Well, it's official : I'm hung over. Another thing you might call official is that I work in an office. You can't get any more official than being an office dweller.

So, it's Friday, July 22nd, 2005. Today is a remarkable day, since only yesterday, my family welcomed its 5th (!) child in almost as many years! Welcome, Meghan Catherine Connell born to Scott and Nikki!! 7 lbs 5 oz, human, 10 toes, 10 fingers, one cute baby. I saw pictures but I haven't seen her in person yet. I have a knack for not seeing my nieces on their day of birth. When Kira was born, I was in college. However, when Caden and Ethan were born, I was right there, hanging out with Patty for a week to make sure she didn't try to clean the place. They were 10 weeks premature, weighing in at 3 lbs 4 oz and 1 lb 12 oz respectably. When Danny was born, I was there a few minutes after, and for a few hours in all. Now, Meghan was born, and I wasn't there. I'll be by tonight, bet on it. One cool extra thing about having another niece is that before I would have to say "My niece and nephews are coming over", when so many times I just wanted to say "My nieces and nephews are coming over." I finally don't have to worry about that anymore.

Another reason to celebrate last night was that I received an offer letter from the business that I've been a contractor at for the last 3 months! I am the bomb afterall.

Recently I wrote about how the Internet was going to hell, and I had mentioned that one reason was the fact that the sheer amount of information available on the internet will be an overwhelming amount for any search engine to handle. One complaint I had was when I typed in my name, my website didn't show up for at least 7 pages. Well, I've taken a look at Google's method of at least trying to solve this type of problem: Personalized Search.

Essentially, personalized search keeps track of all of your past searches. You can either search the web, or as you search the web often, and your history builds up, you can search your history. However, searching the web does not also show results in your history, which I think they will change.

Also, I noted this. Being the anniversary of the lunar landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, Google now has a maps.google.com type of satellite picture of the moon, pinpointing the locations of various important places on the moon. It's cool. And funny! Zoom in all the way, you will see Google's humor once again.

Apparently, maps.google.com isn't integrated with moon.google.com so this directions request didn't work:

For this whole week, the El will be under construction, being shut down from 40th to 69th street, for all intensive purposes. Today was my first day experiencing this ordeal. Let me tell you, it sucks. Take a look at this picture for a rough estimate of what's going on.

The optimal route would go right down Market Street. As you can see by the blue line, it doesn't do this, even after going halfway to Delaware first. This is due to the fact that, indeed, the El is under construction, rendering most of Market Street inaccessible. But the mystery of the new route is that first mile or so. I would assume this is also due to the fact that the shortcut to Chestnut (the road the El Shuttle, the blue line, takes before it turns to meet Market street), goes down Market Street as well, and you're only able to turn off at the first elevated station. So, the first mile may be necessary, however long it is. This first mile is the detour for everyone else going down Market, of course, or so it seems, as it was backed up immensely, and took 10-15 minutes of bumper-to-bumper hell to get through it.

Ok, the way back is fine. You travel the scenic route, up Walnut. It's slow but direct.

On the way in today, there was no mile long detour. This time, we were in one of those double buses with the flexy thing in the middle. That was different. Anyway, departure time 7:58 AM at the end of my street, walked into my office at 8:57 AM (approximate). Not a bad way in.

Here are a few reasons why you can't blame Mozilla for its SpreadFireFox.com site getting hacked.

1) They didn't write the server software that it uses to publish the website with. The software that they use doesn't actually have a security hole. It was PHP that had the security hole, a server side scripting language.

2) They don't write server software. They write browser software. Yet still, ZDNet writes

"The hack is an embarrassment to Mozilla, which uses security as the main selling point for the Firefox Web browser."

That's a joke, right? An insecure server software that you didn't write is on the opposite end of the spectrum as a secure web browser that you are proud of writing. Please.

3) It's some server admin's fault, not Mozilla. Whoever was supposed to keep the server software up to date obviously didn't do their job. This shouldn't reflect on the quality and security of Mozilla's web browser.

4) Microsoft claims to be on a "Secure Computing Initiative" for their operating systems, and yet you can still hack the f*#^% out of them.

5) Here's an analogy (since I love to use analogies): A car company, who stresses their cars are the safest, has an accident on the assembly line, causing a worker to die. Sure, they're not the safest place to work, but if the industry says their cars are the safest, does this make them not the safest? It absolutely is their problem, and a big one, but it doesn't take away from the safety of their cars in the least bit. People who believe this... well, I feel sorry for them. It's public image, but the public is stupid.

I will continue to make love to their web browser, as sexy as it is.

