Recycled Electrons - Blog of Keith Horowitz

A man landed one of his work helicopter at his Conneticut home. Police gave him a $75 ticket to him when a neighbor complained. There is a law on the town's books that doesn't allow landing at a residence. Probably about the same as it would cost him to land at a commercial airport. Maybe he should have just jeft is running, hovering a foot off the ground? :) ABC7Chicago.com: Man ticketed for landing helicopter in yard

In the town where Bush has a ranch he visits regularly, Crawford, TX, the local newspaper has come out in support of Kerry. This is the opposite of 4 years ago where they supported Bush. They suggest people vote based on where they think the country is headed, not by a hometown or political party. Reuters.com -- Bush's Hometown Newspaper Endorses Kerry

No History of the World Part Two [yet?] - but a Spaceballs sequel is underway. Based on Mel Brooks' comment, he wants to tiw it in with the mania for the final Star Wars movie due out next spring. Slashdot | Mel Brooks Says 'Spaceballs' Sequel In The Works

Where have I been? My family took road trips occasionally. One time we made it all the way from NY to Mt. Rushmore. The next year I went on a teen bus tour to CA and back. As an adult I've been from coast to coast by car. I've also visited outside the country a few times. * - Visited by car, stayed and did at least some touring @ - live(d) there for years at a time + - Drove through without staying # - Flew % - Visited by car and plane ~ - Boat trip @ New York (Long Island; @Queens; @Manhatten) @ New Jersey (@Northern; @Central; Shore) * Massachusettes (Cape Cod, Near Boston, Berkshires) * Conneticut * Puerto Rico (San Juan and South Shore) + Rhode Island % Gerogia (Atlanta) % Florida (Ft. Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Orlando, Sanibel, Ft. Myers) * Pennsylvania * Ohio + Indiana * Illinois + Wisconson * Minnisota + North Dakota * South Dakota * Vermont (Skiing Killington) + Deleware + Maryland * Washington DC + Virgina + Nort...

Anagrams! See what possible words you name can rearrange into. It gives you a giant list to look through very quickly! 'He With Irk To Oz' was the first interesting anagram for my name. It made me laugh! As found on Floopie! - Anagrams More interesting anagrams of my name: HE HOOK RITZ WIT HE ORTHO KIT WIZ HE TOOTH IRK WIZ HE HOT I RITZ WOK HITHERTO WIZ OK HIKE WITH ROT OZ HIKE WHIZ OR TOT HIKE THROW IT OZ HIKER WHIZ TOOT THEIR HOT WIZ OK TITHE WHO IRK OZ WHITE HOT IRK OZ HERO WITH KIT OZ HERO HOT KIT WIZ HOTTER WHIZ I OK HER WITH KIT ZOO THE KITH I ROW OZ THE HOOK TRI WIZ TREK HI WITH ZOO ROTE HIT WHIZ OK ZERO KITH HIT OW ZERO HIT HOW KIT

Plug in a compact flash card and you can watch movies, play backed up games, listen to music, and read books. You can even listen to music and read books at the same time! Comes with software to convert DVDs to GBA player format. Game Boy Advance Movie Player updated - Joystiq - www.joystiq.com

A friend asked me about being able to login to a machine outside of work securely, but going through the firewall. Many companies have firewalls with proxies, that only allow web traffic from client machines. So to be able to login to a remote machine, and do it with encryption, you would have to have some software that can go through a web proxy firewall. I found a few links for him that I posted on TechChatter

Some recient developments make it look like Google may be coming out with its' own browser. Read more on TechChatter

In T3 (Terminator 3 - Rise of the Machines) , Skynet came online, and launched nuclear weapons upon humanity. What can be left? Seems we will find out, as T4 has been announced. While Schwarzenegger might be able to spare a little time from being governor to appear in the film, it is pretty obvious that he will not take a core role as he has in the previous 3 films. This does not bode well for the film. While it doesn't meen it has to be a flop, it does have a lot already against it. One can only hope that the plot and special effects can some how make up for loss of star(s) and a storyline that is past its' prime. Perhaps if they can find some plot complication where they can bring back Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor or some robot form of her, I'd give it a little better chance. Empire - I, Robot? Schwarzenegger mulls Terminator 4

In a North Carolina Childrens Museum. Read more on Roboton

MDN: WaiWai

Yahoo! News - Anti-Ketchup Comments Draw Fire From Heinz Seems some Republicans think using Heinz Ketchup will give money to Kerry's campaign. While there is a link, it is rather weak. Kerry's wife's father is from *the* Heinz family. But Kerry and wife have no holdings in the Ketchup company. And do you remember that ketchup was a favorite of a past republican president? Reagan signed a bill that ketchup was legally considered a vegetable. The fruit tomato is a vegetable when place in a container? This ranks up there with making PI legally equal to 3.0 . And while we are on the subject of tomatoes being a fruit: it seems to me there is a dishonestly named product on the market: V-8. I figured out a long time ago that it should more honestly be named V-7 + F-1. Besides, a V8 is what eats up gas in an SUV. :)

Yahoo! News - Women Allegedly Try to Force Man to Wed A 4 month pregnant 16 year old and 3 of her female relatives tried to force her ex-boyfriend to marry her. They were not charged with kidnapping. And there has yet to be any filing of statutory rape.

