The joys of the season changes in Chicago...as much as I hate the long winters come February, I must say that the routine of change that is the 4 seasons is refreshing.  Especially this time of year! 

Early fall has to be my favorite time of the year for several reasons.  You still have plenty of sunny days, and its typically warm enough to venture out without a jacket.  The leaves begin to change and crunch under your feet.  College football is back, and there are plenty of chances to watch the Illini stumble through another arduous season.  Starbucks has its pumpkin scones available (mmmm!) and combined with a warm cup of chai on a crisp morning its hard to beat!

However, I'm reminded this morning that its also about that time of year to lug the extremely heavy (Brian can attest to this) window air conditioning units down to storage.  Yep, it was 52 degrees when I woke up this morning, and no matter how well you try to insulate around the AC units, cold air is sure to seep in.  Of course, past experience shows that unless I leave the units in until mid-late October, the weather surprises and heats up into the 80's with humidity, and then I'm kicking myself for taking the units down so early.  Hmm...looking at the weather forecast for this coming week, I think I'll keep them up a little longer!

...and that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads! Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that cannot be done. Ah, would you remind me what I pay you people for, honestly? Throw me a bone here! What do we have?     -Dr. Evil

What we have, Dr. Evil, is dolphins, with frickin' toxic dart guns attached to their heads!  Are you kidding me?!?  This has to be the most rediculous thing I've ever heard of!

If Mark Townsend is to be believed, this has to be one of the most insane ideas the U.S. government has ever come up with.  And supposedly its been in the works since the late 80's.  Admittedly, I'm not terribly familiar with The Observer, and for all I know it could be the UK's version of the National Enquirer.  However, this story is very humorous whether or not it is true. 

Don't you feel much safer knowing our nation's sea coasts are being protected by Flipper?!  I mean, come on, there's no way Flipper would mistake a beach-goer enjoying the ocean for a terrorist, right?!  And now that Katrina has potentially wiped out some of these flippered friends, what are we to do?  Are we at the mercy of the evil-doers?

[via World Magazine Blog]

 

In my last post about Illinois football, I had a much more positive beat regarding the rest of the season.  That outlook changed quite dramatically this past Saturday when I saw that the Illini had blown it BIG against the Michigan State Spartans, losing 61-14.

I have to say that even with the loss to Cal last weekend, I thought we still had a fighting chance to have a decent season.  I mean, we were actually up 17-7 at halftime of that game, against a team that is currently ranked #12 in the nation.  Granted, I was perhaps overly optimistic, as we wound up losing 35-20, but all in all it wasn't a terrible game.

This week, however, it was another story, as MSU set an all time record for opponent scoring at Memorial Stadium, trashing us for 61 points.  This game proved once again that Illinois needs some serious help in building up a competant defense, as the Spartans racked up 705(!) total offensive yards Saturday.  A strong defense seems to be something Illinois has lacked for many years now.  What happened to the tradition of the Illinois linebacker? 

Coach Ron Zook took the blame for this one, claiming he did not prepare the team mentally, and that they lacked emotion going into the game.  I can only hope the rest of our season isn't this miserable.  Next week Illinois faces the Hawkeyes, and I noticed they chose us as their opponent for the big homecoming game.  How ironic!  It seems like only yesterday I was a student at U of I and we would always schedule Iowa for our homecoming game.  You can bet I won't hear the end of it if we lose this game in a similar manner, since my sister and brother-in-law are both Iowa alum!

Well, it would appear that the experiment has officially become a success!  In looking back at some comments that had been posted, I noticed this one from my sister Annie!  Congrats on finding the site!  How'd you come across it? 

Ok, so I may have "cheated" just a little bit by sending my dad the URL to this post in an e-mail.  I'm guessing he told my sister about the site.  But, hopefully I'm wrong and she was just sucked in by the incredible content I'm offering up, for free, right here at www.jasonengstrom.com/blog!

In other news, I am going to shamelessly add my name to this post.  I noticed that Jason Engstrom is nowhere to be found on the site, so if someone googles me they'll never find the experiment.  Hopefully this will push me up in Google's results!

Not that I really provide much business for Field's...but, it sounds threatening, anyway

So, it looks like despite the efforts of the petition over at www.KeepItFields.com (I signed it on 8/01), Federated Department Stores has decided to rename all Marshall Field's stores in the US to Macy's, starting in the fall of '06.  This is sure to upset many a Chicagoan, including myself!

