Author: Jeff Milner

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Vi Va La Horns – Pronghorn Scavenger Hunt

Yesterday was a great day because I started my first day of work at the University — but even more so because in the afternoon I played water polo with the swim team. It was great, my team won the first match 10-0 and then Brad, the coach, switched me to the other side and my new team won, this time 10-4.

But even better than that, yesterday was the second annual Horns scavenger hunt and as luck would have it I was on the winning team for that too!

We went to a local pub afterwards for some partying. One of the swimmers, James, had a little too much to drink and eventually got thrown out. They asked him his name and another guy yelled to him, don’t tell him your real name, so he gave them my name. I’m not too worried about it, but I’m told by another swimmer that I might be blacklisted now.

Anyway, after that we went to a dance club and stayed out way too late. Luckily for me I didn’t have to be at swim practice at 8:30 in the morning like everyone else. Even after it was already way too late we went out and had something to eat at Humpty’s.

I don’t know how they could get up this morning for practice. Actually I’d be surprised if a lot of them made it. They were going to have a team breakfast afterwards, but I was still too tired to join them.

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Web Design Job

I picked up some contract work tonight revamping a private company’s web page. They want a complete redesign, including an embedded shopping cart system. I’m pretty excited to be creating their site and I know they are elated.

I went over and talked with the proprietors tonight and we discussed everything from colour schemes and design to user interfaces and secure ordering. Good-bye hot pink table based layout, hello… well something CSS based anyway — I can’t give everything away now, can I?

The thing that was most disturbing was their horror story about the trouble they’ve been going through trying to get their site online. It sounded like there were several overlapping problems which I helped them sort out today.

Now their DNS service (provided by register.com) has totally screwed them over. They insist that they are entitled to put a giant banner ad on the bottom of my client’s site. Of course you’re wondering, did they tell my client up front about the obtrusive ad? Or is this particular DNS service free and using the ad to make back their losses? No, it wasn’t free, and no, they never mentioned that as part of the cost for the overcharged $35 DNS service. Who would expect that their DNS service would put a big banner ad on the bottom of their page? I recommended moving to a new DNS service but my client tells me that register.com claims it will take at least 3 months! for the change to happen.

Whatever you do, don’t buy anything from register.com!

In the meantime I’m going to try and setup their site to forward itself away from the crappy register.com ad.

I’ll also keep readers here updated on whether things really are as complicated as they claim. I’m thinking the three month claim is just a scare tactic to keep my less technically savvy client suffering.

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WWII Soldier Found Frozen in Ice

Two climbers on a Sierra Nevada glacier discovered an ice-encased body believed to be that of an airman whose plane crashed in 1942.

World War II Soldier discovered in ice

From CNN:

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — Two climbers on a Sierra Nevada glacier discovered an ice-encased body believed to be that of an airman whose plane crashed in 1942.

The man was wearing a World War II-era U.S. Army Corps parachute when his frozen head, shoulder and arm were spotted on 13,710-foot Mount Mendel in Kings Canyon National Park, park spokeswoman Alex Picavet said Wednesday.

Park rangers and specialists camped on the mountainside in freezing weather for an excavation expected to take several days. The body was 80% encased in ice, Picavet said.

“We’re not going to go fast,” she said. “We want to preserve him as much as possible. He’s pretty intact.”

The excavation crew included an expert from a military unit that identifies and recovers personnel who have been missing for decades.

Park officials believe the serviceman may have been part of the crew of an AT-7 navigational training plane that crashed on Nov. 18, 1942. The wreckage and four bodies were found in 1947 by a climber.

(CNN video)

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Quotations by Douglas Adams

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.

– Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

If you possess even the slightest sense of humour, then this page of quotations by Douglas Adams will have you in stitches.

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iTunes Art Importer

One of the things I like about my iPod Photo is that I have the ability to link album artwork with my music files. One of the things I don’t like about it is that for someone like me that has a rather large music collection, it takes an awful lot of effort to add artwork to each song.

Luckily someone wrote a new application that automatically goes out and downloads artwork for each of your songs. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ve read about it from a few different sources and it sounds to be a great program.

Check out the iTunes Art Importer.

Update: I’ve tried it and I love it!

Update: Macworld has a story from 2005 about this software.

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Keywords

I came up with an idea this morning to help make my blog entries easier to sort. Of course, this may end up being a bad idea that gets dropped, but I’m going to try it out for awhile and decide if I like it or not.

The idea is keywords placed at the bottom of each entry, with each keywords linked to a search query for my domain. In theory anyway it should make it easy to find all related entries on a specific topic.

Search keywords: meta

Update: This lasted for a few months but I’ve gone back and removed the search query’s from all other posts except this one.

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My New Job at the University of Lethbridge

I just got hired on at the University of Lethbridge working for the International Centre. After a two and a half month hiatus from the workforce, I’m really happy to finally be bringing in some cashola. Having money will make buying groceries that much easier.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the break. I think it was important for me to take some time to really nurse the wounds from my break-up. Thinking about it, it’s kind of funny how the break-up got way more coverage on my blog then the actual engagement. I suppose I should have taken it as a pretty major sign that she didn’t really want to get married when she refused to tell her dad the big news. I just wanted to marry her so badly that I ignored the signs.

I guess I’ve come to the conclusion that she’s got more problems than she’s worth. There’s the good old fashioned emotional problems and not to mention her huge commitment issues—she doesn’t even want kids. We just weren’t on the same page. I predict that she will continue to surf from guy to guy until she finds she’s alienated everyone so much that nobody wants anything to do with her. I still think she’s missing out big-time on me, but hey you reap what you sow I guess.

It’s still hard not to like her, and I think I’d like to be friends with her in the future, but it looks like she is going to need a lot of time before she’s ready for that.