A nice mix of strange, disturbing and comical Photoshopped images.
– Dave
My first attempt at creating a blog. Existing since 2005, the blog contains totally random thoughts, comments, photos and links.
A nice mix of strange, disturbing and comical Photoshopped images.
– Dave
Recently, I took delivery of a sexy, new HTC Touch Pro2 from Verizon -- the second-to-the-last US carrier to make it available. Anyone following my Twitter or Facebook or StumbleUpon feeds knows my obsession with this phone, so I'll avoid the gushing reviews of it. Among the features I wanted to exploit were enhanced Bluetooth profiles and functionality. I burned the midnight oil connecting my two Vista machines at home to every profile available on the new phone. Then it was time to marry my IBM ThinkPad running XP Pro to the new phone. And that's where the quest began.
Being a slightly older (read: archaic) ThinkPad, it does not have Bluetooth support built in. I picked up a cheap, yet reliable Kensington Bluetooth USB adapter at <insert favorite tech geek store here> and have had very good luck with it. Today, I plugged the USB adapter into the laptop, enjoyed the symphony of "boop-beep" noises as plug-n-play [re-]created all the appropriate Registry entries, after which the blue LED went dark. This is typical when the Bluetooth device is turned off by means of a right-click of the Bluetooth System Tray (SysTray) icon. No biggie. I'll just right-click the icon and re-enable it. Wait, where's the freakin' icon???
Apparently, due to one of the myriad mysteries of Windows startup, many of my System Tray icons had gone missing, including the pretty Bluetooth icon. I then did what any upstanding self-proclaimed computer expert would do: "Googled it!" I found several impressive, interesting, helpful, and scary articles about how to edit the Registry to remove misconfigured chaff, delay startup of applications, and disable services such as uPnP to get the problem solved. I then came across the safest, easiest, and in my experience, most reliable way to restore my missing System Tray icons: Piff Explorer.exe.
"Piff" is an industry term, meaning to kill and restart the process in memory. To do this, first close any applications that you may wish to protect from any possible OMG's that could occur by killing processes mercilessly. Then, bring up the Task Manager, most coolly by pressing Ctrl-Shift-Esc, but by whatever means you deem appropriate. Click on the Processes tab and sort the list by Image Name. Here you'll see at least one process called explorer.exe:
Select each explorer.exe process and click End Process. Once you kill the last explorer.exe, every Windows Explorer window and the bottom Task Bar will be gone. Things get eerily quiet at this point.
Now, re-start Windows Explorer by pulling down File... New Task (Run...) in the Windows Task Manager. Type "explorer" (no quotes) and hit Enter. At this point, the Task Bar should reappear, and include all the previously lost System Tray icons you were missing so dearly.

Random Thoughts of the Day:
I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize
Dorothy L. (Wunschel) Dugal, 75, passed away Sunday, January 25, 2009. She was the former wife of the late Dona A. Dugal. Born in Pawtucket, a lifelong resident of the City, she was a daughter of the late Anton and Alice (Roberts) Wunschel.
Dot was a member of St. Teresa's Seniors and was involved with the Pawtucket Parks and Recreation Department. She leaves one son, David G. Dugal of Merrimack, NH; one daughter, Diane A. Bynum of Cranston; two brothers, William Wunschel of Cumberland and Carl Wunschel of Coventry and four step-grandchildren. She was the sister of the late Irene Russell and Lillian Dexter.
A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated Wednesday at 10 a.m. in St. Teresa Church, 358 Newport Ave., Pawtucket. In lieu of flowers, gifts in her memory to the American Stroke Association, 20 Speen St., Framingham, MA 01701-4688 would be appreciated.

