Jesus F. Christ...my credit union just sent an email out to all the people who signed up for their online banking service, and they didn't use the blind-carbon-copy feature of Outlook Express, so it revealed all 155 email addresses for each recipient to see. Luckily for me, when I signed up I created an email address just for spam, and they're the only ones I've given the address to so far. I did it to see if they would end up giving my address to somebody else, but so far this is the only email I've gotten at that address since I signed up several months ago. I'm going reply and tell them what a stupid fucking thing they just did, but I doubt they'll care, or even understand why it was stupid.

Update: Here's my original email, and a reply sent to my dennis@udink.org account--so obviously the sender intended it to be seen by all my website readers. Otherwise, the reply should have been sent to my spam account:

From: spam@udink.org

To: [address witheld]

Next time you send out an email like the one below, you might think about using Outlook Express' "blind carbon copy" feature, which allows you to hide the email addresses of the recipients. It's considered quite a breach of internet privacy when 155 email addresses are sent out for all the recipients to see. If I were a dishonest person, I could easily target all these people with spam (unsolicited email), and I'm willing to bet that a local retailer would pay good money for the email addresses of this many people in the area.

I figured something like this would happen when I signed up for Techie Teller, so I created an email address just for unsolicited email and gave it to you, so I could care less what you do with it, but I'm sure many other recipients of this email would like their privacy protected a little better than this.

Dennis Udink

spam@udink.org

From: Cole Clarke

To: dennis@udink.org

Subject: Did your mommy by [sic] you a computer?

Dearest Dennis,

You are absolutely right...I made a gross error in sending out that email inappropriately and it is clearly against our policy to do so. It was, however, a simple error of oversight, not ignorance. Our efforts will be more carefully considered and no such errors will occur again. And, for your information, we have no intention of giving your or anyone else's email address to any other party, therefore your creation of an alternative address was a bit of paranoia only justified by the fact that we made a simple logistical error. Perhaps you could show the most minute amount of integrity now by removing the vulgar comments you have placed on your web site. And if I should ever be fortunate enough to receive email from you again make it more respectful, since, by the vulgar content and miscellaneous garbage contained on your site, it is clear that our coinciding levels of dignity, integrity and maturity indicate a great deficit on your part. Would you like it in simpler terms? Grow up little man.

Sincerely Yours,

Cole Clarke

P.S. If you live in Price you should be more cautious when using small town hick in a derogatory manner--I would.

P.S. Is there a way to use "small town hick" that is not derogatory?

Well, xmas was much nicer this year than it has been in quite a while. Michael is still too young to really understand what was going on--he had as much fun playing with wrapping paper and ribbons as he did playing with all the toys he got. We opened some gifts at my mom's on xmas eve, then the next morning we opened all of Michael's presents for him and spent the morning just playing. Around noon we opened gifts at my in-laws', then we had dinner at my grandpa's. It was a busy week, but it was fun.

There's a Subaru wagon at my wife's uncle's dealership that I'm thinking about buying, I think it's an '89, but I have to test drive it before I make a decision. My parents had an '82ish Subaru just like this one I'm looking at, and I liked that car a lot. If I end up getting it, it'll be nice to take to work 'cause I won't really have to worry about driving in bad weather with all-wheel-drive. My wife doesn't really like the car, she says she'll be embarrassed driving a wagon, but I wouldn't mind it. Hell, I'd love to have a brand-new Legacy Outback wagon, but my wife doesn't even like those.

The greatest oxymoron ever: Panel Wants to Show the World Utah's Religious Diversity.

I spent about four hours driving around and taking pictures today. I didn't take many pictures worth putting up on my site, but I had fun going to a lot of places I've never been before. I went to 4-Mile Hill first and took a 360° panorama of the area, then I drove further south to Hiawatha. After that I went out to East Carbon, Columbia, Horse Canyon, Sunnyside Canyon, Clark's Valley, then finally back home. If I'd had my truck working, it would have been much more fun because there were several places I didn't dare take my car off-road--as it is, I took my car on a lot of roads that it probably shouldn't have been on.

My computer just stopped working yesterday. How shitty is that? I had to take my whole computer up to LS Micro in Orem and have them test the board, RAM, and CPU. It turned out to be the CPU, so they gave me a new one. Before I left, I made sure my computer would boot up, 'cause I'm sure as hell not going back up there anytime soon. I'm 100% certain that I'll have problems with this new one too, because that's just the way things work for me. It'll end up crapping out on me again, and I'll take it back for a refund, then buy a fucking Dell or something.

