What is your browser's default home page set to?
Submitted by Kelev T. Cat.
At home it is iwon.com, I've had my home page set to them for years and haven't won a damn thing.
At work it is google.com/ig which is the personalized Google homepage. The Digg plugin for it is cool.
Honestly though, 80% of the time I never see the homepage. Either the browser will start from a link in an E-Mail or RSS feed in Outlook or I type in a search in the Google desktop search box in the taskbar. Almost never do I click on the button to go to my home page.
Who's your favorite movie villain?
Hans Gruber from Die Hard.
He was super evil, was smarter than average for a bad guy and Alan Rickman played him perfectly. The scene where he ran into Bruce Willis and had to act like a scared hostage was great.
I found a shrine to him, check it out, this guy is an even bigger fan.
What movie would you really recommend renting or seeing this weekend?
Go see Talledega Nights, it's really funny. This is not one of those movies where the best parts are in the commercials.
Make sure you stay until the end of the credits, there is a very funny scene with the two kids.
Well, here's my banner:
What's the nerdiest thing about you?
I am a "second adopter". I get devices after the first wave but before most people. I have a lot of crap.
I bought Sony's first DVD changer in 1998.
I have a DirecTV-Tivo, but I didn't get until it had been out for a year.
I had a iPod mini (which I gave away) and now have a Nano (which ) won't, but I never bought a full-size iPod.
I bought a fancy ipod adapter for my car so it would integrate with the stereo & Nav display. I tried cassette adapters and FM modulators but they both didn't work very well.
I just got a cool DVD player which can play movies off of memory cards, but I can't get it work over DVI with my three year old TV.
I was a participant in an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) last summer called Art of the Heist. If you go to day 72 in that presentation, you can briefly see me in the right side of the boat in the camo jacket. They gave us Palm Treo 650s for being part of the project. I got it unlocked so I could use it with T-Mobile and now I am addicted to the Treo.
I bought an Xbox 360 last December hoping to flip it, but I couldn't sell it on EBay for a profit so I kept it. It is very cool, even though I don't play with it enough.
I bought a Sirius radio, but that was so my girlfriend can continue to listen to Howard Stern.
One last thing, I have a PC with two monitors, two printers, two mice and I can play music out of it into two different stereo systems.
What magazines do you subscribe to, and why?
The Economist - Excellent general news magazine with a British perspective.
Wired - It has some good articles. They have cut back on the articles recently.
Car & Driver - I let this subscription lapse a month ago by mistake & I need to renew. They have excellent no BS reviews of cars. They don't take themselves very seriously, either.
Time - No idea why I still subscribe. I won't renew.
Sports Illustrated - SI has very good writing. The last issue on my subscription came this week, I need to resubscribe for another 3 years.
Cook's Illustrated - Good cooking magazine. Only 6 issues a year. Yes, I subscribe to a cooking magazine. They have good food and gadget reviews. The same people produce America's Test Kitchen on PBS.
It took 3 1/2 days to get to California. We stopped in Souix City, SD, Laramie, WY and Reno, NV. I left my cell phone charger in the hotel in Reno.
We stayed at Dr. Wilkinson's hotel & spa in Calistoga. It was a very nicely kept up 1950's era motel. Jonnell wanted to stay there because they have mud baths. She really enjoyed her mud bath. The motel also had three pools at different temperatures. I never bothered to spend much time any the warmer two pools. The motel is highly recommended. The next time we go to the Napa Valley, we'll most likely stay there. The motel was also featured in an episode of "Dirty Jobs" on Discovery Channel.
Here are some pictures we took in Napa Valley:
I can't remember the name of this winery, but it was very nice inside & had an Egyptian theme.
Jonnell thought this abandoned house outside of Calistoga was very interesting. We had to stop twice to take pictures of it.
These were some grapes at the Cakebread winery. We belong to their wine club & went there for a wine & food pairing seminar.
Here's what they fed us. It was very good & so was the wine. I didn't accentially buy a $75 dollar bottle of wine like I did the first time we went to Cakebread.
These were at Cakebread as well. We didn't take as many pictures in Napa as we should have.
We drove up to Lakeport, CA to go to a drive in. The road was amazingly curvy. Jonnell was very unhappy.
But the lake itself was very nice. We were glad we made it up there.
I always liked the word "plethora".
Not a big fan of "impossible" or "never".
More vacation pictures!!
In 2005, we had a crazy idea. We'll drive from Chicago (our home) to California and back in 16 days. We also wanted to travel in a big circle, without driving on the same road for a long as we could. We ended up driving almost 5000 miles, which was about 700 more than what a direct trip to California and back would take.
Our goals were to visit Napa, California and to see the Gilroy Garlic Festival, in Gilroy, California. It ended up being one of the best vacations ever.
The biggest mistake we made was to not have hotel reservations on our first & last nights on the road. We had no idea that all of the hotels fill up. We ended up driving an extra hour each night trying to find a hotel with vacancies. And we weren't being picky either.
Here are some of the pictures we took on the way to California.
The first tourist stop we made was the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. It was a fun little tourist stop.
Here's Wall Drug, in Wall, SD. This is the classic tourist trap. Free ice water! We ate lunch there, it was pretty good.
Here I am with a statue at Wall Drug. I don't remember the story about the wooden guy.
Mount Rushmore was great. I'm really glad we went there.
We took this picture in a rather remote part of eastern Wyoming. We were glad it was summer.
I'll post a bunch of pictures from California tomorrow!
In the summer of 2002, we were going to my cousin's wedding in North Carolina.
In 2001 we drove from here in Chicago to the Northeast to see Toronto, Boston, Cape Cod and eventually to see my parents in Pennsylvania. This was our first big driving trip together, and we were proud of the fact we didn't kill each other.
So this time we decided to drive from Chicago to Memphis, Austin, San Antonio, Biloxi, Atlanta and then to the wedding. In two weeks. In August.
The key to surviving both trips was the audiobook. It did a great job of taking our minds off the fact we had another 10 hour driving day ahead of us.
Well, here are a bunch of pictures from the 2002 trip. I can't find any pictures from Graceland, which is annoying.
This is one of the old Spanish missions in San Antonio. We would have gone to more of these but it was around 98 and humid every day we were there. We recommend staying on the Riverwalk, it is alot of fun. Jonnell even talked me into taking a tourist boat cruise.
This was near one of the missions we visited.
This is why Jonnell wanted to go to San Antonio. Although, instead of swimming with dolphins we got to go in the shark tank.
And this was the one thing I wanted to see in Texas. Shiner Bock is great beer and the brewery tour is pretty good.
Not sure where we were when this was taken but I liked the picture.
We spent two nights at Beau Rivage, in Biloxi, Mississippi. Thanks to Katrina, I'm guessing it doesn't look like this anymore.
We got to see a Braves game in Turner Field. We were in the "Lexus Level", which is just the club level, and it was very nice. On a recommendation from Alton Brown, we ate at Aria in Buckhead, which was super. We also would recommend the Sofitel Atlanta, which was very nice.
Driving up to North Carolina from Atlanta, we saw this waterfall and had to stop to check it out.
And on our drive home, we passed the Weinermobile in Indiana.
