Today, I went to the site I've used the past two years for free and found they've changed the requirements for free tax returns this year and I don't qualify (it would cost me $15.90 to file both Federal & State tax returns). Since I don't want to pay for something that I can get free elsewhere, I went over to the IRS site and there are quite a few different free tax filers listed. After trying out 6 of them, I finally found CompleteTax.com - which not only calculated the correct amount of refund I was entitled to, but it was the only one that correctly identified the CASDI withholding on my Buzz Time paycheck and thus saved me $12 that all the other services stated I owed the state of California. So, I am finally done with my taxes, I am getting a nice refund that I wasn't expecting, and I don't have to pay a cent to anyone - not greedy Intuit, not the state of California, not to a CPA to do the taxes for me.

URL: CompleteTax.com: Free Tax Filing

Absolutely classic.

URL: MSNBC - Thar she blows! Dead whale explodes

So here we are with another debilitating virus/worm which is launching denial of service attacks against various websites (most notably SCO.com). Worm after worm, virus after virus, how are people so oblivious to the fact that they should not open attachments from people they don't know? I don't even open attachments from people I do know, unless I know they are sending me an attachment beforehand. It's just absurd that people blindly open whatever they get, have antiquated virus protection (if any at all), and don't know what to do even if they are infected.

Today, I received over 1,000 of these e-mails, all of which were quietly stripped of the worm thanks to my free antivirus program and then easily filtered into my deleted items folder in Outlook. To top off the 1,000+ e-mails that made it to me (the result of accepting all e-mails sent to a non-existent person on my domains), I received hundreds of bounced e-mails from servers that think the best way to deal with a virus is to bounce it back to the sender. The problem is, the FROM: field in every single one of these virus e-mails is forged. So if it appears to come from, say henry@sd-1.com, the way the infected computer came up with that e-mail is to take a random first part of the e-mail (before the @) and combine it with a random domain name (after the @) from the user's address book. So even though henry doesn't exist on my server, nor will he ever exist, the server that received, detected, and bounced the e-mail back to me is furthering the problem of the virus - overloading networks, filling up mailboxes, and just causing unnecessary traffic. It's complete idiocy - I understand the reason the server might have thought to bounce back the e-mail, assuming the FROM field is correct in the e-mail, but there hasn't been a worm/virus that hasn't forged the fields in quite a while.

What fun it is to download about 100 messages an hour from my e-mail servers. Half of which are viruses, and the other half is probably all spam or bounced e-mails. I really should keep track of how many I receive in one day. Out of all the e-mails, I would guestimate that, excluding e-mail newsletters, only 0.25% are legitimate e-mails (not 25%, 1/4 of 1%).

URL: F-Secure Computer Virus Information Pages: Mydoom

Good or bad? You decide. The crazy, short, insane dictator of North Korea is terrified by Dean. "Former Vermont governor a ‘madman,’ says madman" - how nice to see that the 'scream heard round the world' really was heard everywhere and I'm not the only one that thinks Dean is a little bit off his rocker.

URL: MSNBC - Kim Jung-Il Terrified by Dean

I neither admit nor deny that I watch the Real World, but with it being in San Diego, I am somewhat intrigued. It's kind of cool seeing them go to places I've been to, visiting places I know. But then again, it is the Real World and I've never watched a full season, let alone two episodes in a row. But still...I saw the preview while flipping channels and saw one of the girls being arrested and then some other altercation, and with it on the news that someone was accused of rape in the house this year, I thought I might tune in. But all it was is that Robin, after getting some crap from some idiots lightly hit the guy on the arm, yet he goes and calls the police?? Come on dude, get a life - don't you have anything better to do than escalate a harmless situation like that? Can't you take a light punch on the arm from a girl? Are you really that insecure that you have to assert your authority by calling the cops? But then again, you have to wonder if the Real World producers somehow got this guy to call the cops to create some drama. I doubt it, but you never know with shows like this.

URL: MTV.com - Onair - Realworld - Season14

I was surfing around the mozilla.org ftp and I knew they had nightly releases of the Mozilla bundle (browser, e-mail, etc.), but then, I found the link below - a nightly build of Mozilla Firebird - their standalone browser I've been using for a few months now instead of IE. I absolutely love Firebird - it renders pages faster than IE, is more standards based than IE, has much more customization than IE, and is just an all-around better browser. It features built in google search, built in pop-up blocker, great cookie management, and everything else you'd want in a browser - including the best feature - tabbed browsing. No longer do I have 15 IE windows open when I'm doing research for my website. No longer do I have to try and make out what each IE browser contains in the applications bar - just one Mozilla Firebird with all my browser windows neatly tabbed. Click below for a self-installing, kick-ass Firebird browser.

