Buh bye, Spam, buh bye.

I get a LOT of spam at work. I've had my work email address for six years, and it's pretty easy to guess, based on my first name. Our IS department, who I've loathed in the past, turned me on to Spamnet by Cloudmark yesterday, and so far it's managed to catch most of my spam. Spamnet is a plugin for Outlook (Outlook Express not supported... yet) that watches incoming mail for spam.

To give you an idea of how much spam I get - since I installed it about noon yesterday (it's 5:30am here right now), I've received 102 emails, and 73 were spam that were caught.

Spamnet allows you to block spam that it doesn't catch, and then it'll send the contents of the spam up to Spamnet's servers to be added to a database so that all of the 330,000+ users of Spamnet will have better coverage.

The installation went flawlessly, the integration with Outlook is great, and it's very good at its job. Finally, I don't have to use my own half-assed Outlook filter. Hoo ray!

My fat ass is in good health...

So, today I had a follow up appointment with my doctor regarding a physical and some blood work I had done last week. Good news, all around. My cholesterol is 190, which is great. The target range is 0-194. Last time I had bloodwork done, my cholesterol was up around 230. Blood pressure normal, as well. I guess Dr. Atkins was right when he said that cholesterol actually goes down when on Atkins.

My doctor recommended getting some ketosis sticks so I'll know when I'm in ketosis, and I plan on doing that soon. He also said to keep up the exercise, which I'm going to *try* to do. But, so far, I'm one happy camper.

As far as my weight, it's still horrible - 380lbs. Before taking my weight last week, my last official weight (taken about two years ago) was also 380. I know that between those two weighings I gained and lost weight. It shows in my face. I'm hoping that it'll start showing in my pants, as well. Time will tell.

Next appt. - 23 April.

Hurry up and wait.

Well, as I wait for this show to be downloaded off of the TiVo, I figure I might as well update the journal. Since the last update, the Bernenwagen has turned 100,000 miles on the ol' odometer. Nicole and I did about 600 miles of driving this past weekend, between Yakima and Kelso, visiting family. I had some serious car lag this morning. That Jetta's been a good car...I hope to keep it for another 50,000 miles or so. Nicole's getting a new car, after her 1990 Geo Prizm was, sadly, totaled. I'm impressed at her mileage - 230,000. She bought it with 60,000. Dayam.

I've been trying to keep up on the war. I still think the reasons that we're in it are wrong, but I'm trying to support the guys that are over there. I just hope it's quick and without massive amounts of civilian casualties. After reading this blog, I have a new appreciation for the "enemy".

Well, that's my update. Not a lot else going on right now, unfortunately, other than me being tired...

Yay for our stupid politicians!

With all this patriotism and anti-French sentiment, I realized today that whenever I swear, I'll have to say "Pardon my freedom."

I'd like to thank the politicians for this. No, really - Thanks.

Updates to the windstorm saga, Spring, Celebrity penpals...

The latest update: the fence has been repaired. There's still a hole in the house where the old meter used to be, and the gutters are still wide open, letting lots of water run down the house, onto the meter housing, and then into a puddle in the flower garden. Not sure when that'll be fixed, but at least people aren't staring at the bent fence anymore. Thank goodness. I have some pictures that I'll eventually post showing the progress.

Spring's rolling in up here in Seattle... yesterday it was sunny, somewhat warm, and dry enough to (finally) mow the lawn. It took me about an hour an a half, between picking up loose twigs, branches, and debris that had been blown onto the property, and between constantly emptying the grass bag. I managed to fill 2 30 gallon yard waste bags. Now the lawn looks great.

Ok, now for the celebrity penpal bit - I've been thinking about this for a while... I'd personally love to have one. I'm not too picky, either... he/she could be a local, regional, national, or international celebrity. He/she could be well known due to media, political, or another presence. I don't really care about meeting in person (unless he/she wants to :-), but a simple dialog would be cool, I think. Wil Wheaton, in my opinion, would probably make a good one (I'd be shocked, flattered, amazed and whatever if he responded to one of my journals (he's not even a fan), but anyway). I'd love it if the celebrity would take the initiative and invite limited people to email them, or interact with them on the Web. Besides, one has to wonder how many ACs, or regular posters on /. might be celebs, in one form or another.

Yes, I realize that the celebs value their privacy and probably don't want freaks stalking them, but hey, I'm a good guy.... I'll even help you with your computer, (so long as it's a Mac) I promise I won't stalk you. Promise... Scout's honor.

It's incredibly shallow and vain for me to post an all-call to celebs, but I'm comfortable with myself enough to do it. Call it celebrity-whoring.

BTW, I can only think of two celebs I've ever met in person... Anne and Nancy Wilson. When I went to AIS, we had the chance to record a song of their band the Lovemongers in one of the audio classes I was in. They were cool, I even got my copy of Dreamboat Annie autographed.

Now playing on my iMac:

Just to Keep You Satisfied by Marvin Gaye

Once again, TiVos rock.

Woo hoo! Hacking's never been so easy!

CompUSA is running a special on Maxtor-made 7200RPM/8MB cache/80GB drives... $130 up front with a $60 rebate. This, to me, is a sweet deal, considering it's considerably less than Weaknees's 80GB upgrade drive. So, with the drive, and the OS 9 BlessTiVo software, I managed to quickly get the drive blessed and formatted for use in the TiVo.

But, there was the small matter of how I was going to mount the drive in the TiVo. As you can probably already tell, I'm a bit of a cheapskate (Nicole, stop laughing... seriously!). So, using these instructions I managed to fashion a crude mounting bracket out of some old drive brackets I had in a shoebox. I knew they'd come in handy sooner or later...

So, I've done all the hacking on the TiVo that I wanted. It now has 120hrs of capacity (instead of 20), and I can record every show I watch in Best Quality. 33hrs of recording time in Best Quality mode, by the way. This is sweeeeeeeet.