I heard from a reputable program this morning that up to 83% of Americans believe that Christianity, including Creationism and the Resurrection, is true.

Yet, strangely, as many as 40% believe that astrology is also true, despite the fact that it is entirely contrary to Christianity.

I know what I believe:  Sometimes it is embarrassing to be an American.

From an email chain my CIO forwarded to everyone:

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming : Woo Hoo, what a ride!"

Scott Hanselman always has great tricks for developers.  Here are a list of registry tweaks to make system administration much easier and flexible for XP.  Use at your own risk!

OK, had a short interruption in service when I setup the new router.  Between Cox reassigning my IP and issues with the port forwarding, I couldn't get everything synced up.  Got it now so everything should resume as normal. 

I optimized my server a bit to get this running a bit faster as well.  Let's see how that works out.  I will plan an upgrade for it later this year, when I have some time to work on it.

I noticed when TC called asking for the address of this blog that I had forgotten to post the primary feed address on this stream.  So here it is:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/UsingHagen

of course, you may also use the source feed at:

http://www.hagennet.homeip.net:22/Blog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetAtom

But it is not nearly as reliable until I can get my server upgraded.  I don't think ASP.NET 2.0 is designed to run on 384MB of RAM.

Sometime last night, my wireless router went south.  Weirdest thing, too.  Just suddenly went dark, no blinky lights, nothing.  It was a great little router; a D-Link DI-624, the early model.  Very reliable, fast, worked well with mixed b/g networking and 100BT wired and a second hub strung off the side for my server.  It will be missed. 

Oh, and I don't know if the router puked or its power supply.  It uses a 5V 2.5A DC adapter, and I don't have anything close to it.  I could go get a universal adapter and try it out, but this is my opportunity to finally upgrade to something better.  So for now I am on my old backup router, sans wireless, until the new one gets here.

And oh what a treat it will be!  Presenting the new D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit router!  802.11b/g/pre-n (no I do not have n capability yet, what's your point?), GIGABIT! (1000Base-T) for great speed from my primary to my server (yes 100BT is not saturated yet, but it might...), MIMO for better distance and such, and its cooler looking.  Can't wait!

BTW, saw a great idea on Lifehacker the other day for cable/device management:  Get a cheap pegboard, stash it behind your desk and attach everything to it.  Voilà, no clutter, and REAL cheap!  Gonna try it.

Where do they find the instructors for IT?  I am attending a respected local university in their IT program currently.  The reasons why range from my wife is a teacher, to I never finished my degree 15 years ago.  IT is an easy course load for me since I have been doing it for nearly 18 years now.

However, the instructors I have experienced are wildly variable.  My personal advisor doesn't like to have a computer, or even a phone, on his desk.  It messes with his Phung Shui.  And his information filing system consists of a desk drawer filled with scraps of paper.  My general IT class instructor may have been current once, but never within my career span.  Not to mention the vast hero worship issues she has with women and fringe industry individuals.  Wow, I can't imagine life without Grace Hopper, who is single-handedly responsible for computer usage!  Forget Thomas Edison, "he had a lab full of assistants", so his contributions are negligable to modern technology.

I wouldn't care, but the other students drink it up like gospel.  AND she keeps giving advice about IT jobs and the industry in general that is just wrong.  Ah well, my future competition will be light...