Thomaskrehbiel.com

1,465 entries. 351,447 words.

July, 2003

• Ashland Parade. 2003-07-04 3:32 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Cynthia and I went to the Ashland 4th of July Parade on… the 4th of July. The parade can be summed up like this: A large number of (presumeably) Ashland natives walked down the street in the searing heat, while a larger number of people watched them and cheered. 123 words.
• Oops. 2003-07-07 7:47 PM.
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  To paraphrase a song, “I feel stupid, oh so stupid…” 40 words.
• Site Administration Improvements. 2003-07-07 8:12 PM.
  • Technology
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  Before accidentally deleting the news database, I was going to report how great my new web site features were. While the new features are still great, they are somewhat diminished by the huge blank pages where the news used to be. 65 words.
• Crayola History Updated. 2003-07-07 8:12 PM.
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  The Crayola Clan history has recently been updated. 17 words.
• Dentist. 2003-07-08 6:34 AM.
  • Blog
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  I’m going to the dentist this morning! This may not sound like cause for celebration, but at least I won’t have to be in prison–I mean, at work for a few hours. 82 words.
• Happy Belated Anniversary To Me. 2003-07-09 1:15 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Yesterday was the first day of my second year at, ahh, Cerebral Locomotion. In the one entire year that I’ve been there, exactly ONE new software module has been released (out of four planned). This module was released at the end of January and consisted of seven sub-programs. 401 words.
• Email Link. 2003-07-09 6:29 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  You will notice that the author of news articles is now highlighted. 45 words.
• Blast From The Past. 2003-07-10 6:46 PM.
  • Gaming
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  From one of the first incarnations of the Crayola Clan web page, which I happen to have a backup copy of: This post-game wrapup by ]CC[-Yellow refers to a match we played with Black Sunrise on June 29, 1997. I have no personal memory of the match, so I doubt if I played in it. 264 words.
• School’s In. 2003-07-11 4:15 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Apparently it’s not enough that I am made to suffer through monolithic config files all day at Cerebral Locomotion. Now I am made to be the Visual Basic tutor to the boss’s pre-teen daughter (I actually don’t know how old she is, but pre-teen is my guess). 295 words.
• Hackers Beware!. 2003-07-11 8:21 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  For all you slavering hordes of h4x0rs out there just waiting for the chance to bust into my site and deface it, beware that I have just added a fool-proof password encryption scheme to the user account database! 51 words.
• Tom’s Editorials Return. 2003-07-11 8:27 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  You may have noticed the addition of the spiffy new menu with links on the left side of the page. 70 words.
• A Typical Day. 2003-07-14 3:33 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Monday’s are always a major drag at Cerebral Locomotion, being as how nobody I know actually likes returning to that oppressive psychotic nightmare after a weekend of freedom. But today was a particularly major soul-sucking drag. 384 words.
• Category Permissions. 2003-07-14 7:02 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Tonight I’ve implemented “protected” news categories, which require a login account and specific permission to view the protected categories. 46 words.
• Cookies!. 2003-07-14 10:37 PM.
  • Technology
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  Implemented cookies to save login information on your computer so you don’t have to keep logging in all the time. 40 words.
• Extrusion Imminent. 2003-07-15 6:46 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In the continuing saga of Tom’s Teeth, I spent another 2 1/2 hours “vacationing” in the dentist’s chair this morning. I’ve come to this realization today: When I’m lying on my deathbed, even if the rest of my life is a complete shambles, I will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that I’ve experienced every conceivable dental procedure known to man. 292 words.
• Not tutoring is a good thing. 2003-07-15 7:28 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Today I recall mentioning to Julio after he had asked me for the 50th time “where are we at with this config file” that it was rather difficult to code in the insanely complex instructions he had asked for (I’m paraphrasing what I said a little :). He seemed rather baffled about it, perhaps thinking that asking for 20 sets of six or seven 5-digit random letter-number combinations was a breeze, but he wandered aimlessly away as he was distracted by something else. 144 words.
• Other Advancements. 2003-07-15 11:15 PM.
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  Tonight I’ve made the cookie login optional. 92 words.
• Duct Tape??. 2003-07-16 7:06 PM.
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  Today’s Cerebral Locomotion anecdoate involves telephones and duct tape. 35 words.
• Reviews Added. 2003-07-16 8:51 PM.
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  By popular demand, I’ve added a news section for my insightful book and movie reviews. 47 words.
• I am but a worm. 2003-07-17 4:42 PM.
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  DO NOT EVER TELL JULIO ABOUT A PROBLEM, NO MATTER HOW MINOR. 122 words.
• Essays. 2003-07-17 10:50 PM.
  • Technology
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  I’m working to flesh out the concept of Essays in my news engine. I’ve decided they should be kept seperate from news articles and presented a little differently. There are still some bugs to work out so beware. 59 words.
• Lies!. 2003-07-18 3:58 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  So I get to work, and about 5 minutes after I arrive, Julio is on the phone. (Julio is not in the office on Fridays.) Julio proceeds to tell me that he needs me to work a little extra to make up for time I missed because of dentist appointments, so that we don’t fall behind schedule. 306 words.
• Reviews Gone Again!. 2003-07-18 7:41 PM.
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  No sooner did they appear, than I removed them again! 21 words.
• Essays and Administration. 2003-07-19 7:52 AM.
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  Last night I moved the reviews out of the news and into the essays, and I copied all of the um insightful comments along with them. 42 words.
• Frequently Asked Questions. 2003-07-19 9:08 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here is a FAQ I dug up from the original Crayola Clan web page, c. 1997. 23 words.
• Total FragAholics Feel the Pain. 2003-07-19 9:31 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  While searching for an old IRC interview with Crayola Clan, I ran across this excerpt from (I think) the Total Fragaholics web page which cracked me up. 277 words.
• Fixes for Mozilla and Netscape. 2003-07-19 11:38 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Thanks to ]CC[-Red (who is one of the six or seven people in the world who does not use Internet Explorer), I discovered that my page looked rather icky in Netscape/Mozilla browsers. 53 words.
• Registration. 2003-07-19 7:53 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Have completed the registration page, so you can create new accounts now. 25 words.
• Email Notification Testing. 2003-07-20 4:15 PM.
  • Technology
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  I’m testing a feature to send an email notification to registered users when changes to the site are made. 53 words.
• Moving Status. 2003-07-20 10:15 PM.
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  We are hoping to meet with our realtor this Tuesday night to begin putting our house on the market. Yay! 83 words.
• This Article Has No Title. 2003-07-23 6:17 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  We signed the papers last night (actually Cynthia did) so our house is officially “on the market.” Unfortunately we were not able to talk our realtors into raising the price more than $900, but oh well. 66 words.
• A Nibble?. 2003-07-24 10:12 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Yesterday the realtors came by and put a for-sale sign out front! And amazingly enough, we have apparently gotten an interested party already: Rumor has it someone will be viewing the house tomorrow. 61 words.
• Showings Galore. 2003-07-26 7:54 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  We have not one, not two, not three, but FOUR showings on the house today! 37 words.
• 3 Offers?. 2003-07-26 2:54 PM.
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  Our realtor has informed us that he may have up to THREE offers for us to look at this evening! 39 words.
• Site Updates. 2003-07-26 3:22 PM.
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  I’ve been playing with the style sheet and trying to find a better news presentation, so you will probably notice something different every time you visit. 43 words.
• Contract Signed!. 2003-07-26 6:03 PM.
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  Our realtor did indeed present us with three offers for the house, and we accepted the third one. It was rather difficult to turn down considering they offered $4000 more than our asking price – IN CASH. 43 words.
• Email Notifications Continued. 2003-07-27 10:00 PM.
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  Have continued the email notification experiments tonight. 48 words.
• Let The Packing Begin!. 2003-07-27 10:05 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Well I’ve started packing up my office here in earnest, since I had the extreme lack of foresight to only ask for the single moving day off from work. (Not that I would have gotten any more time off anyway since it’s cough “crunch time.”) So I’m trying to get as much stuff packed and ready to go as possible. Basically I’m going to pack up everything but this computer. 100 words.
• Crunchy Frogs. 2003-07-30 4:58 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Julio is insane! I worked on THREE completely different programs today, at times almost simultaneously. I’d start a task and then Julio would come back a half hour later and give me something else to do. 151 words.
• Brief Intermission. 2003-07-30 8:52 PM.
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  Our cable service will be interrupted from tomorrow until August 6th, so you probably won’t hear from us Move-weary Krehbiels until then. 51 words.