| Dona A. Dugal | | |
DUGAL, DONA A., 78, of Woonsocket and formerly of Pawtucket, passed away Saturday, September 6, 2008 at the Philip Hulitar Hospice Center, Providence. He was the husband of Pauline (Beaudry) Dugal. Born in Pawtucket, he was the son of the late George and Jennie (Clausse) Dugal. Mr. Dugal was a mechanic for the Auto Show of Seekonk, MA for several years, retiring in 1998. Besides his wife, he leaves his former wife, Dorothy (Wunschel) Dugal, a son, David Dugal of New Hampshire, a daughter, Diane Bynum of Cranston, three step daughters, Donna Bell of Pawtucket, Kim Marie Bell of New Hampshire, and Tammy West of Pawtucket, two sisters, Mary St. George of Pawtucket, and Frances Borges of Pawtucket, and eight step grandchildren. Mr. Dugal was one of the first mechanic's of Leonard Ink D.B.A. Auto Show of Seekonk MA, for over 30 years, Retiring in 1998. He also did some Modeling with Mr. Leonard through the Donahue Modeling Agency. Through the years Don had a LOVE for OLD CARS, He loved breathing new life into old cars that needed him, He could not pass a JUNK YARD without bringing one home. There are maybe 500 cars he has fixed for friends and family members that are still on the road today. Don also belonged to the Rolling Rhodes Car Club, The Drifters, & the Four Seasons Rambler AMCRC Car Club. Visiting hours Tuesday 5-9PM. at the COSTIGAN-ONEILL Funeral Home, 220 Cottage Street, Pawtucket. The funeral will be Wednesday at 9 a.m. with a Mass of Christian Burial at 10 a.m. in Saint Teresa Church, 358 Newport Ave., Pawtucket. Burial will be private. Reception will be held after the funeral, everyone is invited to the basement of the Church for a small luncheon. | ||
Last May Pioneer told us that autumn would bring a "super duper" Blu-ray player--the most powerful Blu-ray player ever built. It makes up for the current crop, which are lower in price but are missing key features like BD-Live for internet-based content. Well, not a leaf has fallen off a tree, yet here it is already, the $2,200 Elite BDP-09FD. Feature-wise, the best Blu-ray player on the market has been the PS3--turns out, an extra $1,700 will buy you something that kills Sony's game console as far as Blu-ray and other media are concerned.
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Incredibly hilarious video by Weezer. See if you can catch all the YouTube viral video cameos. Absolutely brilliant!
A 5.4 earthquake hit Tuesday while Verdell Wilson was having an exam in her gynecologist's Los Angeles office. Given it was her first earthquake experience, Wilson did what comes naturally--she twittered it."As soon as I got dressed, I twittered my experience from my cell phone," Wilson said. "I usually twitter to 80 friends, but I now have 274 messages from people commenting on it."
And then Twitter and FriendFeed exploded with comments and references and replies. Verdell's experience even prompted chitown.mike to post a mock-up motivational poster about it:
Clearly this is a new Internet meme and the beginning of the latest Internet viral concept.
read more | digg story
Current Juniper CEO Scott Kriens delivered strong quarter results, said enterprise demand was solid and outlined the primary reason Kevin Johnson was hired as his replacement: He knows how to scale.
Ahead of its earnings report Thursday, Juniper made the Johnson news official. The company has hired Kevin Johnson, who used to run Microsoft’s platform and services division, which was split up by the software giant. And judging from Juniper’s announcement Johnson is walking into a good situation.
read more | digg story
With over 8 million downloads Mozilla sets the Guinness World Record for most software downloads in 24 hours.
read more | digg story
The Color Management add-on for Firefox 3 by Sean Hayes is a must for any avid photographer or enthusiast who knows the difference between sRGB and Adobe RGB. Firefox 3 adds support for non-sRGB colorspaces, but the Color Management add-on easily enables it, and allows specification of monitor profile as well. Install this now!
read more | digg story
Pretty clever, possibly unedited slight of hand tricks with one or more Zippo lighters. My pyro daughter is looking on with delight. I think I'll hide my Zippo tonight ...
This week Skype has modified this service such that Skype users can select either their SkypeIn (Online) number or mobile phone number as their CLI or CallerID to be sent with their SkypeOut calls. And now it applies to North American Skype users.
read more | digg story
It appears you are not on MySpace.com. You're safe at the moment, but at any point you could accidentally follow the wrong link and end up stuck inside the sweaty armpit of the Internet. But with our helpful Firefox plugin you can browse in peace again. Any visit to MySpace will cause it to jump in and save you with a large prompt offering to take you back to sanity.
Click Am I on MySpace.com to save your sanity forever!
read more | digg story

Barack Obama has done what many just a year ago thought was impossible. He took on the most powerful family in Democratic politics and won.
The first-term senator captured the Democratic nomination by beating out Sen. Hillary Clinton, who was hoping to become the first female nominee.
He also had to campaign against the senator's husband, former President Bill Clinton, one of the great political talents of the 20th century who, at least going into the primary season, enjoyed widespread popularity among Democrats.
During one debate, Obama wondered out loud if he was running against the wife or the husband, given the former president's high profile on the campaign trail.
Posted using ShareThisSecurity Twits by Mediaphyter
Jennifer Leggio (aka. @mediaphyter) has started an up-to-date list of security professionals on Twitter and FriendFeed. Check back often for upcoming security events and/or contacts, or DM mediaphyter to be added to the list.
An incredible portfolio of alluring, eye-catching glamour and fashion photos on photo.net by Alex Matusciac.

