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- Sunday, May 13, 2012 4:00 PM: Happy Mother's Day 2012
Wishing everyone a Happy Mother's Day, especially mine. Love you mom, you're the greatest! 
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- Thursday, March 22, 2012 9:51 AM: My Thoughts on the NASCAR Racing at Bristol
After watching the race at Bristol this past weekend and seeing the reactions on social media and various television shows from fans, media, and drivers over the past couple days, I thought I'd share my thoughts on the matter.
In short, the racing at Bristol is not what it used to be, and I do miss it. A combination of the track reconfiguration, newer cars (the CoT), and changes in tire compounds have changed the complexion of racing there. The racing there is fine, but it's not what fans, including myself, had become accustomed to and had grown to expect when they went there or watched on TV. Now, it's a multi-groove track that allows side-by-side racing with the ability to pass someone that doesn't require as much bumping and grinding. However, it seems as if NASCAR and the media continued to hype and promote the race as if it were still the crazy, nutso, bump'n'run, caution-fest, helmet-throwing tempers Bristol of old, when, in fact, it just isn't anymore. Now, it's just a smaller version of many of the other tracks out there. (Yes, every track is unique, but I think you know what I mean.) The reasons for going to a race there that had been present for so long, just aren't there now. That in combination with the current state of the economy causing those that could only afford to go to one race opting for just the night race were contributing factors in the less than stellar crowd.
It does seem that Bruton Smith has seemed to recognize this and is looking at reconfiguring the track again. We'll have to wait and see how this will affect the racing there, if it happens, and our reactions to it. Regardless, I think the key for the future is for NASCAR to set a reasonable level of expectation and stop promoting it like it's still the old Bristol and for all of us to stop expecting it to be. I think this article from Sports@Work mirrors my thoughts pretty well.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents on the subject.
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- Saturday, March 17, 2012 2:57 PM: Happy St. Patrick's Day for 2012
Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy St. Patrick's Day! Everyone be safe out there and don't do anything stupid like drinking or texting and driving. If you're in Oklahoma, AAA is offering their Tipsy Tow Service for free by calling 1-800-222-4357. Please take advantage of it if you need it. Have a great time! Add/View Comments (0 comment(s))
- Monday, March 12, 2012 1:08 AM: How to Remove the Chat Widget While Watching NASCAR RaceBuddy or Media Center
If you're like me, you could probably careless about the social media chat widget thing that is to the right of the NASCAR RaceBuddy and/or Media Center video streams. I do my chatting in a separate Twitter tab within the browser or a separate Twitter application such as TweetDeck. Not only is the chat in these widgets less than desirable at times, but it also seems to cause the video streams to constantly lag and start/stop when the chat widget updates and scrolls items down/up. This is the primary reason I decided to see if I could stop the chat widget from loading in the browser. You can always move or resize the browser window to hide it if that's all you want to do.
My main browser is Firefox (version 10.0.2 as of this writing) within Windows XP Home/SP3 and this is what I did: After poking around in the source code for the page, I found a JavaScript file being loaded that most likely handled the chat widget. Using Adblock Plus, I added a custom Ad Blocking filter to block ||cdn.gigya.com/JS/socialize.js from loading. This is what the Adblock Plus Filter Preferences dialog should look like after adding the filter:
Success! No more chat widget on those pages and the video was much smoother afterwards. Note: this will affect any webpage that uses the same script to display a similar chat widget.
I haven't tried it yet but I suspect adding an entry to the Windows' HOSTS file for cdn.gigya.com to point to 127.0.0.1 would have the same effect and would prevent all browsers from showing the chat widget (or anything else associated with that sub-domain).
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- Sunday, February 19, 2012 2:13 PM: How to Stop the In-Game Browser From Crashing EverQuest II
As much as I play the game, you'd think I'd have more posts about EverQuest II. Just never thought my exploits within the game were worth blogging about. However, I thought this tip would be helpful.The problem is that when using the game's built-in browser (which is more or less Mozilla Firefox 1.X) it chokes on websites that have Flash (usually ads) in them, such as the popular ZAM EverQuest II site. The newer versions of Adobe Flash just do not play well with this browser causing it to lock up or just simply crash the game. After much discussion in the support forums, I think the following two workarounds are probably the best:
1. Batch File to Disable/Enable Flash
The first is a batch file that you run before starting the game to disable flash and then re-run to enable Flash when you are done playing. The credit for this goes to Tatwi in this post:
@echo off CD C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash IF "%PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%" == "AMD64" CD C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\ IF EXIST NPSWF32._ll GOTO :turn_on IF EXIST NPSWF32.dll GOTO :turn_off :turn_on ren NPSWF32._ll NPSWF32.dll CLS echo ----------------- echo Flash is now ON! echo ----------------- pause GOTO :desktop :turn_off ren NPSWF32.dll NPSWF32._ll CLS echo ----------------- echo Flash is now OFF! echo ----------------- pause GOTO :desktop :desktop CD %USERPROFILE%\desktop :eof
Of course, you have to remember to run the batch file every time before you start the game and after you stop playing because this affects all plug-in type browsers such as Firefox and Google's Chrome. It will not affect Internet Explorer. If you're not familiar with batch files, Batch File Help is pretty good at explaining what they are and how to create them.
