TDavids.com random access mind!

2/27/02: This whole sequence of events with former NBA star Jayson Williams disturbs me. I mean, here this limosine chaffeur gets his shoulder and rib cage blown out in your bedroom by a (playful?) shotgun blast, it is phoned in as a "suicide" and then quickly ruled a homicide, nobody is taken in for questions (hello?!), and then a week or so later you go turn yourself in and are being released on $250k bail for "reckless manslaughter" which carries 5 - 15 years possible jail time Anybody want to put their vote in with me that this first time offender and gun connosieur doesn't see 5 days of jail time?

And what's with this racial tirade from Arkansas Razorbacks coach Richardson? Dude, come on, what's with this "you people don't talk like me or act like me" talk with the all white media? Shouldn't you be sticking to basketball and focus on why you are having a bad year? This guy has had a good coaching record, but these are the kinds of lapses in judgement which ruin careers. I wonder if a white coach had done this, he'd probably have been fired before he finished the press conference!

2/26/02: Ping using PHP and exec() shell call example. Note you should never put user input through exec() without using the escapeshellcmd() function, which adds a backslash to any potentially hazardous character.

<?

    // ping server one time

    exec("ping -c 1 www.tdavids.com", $out);

    

    while (list(,$val) = each($out)) :

    print "<pre>$val</pre>";

    endwhile;

    ?>

Have you lost or misplaced your Windows Certificate of Authenticity and plan on reinstalling Windows?

Don't despair because your product ID and registration/key code are inside your computer so that you can write them down. Here's how to get to them:

1. Goto START ---> RUN
2. Type in: REGEDIT
3. Navigate in the tree menu to the following location/folder:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE --------->
              SOFTWARE ---------------->
                  MICROSOFT ------------>
                       WINDOWS ----------->
                                 CurrentVersion--->

4. You'll see a value for ProductKey. This is the code you will need to enter if you need to reinstall Windows someday. Write this down or save in some very safe place. You might also want to record ProducdId for reference.

Happy coding to you!

2/23/02: If you don't have that many sites you want to send to (30 is not a problem) and don't need to track the clicks sent to the sites, then you don't need to waste the overhead of connecting to a database or flat file. It would take only a few lines of code to do what you want, and I'm happy to share that code with you.

In fact I'm pretty sure in the first Script School php course I go through how to write a script like this.

The following php code should help you out. Save it as out.php and you don't need to pass any query string, just call it to randomize a list of sites in the array. Much faster than connecting to any database or loading a file unnecessarily into memory.

<?
/* populate the array with as many links
as you want enclosed in single quotes
and separate by comma, except for last
item in array */
$links = array(' http://www.scriptschool.com/',
'http://www.tdscripts.com/',
'http://www.tdavids.com/',
'http://www.php-scripts.com/');

// three lines of code is all you need
mt_srand(time());
$random_index = (mt_rand(1, (count($links))) - 1);
header("Location: $links[$random_index]");
?>

2/22/02: Today is our 87th broadcast of Script School Radio. The number "87" holds significance for me. I graduated (barely) from high school in 1987 and I began to reflect on how much we look back, or don't look back on the past.

Sites like classmates are thriving. Why? Well, I think it is because most of us have some inner desire to wonder "what if ..." For some it might be a different career path, for others schooling they wanted to pursue and maybe never had. Or "do you remember when ... ?" Or perhaps simply to wonder "what happened to ..." Did the class clown become the grownup clown? Are the stoners still stoners? Did the stoner chicks turn out to be older stoner chicks?

I'm happy with the path I took and love my children and wife dearly, but I do think about those I went to school with from time to time and wonder what happened to them. Do you?

Another thing on my mind today is how one should never underestimate the underdog. How about Sarah Hughes, the skater? She takes the gold in one of the biggest upsets in Olympic history. Sorry, Michelle Kwan, you forgot to look over your shoulder. And here Michelle is from our town 10 minutes from my office! She didn't earn the gold, so she didn't get it.

The largest scam at EBay? Read this: dude takes in well over 100K at the EBay action in figurine sales in Dec/January, has run a respectable business for years, cleans out his account, and then pulls a disappearing act.

2/19/02: This crematorium story just gets more and more bizarre! Here's a quote from an MSNBC article regarding Georgia's laws:

"It is illegal to desecrate a gravesite or a coffin in Georgia, but not an actual corpse, so the charges authorities can bring are limited"

Huh? Limited charges? Taking money for and telling someone you are going to cremate their loved one and then not doing it:

can *only* bring "limited" charges in Georgia? So what are these charges going to be? A couple of misdemeanor counts or something? IMO, they should round up everyone responsible for this bizarre act and bury them out there with these bodies that were supposed to be cremated. A two year decomposing body retreat!

2/17/02: What's up with this crematorium operator in Georgia? WTF! I mean, come on, guy, this is some nasty stuff. I mean, really, get this guy Crematorium Operators for Dummies. Hmmm, ok, the machine is broken, so I'll just stack a few corpses here, and there, hell we've got 10 acres!

2/16/02: XBox or Gamecube? I was wondering this myself, even though I knew we'd eventually get both, because we are suckers for new video game systems. I remember paying $600+ for the 3DO when that hit the scene. Now they will beg you to take pile at garage sales.

Atari Jaguar? Sucker. Coleco. Sucker. Sega CD. Sucker. Saturn. Sucker. Sega 32-X. Sucker. Actually despite the pitiful performance, these systems usually had at least one shining star.

We bought the Gamecube on launch day and have played pretty much every game available. I'll tell you what games I think are worth getting and which are worth forgetting someday soon.

We bought an XBox a few days ago and are currently playing through the available games. Still waiting on the DVD remote kit to arrive from online purchase because we couldn't find it at any local stores (nice job, Microsoft!).

2/14/02: Happy Valentine's Day and take time out to buy your sweetheart something special! I heard that the average guy spends $122 on his sweetie and the average woman spends $50 on her guy. Take those 172 bones and have a nice night on the town!

2/13/02: The thief tale seems to have had a reasonable happy ending, at least for now. The company known as Ynotcash has publically apologized, closed it's doors and taken the site down. You can read "John's" public apology here. Personally I'm taking a wait and see attitude on this one, as my pocket still feels pilfered.

Oh, and let's not forget those other spammers with the letters GTX and the word "Cash" too in their name who were nice enough to spam everybody and tell us that they weren't associated with YNOTCash and it was "URGENT" that we know. I found out from about 8 or so harvested emails.

We picked up an XBox finally last night. Got an interesting tale about that. I'll save it for the future.


REAL version The LinksMachine	This is the scammed version!

2/12/02: Thief update! Either the host or the lamers themselves have blocked web access (403) to thelinksmachine form page that was clearly swiped.

2/11/02: Thief alert! Watch out for these scumbags, coming to an email box or sitesucker near you! This infringing clone of a trademarked Webmaster resource site, also caught red handed stealing from another Webmaster resource site

1/26/02: I have dropped my endorsement of and involvement in the Speak Your Mind forum that I created and ran at XBiz from May 2001 to Jan 2002. You can see the original post here if it has been removed.