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Picture Theme: Furry (click for larger image) Our Sugar Glider Named Fuzz in a friend's hair. For Photo Friday Challenge Furry

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A visual history of spam (and virus) email With some interesting charts!

Picture Theme: Old An interesting older gentleman playing music in downtown Denver. For Gizmo

eBay item 5920427505 (Ends Sep-19-04 23:46:43 PDT) - SIX DAYS - Professional Handyman Services - NO RESERVE! Ended 2 days ago. They kept saying it was serious. $1,138. They have got to be kidding. Some funny stuff!

Picture Theme: Success Making it to the top of Pikes Peak, a 14,000 foot mountain in Colorado. I had just finished hiking to the top a few minutes before this. For Sunday Shoot

Picture Theme: Mixed A bunch of colorful plastic Tinker Toy in a plastic bin. For Moody Monday

eBay item 3840166200 (Ends Sep-26-04 22:00:00 PDT) - HAL 9000 from the Movie "2001 a Space Odyssey" Well, it seems it is the lens and case from the move 2001: A Space Odyssey . While it might just be ligit, with all the documentation included, $150,000 starting bid seems a bit steep to me.

Found on Boing Boing : Reverse Case mod - Picture guide to this person taking an old PC server case and turning it into a bookshelf.

See Roboton for more details

This app kept coming up as not terminating on my Windows XP system. Read more on TechChatter

eBay item 4320977266 (Ends Oct-17-04 00:00:00 PDT) - Auto Race Track!! SANDIA MOTORSPORTS PARK A multi-use racetrack and rec area in Alburquerque. Another amazing thing on sale through EBay.

Picture Theme: Domestic The planting bed, Koi fish pond, and rock wall in front of our house. This picture was taken Jul-13-2001. The same 2 Koi are still living in the pond. They have survived 3 Colorado winters so far. The area is a lot more grown a lot. The little Japaneese Maple has gotten so big we need to trim it seriously back this year. I even had to replace the pump this summer, as the old one was only pushing out a tiny trickle at best. For Photo Friday

I was reading Do I Have "Sucker" Written Across My Forehead? on the Some Girl blog. She was talking about how both during a manicure and then at a fast food place they kept trying to get her to buy more. I started writting a comment on her blog about the entry. But when I realized I had written 2 long paragraph, and that I still could say more, I knew it was time to make my own blog entry about it... I know they have to do their marketing, trying to sell you something extra. The bosses make it part of their jobs. But I don't like it. And maybe it really isn't worth it. And all those salespeople who keep asking if you 'need help?'. No I don't want your help. Not yet at least. I want to try to find it in my own. Does that sound so strange? Look, I didn't make eye-contact with you. I was looking at your products, not looking for a salesperson. I went deep into the store, purposely going right past you. If I'm looking for a salesperson, y...

Found on BoingBoing A show in New York this weekend: ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show I wish I could be there for that. A neat direction for robots!

Picture Theme: Tears - The water dripping from this pipe like a teardrop from an eye This was a tough assignment - to find a picture with tears - how often do you want to take a picture of someone crying? I might even have one or two pictures of my kids upset, but I don't think I have any good ones of them crying, thus an artistic teardrop. For Sunday Shoot

Picture Theme: Lonely - Lonely football field For Moody Monday

Picture Theme: Blossom - A small flower along the sidewalk near my house For Photo Friday

I bought the 2 new Pokemon games for Gameboy Advance this weekend. My eldest son chose FireRed . I got LeafGreen . These games seem to be based on the original pokemon cartidges. Same old town, pretty much the same old challenges. But it is supposed to be compatible with the Ruby/Sapphire versions of the pokemon game, so that should be good. They did update the game a lot. You get genders that were added with the Silver/Gold series games. So that make you think that breeding will be possible later in the game. If nothing else, you should be able to trade to Ruby/Sapphire to breed. So we both started playing. The first night we got about 15 minutes into the game, just to the point of being able to trade with each other. The overnight I completed a plan that I had thought about with previous versions. If my son was willing to hold pokemon for me, and willing to give up some simple pokemon, there was a way we could have all the starter pokemon. All that would have to happen, i...