August, 2003

• Moving. 2003-08-09 12:25 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The cable is on in the new house, so I thought I’d write a quick update. 91 words.
• Network Enabled!. 2003-08-10 10:21 PM.
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  Due to my superior wiring skeelz, the new house now has network outlets in 3 rooms! 28 words.
• The Unpacking Continues. 2003-08-18 7:40 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The unpacking continues here at the new Krehbiel residence. I have managed to clear enough space in my computer room for the rolltop desk (I did this by moving boxes into the closet heh), and have filled up most of my bookcase. Cynthia is assembling her library of books in the Upper Room closet and doing Great Things with the kitchen. 260 words.
• Amiga 1000 For Sale!. 2003-08-23 11:07 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I have just put my Amiga 1000 on the auction block! Everyone go bid the price up. Yes, right now.Amiga 1000 Ebay Auction 23 words.
• New Dynamic Content. 2003-08-24 9:37 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In another desperate attempt to relive the Golden Age of Internet gaming, I added a section on the contents frame which shows Crayola Clan match results throughout history. 40 words.
• Ugh. 2003-08-25 1:22 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I got a !@#$!@# raise today. How wonderful. Julio tells me I’m “invaluable,” “talented,” and that he “loves working with me.” I refrained from puking and said “thanks, I appreciate that.” 42 words.

September, 2003

• Important Gaming History. 2003-09-03 7:16 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A quick update before I go to work: I found two neat links to important games in first person role-playing game history. I played both of these games when they came out (on a Radio Shack Color Computer and an Amiga 1000, respectively) and you can definitely see how they influenced later games. (Frankly, most later games were not as good.) 131 words.
• The Devil.com. 2003-09-04 8:15 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Just so everyone knows, Robert S. Kieren is the devil. He is my arch-nemesis in the Cyberworld. To find out why, go to uvtek.com and look under the “U"s of Technology domain names for sale. 149 words.
• 233 Hour Powerlessness Ends. 2003-09-28 9:15 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was sitting in the living room reading the comics by the light of the window, when I heard the strangest sound. Something started clicking over by the piano. I thought the cat had knocked something over, but it just kept clicking and clicking. 161 words.

October, 2003

• Cerebral Locomotion Lately. 2003-10-08 3:55 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I haven’t complained about my job enough on here, so here goes. 314 words.
• Ramblings. 2003-10-08 7:35 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  An internet hardware vendor who shall remain nameless sent me an OEM copy of Windows XP Pro SP1a without a Certificate of Authenticty (and thus without a Product Key, which as I’m sure you realize is really what you’re paying for). Of course, they have a no return/exchage policy on software. Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we! 332 words.

