“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” – Alexis de Toqueville

So, I’ve put together my first Sidebar Gadget for Vista. It’s nothing too spectacular, but it’s merely my first 🙂 It displays your external network IP address, and also your internal IP address. Useful for gaming, or if I have to change my DNS record with my domain provider (my IP doesn’t change much with Knology over time, maybe once a year). Anyhoo, here’s a screeny:

Not too much going on today. Just another Friday. w00t! Lunch with the pops, as always. Tonight, though, I get to play some more of World of Warcraft: The Trading Card Game. It’s sort of reminiscent of Magic: The Gathering, except instead of Mana you can use any card you want to as a “resource” which pays for spells, allies and items. A very enjoyable game, particularly because of the obvious connections to a really cool MMO 🙂

My grass is really suffering due to lack of rain-age. On the plus side I haven’t had to cut it in a good long while, and on the down side it’s really crunchy. I’ll have to cut it, anyway, this weekend because hardy weeds have sprung up amongst the hay in a big way. It’s been in the 90s all week. Maybe I’ll wake up at the crack of dawn and do it *SNICKER!!!*

Time to head out. Bleh, I say *YAWN!!!!!*

5 straight! When will this topsy-turvy roller coaster end? 😮 Hopefully not until season’s end 😀

The Cubbies won their 4th straight last night. It was a pretty good routing of the Rockies and quite the wild game. The final was 10-9. Amazingly enough, the Cubbies hit only one homerun in the midst of that slugfest–Pagan hit one out with 2 on and 2 out in the 1st. They didn’t gain any ground on the Brewers (shakes his fists at Milwaukee), but they did gain a game on the Cardinals. Of course, this is all that truly matters because so many frickin’ people on Redstone Arsenal are Cardinals fans 😛

And, yes, I realize the MLB probably copyrighted those numbers above. They can kiss my ass; they’re just numbers 😛 Actually, I don’t know what the hell they copyright–accounts, descriptions? I mean WTF? People can’t talk baseball unless they’re a member of the press? BS, I say, and if they take me to court over that crap, then this world really is sad 😛 Hopefully they’re merely talking about copyrighted telecasts and not a gleaming prideful fan chronicling the progress of his/her favorite team.

Geez, I had to go into a rant, didn’t I? 😛 Go Cubs! 🙂

Wow…click for a higher-res image.

We can only hope that the re-imagining of Star Trek is done better than Planet of the Apes 😛

So here I was, getting up quite early on a Saturday morning. I was going to get new tires for my trusty steed. I shopped online for the best price, which turned out to be Wal-Mart. Really good jobs that’ll last 80K miles. They don’t even carry them in the frickin’ store. I have to wait a few days for them to come in. Ugh! I think my tires still have some life in them, but not much. Hopefully they’ll last the few days (up to a week!) it’ll take 😛

On the plus side, it was a really good deal. Mind you, it was without labor and everything, but the tires themselves were a good price.

First new set of tires. Cars grow up so fast *sniffle*

Mind you it’s hearsay, but disturbing hearsay nevertheless.

http://www.breitbart.tv/html/2042.html

So much for Freedom of Speech, eh? It’s being whittled away a fraction at a time. That’s the best way to take it all away from us, in itty bits so “we won’t notice.” All for the “common good” 😛

I really hope that bitch doesn’t become president 😛

On your next vacation, how about popping over to…

Absolutely legendary