To Whom It May Concern...

Okay... I'm looking at this, and thinking, 'Maybe I should do something here.' We'll see.

There are different ways to be happy. I like to classify them in two ways: Fun and Satisfaction Fun is truly a roller coaster. It seems that for every up fun gives you there is a down. You have a party... you have to clean up when everybody goes home. Summer fun... fades to autumn. Satisfaction comes from a job well done, a life well lived, and friends to share it with. It comes from a life full of purpose and accomplishment. The world tells us that we evolved, and as such, the only time we have is now. This begets a life of 'fun', trying to get all you can while you can. This is sad, since a life of satisfaction can be so much fuller. Many people have been discouraged by things such as religion when they see the hypocrisy that is so prevalent. And they're right to be upset. Most religions preach traditions that have no factual basis, and drift over time, offering no lasting foundation. So, if satisfaction is so much better, how can we find it? It may be time to look a litt...

I read Art of Manliness quite regularly. Here's a nice article about being a house guest, though I don't think you need to send money for food all the time. http://artofmanliness.com/2008/11/16/manners-etiquette-house-guest/

This article is nice for anybody who is going to have house guests. http://artofmanliness.com/2008/11/17/how-to-be-a-gracious-host/

This is the Notice for Stephan E. Cooper. http://www.legacy.com/Link.asp?I=LS000109630446X Click on the above link or cut and paste the url into your browser's address bar.

As many of you already know, my father-in-law has been battling brain tumors for a while. He lost the fight Saturday afternoon while sleeping. We want to thank all our friends for their support during this time.

Well, since my last post, I've been to Chris' wedding, I've been sick with the flu, and I've updated my online footprint. Chris' wedding went very well considering. Brandi, the bride, was sick. Actually, Chris was too, but poor Brandi had the flu. She went to the hospital between the ceremony and reception to get a shot to settle her stomach. But for the ceremony and most of the reception she soldiered on and looked beautiful. Then I got it. I was down for a week with the flu, but for me it was mostly congestion and sore throat. It's been a week and a half, and I've still got a tickle in my throat. As for updates, I updated the link for LinkedIn.com that you'll see on the left. I've added several people, and been recommended a few times. Join in. I've also added a nice Gallery to my site: http://mark.phillk.net/gallery2/ . You'll see pics of the wedding there. This also offers slide shows, but is still hosted on my server. Works busy, I'...

This post was inspired by Jeff Atwood's comments, here . I have 2 keychains. One has my keys and store cards. One has my thumb drive and led flashlight. My main keychain (with the keys) has 2 car remotes, 2 car keys, 2 house keys (our front and back doors are different locks. Have to fix that.) I also have 2 keys for a building I frequent, a key to my parents house, and 3 store cards and a gym membership card. It's the remotes that make it so big... 1 of my house keys has a built in led light (Key Lights brand) , great for finding the keyhole when you forget to turn on the porch lights. I usually keep my big keychain in my coat in the fall-winter months, since it bulges in my pockets. I've actually been stabbed by some keys. I only keep my thumb drive key chain in my pocket.

I thought I learned about this in elementary school. Child cancer risk higher near nuclear plants: study

To keep everybody up to date: Circuit Assembly was great. Steph is ok. She was only in the emergency room for 2 - 2 1/2 hours. They gave her an IV because she was dehydrated, and some medicine to settle her stomach. The doctor said it was a stomach virus and would run it's course. She's feeling better but week. It's important to keep things up to date. But that can be hard when you have tons of links scattered throughout your blog. Like this link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dndotnet/html/persistappsettnet.asp from a post on January 10, 2005. The page doesn't exist. However, the page did once exist, and the Wayback machine helped me find it with this link: http://web.archive.org/web/20050909193245/http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dndotnet/html/persistappsettnet.asp I'm taking some of the content, and I'm going to put it on my site, since it was so helpful to me.