November, 2003

• TheDevil.com Continued. 2003-11-19 8:08 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Well, uvtek.com now shows some silly gateway page, but up in the corner is a place where you can type in an offer to buy the domain name. On a whim I typed in $25 and clicked submit, and it brought me to another page that promptly told me that the minimum bid for my future domain name is $150! Robert S. Kieren must be making quite a profit from this little cybersquatting enterprise, assuming people actually buy domain names from people like him. 301 words.
• Job Update. 2003-11-19 8:17 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In case anyone but Cynthia is actually reading this page, I am now working only four days a week at Cerebral Locomotion, otherwise affectionately known as Gulag 727. I wasn’t supposed to reveal this to any of my co-workers, but since it’s rather hard to disguise the fact that I’m consistently not at work every Friday, they caught on pretty quick without any help from me. On one hand I feel quite lucky to be home on Fridays, but on the other hand I feel pretty guilty knowing everyone else is still stuck at the Gulag. 133 words.
• Monticello!. 2003-11-20 8:04 PM.
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  The long-awaited pictures from our recent trip to Monticello are here! Let the world rejoice! Pictures from Monticello 25 words.

December, 2003

• Christmas Party. 2003-12-22 3:20 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Well today was the celebrated Cerebral Locomotion Christmas Party.. at the Mexican restaraunt a block from the office. I got a toy racing car, two movie tickets, and a gift certificate to I think some other restaraunt. It was exciting and invigorating and the conversation was positively stimulating, especially because we had to confine our topics to non-boss-bashing. 97 words.

January, 2004

• New Year’s Update. 2004-01-09 9:53 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is a website update so my throngs of fans out there will continue to flock to my site to read the riveting news of my life. 254 words.
• Racing Champion. 2004-01-10 10:05 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I forgot to mention that I won the First Annual Cerebral Locomotion Race With Silly Toy Remote Controlled Cars at work on New Year’s Eve. (Yes, I had to work on New Year’s Eve and Christmas Eve.) I won a bottle of French champaigne for my efforts. 86 words.
• UVTEK Software Beta Site. 2004-01-16 9:32 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m happy to announce that after a lot of work today, I’ve gotten the UVTEK Software web site into a “beta test” stage. I am still working toward a Spring-time official launch date, but it is at the point now where it can receive some traffic without too much embarrassment. I am planning to release the first public beta of my Defector software (which Cynthia once inadvertantly called my “mistake” software hehe) this Sunday. 112 words.
• Defector Public Beta. 2004-01-18 8:36 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In what can only be described as a stunning display of hubris, I have released the first public beta version of my self-critically-acclaimed Defector software. For more information, take a gander at the UVTEK Software page. It’s all just too exciting for words. 43 words.
• Crayola History Update. 2004-01-18 8:44 PM.
  • Gaming
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  I’ve just updated the Crayola History with news and information about the current whereabouts of Turquoise and Yellow. Turquoise (aka. Turqy) has a nice web page with samples of his artwork at Turqy.com. 35 words.
• New Pictures Available. 2004-01-20 6:10 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Some new pictures are now available for viewing. Check out Fiona Stealing Tristan’s Bed and Our New House Taking Shape. 30 words.
• Yuck. 2004-01-27 4:00 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  So yesterday it snows. Most of us struggle into work somewhere in the vicinity of the correct time. Julio and his charming wife Gina, decide to sleep in. 574 words.
• Yuck continued. 2004-01-28 3:50 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  You may notice that the Sarcasm section is no longer “protected.” This is a blatant passive-aggressive move on my part. Fortunately I am a fictional character so there is no harm in this. 367 words.
• Wednesday Night At The Germ Factory. 2004-01-28 8:54 PM.
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  I think I have caught a cold. It was difficult to catch, seeing as how it was moving very fast, but I am a very nimble sort of person with fast reflexes so I was able to grab it. 79 words.
• Not Quite As Yuck. 2004-01-29 3:04 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Today was not a bad day in the fictional world of Cerebral Locomotion, although I really don’t remember much of it since I was somewhat doped up on cold medicine. I do remember Julio going on a bit about, erm, dogs and cats for quite a long time though. 109 words.
• Email notification improved. 2004-01-30 8:36 AM.
  • Technology
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  Today I improved the email notification considerably. 29 words.
• Lineage 2?. 2004-01-30 5:48 PM.
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  Yellow reports that Lineage 2 could be the next big massively multiplayer online RPG. 98 words.
• Wet Collie. 2004-01-30 10:19 PM.
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  There’s not really anything interesting going on right now, but I thought I would update the site just so I could use my new and improved email notification features again. 118 words.

February, 2004

• Bizzare. 2004-02-03 4:35 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Today was quite bizzare at Gulag 727. Julio arrived at about 9AM ready to work on the automatic pet diagnosis project. I was quite stunned. 110 words.
• Back to Yuck. 2004-02-06 4:27 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Yesterday, the situation at Gulag 727 went back to generall yuckiness. As I’ve said before, my current ficitional task is to assist Julio in completing the automatic pet diagnosis report software. This software takes a series of statistical observations about your pet’s symptoms and then generates a long narrative report describing your pet’s condition and suggestions for treatments. 278 words.
• Saturday Workdays Are Alright For Sucking. 2004-02-08 1:27 PM.
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  In case you were wondering, the ficitional Saturday at Cerebral Locomotion was quite fictionally frustrating, as Julio worked tirelessly to keep productivity to a bare minimum. 26 words.
• Finger Sandwiches. 2004-02-08 7:15 PM.
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  Have just activated the link to the first horror story I ever wrote, “Finger Sandwiches.” I wrote it in the year 2000. This is the first time I’ve let anyone read it. Note the warning at the top please. 40 words.
• Ye Gods. 2004-02-17 2:17 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The stupid automatic pet diagnosis report is STILL not finished. Since I still have to hold Julio’s hand as he writes the stupid text, I still have to make myself available at times when he CAN write the stupid text, which is almost always outside of the normal workday of 8:30 - 5:15. 152 words.
• Cynthia’s New Job And My Old One. 2004-02-17 7:05 AM.
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  Cynthia has started a new job at NaturaLawn of America. (Yay!) She is currently away at a training seminar thingy in Maryland until Thursday. (Doh.) 86 words.
• Don’t Answer Yet!. 2004-02-20 7:14 AM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I may have said this before, but this time I really mean it: This week was the worst week at Cerebral Locomotion ever. But wait! There’s more! 33 words.
• Read My Book Review Right Now. 2004-02-21 10:03 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  You heard me. Go read it. Right now. 148 words.

