Tropical Storm Bill Say hello to Tropical Storm Bill!

DVD X Copy I won a copy of DVD X Copy. It retails for about $30. Has anyone ever used it? I don't own a DVD burner, so I won't have an opportunity to test it for some days or weeks.

The Great Kate Actress Katharine Hepburn has died at age 96. If you've never seen it, please rent The Philadelphia Story. She gave an awesome performance, as did Carey Grant and Jimmy Stewart.

National Do Not Call Registry "The National Do Not Call Registry is open for business, putting consumers in charge of the telemarketing calls they get at home. The Federal Government created the national registry to make it easier and more efficient for you to stop getting telemarketing sales calls you don't want. You can register online at DONOTCALL.GOV if you have an active email address. If you live in a state west of the Mississippi River (including Minnesota or Louisiana), you can call toll-free, 1-888-382-1222, from the number you wish to register. Phone registration will open to the entire nation on July 7. Registration is free."

CloneDVD CloneDVD (by the makers of CloneCD) has been released. It extracts, transcodes and writes any orginal DVD title you like to a single recordable DVD. Giddy-Up!

"DVD Master Backup allows you to create personal backup copies your DVD movies by transforming them into DIVX format to fit it on a standard 700MB compact disc. The program is simple and easy to use, just select your DVD drive, the output directory and press a button. DVD Master Backup will automatically extract the VOB files and convert everything into DIVX (.avi) format using mpeg2avi. You also have the option to change some settings like screen resolution and size before starting the final conversion process."

Gaming Server Does anyone have the IP address of a good Medal of Honor Allied Assault gaming server? If so, please leave a comment. I don't want to use GameSpy. The game allows you to input a specific IP address of a known server. This is what I would like to do. UPDATE! Once I installed the latest patch for MOHAA, the option to browse internet servers was added.

Opinions Here are a few things that make me happy: the many birds and squirrels that play in our yard each and every day. Drive-thru pharmarcies. Fresh bagels. Overdraft protection on my checking account. A good friend that loves to boil crawfish on Saturdays.

Here are some things that aggravate me: Radio stations that play Jimmy Cliff's inferior version of the Johnny Nash song 'I Can See Clearly Now'. The birds that are eating the blueberries in my yard. The logic behind the price of gas. People who tailgate.

YahooPOPs! 0.46 As you may know, Yahoo! Mail disabled free access to its POP3 service in April 2002. The result? Many people began looking for alternative free POP3 services. YahooPOPs! is an open-source initiative to provide free POP3 access to your Yahoo! Mail account. It emulates a POP3 server and enables popular email clients to download email from Yahoo! accounts. It acts like a gateway, providing a POP3 server interface at one end to talk to email clients and an HTTP client interface at the other which allows it to talk to Yahoo!. Windows and Unix versions are available.

Upper Endoscopy Check out this good news: a decent report from my G.I. doctor, after he performed an Upper Endoscopy last Wednesday. No ulcers or anything too serious at this time. I still have esophagitis, caused by my continuing (mild) reflux. I also have a touch of gastritis. These conditions are treatable and/or controllable. My doctor feels confident that with the right medicine and slight (temporary) changes in my diet, the damage will heal.

Judge: Millions of CD Buyers Owed Money "A judge approved a settlement agreement Friday in a music antitrust lawsuit that will result in more than 3.5 million consumers receiving nearly $13 each. Judge D. Brock Hornby issued a 51-page ruling in the case that began in 1996 when attorneys general across the country began investigating whether distributors and retailers had conspired to inflate CD prices." A potential victory for the little people!

'V' is Back! Giddy-Up! V is returning to NBC in the form of a three-hour TV movie.

Salads From Fast-Food Restaurants May Not Be a Healthy Choice "Many fast-food chains are now offering salads on their menus, but before you applaud yourself for choosing fresh greens over a burger and fries, take a closer look at the salad ingredients."

David Limbaugh on WMD WMD: Don't Change the Ground Rules - "Remember: The United States did not have the burden of proving Saddam Hussein was still manufacturing and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction to justify attacking Iraq. There is no reason the ground rules should suddenly change now that the war is over. We don't have the burden of finding WMDs now -- not because hindsight vindicates our action as a humane liberation of the Iraqi people, which it was -- but because we never had the burden in the first place. Don't you recall U.N. Resolution 1441? It was not a unilateral edict of the United States but a unanimous corporate statement of the 15-member Security Council. It was passed Nov. 8, 2002, not at some distant point in the past. What did that multilateral resolution provide?"

Happy Blogday to Me! Broomeman.com turned two years old today. My how time flies!

Guide to Windows Online Security & Privacy "Making your Windows OS more secure and improving your privacy online is an awkward enough process given the sheer number of things that can be done to improve it. In this guide we will cover many of such known solutions for various popular applications which should make your system more secure as well as less prone to viruses."

Microsoft to Abandon Standalone IE "Microsoft is phasing out standalone versions of its Internet Explorer Web browser, according to statements attributed to IE program manager Brian Countryman in an interview posted on the software giant's Web site. "As part of the operating system, IE will continue to evolve, but there will be no future standalone installations. IE6 SP1 is the final standalone installation," Countryman said in the the May 7 interview." I find this hard to believe.

Central Park Turns 150 Simply put, Central Park is what makes life in NYC possible. It's the best 800 acres in New York. Read all about it here.

Stop Changing Our Favorite Movies Stephen Schleicher: "Star Wars Episode Four: A New Hope was probably the reason why many of us got into the industry - motion pictures, special effects, animation, graphics, etc. In 1977 the movie was something that blew audiences away and became one of those films that redefined the industry. In 1997 technology had improved greatly; Starship Troopers came out that year that had animated special effects that made the effects from the 1977 flick pale in comparison. So what does Lucas do? He changes his film. Not only did he enhance the effects and clean it up, but in a couple of scenes he changed the whole tone of the film." I agree wholeheartedly with Stephen Schleicher's viewpoint in this article.

Truth & Consequences "Just how good was America's intelligence on Iraq? Seven weeks after the end of the war, no hard evidence has been turned up on the ground to support the charge that Iraq posed an imminent threat to U.S. national security - no chemical weapons in the field, no Scud missiles in the western desert, no biological agents. At least not yet. As a result, questions are being raised about whether the Bush administration overstated the case against Saddam Hussein."

Bush: 'We Found' Banned Weapons "President Bush, citing two trailers that U.S. intelligence agencies have said were probably used as mobile biological weapons labs, said U.S. forces in Iraq have "found the weapons of mass destruction" that were the United States' primary justification for going to war."