Asus has a tough new monitor out!  I can't understand anything this guys says, but I am pretty sure that the cross bow is not video trickery!  I wouldn't try this at home . . .

At this time of year, you have teenagers who really get bored waiting on Santa to come and visit . . So what to do to occupy the time?  They steal Nativity scenes and hide them.  Well, this one Florida town has some "Wisemen" on the council!  They equipped baby Jesus as well as the other players in the scene with GPS units so that they can track them, should Jesus start walking shortly after being born!  Here is the article from the Inquirer.

Sunday December 23, 2007 2:16 PM

 

BAL HARBOUR, Fla. (AP) - A baby Jesus statue here is getting a Global Positioning System for Christmas.

The statue, part of a nativity scene, will be equipped with the device after the previous statue went missing, even though it had been bolted down.

``I don't anticipate this will ever happen again,'' said Dina Cellini, who oversees the display, ``but we may need to rely on technology to save our savior.''

The Mary and Joseph statues will also be fitted with GPS devices, she said.

The devices are being bought using residents' contributions and Cellini's own money.

Cellini has also installed a Plexiglas screen in front of the display.

I love this story!  Way to go Bal Harbour, Florida!  Great thinking!  I sure wish I had a GPS built into my laptop that got stollen . . . 

This guy was actually spoted in public wearing this!  Some sort of home-made gadget holder for all his mobile stuff!  Add this to the list of stuff not to get me!  First of all, it looks uncomfortable.  Second, its ugly and third, I am not sure of its value period, other than you might be able to dial/activate with your tongue . . . .

Thanks Restless  and Engadget for making me smile!

 I very rarely talk about anything personal on this site!  Its usually reserved for anything tech and the ocasional idiot. I have broken the rules before, like recently when I visited my son in Colorado, but almost everything that goes up here is usually on topic . . . . .   But with that said, yesterday, I was visiting my dad in the hospital and got to thinking about my childhood!  You know, I had the greatest childhood!  We weren't rich, but I never took the time to notice!  As I was growing up, we had a camper and most weekends were spent inside it somewhere!  We traveled to local places and spent time in Myrtle Beach at least once a year.  Most weekends were either on the BlueRidge parkway, or somewhere in the Smokey Mountains. Come Christmas time, I got so excited, that my parents wanted to kill me! Man, at the loot I got come Christmas!  Christmas truely was a marathon!  At home, it was awesome, but we would eat Christmas Lunch at my Mother's Parents. Christmas was just as good there as it was at home! 

Yea, I got toys, clothes, candy, etc every year! But now that I am getting older, I am thinking back to those Christmases and remembering some of those surprises waiting behind that colorful paper.  Here are a few of those things that stand out.

• Hotwheels race tracks!  I think I got some sort of HotWheels race track about 4 years in a row. Remember the orange plastic tracks with the 360 loops?  And when hotwheels made the fat tracks with cars that you charged up?  Man, we had neighborhood races that were awesome!
• An Organ!  I can remember finding that Organ Christmas morning, plugging that baby up and learning Silient night while my brother and parents were still in the bed!  How cool was that?
  
• A Microphone!  I remember as a teenager, playing in a band.  We had guitars, bass and drums.  Problem was, we had no PA and no microphones. So I asked my parents for a microphone and GOT ONE!  We would plug it into a spare guitar amp!  I remember breaking it, emulating KISS when I hit the stand and knocked it over.  I was devastated!
• Watches!  I had a fetish as a kid for watches that carried into adulthood!  The watch was finally replaced with a Treo as I don't even wear one anymore, but for years, I was delighted to find a Timex under the tree!

Now, as a young boy, I believed in Santa!  Oh, believe me, he was real!  So real in fact, that I actually heard him!  No, it wasn't my dad acting like him . . .  I heard the real thing.  Here is the story . . . . . . .