When I got home and set the computer back up, Windows re-detected my network card as though I had removed it from the device manager. So I went through the process of Windows searching for drivers, finding that a driver was already installed and using that one, but then Windows froze up. I rebooted and Windows loaded just fine, but my network card was disabled in the device manager. So I reinstalled the drivers from a floppy, and the same damn thing happened. I then borrowed a network card from Ty, and the same thing happened with that one. I finally kept trying and trying, and eventually I got it to work. I haven't rebooted my machine since I got the network card working, so who knows what'll happen when I start it up next time...maybe I'll just never turn it off.

So now that I missed several hours of work yesterday while I was trying to get my computer working, I have to fucking work on xmas eve to make that time up. I'm seriously thinking about just telling my manager at work that either the company buys me a new computer, or they lose me as an employee. It's bullshit that I have to provide my own computer, especially when there's a brand-new Dell sitting on my desk at work that only gets used when I go into the office twice a month or so. If I worked in the office, and there were problems with my company-owned computer (which has happened to me several times before), they wouldn't expect me to make up the lost time. I'm just fed-up with all the bullshit.

Instead of going to work yesterday, I decided to come up today. Before I left home, I called the state's new 511 service, which was actually quite nice. It's all voice-activated, so I just say "road conditions," then "highway six," and it tells me the road conditions for that particular highway. Now if only they could keep Utah Commuter Link updated--when I drove up here Monday and had to turn back because of the weather, that website hadn't been updated since Saturday morning. I actually emailed somebody at U-DOT, asking them when the VMS signs and surveillance cameras will be operative in the canyon, but haven't heard back from them yet.

Just a few minutes after I left Price, I ran over a dead deer with my car. I wasn't paying all that close of attention to the road, and I looked up and suddenly saw it in the middle of my lane. I don't think it had been there for too long, or else it would have been frozen and probably would've done some major damage to my car. As it is, it still knocked the shit out of the car, but it still steers just fine, so I assume no damage was done.

Earlier this evening, I was unplugging my coffee pot so I could plug the dishwasher in, when the screw that holds the face plate over the electrical outlet fell out. The face plate was just barely hanging on the outlet, so I started to unplug the other cord that was plugged in, and the face plate, which is metal, fell and shorted across the half-unplugged plug. It welded the plug to the face plate and left some black marks all around the outlet before a fuse finally blew. It scared the shit out of me seeing all those sparks and shit that I screamed like a girl, because I was holding the plug when it happened. So I went to change the blown fuse, and it was welded to the fusebox--I had to use some vise-grips just to wrench it loose. I'm surprised the wiring in my attic didn't catch fire with as long as it took the fuse to blow. I didn't have any replacement fuses, so I went to Wal-Mart and got a few, plus I got a plastic outlet face plate. I've got several more metal outlet covers in my house, so I guess I'd better replace them before something like this happens again.

Stoned Driver Gets Prison For Hit, Run What in the hell is wrong with newspaper reporters that they refuse to use the word "and"? Is space so precious that they can't afford to waste it for three measly characters?

When I left town for work this morning around 7:00, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. By the time I got to Soldier Summit about 45 minutes later, it was foggy, snowing, and the roads were icy. So I turned around and headed home. I took a few pictures while I was out, none of which are all that great. It was too cold to bother setting up and collapsing the tripod every time I stopped to take pictures, so most of them were taken out of my windshield.

So I'm working from home today, but my manager wants me to drive up tomorrow instead. If the weather cooperates, I'll be doing the same damn thing tomorrow morning.

Credit card companies are funny:

In other words: "Please rack up some more credit card debt so you can continue paying us huge finance charges. Thank you for being such a good American by spending more money than you make."

I'm happy with the stability of my Abit motherboard, but the documentation fucking sucks. First, I had that problem with my RAM not being seated in the slot, and the fucking accompanying beeps that weren't documented in the manual. Now, I found out that my soundcard wasn't to blame for the drivers not working. The driver CD that came with the board has some driver that needs to be installed when using Windows 98 in order for some PCI devices to work. It would have been nice for that little-known fact to be published in the documentation, but I guess Abit expects users to poke around the driver CD until accidentally stumbling upon what they didn't even know was there.

So now I'm listening to Tenacious D mp3s, which I missed so badly the past two weeks while I was only able to listen to CDs on my CD player. Fuck Abit.

