Most recent thoughts:
10/03/04 09:56 Search .
08/17/04 12:39 Marketi.
01/25/04 14:29 Marketi.
09/15/03 11:12 Blogs

0108566

3/31/02: Happy Easter to all! Take a look at Google top ranked Easter sites

3/28/02: Ahhh, I can smell a vacation and some much needed AFK time coming in the future. Let's look at some front page news here today:

US Military man sentenced in rape - I think this is a good message to our soldiers stationed in Japan that they better be VERY careful about having sex with the Japanese women over there. I don't think this was consentual at all from reading the information in the article, but then I wasn't there either. If I was a soldier over there I'd keep it in my pants! And if it is true that this guy did rape this 20 year old than a 32 months prison sentence seems too light to me. Should have given him the middle of their 2-15 year norm -- which would be 7 years. It seems like they went easy on him. Politics, grrr.

Collins says Jordan may not return next year - for all the people who said Michael Jordan should never come out of retirement they are probably prancing around now boasting, "I told you so" -- I was kind of on the fence on this. I mean the guy coming back hasn't tarnished his accomplishments. In fact he took a team that totally sucked (the Wizards) and put them into playoff contention. Also, from a business standpoint he made them profitable this year. So you can't call his comeback a failure and be accurate. I think the notion that whatever happens with his knee injury could affect his past accomplishments is rubbish.

3/26/02: Add Earthlink to the oops, billed ya extra list. They decided recently to start sending billing notices to us by snail mail. We never asked for it, never requested it, but it started showing up. Yeah, you know what's coming, the bill comes with an extra buck a month added. So I wondered why to myself after over 4 years being with them would I all of a sudden want to receive a paper bill telling me what I pay every month? doh!

So then we have to call them and go through that "...you have to hold 10+ minutes to get someone to help..." thing. Grrrrr. Well when we finally did get ahold of them they said, yup, you know it -- it must have been a computer glitch.

If you just started receiving paper bill notices for your Earthlink account, you better call them. Yup, it's only a buck, I know, but take that buck a month and throw it in the savings account instead ;)

3/21/02: I'm stoked for this upcoming flyntradio.com today. Larry speaks out a lot in mainstream venues and on TV, but never from what I understand directly to Webmasters! It's starting today: Thursday, March 21st, at 3:00PM PST (6:00PM EST)!

3/18/02: Is it just me who thinks this whole court case over trying to put a patent on hyperlinks is utterly ridiculous? It would be like putting a patent on asphalt for roads! Yes, I realize there are some toll roads, but hyperlinks are one of the more popular navigational methods of how one gets around on the web. Can you imagine the web if for every hyperlink you put up there was some sort of surcharge imposed by your host or ISP? Yikes!

Shit flows downhill, and these court cases can mean something, but I think it will go the way of music downloaders, there will be some serious rebellion if they try to charge users for hyperlinks (which if they charge the host or ISP you know it's coming back to us ... the individual user and webmaster especially!).

3/16/02: Was reading up on Slashdot about the search for the Asteroids champion, and then I saw this post about the guy with the perfect score on pac-man - can you imagine how hard that would be to eat every ghost with every power pill and to make it all the way to the last screen on ONE pacman with a perfect freaking score? It just shows that with enough determination one can accomplish almost anything. And here is this story of the worldwide Asteroids champion who died trying to rescue his cat. The late Scott Safran scored an incredible world record 41,336,440 points on Asteroids at the All-American Billiard Company in Newtown, Pennsylvania on November 13, 1982.

While performing a google search I found this older Twin Galaxies article: http://www.twingalaxies.com/PR-asteroidschamp.html and I found it interesting to note that Walter Day referenced an equal "incredible" feat at that time of Mark McGwire's 70 homers, which as many baseball fans will note has already been eclipsed by Barry Bonds last year. In the follow up release article you'll note that they changed this comparison when they finally found the late Mr. Safran to compare to Dimaggio's 56 consecutive hitting game streak. It got me thinking about records that may never broken, and if there really are records that can "never" be broken.

I think one baseball record that will not be broken at least in my lifetime (No, I won't say never, because I could be easily proven as wrong as Mr. Day) are Cy Young's winning games record of 511 games. Just to win 400 games a pitcher would have to be a 20 game winner for 20 consectutive years in the big leagues! Cy Young also managed to accumulate the record for the most losses of any pitcher (313). Which even that would be difficult to break because one would have to lose approximately 16 games a year for 20 years! I don't know of many franchises who would run out pitchers (unless they were winning 30 games to go along with the losses) every year lol. So it is safe to say that Cy Young will be the winninest and losingest (are those words) pitcher for my lifetime ... or is it?

