Checksum Arcanius

A little while back, I noticed that I was beginning to get some trackback spam. At the time, I thought it odd that the trackbacks didn’t actually show up as comments – yet I recieved the email as if they had been posted. It truns out that, beause the initial trackbacks I was getting were from poker places, they had in fact gone into the moderation queue (although WordPress did not inform me on this). Secondly, the spammers seem to have refined their techniques, as a couple of trackback comment spams actually made their way into comments on the blog. They have of course been utterly eradicated, long before google or even msn bots could have picked them up, but now I have to make a decision between learning how trackbacks work so I can implement some sort of more intellegent anti-trackback-spam scheme, or simply disabling trackbacks altgether. I don’t want to have to resort to the later techniques, but real trackbacks are not all that common for me, so its not out of the question.

No, I didn’t fall off the end of the earth… Instead, I have been below the radar due to the upcoming FIRST Robotics Competition deadlines. Along with Tim and Cheuk, I have done a lot of work on the TRC website, preparing to win (hopefully) its third sraight Best Website award. Since the site is written in ColdFusion, I have started to learn a little more about the Macromedia product. Its fairly easy to pick up on the basics, and already I have implemented foward-looking event queries (it’s a little bit of a hack, but it should work through the end of the year, and it will never be worse than it was before, when it only showed events on the current day), a more intelligent “What FIRST means to me” cutoff point (before it was hard limited to 500 characters; now it searches for the end of a sentence that occurs after 200 characters), and a new banner that most people, including me, are not entirely pleased with (suggestions are welome – but before February 22nd, please).

So go take a look and let me know what you think.

I planned this post last week, after my second successful geocaching expedition, but in a fit of blogger’s block, I was unable to convert it into a post. So now it comes today, after my third successful and fun geocaching expedition. This time the location was Woodinville, the target was a multi-cache on the Burke-Gilman trail. Along for the fun this time was a member of the fairer sex, a fellow BCC student and adventurer named Vanessa. After finding the cache at the fourth tree, we ate lunch at a nice Mexican place and then called it an afternoon. Overall, quite an enjoyable experience.

I’m now on the upswing from being ill; its a joyful feeling to say the least. Precious few things seem worse than the unable-to-sleep, headache-ridden, extremely uncomfortable nights that go along with illness. Disease really is the right name for it. Anyway, here is my advice to you: don’t get sick.

The wife of a family friend took sick, so an extra ticket became available to an eclectic concert last night. Having nothing better to do, I decided I’d give it shot, since I had actually heard of the special guests, Tingstad and Rumbel, whose Christmas Album The Gift is one of my favorites. What it turned out to be was an evening of close harmony with primarily three barbershop quartets, the Renton Valley Harmonizers putting on a production of “The Seven Deadly Sins,” a fun and well-made production, and then of course Tingstad and Rumbel. The choreographed music of the Seven Deadly sins was well-sung and quite fun, and the first two barbershop quartets were quite good – each had either won or placed second in the Evergreen district in the past couple of years – and the Evergreen district covers from Oregon to Alaska to Montana, so we are talking some seriously good singing. When Tingstad and Rumbel began, however, they easily outshined everything that had happened up to that point. The virtuosity of each musician was amazing; Tingstad has complete control over the guitar, and Rumbel is a magician with the Oboe and an assortment of Flutes. They got a standing ovation and performed an encore, but little did I know that the best was yet to come.

The Gas House Gang won the international barbershop quartet competition in 1993, and believe me that it is no slight to the others to say that the Gas House Gang was an order of magnitude better than the other quartets. Even missing one of their original members (replaced by a member of another international-winning quartet for this concert), the sound of the group was cleaner, brighter, and noticeably better than any of the others. And the chemistry between the three original members was fantastic. I can only imagine what the group must have been like with the original baritone, who died in 2003 of cancer, an event which has now culiminated in the group’s decision to retire. After 18 years of what can only be described as amazing music and showmanship, even though this was my first real exposure to them (I had heard of the Gang before, but not heard their stuff), I can say with conviction that the musical community is loosing something special in the Gas House Gang. Bravo!

-or- An evening stroll down the 405
-or- Twenty minutes in an hour and a half
-or- Free exercise on the Kirkland Promenade

Last night, on my way to Dan’s house from work, I discovered that the sometimes-on, sometimes-off low gas warning light in my truck is in fact sometimes-off when it should-be-on. Somewhere between 116th and 85th, the tube ran dry and the truck began to loose power in spurts. I tried to stretch my luck out to get to the next exit, but the truck would have none of it. When power steering and brakes left me, I figured it was time to call it quits and walk the rest of the way. So I jumped out, locked up, and went for an evening stroll down 405. I had the opportunity to check my messages in relative safety (if walking near cars going 60+ mph is safer than talking on the phone while driving, that is), and the walk to downtown Kirkland and back was rereshing, sometimes exciting, and really not too expensive (although it did stink too much of gas on the way back). Ever wonder why gas cans suck so much? I think its because the companies that make them don’t want to deprive roadside grass of the much-needed petroleum products that leaky gas cans provide. The weather was perfect for the occasion; cool enough that the walk didn’t get me sweaty, not so cold that my fingers froze off. It was good to see downtown Kirkland again to, although next time I plan to do it among better circumstances.

…can make all the difference. Yesterday, I left for school five minutes earlier than today. I faced very little traffic all the way in, and arrived before the previous class had let out. Today, leaving some five minutes later, I was confronted with a traffic jam and ended up some five minutes late. The change in arrival time was about fifteen miutes; the change in departure only about five.