Oldest 100 .com Domain Names

A list of the 100 oldest (longest registered) domain names.
It's kind of like taking a trip through the wayback machine.
Really makes me wish I would have gone through with my original idea back in '96 to register stuff like news.com, cars.com, games.com, etc. Those generic domains are now worth millions. Oh well, live and (repeatedly not) learn I guess.

Linky

Transparent Aluminum

Looks like they've found a way
to make it happen. Can Galaxy Class Starships be far behind?
Linky

They're everywhere!

Heh!
Someone put together a Google Maps app that tracks UFO sightings. Pretty cool really.

Japan

You know, a lot of my friends misunderstand me when I talk about going to Japan...
I think they're assuming I just want to go to Japan to hook up with some young bit of exotic tail.
Now really, I'm damn near 40 years old and while I can appreciate the visual impact a beautiful young woman can have, I'm just too freaking tired to deal with their crap. It reminds me of a picture I have floating around here some where...


You know, if you think about it, it's true.

Not too mention young women tend to be all drama. That's the last thing I need, a Japanese girl that I can barely communicate with, ripping my ass about something. It'd be like being married again. "Yes dear, yes dear, I don't know what you're saying but I agree 100%."
Bah, I don't need that shit. No man does.

No, Japan is a lot more than exotic women to me. It's hard to explain, but it's like Scotland. Not that that statement makes any sense either.
When I read about it, I get this feeling that it's where I'm supposed to be. Maybe to live, maybe not. But, just someplace that I'm supposed to go in my lifetime. A journey of self improvement maybe. Bah, that's some new-age sounding shit there.

I want to go to Japan. I want to live there for a few months. Not a lifetime, just a year or two. I want to study Aikido, I want to indulge the Otaku side of my personality and buy toys and gadgets and junk.
I want to meet the people. I want to take pictures and write about the things I see. I want to study the history of the places that I only read about on the web.

Maybe I want to feel like I my life has a little meaning to it again. It's been a long time since I've felt like I was accomplishing something, instead of just getting about of bed everyday and going through the motions.
Maybe I'm starting to feel my years, and while 39 isn't that old, there are fewer days ahead of me than there are behind me. I'd like to have at least one grand adventure before I shuffle off this mortal coil.

I may only go for a month on vacation or something, never to return. I may never get to go at all. I don't know what the future holds for me. But, I do know it's something I need to try to accomplish.

I want to study Aikido anyway, of all the martial-arts that are out there, this one appeals to me the most.
While the SO has added Krav Maga to their list of approved self-defense styles, along with Koga, so I'm going to have to study those too, good thing they're paying for it, Aikido seems to be more suited to me.
It's not a pussy defense by any means, but it is actually quite gentle. Kind of like me. A good day is a day when I don't have to hurt anyone else to get by. I don't want to be breaking bones and snapping necks, that's not me. For me, that's part of the beauty of Aikido. I'm not setting out to hurt someone to prevent them from hurting me. I'm just redirecting their attacks until they get tired enough to leave me alone.

The Aikido Dojo I'm looking at in Denver does regular tours to Japan to train and see the sites. That's probably going to be how I get my first in-person exposure to the country. They also do a regular "cultural exchange" type of program, which could be the way for me to get long term exposure, like a year or so. But, it all depends on me. Right now, I can hardly afford to live here in Colorado. I can't even afford to go join this dojo to begin learning Aikido.

I need to be working at the SO so I can earn a consistent living. So much is dependent on that for me right now, and it's really starting to freak me out. It shouldn't be this way, but the simple truth is, until I can afford to take care of myself, and get my life back to the point I was at before I got divorced, it's impossible for me to move on to anything greater.

Those who say "money isn't everything" say it because they already have it, or they've given up on ever having it. I often say that it's true, Money does not buy happines. It does, however, allow you to buy your own flavor of misery.
I'm not saying I need to win the lottery to be happy, though it would certainly be a big help, I'm just saying that I need to be doing a lot better than what I'm doing currently.
And at this point I've moved into self-indulgent whining, so I'm going to stop here for now.

Gleeee!

Found a really cool tech/toy site today. What was weird was the way in which I found it...
I was checking my stats, not that my site gets a lot of hits- most of the traffic to my site comes from customers who are trying to get to the webmail frontend I installed (I really need to get squirrel mail installed properly). Anyway, I noticed a few hits over the course of the month from a blog aggregator and decided to check it out.
And, I found this. Eeeeeee! Toys!
I'm still just enough of an Otaku to really get off on this site, and the fact that it's named after Otaku Heaven, well, that's just the icing on the cake.
Anyway, the site appears to be a review site, basically. Toys, electronics, geek stuff, you know. All stuff in Japan it appears. No links to buy anything, so it's a nice independent site. Of course, that can be a bad thing too. Maybe they should hook up with JList/JBox to sell the items they review.

All in all, very Schweeeeet!

Oh! and a link to a pretty cool looking on-line T-shirt store

If only I knew then...

What I know now.
A great article on how to know, and what to look for, when it's time to get out of a job or company.
The original article is at http://www.christopherwilson.net/soapbox but it's been slashdotted, so check the mirror here.

In other news today, I think I'm going to not use the blogger interface for my photoblog. After I spent 4 hours messing with it last night, and seeing the results, I'm just not enthused about it. It's going to require a significant amount of work to upload photos either way, I might as well just do it the way I had orginally planned. It offers greater control in terms of layout, and it's really just as easy in the end.

What I'm talking about is this versus this. The first one is way more ghetto in appearance, but it's actually more functional & simpler in terms of archiving, which is what I'm really concerned about. I want people to be able to find all my photos instead of the just the last few entries like with a regular blog. It just means I'll be doing more work by hand. Not a huge deal, I already have a killer graphics viewer/converter for resizing pics and creating thumbnails. The blogger system does that automatically, I'll have to do it by hand. Uploading is a non-issue, ftp is ftp is ftp. I just wish I could come up with a nicer looking page template than the ghetto one I'm using. Oh well, someday.

Geek Code

I just realized I didn't have a copy of my Geekcode or Bobcode anymore. I checked my old personal page at the first ISP I worked for and it was still on-line.
No real surprise there, the people that own the company now seem to be pretty ignorant of what they have. I remember sending them network and system diagrams, list after list of customer unames, then having them ask for it all an hour later. I wouldn't be at all suprised if the servers were still running RedHat5.

If you haven't one yet, you can build your own Bobcode the easy way here or decode one here.

Anyway, here's my codes.

<!--Begin Bob Code-->

Version: 0.11

K$I>k>K l!wW>m ECS++d m3 CP(E)>I>$V B0 OlwO LM S+n@C T+@x A6@A(T) H7(o) b7 D2

<!--End Bob Code-->

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----

Version: 3.1

GCM$ d- s: a C+++$ UBL$>++++$
P+>++++$ L++$ E--- W+++$ o? w$ !O !M V? PS+
PE Y+>++ PGP>+++ t++@ 5 X@>++ R+++>$ tv+ b++@ DI++++ D++ G+ e+ h!@* r*>+++
y*
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
Decode it here

After reading my Bobcode, I realized I'm going to have to scale back on my choice of LART, instead of short-range Tactical Nuke, I think I'd rather have one of these.