Some of my favorite sites

Howdy all,
I know it has been a few days since the last time we posted anything, but we are here in Tucson at Daniel's baptism and I had a few minutes while Bianca takes a nap so I figured now would be a good time to post some things. We have had a wonderful time here in Tucson and in our conversations with Aimee and Bryan and others I decided to share some of our favorite sites here on our blog. For those of you who don't know I am rather geeky and so I spend a lot of my time on the internet. So in my travels on the world wide web I have found some very cool sites that I think some if not all of you will enjoy. So here goes in no particular order:
1. www.hulu.com
hulu is on demand flash streaming of some of the latest movies and tv shows and the best part it is 100% free. It has a lot of the new shows that you may miss with your busy work weeks as well as some of the best classic tv out there. Bianca and I have been very much addicted to the 1st seasons of Doogie Howser MD. Worth the few seconds to check it out.
2. http://www.pandora.com
Pandora is part of the gnome project and is a great free web radio. It does a little more than just organize by class of song, but goes to the artists music types, flows, and beats to find music that is similar. Very nice little player.
3. www.digg.com
Hands down for me it has been the best news source on the net. I have subscribed to blogs and rss readers for a long time as well as the usual news sites, but Digg is a social news site which is user submitted. So you get the best of the news world as well as some of those crazy web stories that are fun to read.
4. http://zennioptical.com
I was just opened up to this site from some of Bryan's family and friends. This site is an amazing optical that can ship around the world and get you glasses fast. The best part is all you need is your prescription and boom you are done....ok let me really get to the best part. GLASSES FOR $8.00 bucks. That is great!!!
5. www.revision3.com
I am a huge podcast and internet tv guy. I got tired of regular tv a while ago and found revision3, which is a complete internet tv station. Lots of good shows and lots of cool forums. Its by the guys who brought you digg.com
6. www.sourceforge.net
Great little place to find all sorts of cool free open source apps
I am sure I am forgetting tons of other websites, but for now I think is a nice little list of some of the cool things out there. If you all have other websites that are cool, please drop me a line letting me know. I love learning about new things.
Hope you all have a great day :-)
-JR

Not a real catch :-(

So much to my disappointment this catch is not real. David had said it all along that this was super fake, but I found my self for one brief moment daring to believe...and alas it is a hoax. Apparently it is a Gatorade® commercial that was leaked onto the net. If you look at the very end of the video you can see her sit next to a bottle. Oh well....i thought everything on the net was true - i guess not lol
-JR

WOW!! Awesome catch

I saw this video today and I thought it was awesome...she could teach some of the major league guys a thing or two:

Ball Girl Makes Incredible Catch - Watch more free videos

Girls Camp '08

Howdy everyone!
Here are some pics of this years Young Women's Girls Camp
Bianca was the coordinator again this year, but unfortunately I could not go because of work and school.
Enjoy !

Vista: How I hate thee, let me count the ways

Ok quick super geek moment: I hate Vista!!! I have tried really really really hard to like the features and work with the new OS but in the end there is nothing that I can see as a clear advantage over XP. The themes and the desktop look cool but that can only take you so far, In fact after about 20 min with Vista the OH AH UH factor was totally gone. For those working on web design IIS 7 is a nightmare. Now perhaps I am being hasty since I am not an expert when it comes to any IIS but geez what I do know, I don't like IIS 7. There are lots of other things I can complain about (like the Network and Sharing Center that takes some serious time getting used to) but I am not going there. If you have the chance to stay with XP...do. I read an interesting article the other day relating that only 8% of developers are coding for Vista as 13% are coding for Linux. Now for those of my friends who are not familiar or comfortable with the idea of another OS don't be. There is life after Microsoft. Now I won't say that everything is compatible or that you can really do everything on Linux that you can do on Windows, let's face it Windows is an industry standard. Linux does however give you a very very nice alternative. It takes some getting used to, but IT'S FREEE!!! So there is a learning curve, at least there is no $200 upgrade fee every time a new version is rolled. I used to be afraid of the "dark side" but try it, you may find that it is a refreshing new look on personal computers. If you are unsure how to even start check out this site: http://distrowatch.com/ here there are tons and tons of different flavors of Linux. I personally recommend Ubuntu and Suse. I have used both and both are user friendly and come with tons of features already built in. They are light too so they can run on almost any machine. If you are a hard core internet user and don't spend too much time on the desktop try GOS. Its mostly an internet based OS but fun and the graphics are very appealing. Well thats the end of my little rant about computers. One last note - Mac's are getting really really nice. OS X has really impressed me. The only downside is the pricey hardware. If you can get over that don't be afraid of the Mac.
Have fun everyone and I hope all the fathers had a good day on Sunday.
Cheers,
-JR

Create a shorter URL link !!

You may have experienced that annoying problem of copying and pasting a huge link to a co-worker or friend. You miss a letter and you get nothing and then you are sending a dead link to your contacts. There is a cool little web based tool that allows you to take really long links and convert them into small / tiny ones. The site is called www.tiny.cc and is super easy to use.

1. Take you super long link and copy it
2. Open the site www.tiny.cc
3. Paste the link into the box labeled Long URL
4. Click on Go Tiny
5. Copy the new shorter link and send to your friends and co-workers

There are some great tools for free out on the web and this has become one of my favorites.
Hope you all enjoy
- JR

Example:
Long URL- http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServerSolutions/SBS/en/library/62e2094e-ad4e-4227-b20e-97a716ed7c861033.mspx?mfr=true
New Short URL- http://tiny.cc/EgslV

Cool Pic of El Paso

I was helping a buddy make a site and I ran across this pic of El Paso.
Nice no?
It almost makes you think....wow.... El Paso is nice :-)
Enjoy