The 56 game hitting streak I think is within reach, and I think the 400 batting average for a season is too, but Cy Young, I would be shocked if any pitcher can eclipse that -- in my lifetime.

Then again, 41,336,440 points on Asteroids has held up for nearly 20 years!

3/15/02: I want to encourage folks to get out to the Script School radio show today. If you have never listened then you will need to have a copy of Winamp or Real player (both have free versions, though I recommend Winamp over Real). The show starts at 2pm PT / 5pm ET every Friday and is targeted to webmasters learning the technical side of the biz. Here's some of the topics we're going to be discussing on the Script School radio show today:

Thief! update courtesy of Oz at truecash.com:

There is a fraudulent operation out there called 'revsharepartners.com'. This is a partnership program utilizing ibill for their processing.

Much (almost all) of the content of these sites is STOLEN from the TrueCash sites. Any content providers out there who've sold to us in the past (and chances are that's just about all of you), YOUR CONTENT HAS BEEN STOLEN. Our entire members' areas were ripped and placed on their member sites, like clubyellow.com. This should raise the ears of a few of the guys who are bulldogs (and rightly so) when it comes to protecting their content. Contact me via email for more information if you are a content provider who has worked with us.

IF YOU ARE A WEBMASTER SENDING TRAFFIC TO THIS PROGRAM... be aware that TrueCash is initiating legal action against this group of scammers and YOU MAY NOT BE PAID for traffic you're sending now. We are going to take the necessary action to shut this little company down.

What's worse is the amazing laziness of these scammers. They copied our exact members' areas verbatim and didn't bother to remove our customer service links. Therefore, we have members trying to call US to cancel their membership with revsharepartners.com. The damage this causes us in terms of customer bad faith is obviously tremendous.

I'll keep you posted - in the meantime, feel free to copy this post and spread it around.

EBay registration/preferences settings flaw? Ebay recent outage:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/724349.asp?0si=-
TD Scripts.com starts accepting PayPal
http://www.tdscripts.com/
AOL to submarine IE in favor of Netscape?
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-860710.html
Are auto submission programs getting a bad rap these days?
http://www.adultnetsurprise.com/multiforum/tgp/thread.phtml?ra=va&t=351
Some webmasters complain about receiving spam from Oprano
http://www.ynotmasters.com/chat/chat.cgi?T=General&S=Oprano%20still%20spamming&V=viewtop
Privacy Policy at Script School re-explained
http://www.scriptschool.com/privacy.html
Adult Webmaster Events - Tampa begins!
http://www.adult-webmaster-events.com/2002/tampa.html
What makes a messageboard "slow" and is a slow board a negative?
http://boards.theadultwebmaster.com/tawmsg.php?action=showthread&id=235

3/12/02: Life is too short without a little humor. I went to my bookmarks today for a laugh. Don't forget to take breaks from your work on the web now and again to enjoy the humor offered up by some very creative people on the web. Also, don't take life so damn seriously ;) I have created a new humor category above and will add to it from time to time. Check out the first entry on people writing about how much windows sucks. There are clearly some real Windows haters out there lol.

3/11/02: I have to chuckle about my recent EBay experience :) Here's a few random thoughts about my experience with this popular, long-standing website so far:

#1: I am brand new to the EBay scene, but when I was signing up for it I distinctly remember UNchecking the box that said I wanted to receive any email "special offers" from them (I almost always do). This morning I receive email from them anyway lol. I went into my preferences and ensured (again) that I didn't want to receive any "special offers" from them.

#2: The first item I bid on, I got what they call "sniped" within the last few minutes. I guess there is software out there which enables EBayers to swoop in at the last minute and alter their bids.

#3: The second item I bid on, I was there the last 30 seconds bidding manually and I won the auction! Yippie!

#4: After winning I attempted to go into the BillPay and pay for the item I'd won right away but it kept denying my credit card (and yes, there was money in there).

#5: So I checked into adding money to PayPal and it said it took 3 business days and I didn't want the seller to have to wait that long to get the money. So I emailed him and asked if he'd take Western Union. He wrote right back and said sure, but he was new to the whole EBay thing. I went right down to the local Western Union and sent the $252.50 I paid for the item and then when I returned home I emailed the seller and told him that the money was ready and he could pick it up at his nearest Western Union outlet. I even looked up the Western Union website and gave him an address that was near him. He wrote back and said that he had a Western Union on his campus and would be shipping the item on Monday (today) and picking up the money at the same time.