It’s well known that the use of sexy screenshots can help your videos get a lot more exposure. People are much more likely to click through on videos showing cleavage or the body of an attractive male/female.
read more | digg story
This is simply a refreshed update to the original BLogThis! post from October 2005.
BlogThis! is an easy way to make a blog post without visiting blogger.com. Once you add the BlogThis! link to your browser's toolbar, blogging will be a snap. Or rather, a click. Clicking BlogThis! creates a mini-interface to Blogger prepopulated with a link to the web page you are visiting, as well as any text you have highlighted on that page. Add additional text if you wish and then publish or post from within BlogThis!
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I'm actually quite surprised I haven't blogged my set of ferret photos from Flickr yet. I've got quite a collection of photos I've taken of my Evil Weasels throughout the years. Here's a mosaic, created from BigHugeLabs.com Mosaic Maker:
and a few of my favorites:






Comments welcome!
With Clipmarks, you're always one-click away from sharing any piece of media you find on the web.
Like scissors for web pages, Clipmarks lets you capture the specific content on a web page that you want others to see.
Once you've clipped something, you can share it anywhere on the web, including Facebook, your blog, by email or on clipmarks.com.
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WOT (Web of Trust), a free Internet Browser resource that has established an impressive 4.5/5.0 star user rating on CNET, tests web sites you are visiting for spyware, spam, viruses, browser exploits, unreliable online shops, phishing, and online scams. WOT which integrates with search engine results from popular search engines including Google...
read more | digg story
This "OK Go" video has become an absolute classic. It's one of my favorite YouTube videos of all time. There was even a reference to this viral video on an episode of The Simpsons!
Panasonic Details DMP-BD50 Pricing and Features | High-Def Digest
Panasonic has announced the spring debut of its much-touted DMP-BD50 player, which boasts BD-Live among other expanded capabilities.
As reported in January and further detailed via press release today, The BD50 adds BD-Live functionality, which lets viewers access online content such as images and subtitles to further enhance the viewing experience.
The BD50 also offers next generation sound capabilities using integrated decoders for lossless Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio.
How to Delete Email Addiction is an excellent article on how to wean yourself off of near-fatal e-mail addiction. The article begins:
"I have a secret: I am an email-holic, and I am addicted to email.
"Despite persistent drive to improve my productivity and personal efficiency, I am hooked on email, and occasionally social networking sites like facebook. I have read countless articles on the topic, including Tim’s 4HWW. Each time, I would get inspired, follow it for a few days, and eventually fall back on my routine of checking email, every spare moment."
Click here for more.
Three beautiful images of a sunset over the water, taken during our cruise on the Sovereign of the Seas coming back from the Bahamas:
This blog is dedicated to the pseudo-random thoughts I have throughout my lifetime. While it may be of little interest to almost nobody, I wanted to confirm that my AddThis widget correctly allows posting to Digg.
read more | digg story
Nancie, my fiancée, has graduated from MySpace to Facebook, and now onto a real, honest-to-goodness Blogger blog! Check out her heartfelt ruminations, called Our Lives, at:
Incredible time-lapsed video of Fenway Park in Boston, MA, shot by Tom Guilmette (www.tomguilmette.com).
read more | digg story
Who's selling Windows XP in July? | Defensive Computing - CNET Blogs
By July 1st, Dell, Lenovo, HP and all the other big computer manufacturers will no longer be allowed to sell new computers with Windows XP pre-installed. So says Microsoft. Microsoft also dictated to retailers that, come July, there will be no more shrink-wrapped boxes of Windows XP on their store shelves.
But, many of us prefer XP over the Microsoft-mandated Vista. To borrow from Star Trek, some of us don't want to be assimilated (sorry, couldn't resist). What are we to do this summer?