tinyurl... seriously

Receiving long links in your e-mail? Maybe the links you've been sending to your contacts have gotten cut off or formatted because of their length? I am sure many of you have seen the tinyurl.com domain before. It is usually included in any random link that is sent out in e-mails. the name 'TINY' is not an exaggeration, in fact, the name describes the product perfectly.

Here's what the service does, you go onto this wonderful site and you can turn a URL such as http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/19/survive-workaholic-spouse-entrepreneurs-human-relations-workaholic.html into a cute little thing like http://tinyurl.com/yj7gymg.

I've even included a handy tinyurl input box below for you to sample. You're welcome. ^_^

Enter a long URL to make tiny:

If you're anything like me, you probably thought that you have to pay for this, subscribe to the service, or give up your first born. Thankfully curiosity got the best of me and I ended up heading over to http://tinyurl.com and found that the kind souls at tinyurl don't charge a penny but would appreciate a monetary assist (via paypal) to help out with maintaining their site and services.

hardcore gamer

can i claim that? i sure hope so being that, back in the day, i played Wolfenstein 3D in all of its 2fps glory on my old system, 486 dx2. it doesn't seem so hardcore if i leave out the details. well, every 15 minutes of gameplay was followed by a sprint to the restroom for a hurling break. this eventually led to me being so sick i couldn't make it to class for a whole week. don't believe me about the fps? you can check it out for yourself, Wolfenstein 3-D.

that isn't the only thing i got from gaming... i received the N64 Stigma on my palm a couple days before i was to head off to E3. i either got it from zelda or mario... all i remember is having to reel in some fish and needing to spin that center stick as fast as i could. thankfully it wasn't a debilitating injury. :)

how'd i get into E3 you may ask? i had a legitimate, licensed business selling lots of video games. why'd i stop doing that? well, i needed health insurance, job security, and furthering my education seemed like a good idea as well.

guess what? Wolfenstein in all of it's crackishness glory is on its way back with a better fps to boot. will i play it? very, very likely.

realizing that geeks are more than...

more than RCs, SPs, and IRC. we are people who live outside the world of routers, switches, firewalls, VoIP, and troubleshooting.

we are GAMERS!!!

from chess, checkers, and othello to resident evil, ghost recon, and worms. we are also part of the gaming community and i will be sure to begin touching on that soon.

with the economy as it is and a good chunk of us going onto unemployment... where else can we vent our initial frustrations?

my buddy, KeePass [freeware]

let's talk about password security. are you like me and are paranoid that someone is going to see a password of yours and run through all your files and destroy you? it's okay if you're not, it may just be me spending too much time in the realm of network security. however, if you do have a billion different passwords for all your documents, applications, accounts, and websites, you will be relieved to know that there are others like you and they've created KeePass which is a free, open source password manager.

this program not only holds and sorts your usernames and passwords, it also encrypts the passwords so that an unauthorized person cannot access the data even when the password file is retrieved. SCORE!

you may be wondering how useful this app can be if it lives on your desktop or laptop. you can have multiple installations of this program and run them off of the same database file (.kdb) AND the creators and contributors of this program must be geniuses because they have a KeePass Portable for your ever so handy USB memory stick.

if you haven't been wowed yet, you should check out the plug-ins and extensions available to KeePass ( http://keepass.info/plugins.html ):

• additional encryption


• browser integration


• scripting utilities


• backup options


• reporting


• imports and conversions

this program is simple enough to run if you are already experienced enough to have a need for it. if not, there is a place where you can go for help:

moi, lazy?

nah, i'm just busy with church, friends, work, and all the other shtuff.

i don't think i'm as bad as the guy in the video. i'm mostly a retweeter. i'll tweet news stories that some of my subscribers and friends might find interesting. please don't call me a twit. ;p

i believe this video is a friendly reminder that we all should have friends outside of our virtual worlds.