March, 2004

• Latest News from Krehbiel-land. 2004-03-16 9:18 PM.
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  I figured it was time to write an update. 185 words.
• CD Changer and Amp Installed Again!. 2004-03-22 8:47 PM.
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  I finally got around to installing my old (c. 1998) Clarion stereo stuff from my old Toyota truck into my Mazda truck. It was a rather large pain and took up most of Sunday, but I’ve now got my CD changer and 200W amp back in place. 153 words.
• In Other News. 2004-03-22 8:53 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Having recently watched Black Hawk Down (yes, we were the last two people to see it), I’ve taken an interest in my grandfather’s World War I diaries again. In addition to the diaries themselves that I’ve already transcribed, I have a stack of letters he wrote back home during the same time period. I’ve now finally started transcribing the letters, which could conceivably amount to more text than the diaries. 103 words.
• Spambiel: La Mort d’Spam. 2004-03-26 9:35 PM.
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  Cynthia is in Blacksburg visiting a friend, so I have the house to myself until Saturday evening. Since I am a rather large party animal, I have decided to use this time to write a Spam Blocker program so I don’t have to buy one. So far, I have successfully written code to examine messages on a POP3 server, decide which ones are spam, and forward them to another (or the same) email address with a modified subject line for easy filtering by Outlook Express. 208 words.
• It’s Official!. 2004-03-31 8:30 PM.
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  […][…]The incorporation papers are in! It’s a great day for democracy and the American way. Now I can start buying up television and radio stations, baseball teams, and start my own cable network! 33 words.

April, 2004

• Discography Online. 2004-04-02 4:06 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Those who have only known me since 2001 may be surprised to find out that composing and recording music has been (one) hobby of mine since high school. (Even if you did know me before then, you still might be surprised since I don’t really advertise this too much.) This week I was inspired to put together a definitive “discography” of all the music I’ve recorded over the years, which you can find at the link below, along with a handful of MP3s. 85 words.
• Google Ranking. 2004-04-04 3:41 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Ye Gods. I just did a Google search for “Krehbiel” and my home page didn’t show up until the 23rd page! So then I search for “Tom Krehbiel” and I don’t show up until the 60th page! 93 words.
• Updated UVTEK Site. 2004-04-05 9:04 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The new look for the UVTEK Software site is now online, which is one of the last steps in this madcap software adventure. Defector 1.0 should be released “real soon now.” 33 words.
• Defector Launch. 2004-04-11 10:21 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Saturday, April 10, 2004 saw the official release of Defector 1.0. The fanfare and majesty of the event was unprecedented in the history of UVTEK Software. Throngs of people turned out for the parade. 120 words.
• Summary of The President’s Speech. 2004-04-13 10:04 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I don’t normally get into politics, but in case anyone missed it, here is a summary of President Bush’s news conference tonight. 785 words.
• Premonition. 2004-04-20 3:02 AM.
  • Personal
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  I hereby predict that the next two weeks at Cerebral Locomotion will be as bad or worse than the previous record-holding worst week at Cerebral Locomotion. 47 words.
• The madness keeps going, and going, and going…. 2004-04-20 5:28 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The weeks leading up to a workshop are some of the most chaotic and panicked times in the life of Gulag 727, and this time is proving to be no exception. In this case, the workshop begins on May 6 in Texas, near The Alamo (how’s that for ironic). All the usual elements for extremely elevated blood pressure levels are in place, only they seem even more magnified than usual: Too many projects to finish at once, inability to decide on final project goals, lowered nicotine levels, excess shipping leftover from the recent major upgrade, disgruntled employees, disgruntled customers, clueless supervisors. 513 words.
• New Meat. 2004-04-21 3:25 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I didn’t mention this, but one of the salespeople was fired about a month ago. It was a very clandestine operation. He was there when I left on Thursday, he was there when everyone else left on Friday, he was gone on Monday–his desk was clean and his business cards were missing. 252 words.
• Thursday at the Gulag. 2004-04-22 3:27 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Normally Thursdays are a happy day for me, since I don’t have to work on Friday. But of course Julio asked me to work on Friday because we were in such a crunch for time and it all had to be done by um May 4. (Yes, today is April 22 and most of my work is done.) I told him that I currently wouldn’t have much of anything to do if I came in Friday. 193 words.
• Friday at the Gulag. 2004-04-24 12:33 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Friday started out fairly well, then everything starting going to hell in the afternoon. I forgot about a major feature I had to add, I ran into a major limitation in VB6 that was a pain to work around, I kept finding annoying bugs while I was trying to use my software, and Julio kept me on the phone for an hour adding more things for me to do and change at the last minute. It was a bit frustrating as I had to leave with a bunch of stuff left unfinished. 94 words.

May, 2004

• Elmer Revisited. 2004-05-13 8:15 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve closed the book on another significant surge of work on preserving Elmer H. Krehbiel’s World War I diaries and letters. I have now transcribed all the letters, which amounted to more than twice as much text as the diaries, and the resulting combination of diaries and letters is over 75,000 words long. Printed on one side of 24# paper, it amounts to about 140 pages, and a stack about an inch tall. 242 words.
• New Release. 2004-05-25 8:39 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I just released Replica 1.4, a, ahem, “maintenance upgrade.” 61 words.
• There’s No Accounting For Cows. 2004-05-27 8:28 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Cynthia is away helping a friend in Blacksburg until Saturday, so I am once again left in miserable solitude. As if that weren’t bad enough, I have to work tomorrow (a day I normally don’t have to work), reducing a potential 4-day weekend to a mere 3-day weekend. It sucks! 228 words.

