’t even start. So I’m back at Mozilla 1.0.2. If only more people would use Mozilla, we’d all find out that Internet Explorer is a inferior browser…at least in those stupid pop-up ads. IE may work better with some Microsoft products, but only because Microsoft designed both products.
Techie nerds use Mozilla as their browser and Google as their homepage. Everyone else uses IE and MSN or some other inferior search engine.
Also I’m having problems networking a Win98 and Win2K machine using a 3com HomeConnect hub. They just can’t see each other. I feel like I’ve got everything setup properly. These computers aren’t going to be connected to the internet, so that may be part of the problem. The Win98 computer seems to get as slow as mollasses once it is plugged into the hub. Maybe its looking for an internet connection. I don’t know. I just want to share files and printers between the computers. Might need to talk to some networking guru to get this problem solved.
Its getting to where you just about HAVE to have a internet connection if you want to do anything with a computer these days. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to download little files for the non-internet connected computers at church. Then have to go back and forth from home to church installing little tweaks and stuff to make the computer operate more smoothly. The internet is a good thing, yet its becoming almost a necessity these days. I’d hate it if terrorrists or something were to knock it out.
Since being laid off from Nortel, I don’t have a laptop anymore. This laptop came in handy when I went off on vacation and needed a hard drive to store digital pictures on. I have a limited amount of Smartmedia cards for my digital camera, and they tend to fill up quickly over a week’s time. So I’m going to have to find alternate means when camp time comes in June. The possible solutions is as follows:

• Borrow my sister’s laptop – And who knows if she would let me. She’s a big nerd with the internet these days and would probably need to use it while I’m gone.
• Use someone’s else’s laptop. – Most likely someone at camp would have a laptop which I could borrow. Even the camp director had his laptop with him last year. I could possibly use his.
• Get a cheap laptop and use it. – However this solution is quite expensive and wouldn’t really be worth it.

There are some good mass storage devices out there. Like a 1 gig USB keychain drive. I saw one on Ebay for $400, which is way too expensive right now. Maybe prices will fall. Then there’s this USB device which stores a laptop hard drive. Comes in really handy if you are backing up your computer or have a large amount of data to easy transfer from one computer to another.

One thing I get tired of hearing is people saying that they’re “an internet computer dummy.” Imagine that. What if you heard someone say they were “a bicycle dummy.” Anytime some activity requires them to ride a bicycle somewhere, they have to call their bicycle “expert” in order to get the task accomplished. Apparently they’ve refused to learn to ride the bicycle. Or just don’t have the patience it takes to get adept at bicycle riding.
Some people take longer to learn to ride bicycles. Some people have to use training wheels and ride for years with those extra wheels on there. Eventually they learn to ride. But no one ever calls themselves a bicycle dummy.
Its the same way about computers and the internet. Its certainly not magical by no means. People just need to take a little extra time and patience to learn it. They somehow expect that computers will make their life a whole lot easier. Yet they don’t realize is that they might have to work to figure it out. No one was born knowing how to ride a bicycle and no one was born knowing how to use the internet. There’s a learning curve there.
I just get tired of people referring themselves as internet dummies and not trying to do anything about it.
Maybe its because of all these Computers for Dummies and The Idiot’s Guide books. We’re all calling ourselves dummies for some reason.
So I’m sorta frustrated. I offer to do a school’s webpage for free, yet I can’t seem to get FTP access to their server (yet). Only the school’s administrator can get to it for now. I decided I really shouldn’t even bother working on the webpage unless I had FTP access…or knew exactly what the server’s abilities and limitations were. I’d like to do shtml and/or php on it. But all my work would be in vain if it wasn’t available. Write the page in php and then have to redo the whole thing…. You know the drill.
It was sorta weird the other day. When I sat down and discussed the webpage with the principal, I think she was thinking I was going churn up a webpage then and there. These things take time. Whatever webpage I churn out is going to have to meet my standards….standards that can’t be met within a hour or so on a principal’s computer. Not that my standards are far superior than everyone else’s. I just get sick of looking at crappy webpages.
So if I can’t get FTP access, I guess it will mean me going back and forth to the school with a floppy disk. Quite teadious and unnecessary.
Friends, the next big thing is the Lexar Media Jumpdrives. Get yourself one of these. I managed to find one on sale at the local Office Max. Holds 64MB of data and fits on the end of my keychain. Compatible with Win 98 through WinXP. Pretty soon we’ll all be using these.

