This site has popped up with an easy way to search and drill-down into the entire text of the House Stimulus bill. Just take a few minutes and browse through this pork-packet. Unbelievable!!

Bottom line is that nobody is really using Silverlight – besides MS’s attempts to force it down your throat on their own website and through some strategic marketing moves (ie. with NBC Olympics online coverage).  Plus, the sites that do offer streaming media via Silverlight were thankfully not stupid enough to make that your only option.  I haven’t been to a site yet that doesn’t offer me the same feature with Flash Video for example.

Anyway – there is a newer version of Silverlight out -  so when I visit a page that is trying to stream content via the Silverlight plugin, I get this error:

How awesome is that?  Did MS really think I could click the link and get to the update page? No – maybe I was expected remember that URL or write it down so that I could quickly download the newer version and get to my content.

How classic is that?!?!

There are many places on the ‘net that you can find “comparable” batteries for your APC (and other) backup units.  Knowing that my friend Jason replaces battery backups with some frequency, I asked for his opinion.  He led me to Gruber Power Services.  What a find!

The prices are extremely reasonable (e.g. $15.99 for a “RBC2″ comparable battery which is $40 through APC and other sites). You obviously have to pay for shipping these heavy lead-acid batteries, but that is the case with any site from which you order.  Shipping for the entire order ended up being about $100 bucks (ugh!).

All told, I estimate that I saved about $350 (incl. shipping) by ordering from Gruber.  Assuming the rest of my experience matches those of my friend, I highly recommend them.

UPDATE (7/23/08): Got a personal email this morning from “Dawn” thanking me for my order and providing to me the UPS tracking numbers for my shipment.  Pretty cool.

UPDATE (7/30/08): The batteries were delivered Monday, as projected.  I have installed one of them so far and it fit well, connected easily and seems to be a great product.

I’m very interested in where I-540/NC540 will be built (assuming NC comes up with the money, and by that I mean raises taxes, builds toll booths and/or Gov. Mike Easley stops robbing the Highway Trust Fund).  The Southern Wake Expressway and the Eastern Wake Expressway will be a great boon to the area and will make it so much easier to get around the triangle if you live in the increasingly popular corridor between Cary and Fuquay-Varina.  So, I did some searching and found the projected routes on the NC DOT Projects website.

I’ve transferred what I found there on various maps into Google Maps.  The route should be pretty close to what is shown on the planning maps from DOT.  I used the satellite view from Google Maps and my own common sense to determine where certain road and property crossing would take place.  For example, I made the assumption that they would snake the road in and around established neighborhoods.  I could be wrong, but I think it is a pretty close approximation of the anticipated route.

Google Maps allows you to export a custom map into a KMZ file, suitable for viewing in Google Earth.  I am making that file available here as well.

But… you can’t playback in 16:9… what??!?!?!  Yeah, for some reason JVC doesn’t write the proper widescreen flag properly in ther MPEG2-PS file format (for which they use the .MOD extension). So, how do you fix your videos?

You can either do some time-consuming and manual work with your favorite video editing suite (Adobe Premiere, Sony Vegas, etc), or you can download SDCopy – a freeware utility that someone wrote to handle this issue.

I learned about it here – Canon Elura User Information  Awesome!!!

You will probably need to google for the file to find a copy – but I was able to locate one which I *think* was hosted by the author of the utility.  |
Google: sdcopy video utility

Are you tired of being badgered about the size of your carbon footprint? Worried that your carbon footprint is inadequate or not as big as the ones you see in Hollywood? Don’t get down, be proud!!  Tell the world that you won’t let the world tell you that you need to change.

http://www.cafepress.com/lovemycarbon

Man, Mountain & Wingsuit
Wing suit flying through the hills of France with expert base jumper Dave Barlia.

Man, Mountain, Wingsuit – video powered by Metacafe Skydiving Wing Suit with Jet Engines

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS2rjcVcaqQ[/youtube]

He may not be flashy – but I think he is emerging as the strong conservative leader that the GOP and the country need.

 [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VblJq4j0_SE[/youtube]

I just downloaded BucketExplorer and started using it to view and upload/download files in my S3 buckets. It is extremely easy to use and did exactly what I wanted.

Here’s a screen shot of what it looks like. You can download an evaluation copy here

Another nice tool that I am trying out is the open source backup client S3Backup. It is in beta as of this post, but it seems to have some good basic functionality. You can get a copy here. You can create a simple schedule (uses Windows Task Scheduler; which means no extra “watcher” process to keep running!) and backup any files on your machine (even from network shares, assuming you have the permissions & connectivity setup).

The interface to S3Backup looks like this:

Sure enough. Aug 30, 1997 at 8:10PM EST. I’d say I was pretty early in the movement don’t you think?