If you have a carry/conceal permit, you can get a $100 discount when you buy a computer at Totally Awesome Computers. (Found via SLTrib, second story from the bottom.)

It's nice and sunny outside now, but the damned wind is blowing snow on the sidewalks and driveway I just got done shoveling. Damnit.

It was too cold (and a little bit cloudy) last night, so I didn't stay outside for more than a couple minutes, and I didn't see any meteors in that time. And this afternoon, it was completely overcast, so there wasn't a chance to catch a glimpse of the eclipse.

This evening, I raised the rear-end of my truck and let the rear wheels spin while I tried to tell what was causing all that vibration, and I still couldn't really figure it out. I realized that if either the driveline or the output shaft were bent, I wouldn't be able to tell which one it was because they're bolted together (duh!). So I unbolted the driveline and ran it again, and I didn't feel quite as bad of a vibration. I think I might just take the driveline to somebody who balances them, and maybe they can tell me if it's bent. And if it's not, it's time to get a new output shaft. I just hope the problem's not inside the transfer case or transmission, but it just might be--there's still oil leaking from between the two.

Well, it's been a few months since I've redesigned, so this new layout is long overdue. I've actually done nine layouts in the past month, but I finally settled on this one. I'm not sure yet if it's too busy-looking...I might tone down the background image a bit, it might be a little too distracting when trying to read the text on top of it. As usual, it looks like shit in Netscape 4.

Wouldn't this have been fun to stumble upon? Some hikers just outside of Price found an entire box of dynamite, but notified authorities instead of takin' it home with 'em.

There's going to be another meteor shower tonight, this time it's the Geminids. Some meteors (earthgrazers) may be visible shortly after sunset, but around midnight will be the best time to look for them.

And tomorrow, a partial solar eclipse will be visible from most of North America. The further southeast you live, the better view you'll have (Solo will have an excellent view). It should peak around 2:20 pm Mountain time, so I think I'll be outside pointing my camera at the sun tomorrow around that time, though as usual, I don't expect any pictures to turn out.

Heh...I don't know how my wife'll feel about this Yahoo search (here's a screenshot in case my site doesn't rank anymore).

Ahh...somebody sheds a little light on the LDS church's position on alcohol advertising in Utah, and their push to restrict it as much as possible (in response to this letter written by an LDS church attorney).

I've been thinking about doing a little "quickie" entry thing on the right side of the main page here, like Bret has going on, but I think I'll do a new layout that will accommodate it a little better. I was going to try to use my current install of Greymatter to update it, but after giving that a try, I decided it would be easier to just do a new GM install in another directory. I'll just use it to post quick local blurbs, those things that 95% of the people who read this site couldn't give a rat's ass about.

Smith's had rump roasts on sale, buy-one-get-one-free, so my wife and I bought a couple and made several pounds of beef jerky last night. We borrowed my mom's meat slicer and dehydrator, but the slicer was turning the roasts into ground beef, so we had to freeze them for several hours before we could start slicing 'em up. We didn't get everything sliced, marinated, and into the dehydrator until around midnight, but when I woke up this morning, it was all finished. And even though I've washed and scrubbed my hands several times since I got done laying out all the beef on the dehydrator racks, I swear I can still smell worcestershire on them.

At least somebody sees the real reason the LDS church is pushing for more strict alcohol laws.

Damn, I just thought I'd lost all the pictures I've taken with my digital camera since August (that's over 1000 pictures). When I threw this machine together, I used several parts from my old one, including two hard drives. One is a Western Digital 20GB that I boot Windows from and use most often, and the other is a Quantum (i.e., piece of shit) 6.4GB that I keep downloaded apps and all my pictures on. When I got this new board and CPU running, both hard drives were working fine. The last couple of times I've booted up, though, my D: drive (the Quantum) wasn't being displayed in Explorer, but I didn't want to mess with it because I've been trying to get my sound working.

I figured since I was up late already tonight, and I wasn't tired yet, that I'd come down and check it out. I booted into DOS first (I dunno why, Windows would have worked just as well...maybe I am tired) and used fdisk, but it wouldn't recognize the drive. So I booted into Windows, and there it was. I didn't change anything or touch any of the cables, so I think the drive might be going downhill. I copied all my pictures to my main hard drive, just in case the other shits out on me again. After all, my current Quantum drive is a replacement for my old Quantum drive that crashed a few years ago--luckily it was still warrantied at the time.

