Tom’s Hardware has an interesting guide up; Build Your Own XGA Projector. For around 300 bucks you can get a 15″ LCD, tear it apart, and put it on a used overhead projector. Tempting, but I worry about power consumption. Our rent is a very good deal and we don’t pay for utilities, so I am always hesitant to add anything that sucks power. Other information avaialable at DIYProjectorCompany.com, diyAudio.com, and avsforum.com

Wow. This is really eerie.

This picture is the last of a set pulled off a memory card of some people that died in the tsunami wave. Click here to read the story, click on the gallery link at the bottom of the page to see the photos.

Looking at my visited countries map:

It would seem I need to get my ass off this continent for my next travels. However with Chicago, NYC, and Williams Lake lined up, I don’t see that happening soon.

I am going to spend a week or two in Williams Lake with family, and hopefully have enough time to head up to my family’s cabin on Francois Lake. In the 40’s and 50’s my grandfather ran a hunting & fishing lodge, catering mostly to wealthy americans (interestingly enough, my other grandparents also depended on american tourists – they ran a cafe/truck stop/tackle shop). It was not an easy or consistent way to make a living. My grandfather eventually joined the forest service and they moved to the coast. He loved the cabin and wanted to retire there. Sadly a stroke and MS crippled his body, he was unable to make it up to the cabin in the later years of his life.

I grew up living not far from the cabin, so we tried to spend a few weeks of the year there. The community that existed around the lake when my father was a boy had long since vanished. The lake now is mostly german vacation homes and some ranches. But there are a few full-timers hanging on. I still love the cabin. The wilds and rotten buildings were the perfect place for a kid, and I was fascinated by the tiny traces of history I would find. Islands, old signs, papers, and bits of life were treasures waiting to be found. Considering my fascination, it is surprising I didn’t go into archeology or join the forrest service. Funny how things work out.

I posted some older photos of the cabin here.

Anna, Pete, Paul, and I splurged and went to Brockton Villa for breakfast on Sunday. Coast toast is damned good (imagine French toast souffle). It was funny, I had never seen the cliffs of the cove look so brown. All of the guano has been washed off. Of course with La Jolla drainage, that meant there were some street rivers and some mud slides.

I get to miss a bit of the rain, though Monday is supposed to be an even bigger storm. I will be coming back that night from Chicago. Anna has biz out there, so I am going out for the weekend. It will be my first time in the windy city, (4th in the airport) and I am excited to check it out.

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I just donated some moolah to the guy that runs Sabadabada. He has been hosting his record collection of 60’s Brazilian jazz/pop. I love the stuff and can’t get enough of it.

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I am so tempted to get a Dell 20″ LCD screen. They are $506 after rebates. Of course, that means buying a new vid card and other crap, so I think I will hold off until their new 24″ LCD goes on super sale.

Another rain storm last night and this morning. I saw a ford explorer slam into the center concrete barrier near old town on the 5 south. It crashed into the wall right beside me and sprayed my car with water and fragments. Lucky for me, I was on the other side of the barrier, and it held. These SoCal SUV tards need to learn how to drive.

I get the pleasure of rolling out to a brand new exchange server (+ new version) within a day or two. There are some huge bugs with exchange on NT4, and MS is not providing patches. So I have to move everything before Johnny Scriptkiddie writes a worm for exchange servers. This was something I had planned to do a while back, but couldn’t get money for the new antivirus and backup software. Ah the fun of deploying a of a live, untested system.

Ah, firefox has hit the big time. Why? It has a bug that IE doesn’t. It has to do with IDN names mimicking real domains, IE hasn’t implemented this yet. They use the international characters to make it look like you are at a different site. In order to get this to work, they have to get you to click a link – so there will be phishing scams coming I’m sure. Try the demo out here. Full info on the exploit here.

Someone has shown how to disable IDN here.