As a child, my family had a tradition each Christmas of riding Metra (yeah, I have to admit I grew up in the 'burbs) into the city, huffing over to Marshall Field's (often in sub 20 degree weather) and gazing at their incredibly detailed and beautiful Christmas window display.  While this may not sound like the most enjoyable activity to some, it brings back fond memories.  After checking out the windows, we'd wait (often for HOURS) in line to eat at the Walnut Room on the seventh floor, next to the giant Christmas tree.  We'd end the day riding the train back and devouring the Frango mints we bought at Field's. 

And now, I'm going to have to re-live these memories at a Macy's?!  A store from New York, of all places?  I don't think so.  Way to go Federated, you've lost yourself at least one customer.

I've been a fairly active person for most of my 26 years of life, and have rarely taken the time to stretch out prior to participating in physical activities.  Sure, I'll spend 20 seconds to hit the quads and hams before a 3 mile run (and you'll almost NEVER find me running longer than that), but for the most part, muscle soreness and injury is something I haven't had to deal with. 

That all changed last night!  I signed up to play in a local softball league with a bunch of guys from church.  I never thought to stretch out before the game, because, like I said...it's just not something I've had to deal with before.  However, seems like the time has come where stretching is going to have to be a part of my regiment.  My first time up at bat, I had a nice rip to left center, and I took off at a full sprint.  Immediately I noticed a shooting pain in my upper right quad.  Sure enough, I pulled it, and its been quite uncomfortable ever since.  Granted its nothing I shouldn't recover from soon, but with every step I take it serves as a painful reminder that I'm not getting any younger!

In more positive news, our team is really rocking the competition!  Our first game we won something like 20-7.  Last night, we slaughtered the poor unsuspecting young bucks we faced with a 33-5 win in four innings.  I've been quite happy with my performances, despite not having played in 3 years.  I've been hitting the ball fairly well and my fielding last night at 3rd was decent. 

Looks like I'm gonna have to pick up some of this for the first time!

Like many video gamer geeks out there, I've been following the speculation on the Nintendo Revolution and its highly touted and mysterious controller over the past several months. 

The secret is out, as Nintendo revealed the controller yesterday at the Tokyo Game Show.  In a nutshell, this thing is supposed to be able to sense motion; ala, the revolution is upon us. 

However, its also supposed to allow the Revolution to play ALL past Nintendo games (NES, SNES, N64, etc).  At first glance, I can't see how this will be possible.  There doesn't even seem to be the necessary X/Y buttons, let alone the C-buttons from the 64.  Hmm...I'm skeptical.  But it will  be interesting to see how this all pulls together.

Has anyone else tried out IE 7 Beta 1?  I recently installed it, and while I like the advent of tabbed browsing, there are other features that have annoyed me.  For example, many sites that use scripting no longer work as a result of the upgrade, and I can no longer enter my time for work or even log into Engy's Experiment!  I've looked in the options to see if I have to check/uncheck something, but haven't yet discovered the problem.  The interface itself is nothing special, although Microsoft appears to be taking the Google approach of simplicity in their UI.  I'm not digging the tiny new back/forward buttons, and can't find a way to increase their visibility.  In addition, it is reporting www.jasonengstrom.com as a potential Phishing site!!  What??  I'd love to know their criteria for selecting a "potential phisher" and how my site shows up on the list. 

Granted, I haven't spent a ton of time evaluating it and haven't even tried out the new Web Feed functionality (thanks to BlogLines), but I'm ready to uninstall.  Which, leads me to another point...how the heck DO YOU uninstall it?  It doesn't show up as an option in my Add/Remove programs list, and even in the Windows Component section, it shows up as using 0.0 MB and uninstalling it via that method has proved unfruitful. 

IE 7 is going to lose my business unless the final product is markedly improved!

[UPDATE:]
Just found this post over on the Framework Zone and bingo, IE 7 is history!

The Poynter Institute, a journalism school and owner of the St. Petersburg Times, posted this entry discussing the death of the newspaper, a thought I briefly mentioned earlier. 

Their take is that with the growth of online news readership, the newspaper will have to present itself in a different light, and provide readers an alternative to the traditional newspaper.  They cite an example of a Danish newspaper that is presenting content in more of a magazine / tabloid format, ala the Red Eye in Chicago. 

So what do you think?  As municipalities and transit agencies begin offering free WiFi and web connectivity becomes more and more prevalent, is there really a need to print all that paper, which in and of itself is so wasteful? 

I'd always prefer paper-less reading whenever possible, but certainly books and other print volumes are here to stay. 