June, 2004

• In Case You Didn’t Know. 2004-06-08 3:14 AM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I may have neglected to say this before, but Visual Basic 6 sucks. Period. 72 words.
• Superiority Rules. 2004-06-09 4:45 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Arg. It’s quite frustrating to sit idly by while Julio mangles a multimedia project. Today he proudly declared to me, with the same bubbling pride that a toddler must feel after first discovering how to walk by himself, that he had cleverly deduced that his $3.99 audio card was the source of all the hissing he heard in his digital audio. 189 words.
• Busy Weekend. 2004-06-14 5:07 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  ‘Twas a busy weekend here at Krehbiel Central. Saturday I finally got around to doing a bunch of miscellaneous housework like putting a rubber gizmo on the bottom of the utility room door and adding more weather stripping to the sliding door. Then I noticed one of the attic vents was not spinning like it was supposed to, so I climbed onto the roof and fixed it, and cleaned out the one piece of gutter on the back porch. 243 words.
• Miscellaneous. 2004-06-15 7:05 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m sitting here waiting for Cynthia to get home so we can eat, so I thought I’d write some fascinating drivel on my page. 204 words.
• Fun with Search Engines. 2004-06-20 10:45 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was looking at my web logs this morning and I noticed that someone had accessed an old Nova Design site design I had been working on ages ago and never deleted. Well it turns out they got there from a Yahoo search engine. So I searched on Yahoo for “Nova Design” and sure enough, there’s my old page at about #6 on the list. 71 words.
• New Pictures Available. 2004-06-21 9:43 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here are some new pictures that I finally got around to posting. Yes, I’ll admit it is partially a test of my vastly improved picture gallery software. 31 words.
• A Moment, Please. 2004-06-24 9:29 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I must take a moment and brag about the cool software I am currently working on. 262 words.
• One More Thing. 2004-06-24 9:37 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Tonight Cynthia showed me some clinical reports from a school evaluation on our nephew, and I found myself having a very odd reaction to them. At work, one of the things I’ve recently worked on is a narrative report for our cognitive testing software, and, at the time, I thought it was just a bunch of gobble-de-gook (that is a highly technical term). Most of the time I work in a complete vacuum, and I have absolutely no earthly idea who is using the software I write, or what they might use it for, or what any of the competition looks like. 131 words.
• DIBs and BitBlts. 2004-06-29 10:53 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This won’t mean anything to most everyone, but tonight I revised the internal workings of my image processing engine so that it uses Win32.CreateDIBSection to allocate the pixel storage. This should not only increase the speed of rendering the data onto Win32 displays, but it should also decrease the memory usage considerably. You can now BitBlt() directly from my Nip bitmaps onto a Windows DC! 102 words.

July, 2004

• Blog Protected!. 2004-07-06 9:00 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  To protect my site from the swarms of hackers that try to break into it and steal my sensitive data on a daily basis, I’ve implemented some long-awaited protective measures to keep people from inserting malicious script code into their comments. 76 words.
• A Fascinating Article. 2004-07-07 9:37 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  […]This article really serves no purpose except to test some new database features I added tonight. If you’re wondering, each news article now has an optional picture and link reference, which makes administration a lot easier. 243 words.
• A Happy Day. 2004-07-08 1:59 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Today in the what-the-fuck-ever department, we have this new item: Julio was being a GIANT FLAMING ASS PICKLE this afternoon. I’ve spent the last 3 days TRYING to get a release put together, per HIS request, and he’s done absolutely EVERYTHING to prevent me from doing it. What tricks does he pull from his pickled buttocks today? 268 words.
• Pictures Updated. 2004-07-10 9:57 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve updated all the picture galleries on the left using the newest version of my Galleria program. 54 words.
• Deadwood Gone. 2004-07-11 9:04 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I finally got around to cleaning out the deadwood from my site. I stripped everything out of the old Nova Design pages. Now if people should stumble upon them in a search engine they’ll get links to the real Nova Design and links to here. 73 words.
• Account Settings Implemented. 2004-07-11 11:13 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I finally added the ability to modify user account settings. 36 words.
• Change Log. 2004-07-11 9:20 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I just created a “change log” for all the tasks I’ve accomplished since the first release of Defector. It almost looks like I’ve done something productive! I have some hope of making this a regularly updated item on the site. 43 words.
• Slideshows Ahoy. 2004-07-12 10:46 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  If you are the kind of person who obsessively clicks links you’ve already seen many times before, you may have already noticed that there is a new feature now available in the pictures, thanks to a helpful suggestion from Cynthia. If you are the type of person who is not willing to look for things on your own, I’ll just tell you that there is now a slideshow link on all my picture galleries. It requires a Javascript-enabled browser, of course, but if you don’t have one of those then you are disasterously behind on the technology curve and probably can’t even read this, since you would still be speaking Latin and probably be wearing a toga. 194 words.
• Buttons Ahoy. 2004-07-13 11:44 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Okay, I couldn’t leave well enough alone, so tonight I made a bunch of buttons to replace the text links in my gallery pages. It was a surprisingly tedious task to do the highlighting when you roll the mouse over the buttons. And I won’t even go into how frustrating it was to get the play/pause button graphics to work right. 157 words.
• The Continuing Saga…. 2004-07-14 10:58 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I believe I’ve solved all of the current slideshow problems. The newest updates are in the “Ashland Parade,” “Lakeside Flowers,” and “Chincoteague” picture galleries. 57 words.
• Fascinating New Material. 2004-07-16 3:44 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Who can spot the new link over there on the left? The first one who does gets… uh… to read it first. 22 words.
• Picasa ‘n’ Ninjas. 2004-07-16 9:40 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I downloaded that Picasa thing by Google today. My heart stuck in my throat for a moment before I realized it’s just a glorified picture viewer. But nevertheless it’s pretty slick. 110 words.
• July is a Wrap. 2004-07-31 2:40 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here are some pictures from the exciting month of July. Pictures from July 13 words.