Here are two things that might make you laugh.

Coming up to a "left arrow green light" today, the left arrow green light went out, meaning oncoming traffic will soon be coming. After the light went out, the car in front of me went, I went, and I look in my rear view and TWO MORE cars went!! It was worth a post. I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Another story came into my mind. My friend, John, and I were coming home from somewhere that makes you cross the trolley tracks up near Garrett and Burmont. Well, we start to cross the trolley track even after noticing that the lights are blinking. Keep in mind they don't have those things that drop down and are normally made of wood painted red and white. We swore we JUST got over the tracks, and John looked in his rear view, and ANOTHER car made it over fine!! Trolleys do have brakes, but still, that thing was close, I was in the passenger seat and it was coming at us from that side. Sometimes I count my blessings :)

I don't have anymore :(

I've recently become enlightened to the fact that there are actually interesting websites out there on the internet. Out of all this time I've spent browsing the internet since its inception, I was sure that I've visited everything. However, I recently came across 2 fascinating sites (well, not exactly sites).

In high school, I had heard of Nirvana. It wasn't until after Kurt Cobain's death that I really got into them. My music phases post talks about this a bit. I listened to "In Utero" for a long time, on the walk to and from school, in a tape walkman I had probably stolen off of one of my brothers. I wouldn't say I became obsessed with the band, just the music, but I would buy a few magazines that had Kurt in it. I probably don't have them any more. I remember that day back in 1994, in April, at Jim's house, our friend called and said Kurt Cobain had died, rather, had killed himself. I was like "Who's Kurt Cobain?". No lie. Apparently, if you read more and more into this story, it soon ends up not looking like a suicide, but more of a homicide. I found a site, In Defence Of Kurt Cobain (that's how they spell "Defense", they must be a Brit). There are tons of facts there, leaning towards the author's implication that Courtney Love murdered Kurt. Form your own conclusion.

On to the next one. We all know of the events on September 11, 2001. What everyone doesn't know is exactly every piece of information that was available. Until you watch this movie called Loose Change. Search the internet for a downloadable version of it. The movie is pretty good, but can seem a little bit far fetched. It opens with the perfect disclaimer, "For Your Consideration". It simply points out that most of the world was given enough evidence to make the conclusion that al Qaeda attacked us on September 11th. But there is more. Take it as entertainment, or let it convince you. I find that the picture it paints is too shocking for me to believe it, but the evidence, or lack thereof, is there.

I might try to find other interesting stuff and post it here every week, but we'll see how long that holds up.

This is brilliant. It's called "Lies, Deceit, Cheats and Greed". Oh wait, that's every reality show out there where the ultimate goal is to be the last one standing (Survivor Style) and winning a huge sum of money. And Americans are enthralled. Since Survivor there's been a huge number of these. One of the most recent ones is Hell's Kitchen. The thing is, it reinforces a quote I heard.

"Behind every great fortune there is a crime." - Honore de Balzac

Meaning no one gets rich without doing something illegal or immoral. That's probably why I'll never be rich :) I'd rather watch something where everyone isn't fighting for a reward, like Surreal World, if I watch anything at all.

But anyway, that's enough posts about television to last me a few years.

I rarely watch TV besides sporting events and sometimes the news, but when I do, I manage to find entertaining stuff. Last night was the first show of the new season of "The Surreal World". The last one, with Chris Knight, was good. I did watch most of it. The new one has people in it like "Pepa" from "Salt 'n Pepa", and Balki from that show, and a couple of good looking women, and a dirtbike pioneer, and of course, Jose Canseco. It's going to rule.

Another show, on that same channel (it's a Godsend), is that fat show I had mentioned before, where everyone has a set amount of weight to lose, and they form teams, and whatever team loses the most weight wins. This is mildly entertaining when it's just normal people, but now there are personalities on there that most of us would know already. That girl from the Snapple commercials (Wendy), the lead singer from Warrant, Victoria Jackson of SNL, Phil Margera (Bam's dad who gets the S%@!#^# kicked out of him by Bam in pretty much every episode of Jackass [I don't watch the new one]). Of course there's more, but most worthy of a mention is Gary Busey. This dude rocks.

Let me clarify something though. I don't care for celebrities any more than I care for us "normal" folk. I don't know why, but if I saw someone who I don't consider an "extraordinary celebrity", they might get a second look from me if they're lucky. Not all celebrities are created equal, and of course, it's all opinion, but I find that there's an elite group of super talented folk who deserve it. Probably a topic for another discussion. Basically, don't expect this to become a hotbed for celebrity talk. In fact, you might as well get it all out on this post. There's a reason I don't have categories on the left entitled "TV" or "Celebrities". I don't watch TV really, and I find it a waste of time to talk about other people, anybody, either in a nice way or in a bad way, but especially in a bad way.