Cedar Rapids, Iowa (my parent's current town of residence) may have the coolest feature on any transit system in the country.  Looks like the Five Seasons Transportation system has recently added WiFi service to all their bus routes!  It would be pretty sweet to spend your morning commute reading the latest blogs and doing so without using a GPRS connected mobile phone.  Granted, my dad's 5 minute drive to the office wouldn't make it very worthwhile, but something like this could be very useful in a city like Chicago.  However, big props to CR for taking the initiative - I'm sure many will find it useful.

Could we be one step closer to eliminating the daily newspaper? 

[via Live From the Third Rail]

Because I am always looking out for my loyal readers, I wanted to make sure you are aware that my previous post about the XBox 360 release date was incorrect!  Now you will be able to enjoy 3 additional days of gaming goodness...that's right, it's OFFICIALLY official, the XBox 360 comes out in the US on November 22, with release in Europe on December 2 and Japan on December 10. 

Looks like this Thanksgiving holiday will see many American gamers out there that, upon enjoying turkey and mash potatoes, will roll over to their couch, flip on the idiot box, and watch some Football play some Madden on thier new 360! 

Google is in danger of losing my business!  Googling my name still points to my deleted MSN space, and there is no reference to www.jasonengstrom.com anywhere that I've found.  It's been over a week since I moved the site, so what gives?  How long does it take for search engines to update their results?  I know their bot is pinging me daily, so I think it's odd that Google seems to have no knowledge of my site. 

Any tips on how to gain better visibility?  Google's my last hope!  MSN and Yahoo lost my business years ago.  ...Stupid graphic intensive sites

 

Tony Morgan, pastor at Granger Community Church in Granger, Indiana, blogged about his church's baptism service this past weekend, where over 400 (wow!) people were baptized.  I'm loving the O Brother Where Art Thou mock he's got posted. 

My church, First Free, recently held a baptism service at Foster Beach, where we had 5 people (including my wife!) baptized.  While it is awesome to see even a single person that has committed to follow Christ be baptized as a public declaration of their faith, to see 400 at one time must be incredible!  Granted, Granger is probably a much larger congregation than First Free, but still, they must be doing something right to see that kind of growth.  I'd love to hear what kinds of outreach activities they participate in.

I've been thinking about how our church is committing to uphold part of its mission, namely, compassionate outreach.  We are involved in many great activities in this regard, including a commitment to those in need, loving on the community we are in, and supporting global ministry. 

It is these very activities that will help us to share what is far more important than anything else we can ever do, which is to make sure everyone knows God's love for them and desire to be in relationship with them.  That is why I'm so excited about the Alpha Course we are running for the next 10 weeks.  The course is an excellent opportunity to enjoy dinner, meet new people, and bring tough questions to the table in an open, safe environment.  The course begins Tuesday, 9/13 at 7:00 pm at Cafe Victoria, and all are welcome to attend, so consider yourself invited!

 

Wow, I can't believe it...Illinois football is 2-0?!

Before I get all excited, however, I must remember that their last two opponents, Rutgers and San Jose State, are not exactly considered "football powerhouses."

However, when you consider that Illinois has only won 3 football games over the past two seasons, to start off this year with 2 victories is quite a confidence boost for the team and the Illini nation.  Next week's matchup should be a great indicator of how Illinois can handle a big time team, as we face No. 16 California. 

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to watch a single game yet this season.  I've been reading the Chicago Tribune's write ups each Sunday, though, and from what I can gather, our QB Tim Brasic is starting to show some decent potential.  Maybe one of these Saturday's I'll be able to carve out a few hours to catch the game, or even better, road trip down to Champaign and bask in the greatness that is a Big Ten football game.  Memorial Stadium on a crisp fall afternoon is the quintessential environment for college football...it sort of has that "Wrigley-esqe" old school feel to it, and the tail-gaiting scene rivals what you'll find anywhere in college sports.  Ahh...college football.  Don't you love it?  Anyone care to join me for a little trip? 

My apologies to anyone experiencing the dreaded 403.9 "Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected" errors.  I didn't realize my little blog was so popular

Running IIS 5.1 with its 10 concurrent connection limitation seems to be the culprit.  Unfortunately, hardware limitations are preventing me from upgrading the server to 2k3 and subsequently IIS 6.  However, I found this nifty little post describing how to max your IIS 5.1 connections at 40.  Hopefully this well help alleviate the connection issues for the time being.

I've also given permission to a "little hacker friend" (who also happens to be a competent Halo 2 buddy) of mine to take a look at my current security situation.  Will be interesting to see how helpful the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer tool is.