I took a look at my muffler today, and it looks like the short pipe running out of the front of the muffler that connects to the exhaust pipe from the engine rusted through and became disconnected. The clamp is still on the exhause pipe, and there's still a very short bit of pipe sticking out of the muffler, so tomorrow I'm going to attempt to fix it myself. If I can't get it to work, I'll have to get a new cheap muffler put on. I'm lucky the muffler is still attached, 'cause it's only dangling by a small hook attached to the frame.

Well, I got my computer up and running last night, after a very minor problem that proved to be a major pain in the ass. Even though my RAM looked like it was fully seated in the slot, and the clips on the motherboard fit perfectly into the notches in the RAM, it wasn't actually seated all the way. I was afraid I had already pushed too hard on the RAM to get it seated, and I was sure it was installed properly, so I spent a lot of time messing with different video cards, swapping out power supplies, checking hard drive cables and PCI connections, etc.

Whenever I powered the machine up, I just got a series of long beeps from the BIOS. And none of the beep codes are documented in the motherboard manual, so I went to Ty's to borrow his 'net connection and try to figure it out. According to Award's site, there is only one series of beeps (one long, two short) that signifies a problem, and that's a video problem. Also according to their site, "Any other beeps are probably a RAM (Random Access Memory) problems." How damn vague can they get?

So after I came home from Ty's, I decided to move my RAM to another slot, even though I had used the slot specified in the manual when using a single chip. That didn't work, so I put it back in the original slot and snapped the clips back into the notches in the chip, but after that, I pushed really damn hard on the RAM, and it snapped in another millimeter or so. It was then that I knew my problem had been solved. I turned the power supply back on and hit the power button, and the damn thing powered up. =)

The extremely cheap soundcard I bought isn't working yet, though. The driver CD that came with it apparently (according to Windows) doesn't have the correct drivers. I even tried downloading drivers from the manufacturer's website, but they don't work either. I'm sure it's just defective, but it's not worth killing somebody over a $10 part. I'll just exchange it next time I'm in Orem.

I think I blew a hole in my car's muffler on my way to work this morning. I was about a mile west of Billie's Mountain, and I had the stereo turned up pretty loud, when I thought I heard a noise. With the stereo up so loud, it was hard to tell what it was or where it came from, but when I turned the music down, it was obvious that something had happened to the muffler. I pulled over to make sure the muffler was still attached to the car, which it was, but I couldn't see any other damage without crawling under the car and getting very dirty. If I'm lucky, the exhaust pipe just came loose, but I'm not usually that lucky. So now people will think I'm a riceboy, except that my car only sounds like it has a 1-foot diameter exhaust tip on it. =)

My wife's mother, quite inappropriately, bought our son a book all about god and prayer and shit like that. I got pretty pissed off when I saw it, but I didn't say anything to her about it, because to do so would have only made both of us angry. I later told my wife to give the book back to her, and to let her know that she can keep her religion to herself.

For the most part, Mormons raise their children to believe that the Mormon religion is quite simply the truth, rather than telling their children the real truth: that their beliefs are just that--beliefs--and that the child can take 'em or leave 'em. Being an atheist myself, and being married to a Mormon, I made sure my wife understood the way I planned to raise our children in regards to religion, before we even decided to have children. I told her that anything she tells our kids, I will tell them the exact opposite, but I will make sure that they know both points of view are only beliefs and not necessarily the truth, and that they are free to believe as they choose. My wife is a somewhat reasonable person, and she feels the same way about raising our children as I do.

Mormons also baptize their children at age eight--in my opinion, entirely too young to make important decisions such as which church to belong to, especially after having contact with only their parents' religion. "Age of Accountability," my ass. If children are accountable for their actions at age eight, then they should be allowed to vote, drive, smoke, drink, have sex, and do whatever else they wish--after all, that is the age at which Mormons believe children become accountable for their sins. I won't allow my son to be baptized at age eight, even if he wants to, just like I won't allow him to drink, smoke, or do any other thing that he doesn't fully understand the effects of.

My main gripe with religion is that it's "hereditary," that is, most children learn ("inherit") it from their parents. If a child was raised by a pack of wolves, do you think that child would grow up to believe in god? I don't think so. That's why I don't buy into any religion or god, because it's something you couldn't learn on your own--it's something you're taught.