Does anybody know where I can find a driver for an Intellimouse 1.1A PS/2? The church’s computer mouse is that version. Unfortunately Windows 2000 doesn’t carry that driver. I’ve been doing some web searches for it, but I can’t find a driver without first signing up for some lame access to these type of drivers. Windows 2000 seems to work with the Intellimouse 1.2A, but not 1.1A.
I dug up some really old floppy disks to make CDR backups. Mostly of stuff I had from Lipscomb. It’s amazing. The total amount of data on these disks are about 10MB – so small compared to the amount of data we are working with today. I was hoping to fill up a CDR with it, but I think I’ll wait until I find some more stuff to archive. I found some old emails from 1996 and 1997 – where I had written form letters to all of my friends to update them on what I was doing. This weblog would probably be excellent to archive this type of information in. However I’m not sure if I’ll do it.
I’ve been digging into how to implement CSS with webpages. I edited Josh’s Weblog…which uses CSS. It seems pretty slick. I wish I could find a good WYSIWYG editor for CSS files. Anybody got any suggestions? I guess I must be behind the times since I’m not that familiar with CSS and everyone seems to be using them these days.
Oh yeah. It is St. Patrick’s Day, which means very little to me. Only that I’m supposed to wear green or get pinched or something.

I’ve been thinking about converting this weblog database over to MySQL, which is supposed to be better, quicker, faster than the regular ole database. I know nothing about MySQL, only that it is free and easy to use. But the good part is that I don’t have to know all there is to know. MovableType is supposed to be able to use it…no problem.
So I’ve been pondering this church computer networking issue. We’ve got all those computers donated waiting to be networked. The only problem is that our resident computer guru is also a CPA and won’t be able to help with this network installation until after April 15th (obviously). So the next big thing will have to wait.
Still it is amazing how far they’ve gone with these computers. I have been pondering getting the preacher’s computer some more RAM so it can be upgraded to Win2K. David’s computer is a Cadillac among the rest of the Pintos in the office. Well, maybe not a Cadillac, more of a nice Honda. Still the other office workers don’t know they’re driving Pinto computers. I don’t know how they’ve been getting along with those 8 year old Packard Bell Pintos (apologies to other Packard Bell users). Those are inadequate for zipping out those weekly church bulletins.
I’ve seen a scanner in the church conference room, not being used. I was thinking about asking permission to use it in the audio/visual pit area. You never know. It could come in handy whenever someone brings a picture to us wanting it to be shown on the big giant screen. The overhead is not always adequate, ya know?
I’ve lost all respect for singer Ryan Adams. That’s RYAN Adams….not to be confused with “Summer of ’69” Bryan Adams. Ryan Adams sings “New York, New York,” that one hit for the wonder. Seems Ryan tends to cuss alot in between his songs in concert and on his website. What a drag. Express yourself with reasonable language.

I tried upgrading from Mozilla 1.0 to Mozilla 1.2. There were a bunch of bugs in it…like using the Ctrl-F keys to find a word in the page. Using that function completely crashed Mozilla. So I downgraded back to Mozilla 1.0.
The only reason I tried to upgrade was due to a plug-in I was trying to add to it. It was supposed to let you blog while surfing in the same browser window. The plug-in was supposed to work well with Mozilla 1.2, but unfortunately it didn’t work with Windows 2000. So my hopes were dashed.
I helped a friend of my mom’s get setup with Juno email. Nice old Windows 95 machine with 48MB of RAM. Probably adequate for her needs. Had a 33.6 USB External modem. It’s been a while since I saw an external modem. Anyway she’s happy. I’m happy. And she can email away.
The big companies that control our lives have done a good job at convincing us that email and the internet are vital to our lives. So that some retired grandmother in Omaha HAS to subscribe to AOL in order to continue contact with her grandkids in Missouri. So we HAVE to have the internet. Its the next big thing. The great white hype. The new frontier. The next best thing since sliced bread.
So apparently everyone NEEDS the internet. Everyone NEEDS email. As if our lives weren’t already complicated enough as it was. And somehow I’ve convinced you that my life is important enough to share (and for you to read) on this webpage.
Juno email? You’ve come a long way, baby. Circa 1996: Juno email becomes available. Everyone rejoices. Finally…free email without paying those huge tuition bills at your favorite junior college. So its been good for those grandmothers who don’t know anything about the net but want to send fickle messages back and forth.
Still this whole internet thing seems halfway between a huge inside joke and something remotely legitament. Legit for people who use it as a real tool. A huge joke for people who…well, use it as a huge joke.
Stories I’ve read lately:
Tale of the Big Giant Cheeto on Ebay
Anti-Americanism affect American Tourists