After a nice long weekend of camping near the Dells, I arrived home, fired up the 'ole Tivo, and was pleasantly surprised to see that my box had FINALLY recieved the software update enabling TivoToGo.  After announcing the feature back in January and rolling it out to most Tivo boxes shortly thereafter, I noticed the "small print" on the website.  All Humax, Toshiba, and Pioneer units would receive the update "later in the year."  Well, after waiting about, oh 8 months, the update finally arrived!

Just in time, too.  I've been hoarding quite a few episodes of Arrested Development and Chicago Stories with the intent of archiving them on my pc as soon as TivoToGo showed up.  The hard drive was so full it was getting to the point that a newly recorded show would be auto deleted the next day, and that's with 120 GB! 

I've been pretty happy with TivoToGo after playing around a bit.  I realized why my HD was so full...a simple 30 minute episode recorded at high quality is over a gig!  Man at that rate any HD DVR's are going to have to have 500 gig or larger hard drives!  The large size of the shows stem my biggest complaint with TivoToGo...namely, it takes a good 2 hours to transfer a 30 minute show over to my PC.  Granted, I'm using an 802.11b adapter (finding one that worked with Tivo was a nightmare in and of itself!)  Time to upgrade to a 54g, I suppose.  Other than that, Tivo uses some sort of DRM solution preventing my shows from being played anywhere but my PC.  Hmm...time to read up on a little "extracurricular" activity for my shows

Man, what's going on right now on the Gulf Coast (New Orleans, in particular) is such a tragedy.  My heart goes out to those in the midst of all this, and I have been praying for those affected, that they might attain peace in the midst of despair.  I also hope this event will stir within people all over the world a desire to investigate and challenge their beliefs on the meaning and purpose of life, so that they might discover the Truth. 

I really had no idea that a hurricane could cause this much chaos, especially in an "industrialized" nation.  I think it is very interesting, however, that the risk of such a disaster in New Orleans had been studied and documented at length, and yet, the government, both at a local and national level, seems so ill-prepared for something we knew was imminent. 

Check out this post I came across (via Ethan Zuckerman) that links to a National Geographic article from October, 2004, that eerily describes a scene very similar to what we have today. 

I agree with many of the points made by the author of the post.  I hope that if any good comes of this situation (on a political level, anyway) that it will allow us to refocus our energies on building into our own nation, and really challenge us to solve the some of the difficult problems our own country faces before we try to "fix" the rest of the world.

The other day I was talking to Kevin, and he encouraged me to host the blog myself.  Initially when I started this blog, I used MSN spaces because it was free and there were really no hurdles to jump in order to get my thoughts out.  After running into problems using spaces, I decided it was time for dasBlog!

The whole process was really quite simple and I got the site up and running in only an hour or so.  Basically, I headed over to EasyDNS and registered JasonEngstrom.com and set them up as my DNS host.  This was probably the most time consuming part of the whole process, since I was trying to decide what domain name to use, and there are several I was considering that were already taken (www.theengstroms.com, www.engstroms.com, www.engstroms.net).  I finally decided I might as well grab my name since it was available.  So, for a year's use of the name and DNS hosting, it was $35.  Subsequently, I picked up www.theengstroms.net for $2 at Yahoo. 

Since I don't have a static IP, EasyDNS has a nice option for dynamic IP's using a program called DynSite.  We'll see if this gives me any problems, but for the time being it seems to be working fine.

Finally, I installed dasBlog and with some minor tweaking, I had it serving my site locally.  The small snag I did run into was opening up port 80 on my box.  I couldn't view the site from the outside world, and had to do some digging until I remembered SP2's Windows Firewall service.  My router was properly forwarding port 80 to my webserver, but I completely forgot to open up the port via Windows Firewall.  The good news is Windows Firewall seemed to do the job in blocking the port!  Once I opened it up, though, it was all good.

Finally, there is some minor configuration needed for dasBlog, but it can really be done in about 5 minutes.  I'm still figuring out some the finer details, so you might see some cosmetic changes (for example, I like the Sound Waves theme I'm using, but for the life of me I don't see a way to edit/delete entries using this theme.  It may go away!) 

Anyway, just wanted to encourage anyone out there that may be sitting on the fence deciding whether or not to host a blog themselves...its easy!  Give it a shot.

Well, I hate to do this, but I moved the experiment to its new, permanent home.  It kills me to think how I've hurt the experiment; I mean, seriously, my readership was blowing up! 

However, a URL like jasonengstrom.com combined with the ease and flexibility of using a platform like dasBlog on my own webserver should make for a better site overall. 

So, I hope you don't mind updating your blogrolls and links to the new site.  Meanwhile, the blogging continues!