August, 2004

• One Year Later. 2004-08-01 2:15 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Well, today is the first offical day of “Cousin Camp at Forest Brook.” This is an event that brings together a large number of nieces and nephews and other miscellaneous young folk at our house for the week. (Yes, you read that right, the entire week.) I have just finished the last-minute preparations (ie., the honey-do list of cleaning tasks) and am now sitting down for a quiet moment before things get, um, campy. 143 words.
• Day 1 Report. 2004-08-01 8:58 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It is nearing the end of the opening day at Camp Forest Brook. The kids arrived around 5 o’clock. 178 words.
• Day 2 Report. 2004-08-02 8:58 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Mattie triumphantly returned this morning at the ungodly hour of 7:30 for another grueling day of camp. The other kids, too, were awake at the aforementioned ungodly hour, if not before. 264 words.
• Day 3 Report. 2004-08-03 8:33 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s the wrap-up on day 3: (Only 3??) 305 words.
• Day 4 Report. 2004-08-04 8:13 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There isn’t much to report about day 4 since Cynthia hasn’t called or left a message for her poor, neglected, worried, forgotten husband yet. 43 words.
• Day 5 Report. 2004-08-06 6:42 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I got a little behind on the reporting but I’ll now bombard you with information. 202 words.
• Day 6 Report. 2004-08-06 6:56 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Today isn’t really over yet but I suspect that everyone will be too tired to do much else when they get back. 185 words.
• Day 7 Report. 2004-08-08 9:50 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The final day of Cousin Camp dawned at approximately dawn. The cooking and cleanup work began soon after. The mission: Get the house ready for the mob of people arriving at 11:00 for Jordan’s birthday party. 457 words.
• On Another Note. 2004-08-08 9:54 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The !@#$!@3 !@#$!@#4 !@#$$@!!@# that owned uvtek.com RENEWED IT UNTIL 2013!! !@#$!@ !@#$!@#$ !@#$. And !@#$!@# !@#$!@#$. 34 words.
• Odd Thomas. 2004-08-08 10:21 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Sometime during the week of Cousin Camp, I finished Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz. I saw this book at a K-Mart one day and thought it sounded kind of interesting after reading the jacket, and then later at the Green Valley Book Fair I picked up a copy of the hardcover for like $7. 274 words.
• Gaston and Me. 2004-08-31 9:54 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It took me about 4 hours and 45 minutes to get home last night. I happened to reset my odometer before the trip. Total mileage on the odometer when I got back: 16.0. 111 words.

September, 2004

• Recent Events. 2004-09-21 6:07 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I haven’t written much here lately because I’ve been preoccupied with, of all things, Celtic arts and crafts. During my vacation from work I got pretty involved in a book on Celtic knotwork. I find it a fascinating form of art because it’s both scientific and creative. 140 words.
• Imminent uvtek.net Server Move. 2004-09-26 4:35 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I am hopeful that I will be able to move uvtek.net from Communitech.net to Omnis Network on or about October 2nd. Keep your fingers crossed! 124 words.
• Essays Gone. 2004-09-26 10:32 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I took the liberty of removing the “Essays” sections because, well, I never write anything there and it’s a pain to maintain it in the news desk application. So, screw it. 68 words.

October, 2004

• Surprise!. 2004-10-03 8:43 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  You may be surprised to note that uvtek.net is still in the same place. (You may not have noted this at all, but it’s true.) That’s because I decided it would be better to wait until around November 1 to move the server, because it’s already been paid through the end of November. That way, if there are any problems on the new server, I can switch it back to the old server within the 30-day money-back-guarantee period. 78 words.
• Friday, Part 1. 2004-10-09 10:06 AM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It may be useful to deconstruct the events of this past Friday, in the event that I should suddenly go on a murderous rampage at my place of employment sometime in the coming weeks. 965 words.
• Friday, Part 2. 2004-10-10 6:38 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I had planned to write long saga about Friday, but now it’s Sunday night and I don’t really want to think about it anymore. So this is an abbreviated rendition. 715 words.
• Thursday. 2004-10-21 4:56 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Yes, it’s crunch time again (still). 141 words.
• Bruce Hornsby. 2004-10-21 8:45 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Cynthia and I went to see Bruce Hornsby at the Carpenter Center (otherwise known as, the Theater Amid Massive Destruction) Saturday night. It was quite cool. Except for the drunk women beside us screaming “woooooooo” during every quiet moment of every song. 130 words.