2. Add user.js file to game's mozilla folder
This is probably the best work-around and is the one I use as it disables the plug-ins that are most likely to cause problems from loading in the in-game browser. You'll want to add the user.js file to the mozilla folder in the game's installation directory. Credit goes to Jrral in this post.
pref("security.enable_java", false); pref("plugin.scan.plid.all", false); pref("plugin.scan.4xPluginFolder", false); pref("plugin.scan.SunJRE", "20.0"); pref("plugin.scan.Acrobat", "20.0"); pref("plugin.scan.Quicktime", "20.0"); pref("plugin.scan.WindowsMediaPlayer", "20.0");
Since this appears to be a file that is not part of the game's installation and is, therefore, not checked during the patching process, you don't have to worry about it being replaced. I have not had the in-game browser cause a crash since making this change.
For your convenience, you can download both files in this ZIP file: eq2-userjs-flashbatch.zip. Hope this helps!
Update March 8th, 2012: It figures that not long after I write this post, they fix the problem according this March 6th Update. It looks like the \mozilla\greprefs\all.js file was updated with the following change:
// Locate plugins by the directories specified in the Windows registry for PLIDs // Which is currently HKLM\Software\MozillaPlugins\xxxPLIDxxx\Path pref("plugin.scan.plid.all", false);
If you'll notice, this is the same as the second line in the user.js shown above. Even though they did correct the issue as it relates to Flash, I will still use the user.js file so it doesn't load the other plug-ins as well.
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General Information
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Background: I was born on June 6, 1969 in Wichita Falls, TX, but grew-up in Edmond, OK, including going to Edmond High School there.
Current Occupation: It's a secret.
Before my present job, I was: a bank teller, Interned/Co-oped with IBM down in Southlake, TX at their Performance Evaluation Center programming Remote Terminal Emulators, and then worked for the State of Oklahoma in the Department of Vital Statistics (birth/death certificate stuff) for awhile, then spent 13 years working for Creative Labs, Inc starting out as a Technical Support Agent and ending up as a PC Technician/Help Desk Support in the IT Department.
Current residence: Oklahoma City, OK. If you want to know where Oklahoma City is in Oklahoma, or if you want to see what other internet resources there are in Oklahoma, click Oklahoma. Here's another site for info about what's in Oklahoma City.
Graduated May '92 with a Bachelor of Science in Computing and Information Sciences from Oklahoma State University.
Hobbies: Computing and all that stuff, Music, Movies, Snow Skiing (it's been awhile since I've been :/ ), Chatting on the internet (generally while working on our website or programming), and goofing off.
Radio Station I mostly listen to is the Classic Rock station KRXO 107.7 FM, followed by: KJ-103 and Rock 100.5 the KATT., all out of Oklahoma City, OK. I also listen to a fair amount of Internet Radio. The two I listen to the most are Club 977, the 80's Channel and Ravetrax (Breakbeat Trance House). I listen to and watch their live video streams using Winamp. Ravetrax rocks, I suggest you check 'em out! I also subscribe to XM Satellite Radio and my favorite stations there are: BPM (Dance, 81), The System (Dance, 82), The 80s (Decades, 8), Top Tracks (Rock, 46), Bluegrass Junction (Country, 14), Cinemagic (Pop & Hits, 27), Squizz - XL (Rock, 48), and XM Classics (Classical, 110)
I have one sister, Jill, who got her PhD in Physical Chemistry, researching the atmospheric chemistry of alkylperoxy radicals (believe I got that right.. has to do with lasers, studying molecular behavior of various gases, CO2 and Ozone among others).. at the University of Colorado She's now a Research Associate at the University of Kansas.
Website was created with HomeSite v4.5 After Macromedia purchased HomeSite I stopped upgrading. It seems to do the things I want.. so why upgrade? Also, some aspects of version 4.5 that I use on occasion were removed from later versions.
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