Nota Bene: For the most part, you won't have to change anything after installing this - it'll still keep your previous configuration. However, if you have a skin made for 0.7, it may not be compatible with 0.8, which could give you an error message. But there's an easy work-around (well...kinda easy). If you get the error message, open up the Profile Manager in the Firebird Start Menu folder. Create a new profile and you'll be good to go, but you'll lose some customizations. So all you have to do is copy over your cookies and bookmarks (check to see where your new profile is created and look for your old one there - you can copy over your bookmarks/cookies from there). I'm loving 0.8 as it is actually faster, sleeker, and just better than 0.7 which I thought would be hard to top.

URL: Firebird 0.8

I think after today, I'm going to have to take some of the advice in the article below, or just continue with my addiction. Today, I woke up, went to class, ate lunch with some sparkling water and went to work. About 1/2 way through my shift, I started to get a headache. I came home, took some ibuprofen and went back to class with a huge headache. With my class being a Music class (Beatles music), it wasn't very good for my headache. I left at the break and couldn't for the life of me figure out why I had the headache. I got enough sleep the night before and the bus I was driving was extremely quiet (some of the buses have engines in the front and give me a headache due to the noise they put out). So after class, I went to McD's and picked up a 42oz. coke since they're only $0.89. About 1/4 of the way through that, my headache started to subside and I felt better immediately. I always knew that I liked caffeine and I knew I drank a lot of Dew each day, but I never really thought I had a caffeine addiction. I'm not like others who need it to wake up and function during the day, but it seems like to function later in the day I need my daily caffeine. There's a lot of good ideas in the article below, but instead, I think I'll just continue drinking Dew.

URL: Slashdot | Best Way To Beat A Caffeine Addiction?

Multiple times I've voiced my distaste over spam from political candidates. I just think it's extremely tacky and even worse than a phone call. But since we've all joined the no-call registry, they can't call us any more, so they're trying to get our attention by spamming us. This is only the first spam I've received from the 2004 primary race (or at least the first one to get through my spam filters), and, even though Wes Clark had no chance of getting my vote, now he's got even less. I'm just hoping that candidates I plan on voting for in the future don't resort to such low-brow tactics.

It's even worse that when you click through the links in the spam e-mail, you are directed to his website, but not the front page, not a page about why you should vote for him, but instead, a page where you could sign up for e-mails. So...they send you an e-mail to get you to sign up for e-mails? How counter-intuitive is that? If I wanted e-mails from your campaign, I would have signed up for them in the first place - I wouldn't want to be "reminded" to sign up via a spam e-mail that I never requested.

URL: General Wesley Clark for President - Official Campaign Web Site

Ok, so I had to cheat - congrats to the Lord of the Rings for winning best picture. Let's hope the Academy Award goes the same route.

URL: :: GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS WINNERS 2004

Since the Globes aren't quite over here on the West Coast, I can't comment on all the awards (though I could look them up), but the best awards of the night went to Howard Shore - definitely deserving of the Globe for best score for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Also, best song went to LOTR as well, and it was well deserved as Annie Lennox's performance was both moving and heartfelt. And now, seeing Peter Jackson win for the conclusion of the epic trilogy is just icing on the cake. But we all know the Globes really don't mean that much - I'm just hoping that the Oscars recognize the Lord of the Rings like they should.

URL: HOLLYWOOD FOREIGN PRESS ASSOCIATION

Just a couple of TV observations. First, while doing everything but studying today, I caught a new show on VH1 called Bands Reunited - easily one of the most entertaining shows on TV, and by far, the best show on VH1, Bands Reunited brings together bands of the 80's to have them reunite and catch up, and then, if they so choose, they play for one night only. Of the four I watched today, the Berlin reuniting was the best - though the reuniting of Frankie Goes to Hollywood was interesting because of the way they broke up, but unfortunately, they were the only one of the four that didn't perform when reunited. As an aside, for a 52 year-old, Terri Nunn of Berlin looked pretty damn good.

And for the second observation, it's pretty cool seeing the old-school Batman, starring Adam West on TV. I didn't know it aired on TV Land, but I'm sure I'll be watching it more often. I grew up watching it and, though cheesy, it's still quite entertaining. In the one tonight, the Joker rigged the vending machines on the high school campus to give out stocks and silver dollar coins (the thought being they'd think they didn't need school and drop out) and then he used a gang of high-school dropouts to rob stores and bars.

URL: VH1.com : Shows : Bands Reunited : Main Page