General

I just bought the South Beach Diet book. I plan to start the first phase after Memorial Day. For the last few months I’ve been working out at the gym at least 3-4 times a week and everyone is already starting to notice. I’ve lost about 8 pounds with exercise alone and I’d like to lose another 8.

Good news. Arrested Development is one of my favorite shows and one of the few that I actually take time to watch. It’s intelligent, sharp, and funny – a very rare combination. It doesn’t use a laugh track and it never goes for a cheap laugh.

I discovered Cameron Clapp’s site via Boing Boing. Cameron became a triple amputee at age 15 in a train accident. Despite that, he became a champion athlete in several sports with the aid of his prosthetic arm and legs.

Am I the only one who can’t stand “Friends”? I could never make it through an entire episode of that show. The cast is the dumbest & most annoying of any recent TV show. I’m glad it’s over and I can’t wait for all the fuss over it to die down. It’s impossible to turn on the TV now without hearing about it.

A few days ago I bought a new DVD player, a Samsung DVD-P241, when I started having trouble with my old one (which was almost 5 years old). The new one cost less than half the price of my old one and it’s a lot better.

One really cool feature is the ability to play MP3 and Picture CDs. It has a nice file/folder browser to select MP3 or JPG files and play or view them.

I’m annoyed that iTunes won’t burn an MP3 CD from AAC files (even unprotected ones). I’ve been ripping all of my CDs as AAC for smaller file size and better sound quality, and now I’m starting to regret it. I either convert the files temporarily to MP3 to burn a CD or convert my library to MP3.

I just received the most realistic PayPal scam email yet. I was immediately suspicious for two reasons: it was sent to an address that was NOT my primary PayPal address; and it said that I haven’t logged into my PayPal account for a long time, yet I had just logged in yesterday.

I noticed that it was directing me to paypalserv.com rather than paypal.com, so I looked up that domain. Here’s what I found (personal info blocked out):

Domain Name.......... paypalserv.com
Creation Date........ 2004-04-27
Registration Date.... 2004-04-27
Expiry Date.......... 2005-04-27
Organisation Name.... Jodie Schleicher
Organisation Address. 99 YYYY Street
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. Dalton
Organisation Address. 01xxx
Organisation Address. MA
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES

Admin Name........... Jodie Schleicher
Admin Address........ 99 YYYY Street
Admin Address........
Admin Address........ Dalton
Admin Address........ 01xxx
Admin Address........ MA
Admin Address........ UNITED STATES
Admin Email.......... jodie.schleicher@sbcglobal.net
Admin Phone.......... +1.413XXXXXXX
Admin Fax............

Tech Name............ YahooDomains TechContact
Tech Address......... 701 First Ave.
Tech Address.........
Tech Address......... Sunnyvale
Tech Address......... 94089
Tech Address......... CA
Tech Address......... UNITED STATES
Tech Email........... domain.tech@YAHOO-INC.COM
Tech Phone........... +1.619XXXXXXX
Tech Fax............. +1.619XXXXXXX
Name Server.......... yns1.yahoo.com
Name Server.......... yns2.yahoo.com

I called the admin phone number, and the person who answered never heard of the person mentioned, so it looks like their DNS entry has bogus info. I’ve also forwarded it to PayPal.

John Perry Barlow writes about getting back in shape after a life of neglect.

Although I’m not anywhere near as extreme, I’ve been going to the gym 3 or more times a week and people are starting to notice that I lost weight & I’m looking good. One of the reasons I moved here was because of the gym in the complex, which I really missed at my old place.

Today is the one year anniversary of iTunes Music Store. It also marks exactly one year since I moved into my condo. I didn’t see the iTunes announcement until late that night, since I was busy moving.

The last few days I’ve been getting 5-6 comment spams. It appears that they’re being added manually, since I’ve already renamed the comment script. I delete them immediately with MT-Blacklist and ban the IP address they came from. I really need something better – I can’t wait for MT 3.0 with the comment registration system.

To anyone who sends me add requests on ICQ, unless you tell me who you are, I won’t accept your request. I get far too much spam.