Anyway, back to Gary Busey. So, this guy, you may have heard, was in a huge motorcycle accident, had a huge change on his outlook on life, appreciates it more and everything, and became a philosopher of sorts. And these other people laugh at him when he comes up with stuff like his acronym of TEAM (Together Everyone Achieves More) and when he states that his team was put together by a power greater than himself and it's a sign. They laugh at him. Those guys, whoever they are, have no idea what he's been through and how he perceives life. They should just STFU in my opinion. But, whoever got this group of people together are geniuses. They know what people will clash, put them on the team together, and it becomes entertainment for all of us, defending Gary Busey or ripping on the Snapple girl. It's not even worth that much time talking about it, and I've wasted 8 minutes of my life. The disrespect shown is unbelievable. I was in an accident, and if I claimed that it changed my life, and acted like it like Busey does, I'd pity anyone who laughed at me, but he's probably too nice for that.

Sometimes I catch the first show of a season (last night I caught 2), and then never watch it again. We'll see what happens. I want to see if Bam's Dad loses 80 pounds! He considers mowing the lawn on a RIDE-ON MOWER exercise, it's hilarious.

Something else that's funny: I saw the Hulk Hogan reality show last night, where his daughter who's 16 wants to go on a date with a 22 year old, and Hulk's having a hard time letting her, and finally agrees to it after buying GPS tracking equipment for the car. OK. She's 16. The one scene had her coming out after getting a shower, in very skimpy bra and panties. Hulk, any guy who watched that episode has now lusted after your daughter. That's no estimated guess. Hulk, minding who his daughter dates at 16, apparently doesn't mind that the rest of the country now has very little left to imagine of her.

As you may know, I take the trolley and the El into work everyday. Trolley to 69th Street, then 69th to work. You may have heard that there were subway bombings yesterday in London, and that had caused alert levels to rise here in the lovely USA, but only for rail lines (which I think is dumb, but that's another story for another time, like in 10 minutes). However, I fear nothing, so I continue to go to work on the train. Call this whatever you want (courage, heroism, Godlike symptoms), I'm a stud.

Mainly, this courage comes from my lack of fear from dying or losing a leg or something, but also it comes from necessity for a paycheck. You might ask, what good is a paycheck if you're dead? Well, I'm sure that no one who has received a paycheck posthumously can answer that question, so why would you be asking me it? Like I know? Are you racist against dead people?! Ok, don't make me play the dead card on your ass. I'll have civil rights all over it.

So now that I've covered my utter lack of fear from anything (except bugs flying down or up my shirt), let's ponder why it's dumber than Kodie to raise threat alerts here in the United States. These also happen to be more reasons that I'm not afraid of an attack.

1) Coordinated attacks usually happen at the same time, hence the word "coordinated". By the time we heard of London's attacks it would have been too late already. Plus, there's like a huge time difference, so rush hour in the morning there is like sleepy time here. Rush hour in the evening there, if it's 5 o'clock, is lunch. My point is, terrorists would have suspected that the USA would have taken steps to prevent an attack here after hearing of the one in London. So they would have either coordinated an attack or just decided to attack one place.

2) Terrorists are not stupid. We probably insulted them bigtime by raising threat levels on only the public trans systems. Seriously, do you think, if attacks are only slightly coordinated, like 5-6 hours apart, that they would perform the same types of attacks? Meaning, bombs on subways?! Come on. I give them a little more credit than that.

That's not to discount the police or metro police who stand by the turnstyles everyday, looking for anything suspicious. But that brings up a question. They're always there. I thought the threat level was raised. Shouldn't they be "stepping up" security? They have the same amount. Oh well, I still feel safe. Plus, SEPTA has these signs, and has had them for as long as I've taken it, in their cars that say "Nothing can stop a train faster than a forgotten bag" or something like that. And it also warns to keep an eye out for this activity. I think it's brilliant. But, we're only Philly, what interest would al Qaeda have in us? I have no idea.

Yes!

If only I needed a car. I said it before, I would love to have one of the new Dodge Chargers. I haven't checked what cars are available at the employee discount, but I do seriously doubt that a car on the market for less than a month will suddenly go at employee rates.

[Moments later] Found it :
"Excluded from the program are the 2005 Chrysler 300, Dodge Magnum, Dodge Sprinter, Dodge Viper, Jeep Liberty Diesel, all 2006 models, and all SRT models."