Spent much of the day prepping a computer to use in the audio/visual ministry area….displaying songs and announcements on the machine. Had to install a bunch of hardware on it. CDRW Drives, Zip Drives…. The PC doesn’t even have any USB ports on it. Then there’s not any sound cards….
I think these machines were just terminal machines. They didn’t need much on them. Just the basics. The main thing is that these machines are better than what we’ve got. Even some of the church secretary’s machines are 8 years old. This will be a good improvement to them.
So a bunch of things went wrong with the installation. But we eventually got it to work. Everything is good to go for Sunday morning.
So while picking up some computer equipment at a local computer store, I ran into someone I went to school with. He recognized me. I guess I haven’t changed much in appearance since high school. On the other hand, I would have never recognized him. I guess this is only a preview of what might occur at my reunion this summer.
Sinbad is coming to Lipscomb. I’d like to go to this. I hear Sinbad is really funny and really clean. So maybe I’ll be able to go….

I did find some cartons of Jungle Juice for my object lesson on the devotional scheduled Sunday. Woohoo! Kids will be talking about the Jungle Juice devo for years to come. Special thanks to Todd for the devo idea. “Reach for Something Good” is a good philosophy to live by.
Exxon is the place to go for Purity Jungle Juice.
There’s an advertisement for Miller Beer on my Juno email screen. And who said Juno was family friendly? I’m trying to see if I ever told Juno that i was over 21, but each time I want to access my profile, Juno wants me to update it….asking revealing information like what’s my internet service provider.
Do AOLers have this problem? Do liquor ads show up on little Johnny’s email screen? How about ads for smokeless tobacco?

A friend of mine asked me “How do I block up pop up ads?”
I’m glad you asked. Here are my suggestions:

• Download Mozilla. – Mozilla is an open source browser similiar to Netscape. After you install it, go to Edit, Preferences, Advanced, Scripts and Windows….Uncheck “Open Unrequested Windows.” This will stop all pop-ups, even the ones you want. Like the CNN pop up vote thingies on their website. Still, it is a good thing. Use Mozilla for passive surfing. If you need to see a pop up, cut and paste the URL into Internet Explorer and use that.
• Privoxy – Advanced users should be able to download it and configure their browser properly. Just follow the directions.
• Reconfigure your host file – Do a web search for Hosts file and ads. You should find a file with text like this:
  127.0.0.1 ad.doublclick.net
  127.0.0.1 ad.linkexchange.com
  127.0.0.1 ad.linksynergy.com
  Download it to somewhere where you can easily get to. Then go to your real host file (usually in C:windows or C:winntsystem32driversetc folder). Rename it to host.bak. Then copy the host file you just downloaded to there. Make sure you name the host file simply “host” or you might find your internet connection gone. That should take care of some of the ads (depending on how comprehensive the ad file you downloaded). Also if you get tired of the broken images of the missing ads, get eDexter.
• Surf in Peace. Install it and put it in your start up folder. Everytime you get an unwanted pop up add, click on the icon by your clock (bottom right corner), and add it to the block list.
• Download Adaware and clean your system of spyware.

That’s it. Nothing else. This has stopped 90% of ads. I rarely see them anymore. Your mileage may vary. If you screw things up, don’t blame me. It’s your own dumb luck.

You may have noticed this webpage was down for a few hours. But everything is back up now. Kudos to Chuck for getting it back up! This reminds me that I need to make backups more often.
This website is pretty fickle. It would be interesting to know who tried visiting this site and was turned away. Remember kids, this website should not be the most important thing in your life. JeffWhittle.com is down. So what? Go outside and enjoy the sunshine.