November, 2004

• Every Cloud. 2004-11-03 6:52 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The fate of the world rests in the hands of… Ohio? 54 words.
• New Look. 2004-11-04 11:53 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Something that’s been on my web page “todo” list for ages is spiffing up the article title bars. Tonight the dream has become reality. They are, in fact, spiffier. 76 words.
• Election Thoughts. 2004-11-05 12:53 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Again, I don’t normally get into politics, so I apologize for this diversion. (Warning: Obscure reference ahead.) Most of the time you can find me working diligently for the Voter Apathy Party. (“Now here’s a party I can get excited about. 453 words.
• Weekend News. 2004-11-07 8:37 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  We had the niece and nephew over again this weekend. We went to Pocahontas Park to canoe yesterday. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize that the canoe rentals were shut down for the season. 88 words.
• More New Looks. 2004-11-07 9:10 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been working toward making the “look and feel” of my Blog application more customizable. 77 words.
• Even More New Looks. 2004-11-08 9:32 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  No, I haven’t yet found a look I’m happy with, and I vow to continue changing everything around until I like it again, or until I get sick of it completely. 31 words.
• Long Live The Workshop. 2004-11-09 4:42 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The workshop is over. Only one crashing bug attributable to me was found. It was, of course, a completely unpredictable bug caused by a corrupt file on Julio’s laptop. 169 words.
• Boycott In Progress. 2004-11-10 6:01 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It has come to my attention that Flower Depot in Ashland has screwed us over, so I thought I should warn all of the loyal readers of my site. 117 words.
• 14 Episodes of Kingdom Hospital, Stat. 2004-11-10 11:09 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  We finished watching Kingdom Hospital on DVD tonight. Overall it was pretty good but I think the 14 episodes could have easily been shrunk down to 4 or 5. I guess they were hoping for an X-Files type of series where half the episodes don’t have anything to do with the basic story arc. 186 words.
• Under Construction. 2004-11-11 9:05 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m in the process of updating the code that runs my blog, so it may or may not work for a while. 22 words.
• Moving…. 2004-11-12 4:20 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I sent in the request to move uvtek.net this morning, but so far it’s still here. 21 words.
• Auctioning Aladdin. 2004-11-12 10:59 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  […]I know my server may get yanked out from under me at any moment, but I just had to write something about this. 289 words.
• Fax0red. 2004-11-13 8:21 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I am wondering if our fax machine is broken, because I faxed the appropriate papers to the new Internet provider twice yesterday but the status on their web page still says “awaiting faxed papers.” I recall now that Cynthia mentioned she had problems faxing out resumes a while back, too. I suppose it’s reasonable to expect that, after 10+ years, a fax machine might develop some problems. 98 words.
• Faxed. 2004-11-13 9:45 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Wow, that only took an hour and 20 minutes. I rock! 104 words.
• Virtual Moving Day. 2004-11-17 9:21 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  According to the Powers That Be, uvtek.net will move on November 20th. 30 words.
• Non-Frames Experiment. 2004-11-17 9:28 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m experimenting with a non-frames based page, so there may be some weird stuff happening for a bit. 22 words.
• Electronic Arse-Pirates. 2004-11-19 7:42 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I read an interesting article on Slashdot this evening which makes me a) thankful I never aspired to get involved in the game programming industry and b) likely to boycott purchasing any “big name company” games from now on. (By boycott, of course, I mean pirate.) 192 words.

December, 2004

• Back!. 2004-12-06 10:43 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Naturally, my new web host’s database server crashed and their backup procedure was faulty, so they lost a couple of my last news articles. Tragic, but survivable. 89 words.
• Case Closed. 2004-12-08 3:16 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Went to “the doc” (which is generic for any doctor, but in this case means a urologist) today to find out why I’m still having “urgency” issues and a slight burning sensation. I already suspected that I was probably on the verge of developing a bladder infection from the last kidney stone episode and I probably just needed some antibiotics. Cynthia tried to get someone to write a prescription over the phone but they wanted to see me first. 191 words.
• Threaded Discussions. 2004-12-11 11:53 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Today I have extended the capabilities of the news engine to support “threaded” discussions. That is, a heirarchical structure where you can reply to any article, and reply to the replies, and so on. This is the basis of the proverbial “discussion group” found on so many web sites these days. 90 words.
• Old Times. 2004-12-12 4:09 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Just so you know, the time on any article that I posted before moving to the new server (around the end of November) will be off by about 5 or 6 hours. 82 words.
• Weekend News. 2004-12-13 1:52 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned this here yet, but Cynthia is now playing at Emmanuel Church at Brook Hill, so she is happy to be back in an Episcopal church. (Last year was Lutheran church hell.) This is her first church job with a real pipe organ, too! 329 words.
• Christmas Grumpiness. 2004-12-14 12:57 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Well, it’s Christmas time again (ahem, at least for the uninformed) and you know what that means: Let’s play shame the neighborhood with enough lights you can probably see them from orbit! Yes, our neighbors have once again installed more lights per square foot than you can find in downtown Las Vegas. And even more importantly, they are all perfectly aligned and symmetrically organized. 175 words.
• New York, Here We Come!. 2004-12-15 3:33 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I actually got the week between Christmas and New Year’s off from work, so Cynthia and I are packing up and heading to New York for a well-deserved vacation from this backwater ‘burg. 33 words.
• Napster Reborn. 2004-12-16 4:34 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  So after listening to EnergyX for a while I collected a list of cool songs I wanted. 371 words.
• Menu Fixed. 2004-12-18 2:23 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m not precisely sure what happened, but tonight I discovered my main menu was all messed up. 48 words.
• Crayola History Added. 2004-12-20 12:04 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  You’ve probably noticed this already, especially if you get email updates about the site, but I’m adding the Crayola History to a blog section. 35 words.
• Christmas Survived. 2004-12-27 2:48 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  […]Christmas here had the usual assortment of stress and, well, more stress, but we survived the ordeal relatively intact. 51 words.

January, 2005

• Happy New Year!. 2005-01-01 10:27 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  We are back safe and sound from our New York trip! More details and pictures will be forthcoming as I get around to it. 109 words.
• Pictures From New York Revealed. 2005-01-09 2:21 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I think I can at last reveal the pictures from New York. I ended up having to upgrade Galleria a little to handle the sheer volume of pictures. 183 words.
• Recent Events. 2005-01-20 3:44 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been woefully negligant in posting news this month, so I’ll jot down some noteworthy events from Camp Forest Brook. 172 words.
• Vick a Huge Disappointment. 2005-01-24 3:49 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Michael Vick sucks. If only he could have not sucked today, he might have beaten the hated Eagles and keep them out of the Superbowl where they belong. But no; he sucked, so the Eagles advance again by default. 153 words.

February, 2005

• Eagles did not disappoint. 2005-02-11 6:25 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  My web host borked my first attempt at posting this, but I will attempt to re-capture the magic of what I first wrote. 82 words.
• Chomper Update. 2005-02-26 12:21 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Today is a red letter day in the history of my teeth. Which is to say, today my temporary upper crowns were replaced with permanent upper crowns! This is a cool thing. 58 words.