From Philly.com. I don't know why they wouldn't explicitly mention the Charger, it's their best car. But it's included in the exclusion list, I guess. I kind of predicted that Chrysler/Dodge would be joining in :)

You can only imagine what an employee pays now. If anyone can get a car at that price, employees have one less perk, so I'd imagine they lowered the actual employee discount, so we are just getting the old employee discount, therefore not getting THE employee discount at all. Of course, they could have just given the big F YOU to their employees, saying that it's only a month sale and suck it up, b@#%^@tches. Those rat bastards. Business is F@%^%@#$!@ed up.

Since I'd rather not use my dedicated Linux server as an email server as well, and catch tons of spam eating away at my 1000GB monthly bandwidth, I have a few free email accounts and one not so free. Namely, 4 or 5 gmail accounts and a hotmail account. There are probably others. However, I'm starting to hate hotmail. I pay $20/year for it, and will probably still pay for it at least one more year. I am going to try to completely convert over to my gmail account. They have better spam filtering with NO initial setup! For instance, only one email that was junk got into my inbox, but NO emails that weren't junk went into my "spam" folder. Hotmail basically has no idea. Gmail is smart. The one thing it's lacking is email groups, but it's underway. Everything else is solid. I've started using labels to categorize mail, which is cool. The one thing that I don't like about Gmail is that all of your mail stays in the one folder. I see where they're coming from, and perhaps if I use more labels and more frequently, I'll start to see the beauty of them, and won't care as much about the one folder thing. The one extra extra strong thing that gmail offers is it'll automatically store sent messages. I sometimes like to read messages after I've sent them along to make sure I wrote them perfectly, sometimes laugh at my own jokes that I wrote in them, or just simply waste a few minutes of time. I always forget to check the little checkbox in hotmail to store a message that I'm sending. I hate it. Gmail is good where I want it to be good.

So if you have me as a contact in your mail program, please update my email address to :

jasontconnell [the at sign] gmail [the dot] com

So, email me already.

This process has started. Yesterday, I copied all of the worthwhile contacts from my hotmail account, saved them as a csv file after much pain and suffering, and did an import into gmail. Works like a charm. That contact groups thing hurts me, because I wanted to send an email out to everyone that I drink with. I would create a group called "Drinking buddies" and send it a message. Gmail doesn't have great contact support, either (or "yet"), like it only has Name and Email address fields, but it's a beta (meaning, it's not finished). So later on they'll probably have phone fields, extra email addresses for people, pictures, quick facts (like, "This guy can't hold his liquor"), and other neat stuff.

If you want to try gmail out, send me an email, although I can't imagine anyone who spends more than 30 minutes a day on the internet doesn't have an account...

London was attacked today. Coming right after they had received the bid on the 2012 Olympics, a thought popped in my head. It wasn't a joke, per se, but it was lighthearted in times of non-lightheartedness. Oh well, I am an optimist, I don't stay mad at anyone, really. Honestly. Come up to me and kick me in the face, tomorrow I'll smile and say hi. Don't really do that though. So, it's nothing against anybody, it is just the way my mind works. Of course, I hate terrorism even more and feel bad for London that we weren't able to help extinguish the threat, and of course I realize that I am as susceptible to terroristic attacks as anyone, so I can't really explain any better why this thought popped in my head. Here's the thought:

"Perhaps al Qaeda wanted to host the Olympics in 2012?"

Pretty lighthearted and harmless, huh? I thought so, but excused the F out of it anyway when I posted it here.

[Update] Great. The US is raising the terror level for rail and metro. I take the trolley and the El into Center City. Like I said, I know I am as susceptible to these attacks as anyone.

Also, GM extended theirs another month. Their sales rose 41% last month, who could blame them? I'm personally waiting for Dodge to join in, I want a Charger. Actually, that will never happen, I'm paying off my car still and it works well. It's almost 3 years paid for so I might as well just pay it off and never ever pay another car payment again. Until I need another one. Which is hopefully never. I love my car :) This weekend, I drove my Dad's car and my brother's Xterra. Then we got home and I drove my car, and it's just that familiar feeling, you know, like your favorite pair of boxers that you wear everyday. I'm only paying $[explitive deleted] a month for it, so I could probably bump it up a bit and pay it off a little early. I'll try my darn'dest.

The Philadelphia Flyers will be awesome next year. Judging by the fact that they have exclusive set of picks from this list, and that the Phantoms pretty much kicked everyone's ass up and down the ice last season, winning the Calder Cup in 4 games of a 7 game series. You may find me watching every Flyers game come October.

(As seen from the Fishing Pier at Cape Henlopen)