Mark’s Blog

So I just got done speaking with ASUSTech-Timothy01, and I have to say I’m a bit disappointed. Back in September I bought the ASUS My Cinema-PE9400 Combo TV Tuner card for my computer. I installed the card and all the drivers and programs and got nothing but a blank screen. I tried many different configurations, all to no avail. So I finally got an RMA number and sent it back, assuming it was defective.

Well, I got the new one yesterday, I installed the card and updated any drivers that needed to be updated, and tried it again. This time, just like last time, it “found” channels, but only displayed a blank screen.

To top it all off, when I tried contacting ASUS’ technical support and obviously exhausted all possibilities, the technical support agent just ends the chat session. They didn’t try calling me back (which they could have, because I gave them my phone number) or anything.

Below is the conversation I had:

I then tried to contact them again through their live chat option and the session ended up timing out, because I was “on hold” online for too long.

Still sucks. And now a lot of my add-ons don’t work. There’s an annoying little message that pops-up at the top of the browser screen that says, “Internet Explorer is currently running with add-ons disabled. Click here to manage, disable, or remove your add-ons.” Well that’s great, but how am I supposed to know what add-ons are or are not compatible with Internet Explorer 8, Beta 2, if it doesn’t tell me?!?! Firefox at least has that easy to use feature where you can search for and install add-on updates with just a simple click of a button. Firefox is great, Internet Explorer sucks.

Also, what happened to the “Emulate IE7″ button? Do the people at Microsoft not understand that there are a lot of people out there who need to test RIAs and Web sites on multiple browser types? I completely regret installing the Beta 2 version of IE8, because it’s worse than the first Beta version! Screw this, I’m going back to IE7 until they fix those problems.

First seen on Gawker, a Manhattan media news and gossip Web site, the Montauk Monster allegedly washed ashore on the far eastern end of New York’s Long Island. Some people say it looks like a turtle with no shell, a bird, an alien, and some even assert that it’s a fabrication, dreamt up to create some Interweb hype or even visibility as a new guerrilla advertising campaign.

Persoanlly, I think it could very well be real, and I’m going to put my money (what little I have) on the hunch that it’s nothing more than a decomposing boar.

Below are the two pictures I’ve been able to find of this alleged monster:

I could see how these two very different images could be of the same thing; one you see of the Montauk Monster’s back (which one could only assume has been frying beneath the summer sun for quite a few hours/days) and the other is of little beast’s underside, unharmed by the sun’s rays. There’s also no telling how much time transpired between the two photos, perhaps someone flipped said beasty over and unbound (what looks to have been bound) its front extremities.

My personal take on this is that the beast is neither monster nor fabrication, rather it looks to me like a simple Boar that has been given a few days/weeks to decompose whilst bathing in some H2O.

The reason I think it’s a boar is because it kind of looks like one. The “beak” on the forefront of its face looks more like a decomposed (or potentially injured/chopped off) snout. It has tusks much like a boar has and its head and general body fits the size and shape of a boar. The underside also reveals patches of what looks like hair (which boars also have, in case you didn’t know ).

Below is an image I got from a Web site of a boar’s skeleton.

Source: http://www.archeozoo.org/en-article134.html

Now, I’m no scientist nor am I educated in any type of animal science, but to me, the pieces just seem to match up. The only thing that sort of seems out of place is the Montauk’s long tail and seemingly longer and possibly malformed front appendages.

I just got this message in my inbox from Haberman, Michael C. MCHABERMAN@stthomas.edu

TOP URGENT!!! Please Confirm Your Account Immediately…

Dear Edu Email Account Owner,

This message is from Edu messaging center to all Edu email account owners.
We are currently upgrading our data base and e-mail account center. We are
deleting all Edu email account to create more space for new accounts.

To prevent your account from closing you will have to update it below so
that we will know that it’s a present used account.

We have been sending this notice to all our Edu email account owners and
this is the last notice/verification exercise.

CONFIRM YOUR EMAIL IDENTITY BELOW

Email Username: ……………
EMAIL Password: …………….
Date of Birth: ……………..
Country or Territory: ……….

Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his or her account within
Seven days of receiving this warning will lose his or her account
permanently.

Warning Code: VX2G99AAJ

THANKS,
WEBMASTER SUPPORT TEAM.
Reply to: support_team@alumni.com <mailto:support_team@alumni.com>

Wow, talk about a failure waiting to happen. Are people really stupid enough to fall for transparent scams, such as this?

Not only did the email come from a school that I’ve never gone to, but the support email is from alumni.com. How would any of those people have control over my college email address?

