The All Car Garage

If you are interested in Cars, check out the All Car Garage, a weblog which follows automotive news. I really like blogs like this one, where you can keep up to date on a topic because of the effort of others to search out the latest information on a topic they are passionate about. It's like having your own research department, in this case, about everything automotive. Entries are categorized by company, so if you are a Honda person, you can jump right to a list of relevant items. Blog entries all have images with them, so the presentation is appealing.

Too Slow to Post

I had a feeling this would happen at some point, but today was the first time I lost out on one of the PayPerPost opportunities because all the spots were taken in between the time I clicked on take this opportunity and when I finished my post. I had a problem posting it, so it took a few more minutes than it should have, but it was a bit of a letdown to put in the time to get it right (and I did a nice job, if I say so myself) only to have it go for nothing. It seems like it might be better to have the opportunity locked for a certain time period once you take it, or maybe it's wiser to complete the whole process first, then go back and edit the entry before it gets reviewed.

In the case of the entry that got done too late, I even emailed the site to point out a typo on their home page...so much for my good deed.

Brand Name Shoes

If you need to Save On Brand Name Shoes, check out ToeCovers.com. They offer a great selection of shoes with free shipping and free returns. Sure, you can't try the shoes on online, but you can buy a couple of pairs and return the pair that doesn't fit at no charge to yourself. Nice deal. The site also has information about buying shoes and foot health.

They carry shoes for nurses,  athletic shoes, women's slippers, shoes for kids and even vegetarian shoes! Check out this page of men's athletic sandals, my favorite type of shoe -- I'm wearing some right now! Those vegetarian shoes are non-leather. You don't have to eat them...and you don't have to be a vegetarian to wear them.

Those new ipods

I already have a couple of ipods, but the new ones Apple showed today look pretty good. It's just like almost anything else with technology -- things get cheaper, smaller and have more storage. So you can always wait for the next generation and get more for your money.

Estelle.tv goes to Kuaui

Tags: payperpost, estelle.tvThe closest I've been to Hawaii was a phone interview where the people interviewing me were in Hawaii and I was in California. After watching the segments from Estelle.tv about Hawaii, I sure wish I had gotten that job there! The short video segment about Waimea Canyon is really incredible. The footage is amazing and must have been shot from a helicopter because you are crusing through the canyon, which is about 10 miles long and up to 3000 feet deep and very green. Estelle mentions that Mark Twain called it the Grand Canyon of the Pacific, and it is easy to see why after watching this clip. Wailua Falls is a remote waterfall around 80 feet high located on Kuaui. It looks fantastic and was featured in the opening sequence on the television show Fantasy Island, which I think was the one with Ricardo Montalban. The Estelle.tv website is a great resource for videos and information about travel destinations from around the world. The video segments are taken from the television show hosted by Estelle. She also offers a daily video podcast which you can subscribe to and watch on your computer or iPod. The site is really a great educational resource if you are interested in getting a local perspective on some fabulous destinations. Estelle frequently interviews locals who have the kind of knowledge and information about these places that you might otherwise miss. For example, in this photo, we see Estelle with some Hawaiian locals after she went for a swim in a secret cave on Kauai’s northshore. In some of these locations, the locals don't really like too many visitors to crash their party, but these guys look pretty friendly! Here, Estelle takes a nice walk on the beach in Kauia before jumping in for another swim: Hawaii is known for great surfing, and here we see Estelle hitting the surf near Princeville, Kauai (Hawaii). Is there anything Estelle can't do?: Estelle.tv should be in the bookmarks of every Internet traveller, whether they are going to be visiting the places in person or just online.

vizaweb coming back to life

Something is happening at vizaweb.com, which is an improvement over the past couple of days. I can access my weblog although it still has mysql errors. I am optimistic that they will resolve everything by tomorrow, but I'm sure that many of their customers will leave them and that they will lose other potential customers because of this. As with most cases where things go wrong, the bad thing was made much worse by the absence of any information from the people in charge.

Need to rewind your hose?

I have an automated sprinkler system in my yard, but I still need to use a hose just about every day to water some areas which don't get enough water or get too much sun, or for various other plants. Managing the water hose is a pain in the neck, but ReelSmart makes a water powered hose rewinder which would really make hose management much easier. Their weblog has lots of info about Hose Reels as well as other garden-related things. I liked their article about how to prune your roses, something I need to do.