Well, it's snowing very lightly here in Price, so I'm sure Soldier Summit is getting dumped on, which means there's no way I'm driving my car over it. I noticed that over the past year, two automated weather stations have been erected (heheh), one on Soldier Summit, and the other in the Red Narrows. And within the last month, UDOT has installed a large electronic sign over US-6 at the mouth of Price Canyon. I did some searching on the web and found this PDF (2.5 MB) that explains what they're doing. They've set up two RWIS stations to monitor weather and road conditions, plus they're setting up three video surveillance stations along the way. I only hope they have all this information available on the internet, because I really don't want to go through the hassle of getting ready for work, driving through Helper, and finding out from the VMS sign that it's snowing like a bitch up the canyon. According to that PDF, the video cameras were supposed to be up this summer, but they're not on Utah Commuter Link, which should actually be called Salt Lake Commuter Link, since they've only got traffic information about Salt Lake City.

Ty kicked my ass at three games of racquetball yesterday evening. It's been almost a year since I played last, but I didn't get too sore this time. We used to play a lot several years ago, and I couldn't beat him then, so I'm not surprised at all that I lost this time. =)

I decided I was going overkill on the computer I was going to build, so I decided on a Duron 1.2 GHz and an Abit KG7-Raid board, with only 256 MB of DDR RAM. It'll save me quite a bit of dough, and I probably won't use it to its full potential anyway, since most of the work I do only involves HotDocs and MS Office. For gaming, well, it'll be better than what I've got now.

I'm going to attempt to drive up to Provo for work tomorrow, but if I hit bad weather (or see it rolling in before I leave home) I'm going to turn around and work from home. I don't want to repeat what happened to Ty this weekend, especially in my tin-box-of-a-car. If I don't make it up there tomorrow, I'll give it a go some other day this week, 'cause the weather isn't supposed to be so bad Wednesday through Friday.

Tonight, yet again, we had to call the police on our noisy neighbors. This time, I videotaped them yelling and chanting (yeah, they were actually chanting something) for about 10 minutes before the police arrived. The officer who came by tonight was smart--he parked down the street and walked here, and he heard first-hand all the noise they were making. This time, a citation was issued to the girl who lives there (and whose grandmother used to live there before she died). I would have thought the police would have issued a disturbing-the-peace citation, but it was actually a disorderly conduct citation.

The cop took my videotape to place into evidence, and if she contests the citation--which I'm sure she will--I'll have to testify in court, which I'll gladly do. She actually asked the cop if she could come talk to me about it when she found out she was being cited, but he told her no, because I was pretty pissed off.

Update: Dec.3.2001 - 7:19 am

About an hour after the police left last night, the dude in the Explorer that was honking Saturday night pulled up in my driveway and laid on the horn for several seconds, then backed out and took off down the street. So we called the police again, and talked to the same cop that was here last night. He wrote it up in the report he was already writing for the shit that happened earlier, so not only will the neighbor girl probably get in more trouble than she's already in, but the guy in the Explorer will probably get in much more trouble than her for harassment.

So I guess I've made an enemy of my neighbor and her friends. Not that I care, because they're all douche bags anyway, but I'm probably gonna have problems with them until all the giggly college girls move out. I seriously think it's time for me to get a handgun, and I'll welcome any confrontations I have with any of them.

I mentioned in this post that I wondered how many times it would take calling the cops on my neighbors before they finally started issuing citations. Well, apparently it takes more than three times. Around 11:00 tonight, right when we were about to put our son to bed, some fucker in a green Explorer pulled up in the neighbor's driveway, right next to my son's bedroom window, and honked his horn about 10 times. So my wife called police dispatch yet again and complained. Last time some douche bag pulled up honking his horn like that, they had left before the police even arrived, which rather sucked. Tonight, however, right as that fucker was backing out of the driveway, two police cars pulled up and blocked him in, shining their spotlights at his vehicle. I hope that shithead had to change his pants after that.

Anyway, the cops talked to the fuck in the Explorer, then one walked up to the neighbor's house while the other came to my house. I explained to him how this was the third time we've made a complaint, and that shit like this happens all the time. As I was talking to him, another douche bag in a white Cherokee (another one that habitually honks his horn late at night right outside my home) pulled up to the stop sign right across the street and was signaling left, but when he saw the cops, he decided he didn't want to go to his friend's house all that bad, then put his right turn signal on and went the other direction.

I swear, if the cops don't actually start issuing citations next time, I'm going to have to take care of things myself.

Here's an interesting Trib article about the anthropological study of the Mormon church.

And another about the way things should be regarding mary jane, and hopefully will be in the future.

Luckily, this kid got off the hook from frivolous prosecution by an overzealous prosecutor. I'm sure a civil suit will soon follow.