So now I wait and hope the item that I bid on is what was advertised. I guess that is the way this EBay process works. I must say that the whole process is a bit addictive. If this sale ends up well then I will be doing more buying there, I'm sure. I picked up some tips from this whole EBay experience that I'll pass along to other EBay newbies (if there are any out there like me):

- Have enough money in PayPal to cover your bid amount
- OR Have a credit card that actually works with EBay's Billpay
- Pay attention to the last 5 minutes of the auction you are interested in
- Set a watch inside EBay's user preferences on the item you are interested in (I actually bookmarked the two auctions I was involved in).
- Pay attention to the emails that EBay sends you. They will notify you when you've been outbid by someone (but in the last 5 minutes it will be too late, so be at the bid page, ready to bid as quickly as possible during that time).

3/9/02: Sun and Microsoft are dueling again. This time Sun is suing M$ for 1 billion dollars because they insist that M$ built WindowsXP to be incompatible with Sun's Java architecture. Will these guys ever get along? That is the card that M$ can always play, they can upgrade their OS and leave competition in the dust. It's quite an allegation and one wonders where it will go ...

I have an amendment for my post on Jayson Williams after new information has come out via Sports Illustrated that he tried to cover up the homicide and possibly put the victim's fingerprints on the gun. If these ALLEGED facts are true, I hope Williams rots in a prison cell. I no longer believe he will get off without a day in prison. He's going to do some time now.

3/8/02: Windows users behind proxy servers, there is a Microsoft security alert that you should read about here: http://www.infinisource.com/microsoft/ms-security030402.html

3/6/02: In creating your own "hard to guess" passwords for yourself, it is helpful to keep in mind the number of mathematical possibilities. While this is a simple calculation on its face, it might require some to think about it. I always remember this formula by taking 2 6-sided casino dice as an example. The number of different possibilities is 36 (6 x 6). So the formula for figuring out the number mathematical possibilities is:

N X N

where N = maximum number of possibilities. Let's say we have a 4 digit password scheme with numbers 0 - 9 only. That is 10 possible combinations per digit.

10 x 10 x 10 x 10

That's only 10,000 possible combinations, and probably a little easy to hack. Now what if you add alphabetical letters (lowercase only to the mix)?

36 x 36 x 36 x 36

Now we're up to 1,679,616 different possible combinations. Not bad! It's starting to get more difficult for a simple brute force attack. Let's add upper and lowercase letters (52) numbers (10) and 5 symbols !,@,%, ~, _ to the mix (5)

67 x 67 x 67 x 67

20,151,121 possible combinations for a 4 letter/number/symbol combination. I kept it 4 digits for this illustration because this is math you can do on basic calculators. You would need a computer or more sophistocated calculator to help you do 6-8 digits which is the real size you should use for password generation for yourself.

iBill has a pincode system which consists of 7 single digit numbers, can you figure out how many mathematical possibilities of different numbers there are?

For math puzzle (and some serious brain benders) try http://www.mathpuzzle.com ... warning this site may give you a headache! lol

3/5/02: That's my son and I in the picture to the right. He's having a birthday here in 2 days and will be 12 years old! Man, does that make me feel old because I remember when I was 12 years old very well!

So what does a 12 year old boy want from his father on his birthday? To spend time with his mother and father, of course! ;)

3/4/02: I'm learning all about high fevers, as I'm still trying to fight off this damn sickness. Here's something I didn't realize about fever:

"Most bacteria and viruses that cause infections in humans thrive best at 98.6 degrees F (37C). Raising the temperature a few degrees can give the body the winning edge. In addition, a fever activates the body's immune system, accelerating the production of white blood cells, antibodies, and many other infection-fighting agents.

Cold blooded animals adjust their temperatures by moving to a different spot. While a medical student, I sat fascinated as I learned that lizards, when infected, will move to a warmer place to give themselves a fever. If they are prevented from finding a warmer spot, they will likely die." - Dr. Alan Greene

I really feel like the proverbial lizard looking for a warmer spot! lol

3/2/02: I've been pretty ill lately, but I'm starting to get back with the program. I should be officially back on track on Monday 3/4/02.

This page is updated dynamically on an "almost daily" basis so you might want to bookmark it now and check back. By the domain name, this is my personal site, but my intention for this site is to share some of my comments on business, life and the net and send traffic to sites that are providing mutually beneficial business.

If you have a question you'd like to see me answer here then post a question at one of the resource sites to the left or send a question to: questions@tdavids.com and perhaps I'll give you some of my random access mind!

As of this writing, I have a lousy design for this site, but that is because I am just not very good at graphics. Naturally I could pay a designer (or call in a favor from somebody I've hooked up in the past), but I have mixed emotions (probably completely without merit) about using a pro designer for a design of a site that is personal based, lol. One of these days I'm going to try and improve this graphics skill of mine, but in the meantime, forgive my lack of creativity in the design ;)

With this said, thank you for stopping by and I hope you enjoy reading my almost daily thoughts.