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News Archive - 10/2003 Friday, October 03, 2003
We had our first frost here last night. Though I hate waking up when it's chilly in the house, I do enjoy not requiring an air conditioning all year long. I occasionally hear peeps and pipes from my friends down in Tallahassee; apparently everything is about the same as it always has been. I'm working on a new custom map for Warcraft III -- it should be out on Monday. The Hokies beat UConn 47-13 last weekend. This weekend they're ranked #4 and playing at Rutgers.
Saturday, October 04, 2003
Sunday, October 05, 2003 Everytime I jog under a streetlamp and it goes out, I think I'm about to be part of some high profile kidnapping where I fend off twenty attackers in masks and disarm a nuclear bomb. It hasn't happened yet though. I did a little house-cleaning around the site today, and added my latest battle report to the Writings page.
Tuesday, October 07, 2003 I would like to meet the genius who invented the new Yoplait ad with the slogan "Together We Can Lick Breast Cancer". Sounds like a great way to sell yogurt... I've been busy with maps -- there's new updates for Micro Arena and Burrow Command on the Games page. I also have a few new cat pictures, but there weren't enough to warrant a full update, so I'll post those in a couple days. So how many of my staid Republican readers would vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger today if they lived in California? Thursday, October 09, 2003
Happy Birthday Mike!
Saturday, October 11, 2003
Sunday, October 12, 2003
I saw School of Rock last night, and it was actually pretty funny -- much funnier than it could have been, and a lot less annoying than it could have been. Another good movie I've seen recently: Confidence with Edward Burns and Dustin Hoffman. Con-man movies always follow the same basic concept, but they're still fun to figure out as they go. Alias, tonight. permalink
| 0 comments Monday, October 13, 2003 It's Columbus Day, but it's business as usual for going to work. Booty says hi. I'm searching for good domain names for this site that aren't already taken. Among the current possibilities:
This list is by no means complete, so any suggestions would be welcome. The only limitations: no punctuation, and the domain must be unclaimed on one of the .net, .org, or .com suffixes. You can test out names at Dotster
Wednesday, October 15, 2003 I suppose uri.nl is a bad idea for a domain name. Any other suggestions? Right now I'm leaning towards orgella.org because it's repetitive, easy to remember, and short. Plus, I can use it for other purposes if I ever do more than a personal page (unlike uridomain.com or something). uridomain.com is a porn site. Choosing net or org for that might lead to some confusion...
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| 0 comments Thursday, October 16, 2003 Poll time. Pick your favourite address, and send it to me by e-mail (bottom of the page):
www.uricountry.com www.urijungle.com www.uriuriuri.com www.urizoo.net www.urizone.net permalink
| 0 comments Sunday, October 19, 2003 Poll Results
Each primary vote was given two points, and each second choice was given one point. At this point, I'm leaning towards www.urizone.net. urirealm is odd-sounding, uricountry sounds like a Disney theme park set in Texas, urijungle and urizoo are odd-looking, and uriuriuri is long and hard to type fluently. I will probably be purchasing the domain name sometime this week, so feel free to write in if you want to try and sway my vote to another domain name. When I've purchased a domain name and a web host, this site will finally move off of the Virginia Tech servers and you won't have to remember the extended web address anymore. There will also be bonus features like a forum, news comments, and online polls. The trip to Tech was fun and exciting. I'll probably post a travelogue tomorrow, to compel me to update more regularly. permalink
| 0 comments Tuesday, October 21, 2003 
I lost a day to a migraine so accept my apologies for not updating yesterday. I registered the name www.urizone.net this morning, and purchased a year-long plan for a recommended web host as well. I got a nice package deal and saved $60 for the whole year. The site name won't be active for a couple of days, and it will still be a couple weeks before I transition over there. I want to get a simplistic forum or news comments working before I make the leap. There were some interesting cases presented for and against www.urizone.net:
It sounds a little like "horizon" or "uri's one" but it could also be an anti-itch medicine for some unknown ailment or body part (like "freezone") so it's the name with the most possibilities. Against: The problem is that "zone" is already associated with so many bad things. e.g.:
Microsoft - Gaming Zone (has all of like four games) Reduced Speed Zone - Everyone hates these ZoneAlarm - Obnoxious Firewall (O)Zone Layer - We like it, but it's depleted The Matrix Reloaded was easily the stupidest movie I've seen since Thin Red Line. Don't watch it. You'll be better off.
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| 0 comments Wednesday, October 22, 2003 My trip to Tech this past weekend was fun. I got to see all the usual suspects, and chatted it up in the Music Department where things are actually picking up, despite the past years' budget cuts. They've moved out of the College of Arts and Sciences to the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, and apparently the dean there is gung-ho about hiring new professors and resurrecting the Schultz Performing Arts Building project. On Saturday, we went out to the New River for a while and scaled a mountain. I got home to two fat cats. Booty had eaten all of Kitty's weight-watching food (probably within twenty minutes of my departure) and in retaliation, Kitty searched high and low until she found the shelf where Booty's fatty kitten food was. After jumping four feet up to the shelf, she ate it all. I came home to Kitty sitting on the shelf waiting for more food. Since then, I've hidden Booty's food on a smaller, higher up shelf, and closed the closet where the food used to be. Now Kitty sits in front of the closet meowing all day and trying to get the door open. Also, Booty opened the screen door and came in off the porch last week on her own volition. She will be a year old on Saturday.