A while back I mentioned the trip my wife and I took to Wyoming. One of the most stunning differences between Wyoming, and here on the east coast, was the sky. Not the fact that you could see so much of it. Not the fact that you could see why the Milky Way is considered milky. It was simply the clearness of the air. Landing in Philadelphia, we descended into a brown haze. I guess living on the east coast, and in NY city, I never really noticed how prevalent it was. But you literally felt like you were slowly dipping into cloudy lake water. 'Well, this is Philly', I thought. But lately, as I drive into Harrisburg, I'm noticing the brown cloud that hangs over the city. And not just the city... but out into they nearby suburban developments, where kids play in their tiny backyards, and drink from the garden hoses fed by the river. Don't get me wrong. I'm no tree hugger. I've wasted my share of resources. I put my recycling out. I try to re-use what I can. (I'm ...

I live in an area where a zip code could be 30-45 minutes across. And I work in a different zip code than where I live. So let me lay out my problem. Let's say I live in the western side of 'Town A'. Further west, we have 'Town B' where I work in the Eastern half. If I do a search on my insurance company's site for doctors in the zip code of Town A, they may send me to a doctor in the eastern side of the town (remember, in this example, I live in the western side of the town.) So, I drive 30-45 minutes WEST in the morning, to go to work. Then I have a doctors appointment, and have to drive maybe 1.5 hours (passing my house) to go to the doctor. That's just silly. So, let's say I punch in the zip code for 'Town B', where I work, and they send me to the Western side of town. Here I'm working in the eastern side, so again it's all the way accross town. A 1.5 hour round trip. Could I put in 2 addresses, and let our slaves of a computer figure...

This is interesting to those groups who try to cover as many languages as possible. Languages Racing to Extinction in 5 Global "Hotspots"

Yes, we're getting a new member of our family. No, not a people. Check out our new puppy , coming home October 19th. Oh yea... She's a Shih Tzu.

Never had a problem myself, but thought I'd pass this on: Crocs, kids and escalators a bad combination? My advice? Always pay attention to your children. Who wouldn't be careful with a two year old on an escalator anyway!!!

The Bank of America's ATM heist , or, Why we pay fees to get take money out.

Historic Pretzels-For-Little Debbie Swap Sparks Heavy Lunchtime Trading

We were down at Ocean City, MD this weekend. We walked the beach, despite the cold wind. Walked the boardwalk. Steph tried Go-Karts for the first time ever. Absolutely no computer work. YEAH!!! (We did bring the laptop for navigational purposes, but it didn't come out of the bag once we were there.) Sunday I get a call from my brother: 'Your mom rushed dad into the emergency room this AM with chest pains. They said something about a pulminary embelism.' 'What hospital?', I asked. 'I don't know, Marsha got the call, I think Hartford.' (It ended up being Manchester.) Thankfully, it's just Pneumonia and he's on antibiotics. (Thankfully just pneumonia? Sheesh, what a system.) He's taking it easy, letting things settle down. They checked everything else and he's fine otherwise. What a way to wind up our weekend! Hehe... I can laugh about it now tho.

It's been a crazy month. Starting a new job, Aux. Pioneering, lot's of activities. It's had it's ups and downs, but it was good. Today was a nice touch. On the way to work I saw a pretty nice rainbow. It wasn't the entire rainbow, but both ends. (The top was missing.) I also did some work on my system to fix a problem I was having with my RAM. I couldn't use both chips of my Dual Channel OCZ RAM. I also couldn't tweak the BIOS settings for RAM because the motherboard was very limited. I got a new ASUS board which booted right up with both sticks of RAM. Later though, I got the same Windows Stop errors. But I was able to go into the BIOS and tweak the settings for latency and such, getting it to work with no errors. However, I'm also trying to use my system less. I'm wrapping up my projects for my old boss. I'll eventually end up with this box as a media box, feeding a Hauppage set-top unit. So, getting closer to our Wyoming trip. What's new i...

We had 136 with 1 partaker on April 2nd. Our bible studies came, so that was nice. Okay, the new job. I like it. I have to get acclimated to the new type of work environment, but as for technical skill, I'm not as far behind as I was afraid I would be. I still have a lot to learn, and it's a big project, but it's VB .Net 1.1. So I don't have to get used to a new language right now. I'll try to find topics I can talk about but for now, just getting used to the routine and such. All else is well.