The Uconn Huskies (the only team in Connecticut to root for…) just won the NCAA tournament - go Huskies!

Turns out in Chicago, ComEd (electricity provider) can’t turn off the electricity during the winter, due to the fact that people would die. However, come April 1st, they can and will shut off any power that is not being paid for.

Oddly enough, despite the fact that I live in apartment #2 and it is one unit, ComEd seems to think that the upstairs of my apartment is a completely seperate unit, namely #3. So when ComEd cut the power to unit 3 on April 1st, I came home to a pitch black bedroom and office (yes, where all my computers live). So I’ve been spending the past few days in a very dark and quiet upstairs. Power should be restored Monday or Tuesday…just as soon as somebody has the time to get out here and return the apartment to normal living conditions. Now the only matter left is the bill for the electricity that my servers have been sucking down for the past year.

On a side note, today is 04/04/04 - woot.

I’ve decided I need to be a much healthier after a 2-year hiatus of nearly no exercise and extremely bad eating habits. The poor eating habits is primarily due to my work - I travel a lot and it’s a struggle to eat well while you’re on the road. Even if you try to, restaurants make it difficult to enjoy a good meal…of course, that’s probably due to the fact that I am wholeheartedly a meat & eggs kind of guy.

So a couple new goals - move more often, and try to eat better when I’m at home. Simple enough, huh? I think I’ll be buying a bike to achieve that first goal. I could run, but that’s never done much for me. I like rollerblading, but I feel like that doesn’t give me quite the workout I’m looking for. Thus, an occasional bike down the lakeshore path and perhaps even elsewhere in the state seems to be the answer. As for the eating part, I went over to Whole Foods the other day to buy good healthy stuff. I try to munch on celery and carrots more often now to get some veggies.

Hopefully, this will improve my overall health factor, but I guess we shall see.

I’m so happy - I found Synergy. No, this isn’t some aspect of monkhood that I have achieved after many years of study, it’s merely a wonderful little application that lets me use my keyboard and mouse between two different computers merely by moving my mouse to a side of the screen. I’ve used Win2VNC before to do the same and while it worked well, I had to a) install VNC and b) it ceased to function very well once I went to a dual-monitor setup. Thus, I’ve been on the prowl ever since for a good app that does the same. And thanks to my recent discovery of MSDN blogs, I found a good article about using your laptop as a second monitor. I can now happily recline in my chair and use my laptop without having to lean forward to use it’s puny little keyboard - ah, the luxury of laziness.

Now, if only I could find a good virtual window manager for windows, I’d be very happy. The one that comes with GeoShell isn’t bad, but doesn’t fit my usage patterns - i.e. I like to minimize things and have them stay on the same desktop when I restore them. I’ve also tried Virtual Dimension a couple times, but I couldn’t get settled with it either. This past time, it was a little slow and kludgy (probably just the number of apps I was running on my laptop at times), but it also didn’t handle command prompts well. I always keep a cmd.exe open and Virtual Dimension kept it on every desktop - fairly annoying for me. Otherwise, it wasn’t bad, but I know Keith didn’t have too much luck with it either.

For now, though, back to writing an interace to my syslog database server. Oh, and taxes, and doing laundary, and cleaning up a little bit after being away for work and fun for the past 8 days.

p.s. I did want to mention there is a bit of (barely noticeable) lag with Synergy, but I have no doubt that’s due to the fact that I’m connecting from my wireless to my internal network. If I were on the same network, I bet it would be flawless.

So I left a beautiful and sunny Chicago this weekend to go down to upstate NY for work, where it is 30 degrees and snowing. Not to mention the hotel has dialup and a whopping 20.6k at that.

So hear I sit, eyes blistering from staring at my laptop screen all day, drooling over articles on RootPrompt about switching to a mac which I’ve been wanting to do for the past few years. I find it odd that there are more Apple articles on RootPrompt these days than Linux articles. Actually, no I don’t - it just surprises me. Unfortunately for me, the Mac Buyer’s Guide recommends I hold off on getting a new PowerBook anytime soon. That’s ok - I’m still waiting for Apple to drop the G5 into the PowerBook.

That’s all for now - back to trying to look further than 2ft in front of me.

I put some pictures of the recent progressive dinner I had with a bunch of people form work. As you can see, it was a blast! We hosted dessert at my place, which gave the new pool table a greak workout. Luckily, it came away with no stains on the felt. ;)

I had creme brulee, which S was kind enough to whip up on super-short notice. She had fun with the blow torch later, as well. I spent the entire day shopping for ramekins and glasses for 20 people and only had about a half-hour to prep the creme brulee.

There are only a few pics up there at the moment, but I’ve got a whole bunch more to upload. It was a blast, and I can’t wait to do it again!

While at a client this week, I was given a good recommendation for some Greek eating. I think it is at 314 S. Halsted St., or Halsted and Jackson - but regardless it is called the Parthenon. Apparently, the gyros are wonderful, which the Metromix reviews seem to agree with. I will have to check it out and post a review. The client recommended getting the family style gyro for the best deal.

We all love gadgets. I don’t know who Cory is, but he’s got a lot of gadgets! I like the Exilim, but I might go with something a little less point-and-click. Time to start researching as I think it is time for a new camera. Other than that, there’s not much he has that I don’t besides the Powerbook (drool).

It never seems to amaze me how many sites are still vulnerable to SQL Injection. I just stumbled upon a site specifically for SQL Server scripts and it was SQL injectable!

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error ‘80040e14’

[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Unclosed quotation mark before the character string ”.

To all web developers out there - validate all user input always!!! Especially if your backend is Microsoft SQL - it’s just too easy to gain utter and complete control over a system where the web frontend is vulnerable to SQL Injection.

ponders whether he validates all user input…

There’s a story on Kuro5hin about how to stop receiving credit card offers. I actually did this myself a couple months back as I was receiving 3-5 offers a week, and it was simply getting ridiculous. Similar to when you receive an email with EOM (End of Message) in the subject and still feel oddly compelled to open the email, I felt oddly compelled to open each and every credit card offer just to make sure I wasn’t missing something.

Well I finally got fed-up and called the msytical opt-out number. Per Kuro5hin:

1. Call 1-888-5-OPTOUT.
2. Select option 2 to skip a message about an internet email (described below).
3. Select option 2 to opt out of mailings permanently. Be careful, because option 1 only opts you out for two years.
4. Follow the prompts to enter your phone number, name, zip code, address, and social security number.

I’ve done this, and I now only receive a couple measly pieces of mail a week. Maybe I liked it better before when I thought somebody really cared, but I know it’s for the better. ;)