Thursday, October 23, 2003
In my spare time, I'm working on creating a PHP/SQL forum for the URI! Zone. If this site had a forum, what sort of features would you want to see? Happy Birthday Jason Mirick! Friday, October 24, 2003
We're planning on doing the Historic Leesburg Ghost Tour tonight to better recognize the Halloween spirit. Give a whistle if you want to come along. It's cold out.  Woman mistakenly sits in suvbathing zone.Saturday, October 25, 2003
Sunday, October 26, 2003 We went on the Historical Leesburg Ghost Tour on Friday night at 11 PM. It was actually pretty interesting, and very scientific in presentation. The coolest part of the tour was touching the "residual field" under a tree at the Courthouse. There was no breeze or trick of wind, but you could easily feel a minty tingle when you passed your hand along the line of the EF field. Monday, October 27, 2003 Saturday night was spent at a Halloween party out in Catlett with a live band and a speeding hayride. Yesterday, I began rewriting this site to take advantage of new server features. I'm trying to eliminate the dependency on <TABLE> tags in favour of CSS and strict XHTML, but it's hard to make the switch after writing HTML the same way for so many years. Who was the ridiculous ad monkey who wrote the ABC promos for Halloween week? "It's A-B-SCREAM week!" Ignoring the fact that scream doesn't rhyme with c, how can anyone find that witty, clever, or even remotely relevant to ABC's poor comedy lineup? On a side note, it's a reflection on the quality of TV that Alias, the show that no one watches, commands the third highest advertisement rates of all the primetime TV shows for 18-49 year olds. At least we know it won't be cancelled this year.  Your very own stoplight controlTuesday, October 28, 2003 The conductor was nervous. It was the last performance of the season, Beethoven's 9th Symphony, and earlier he'd caught his basses passing a bottle around. So far the symphony had gone as planned, but this particular one required a little extra effort from the basses at the end. Taking a deep breath, he cued the basses for the grand finale and succeeded in knocking his music stand over. As the sheet music scattered in every direction, his worst fear was realized; it was the bottom of the 9th, no score, and the basses were loaded. Wednesday, October 29, 2003
Digital TV to become standard Bomb alert over farting dog Why some people should not be allowed to do home improvement Cyber women test what's realpermalink
| 0 comments Thursday, October 30, 2003
In other gaming news, Patch 1.10 for Diablo II finally came out, some two odd years after it was first announced. Despite the lag time, it's nice to see a gaming company supporting software for free so long after its commercial success. Bush has more urgent plans Sexual Karaoke Black hole hums Bbpermalink
| 0 comments Friday, October 31, 2003
I bought lots of big candy bars and treats and toys with which to spoil the apartment complex kiddies, as is tradition in Uri! households. Everything is in order for a November 1 rollout of the URI! Zone. In fact, the early birds among you will probably see it a few minutes after midnight if all goes according to plan. "Halloween and Halloween Eve are two days when dressing like a clown is less likely to draw attention." - CNN news reporting on why someone might dress as a clown to rob a bank
Mission accomplished? No one's buying disposable DVDs.The newest news on the front page is always at the top. Archived news is in chronological order. You can always contact me at The entire URI! Zone is © 1996 - 2008 by Brian Uri!. Please see the About page for further information. |
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The season premiere of Alias was good stuff. The show could go in any direction now, and it's definitely easier for new viewers to follow. When I got the Season 1 DVDs, my roommate hated it in the beginning and then got hooked on it in spite of herself. It turns out that her sisters are addicted to it too. I'm like a pusher.
I've created a new custom game for players of Warcraft III called Caravan Assault. It's essentially a cross between the popular custom game, Footman Wars, and Capture the Flag. Check it out on the Games page if you're into that sort of thing. If you think I'm geeking too far into the gaming side of things, I'll try to get you a musical update in the coming weeks.
The problem with owning a cat is that sometimes you can't tell whether you have a virus or someone just sat on the keyboard all night long.
There hasn't been a recent picture of me since last August, so here's one to satiate you. There's also some new cat pictures on the Photos page.
This has got to be the stupidest packaging idea ever. You open the full-sized box to reveal a minibox, fully sealed and shrink-wrapped. You open that to reveal a wafer thin cardboard CD case that could easily fit through a hairline fault.
I've uploaded a new edition of Caravan Assault on the Games page, with greatly improved gameplay and balance. Check it out.
I've been using Mozilla Firebird 0.7 as a web browser this past week and it's definitely the best web browser out there. It's free and renders even the most bloatedly-coded web pages quickly. Plus it has features like tabbed browsing (which you'll never be able to stop using once you start), loading links in the background, and built-in popup stoppers that actually work. You can even right-click on an ad and order Mozilla to never display images from that site anymore. Give it a try -- you won't be disappointed, especially if you use Internet Explorer
New cat pictures on the Photos page.
I've been devoting the whole of my evenings to preparing www.urizone.net for a grand opening on November 1. My original plans to make everything XHTML were abandoned as it's far more trouble than it's worth, especially now that this site contains over four hundred standalone HTML files to sort through. The new Zone will open with the most common sections cleaned up, and I'll convert the other sections on a page by page basis afterwards. My forum and News comments work is on schedule as well, and the Online Polls should come soon after.
I purchased Halo a while back and have been playing it in my spare time. Overall I'm underwhelmed. The game is fun enough and the squad AI is gimmicky, but it seems like the game to date is just more of the same (I was also unimpressed by Half-Life and won't be buying Half-Life 2 when it comes out). Plus, the levels are boring.
Happy Halloween!
visitors since November 2003