Like every young boy, I was told that if Santa saw me up that he wouldn't leave any toys!  One Christmas morning I woke up and it was still dark outside.  I didn't know if Santa had arrived or not, so I laid very still in the bed.  Suddenly I heard knocking on the roof!  Then I heard all this wind!  And then, on the other end of the house, I heard the "Ho Ho Ho" Again, I would hear the wind blowing, and the deep laughter!  I laid in bed as still as I could!  I was frozen with fear!  Finally, it ended!  But what to do?  What if he wasn't done?  I finally got up the nerve to creep down the hallway and peak into the den . .   Presents everywhere!!!!!!  But no sign of Santa!  I still hesitated because I wasn't sure if he was around the corner or not.  I actually crawled on my stomach much like a soldier facing the enemy!  I made it across the kitchen floor so I could get a full view of the den!  THE COAST WAS CLEAR!!!!!!!  Up on my feet and into the middle of little boy heaven!  By the time my brother and parents were up, there was nothing left but a sea of torn wrapping paper  that had anything with my name on it!  

Now, as I have grown older I have learned a lot of life lessons!  But for that one Christmas, fantasy and life were one!  Santa was real, and to this day I believe my ears!  I might tell you that Santa isn't real . . . .   But once upon a time in my life, he was!  I heard him!

To kids young and old everywhere!  Merry Christmas and my God truely bless you with more than you can stand! 

I sat out this week to design a new template for a new Church Client!  This actually led to three slightly different designs!  The first I started with, and given very little direction was a largely blue template.

The client found this too blue actually, and sent me a photo and I set out to build a template using colors from that photo.  Here is the result!

But I hate large headers as they take valuable realestate away from why we all surf the web . .  For content!  So I basically kept the template, but make the header about half of the original size.

I think all three templates turned out really nice and have dropped them into my downloads section for any Joomla lovers out there . .  

With Christmas coming on, I have been swamped.  Of course, its that time of year when everyone is wide open, but on top of that, I took on a new web project.  I think the template is getting close.  You can check it out here:   Preaching Christ Church. As always, each site presents its own problems.  This one is no different.  But I think its starting to happen.  If I can only get the scripted menus to work in IE, I will be happy!  OK, back to it!

So I vented here the other day about a way to get Office Enterprise for very cheap!  And after I installed Microsoft's spyware on my system, no email about getting the software . .  So I quickly deleted the software and went about life.  But I had forgotten that long ago, I got a memo at work about a Microsoft partner program where I could get Office 2007 Enterprise for my home system for a low price of $29.00.  I did a quick search from work and jumped all over it! Well, it came this week!  I installed it and I must say, Microsoft, job well done!  Did I just say that?  Office Enterprise really is a very nice suite!  Sure, you can fuss about price as paying retail is some serious back pocket weight, but its a great improvement over OE2003 and Outlook alone is worth something to me!  Its so much nicer than Express in older versions and now "mail" in Vista! I especially like the RSS ability built right in to Outlook!  Excel is taking some getting used to, and its not compatible with my old version os Adobe Acrobat.  I will have to deal with that soon, but I must say, that I am very satisfied with this version.  Of course, I picked up some bloat.  For example, access is something I don't really use ever as well as Groove and Infopath, but who is to say I won't have cause for these apps in the future?  I happily deleted Office 2003 and am really enjoying the new suite!  Yea, I can fuss about Vista, and about Microsoft being big brother but this is one suite tied together that really is the cream of the crop!

So I vented here a few days ago about the Wife's Treo being DOA.  Just to let you know, it was a nightmare getting someone at AT&T but we THINK we have another on the way.  Since I am writing this early Sunday and tomorrow is Christmas eve, I think its safe to say, it won't arrive until after Christmas!    Don't tell the wife, but she ain't getting jewelry for Christmas!  No, in fact, here is what she is getting!

SSSSHHHHHH!  Its Christmas and I am betting she won't read this until after its over . . .   She once told me not to buy her anything that she had to plug up!  Good thing I don't listen, huh? 

I have seen in many Treo forums how to set up your GMail account in Versamail, but not in Chatter.  I don't know if its a problem or not, because I set mine up when I first installed Chatter.  It worked, and I never thought anything about whether or not it might not be a standard.  And the truth:  I rarely use my GMail account period!  But with that in mind, I thought I would document just how I have it configured in Chatteremail. NOTE: for this to work, you will need to go to your GMail account and activate the POP settings.

So with Chatter open, you'll want to head to menu/new account.  Tap on the dropdown menu and select "Generic POP3 Account",  Then start filling in the blanks as I have shown below.  (click on any image to enlarge)