Apparently this scam has been done before:

http://www.aub.edu.lb/bulletin/83461.html

I think that it’s sort of ironic that Apple, known for making computers that “just work” and are rather forgiving with it comes to user error, would make a Web browser that is very particular and less forgiving when it comes to displaying XHTML and CSS Web sites.

As it turns out, in order to display an image in the body tag of a Web site using CSS, you must first make sure you order your rules accordingly. That order is as follows:

1. Color (#000000, for example)
2. URL of image
3. Whether or not it repeats (no-repeat, repeat-x or repeat-y)
4. It’s position along the x-axis (left, center or right)
5. It’s position on the y-axis (top or bottom)

An example of this would look something like this:

body {
background: #000000 url(../images/bg.jpg) no-repeat center top;
}

I am currently seeking full-time employment! If you like working with a passionate, awesome, and “very interested in learning more about anything and everything Web design and development” person, then feel free to contact me (look for my resume on my Web site).

I am looking for a fast-paced, exciting company for which to work; a company where I can utilize my skills to my maximum potential and continue to learn and grow to become an ever-growing asset to it and its clients. So don’t wait, give me a call (or shoot me an email), today!

Did that seem a little cheesy? Good. I like it. Cut and print!

Exercise is as essential to living as is breathing oxygen, eating and sleeping. People who work complain about feeling so tired or being so worn out after a stressful day at the office receive no sympathy from me. I won’t even play the world’s smallest violin for them, because they have complete control over their lives and they don’t even know it.

If you exercise well most days of the week and eat well all days of the week, you won’t feel so tired when you get home from work, or even while you’re at work. Plus, you will even preform better at work and at home, by being more awake, more aware and more energized then ever before.

This is your life, why waste it being unhealthy? This is what I don’t understand about people. You have one life. One. Why on earth wouldn’t you want to live the best life you can? You don’t want to deprive yourself of sleep, you don’t want to deprive yourself of food, so why would you want to deprive yourself of exercise? Why deprive yourself of healthy foods that will make your life more enjoyable?

Anyway, enough with the ranting. I just bought the book, LL Cool J’s Platnium Workout. I’m on week 1 of phase 1. Let’s see how it goes.

I just wanted to say this. Coding for Safari just requires too many work arounds for even the simplest tasks (such as displaying a background image and/or color in the body tag of the stylesheet). Safari may tout being “standards compliant,” but it most defenitely isn’t. Please, Internet surfers of the World, use Firefox instead (hell, I’d even settle for IE 7)!

So this past Friday I moved into my new apartment! I’m really liking not living in a fraternity. Not that living in a fraternity wasn’t fun, it was, but now that I’m in the “real world,” I think apartment living will be more conducive to my productivity and work.

Here’s a list of reasons why I’m happy to be living in a new apartment and not living at the fraternity:

• I don’t have to walk down two flights of stairs to get to the kitchen
• I don’t have to lock up my food
• Bigger room and a lot more storage space (plus a huge closet!)
• I can finally set up my desk so it’s more like an office/work environment than a college dorm room environment
• Closer to my work
• Quieter neighborhood
• Kevin (my roommate) has an Xbox 360 and is getting an HDTV (can we say Halo 3?)
• The list goes on!

Once I get everything situated, set up and organized, I’ll take some pictures and post them here so everyone can see how cool I am.

In other news, I’m still in the works of getting the PC I built for work to work. I’m hoping to have that settled by the end of this week. I’m currently finishing up that Alpha Gamma Delta - University of Minnesota Chapter Web site, and then I’ll be working full-throttle on Circuit Sports’, Kelly Benefits Strategies / Medifast Pro Cycling Team Web site, as well as Jane Gilgun’s Personal Web Site.

I have come to really not like Safari, perhaps even more so than Internet Explorer 7 (of course IE 6 will always have a special place in my heart of hate). Recently when attempting to implement the “Sliding Doors of CSS” from A List Apart, I noticed that universally changing the default font size (to 62.5%) is not in the capabilities of this browser. More over, you can’t highlight an element on a Web page, then right-click (or control-click, for the few Mac users out there) and view the source code of just that section. The only option available is to view the source code for the entire page. That’s lame in my opinion, but leave it to Apple to limit your options.

Another beef I have with Safari is that you can’t view a site’s CSS file directly in the browser. Attempting to do so just causes the file to be downloaded onto your hard drive and then you have to go out of the browser and open it separately in a text document (or Dreamweaver, or whatever your code editor/viewer of choice is). Again, leave it to Apple to limit your options. This is probably the biggest reason I’m not an Apple fan; they limit your choices thereby forcing you to do things their way.