Zookeeper

More than 20 years ago I used to play the arcade game Zookeeper pretty much every day. I worked in a bowling alley and the game was right across from the front desk where I worked. It was a great game, but I never noticed it being available on any other platform. It turns out there is a $2000 arcade game system you can buy which comes with 100 games, one of which is Zookeeper. I played it for a little while and was surprised that I still remembered the game very well even though I had not played it in more than 20 years. I did a little more research and Zookeeper is available for the PS2, PC and XBOX as part of Taito Legends for around $20. I think I'll save myself $1980 and buy that.

Bridal Shower invitations

If you are having a bridal shower for your wedding, take a look at this  Bridal Shower Invitations page.This page has some good ideas, nicely organized, with additional links related to bridal shower invitations.Tags: payperpost, "bridal shower invitation"

Discussion about Vizaweb

Anyone who would like to chat about the vizaweb outage/problem -- I have set up a discussion here:

http://www.quicktopic.com/37/H/PLrBXbHiBp6Q

You don't have to register or sign in, and you can choose to receive
email for newly posted messages -- just click the Subscribe button
when you get there.

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Vizaweb going from bad to worse

My weblog at brian.reillyville.com doesn't show up at all now, and Vizaweb goes to WhatsYourDomain.com. I am hoping that this will get resolved tomorrow and that part of the reason things aren't fixed yet is that this happened over a weekend. However, I have gotten no replies from vizaweb since Friday afternoon, and there seems to be no way to get any information about what's going on. They've got a problem with their databases and maybe their domain name registration. On the other hand, maybe they didn't pay their bills and they are out of business. It's hard to tell.

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What happened to vizaweb?

Vizaweb.com is the host of my personal site, www.reillyville.com. Since yesterday, I have had all kinds of mysql errors on my weblog there and my photo site is not working. Pretty much anything which uses a MySQL database doesn't work. Vizaweb's support responded earlier yesterday, but not last night or today, and now their site is not accessible and displays an error message which says "This count has been suspended". I know that Vizaweb got hacked this week, so maybe that is the source of the trouble, but it's a little troubling not knowing what's going on or if the problems might be resolved soon.

Interesting video

It says that Noah took a picture of himself every day for 6 years (so far). That's dedication! The thing that gets me about this is that he never looks very happy in the pictures.

Most famous person from Winchester, CA

Adam Gadahn may be the most famous person from Winchester, which is next to Temecula and has a population of around 2000 people.

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MacZot Story Zot

I bought my first mysteryZot last night. It was $5.95 for 3 unknown applications, although TUAW had said that one of them was going to be KIT - Keep it Together -- which seemed like a useful tool. The other two turned out to be RooSwitch and Hawkeye, two things I probably wouldn't have bought otherwise. RooSwitch lets you maintain different settings for an application. Seems useful for software developers and testers. Maybe there will be some way I can use it. Hawkeye has a nice icon which seems to have nothing at all to do with what it does, which is to create DVDs. It may do some transcoding of video formats or recompression, but I haven't tried it yet.

Qumana Blogging tool

I had no luck getting MarsEdit to work with Blogger, but it looks like the free Qumana does work automatically. I didn't have to do any work to set it up. Not bad.

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Cal Bears ranked #9 to start the season

For most of the time I was a student at Berkeley, the football team was not too good. They had some good players but never a big season. Now, with Jeff Tedford as the coach, they have become a perennial powerhouse and this year are ranked ninth to start the season. Tomorrow's game should be a good one against Tennessee.

Apple to sell movies online

According to Business Week, Apple will start selling movies for $14.99 and $9.99 through the iTunes Music store later this month. Wal-Mart doesn't like the idea because the price is lower than what they can charge, but that seems to be the case only because Disney is the only studio which has made a deal with Apple, and Steve Jobs is the largest Disney shareholder.

I'm not sure that I will be buying too many movies for $15. I'd rather rent them from NetFlix because there just aren't too many movies I would watch more than once.

"Bush 3.0 issues patch for Iraq war"

Earlier today I noticed a headline on www.cnn.com which said "Bush 3.0 issues patch for Iraq war". It's gone now, but it seemed like a very strange thing to find on a news site which at least tries to be non-partisan. The story is still there: http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/31/bush.terrorism/index.html -- and they do mention Bush 3.0, whatever that is.

Local fires

There is a big fire in San Bernardino right now. Things look pretty dry around here and we are going to be going through several more very hot weeks, so I hope that we don't end up with some big fires in Temecula. I have noticed that many of my neighbors have burned out areas on their lawns from the extreme heat this summer. And that is with daily watering. I bet the guy in the neighborhood with the astroturf lawn is saving quite a bit on his water bill this summer.