I watched the DVD Cold Mountain last night. I found the movie was a bit long, and the scene changes got a bit tedious. But overall it is an interesting movie. It is set in the war-torn South during the civil war. You get a real feel for the emotional upheaval during the time. While the level of violence wasn't as strong as Saving Private Ryan , there was still quite a bit of graphic violence. There is a lot of value to the DVD version: the second disk has quite a bit of cut scenes. In spite of the final movie's length, the cut scenes add a lot of value. There is a lot in the deleted scenes linking the characters even more completely. You get an even deeper understanding of the deaths of others that the male hero experiences.

This morning, I was working on packing up some lunch to take to work with me. I look up, and notice something a little odd about my youngest son. His chin looked somewhat jaundiced. Yellow. I looked closer, and assumed he had decided to draw on himself with marker again. Just a little bit earlier in the morning, he had shown to my wife a picture he had drawn last night. It was very good work for him. Heads, arms, faces. He even did a rather good, for him, version of his name on the back. Last night he told me it was his teacher and himself. This morning it was my wife and himself. He has been know to draw on himself before. Usually he draws on his arm. He is trying to write Chinese on his arm. He is playing at being Mulan , from the Disney movie. Mulan want to make sure she remembers all her answers for the match-maker, so she writes them on her arm. I look at his arm. I see yellow and brown. It looks like he has been drawing on himself. Not good, but not too bad. They may loo...

I had a problem this morning with Excel not moving the active cell with the cursor/arrow keys. Turned out to by my Scroll-Lock was on. And it turned out to be harder to find the answer than I expected. To read more about it, see my entry in TechChatter: Excel Scroll Problem - Scroll Lock

Looking through the kitchen window this morning, I noticed that the basil in the garden looked a bit wilted. I also noticed that the ground looked rather dry for a day that the sprinkler should have run in the morning. The first thing I thought was that I, or someone, had turned the sprinkler system off and forgot to turn it back on. So I went to check it in the garage. I was greeted with the view you see in the picture. The same view I had seen once before. The last time it looked like this was when lightning had taken out the first sprinkler controller. I was not happy. I wondered if perhaps the wall wart had gone on the Fritz. It felt warm. I unplugged it and plugged it back in. No response from the controller. I checked the fuse, no problem there. I checked the specs on the wall wart. It was 24v AC. That means it was exactly the right supply to drive the sprinkler valves. I jumpered the wires for the garden zone. It turned on. I set a timer in the house so I would...

Photo Theme: Cheap Picture of a cheap Yam-throwing machine I built for a contest. It did pretty poorly - but it was funny how it worked and how short it sent the yams. It wound up just chucking a yam about 5 feet, and spun around humorously. For Moody Monday

Denver Robot Club Meeting

A friend of mine asked me about old laptops the other day. It seems he had a project in mind. He wanted to create a digital picture frame . I knew I had some old ones in my junk box, but I didn't know if any of them were of any value. My friend managed to find just what he wanted on eBay, so it is good he didn't wait for me. Well, after reading the work he has been doing on his smart-frame, and some of the pages that gave him inspiration, I was interested to see if I could follow suit. My friend had some extra ideas for his system already: he was thinking of video, and perhaps live updates from web sites, such as weather. I've had a few extra ideas myself, thinking about being able to hook up a microcontroller to feed data to the laptop. Things like temperature in the house or outside, or perhaps some sort of special input buttons, as no keyboard will be available when it is mounted. So yesterday, my eldest was sick, and I wound up picking him up from school in the mo...

Picture Theme: Simplicity - A simple ponytail from the back of a girl's head For Photo Friday

The other night when our friends were over, we were talking about music. My wife mentions that our song when we got married was One Good Woman by Peter Cetera . So I reach for my Toshiba Laptop and say: 'Let me find it on my T-Pod '. About 30 seconds later, I have it playing. Then there was some question about when the song came out. It took a few clicks to find that the album came out shortly after we started dating, but about a year before we got married. Okay, so a laptop with a 15" screen isn't exactly a hip-wearable portable music player, like an I-Pod . But it does have a decent collection of music on the hard drive. I mostly listen to it when I'm at work. It helps keep me motivated. I have been known to use my laptop as a portable music player. The carrying case I have for it also has a backpack mode. When I was warming up to Hiking Pikes Peak , I had put it on my back, and plugged in earphones for the Hike up the Scar . I wanted the extra weight of...