March, 2005

• Amiga 4000 Sold!. 2005-03-08 1:22 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  […]The last vestiges of my Amiga programming days just got sold on EBay. 44 words.
• Pictures Fixed!. 2005-03-12 10:20 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Finally got around to fixing the display of pictures associated with articles. 12 words.
• Palm Sunday Kickoff. 2005-03-20 1:59 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Cynthia’s grandmother died yesterday after taking very ill a couple weeks ago. She was 104. It has been a very stressful time for the Millers up in Doswell, and everyone is thankful it has come to a peaceful end. 90 words.
• The Aliens Came For Coffee. 2005-03-21 4:16 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It occurred to me why I find so few things to write here. Most of the things I would be inclined to write about are off-limits because people I know might read the page. 292 words.
• Nothing Made Up. 2005-03-22 4:12 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I suppose I could talk about some of my recent adventures. 274 words.
• Goochland Express. 2005-03-23 4:26 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Went to Cynthia’s grandmother’s funeral today. Saw a lot of people who seemed to know me a lot better than I knew them. 265 words.
• And The Winner Is…. 2005-03-26 5:58 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  We survived Holy Week okay (unlike SOME Christian icons who shall remain nameless…). By my count, including Palm Sunday and funerals, Cynthia has played for eleven services this week so far. There is an Easter Vigil service tonight and two more on Easter Sunday. 150 words.
• Partying with the Krähenbühls. 2005-03-27 10:56 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  So I was up most of the night last night doing geneology research. So sue me! Anyway, I find it very entertaining and highly informative. 415 words.
• Ancestry. 2005-03-29 3:19 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The moment you’ve all been waiting for! I freely admit that I have copied a lot of information from other people who have done much more intensive work than I have. All my sources are credited in the footnotes, though. 56 words.

April, 2005

• What’s In A Name. 2005-04-25 2:24 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I haven’t been doing very much lately except researching my family history. I find the whole process of piecing together concrete information from small bits and pieces pretty fascinating. Yesterday I actually went to the Library of Virginia and looked up some more information. 249 words.

May, 2005

• Exclusive First Peek!. 2005-05-02 3:35 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  […]Here’s an exclusive peek at my Genealogy program. I’m writing it for the same reason I write all my other programs; I don’t like everything else that’s out there. I wanted something that’s easy to navigate in, and something that looks spiffy. 134 words.
• ‘Wars. 2005-05-24 2:33 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Cynthia and I saw Episode III Sunday night. Pretty cool. Way better than I and II. 66 words.

June, 2005

• Tear Down The (Shed) Wall!. 2005-06-01 1:48 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Cynthia and I spent our Memorial Day in a relaxing fashion: We busted up our shed into a million pieces. It was quite a bit harder than I expected. 60 words.
• Big June. 2005-06-29 2:34 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  June has been a BIG month so far, including, but not limited to: 1) leaving my old job, 2) a vacation in Chincoteague, 3) starting a new job. 37 words.

July, 2005

• Expanded June News. 2005-07-08 12:29 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I haven’t done a significant update to my site in a while, so here goes. 600 words.
• Work Happenings. 2005-07-16 4:05 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  On the work front, I finally received network access on Thursday afternoon! I can actually do work now. I spent Friday installing software and familiarizing myself with some of the source code. 434 words.

August, 2005

• Extra Crispy. 2005-08-09 12:49 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  So Cynthia and I went to Tangier Island on Saturday with her family. It was pretty fun. The island itself was a little sparse on the entertainment side, which is understandable since it only has like 150 people on it. 124 words.
• Categories Removed. 2005-08-14 1:33 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Since I basically never write anything in the Site News or Crayola categories, I pulled them down. 36 words.
• Scanning and flaking. 2005-08-16 12:51 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I have been feeling rather poorly the last couple of days, so I stayed home from work to rest up. While doing so, I continued scanning some family photographs. I have now scanned 739 slides and photographs. 81 words.
• Mucus update. 2005-08-21 2:41 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Today is the 7th day of my most recent sickness, although since I began feeling badly last Saturday night, one could argue that this is actually the 8th day. This past week has been a complete and total loss for me, since I have been unable to go to work or do anything productive at home. And while I have been improving each day since Thursday, I have to say that it is really freakin slow improvement. 293 words.
• Today’s News. 2005-08-26 10:08 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Today was particularly boring, being a Friday and all, so I decided to comment on today’s top story. I have discovered the joy of RSS Newsfeed Readers, so I now have instant news from around the world available at my fingertips. 158 words.
• If I’d only had a Midigun…. 2005-08-27 9:36 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Wow these RSS Newsfeeds are awesome for finding things to write about on my blog. Now I can be just like television media and rip off stories from other sources! Check out the Midigun! 347 words.

September, 2005

• This Week In The News. 2005-09-01 11:14 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  If you’ve turned on a television lately, you’ve probably seen that the Superdome in New Orleans has turned into Thunderdome. But you may have missed these other important news items from this week: 199 words.
• Creativity Extinct, Creationism On The Rise. 2005-09-09 12:33 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In my ever-widening search for news that didn’t make it onto NBC’s Nightly News, I have found the following information for you. 280 words.
• Web Overhaul. 2005-09-14 12:57 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Remember a while back when I said I wanted to do a ground-up rewrite of my website? Well, it’s underway! Actually, it’s been underway for about a month, but it’s only just now starting to look like a working web site. 167 words.
• Cats, Keyboards, and Crime-Fighting Grannies. 2005-09-15 12:22 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here are some more interesting stories you may have missed in the swirl of, how shall I put it… crap… in the mainstream media. 157 words.
• Water Bridge?. 2005-09-18 2:46 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I just got an email containing a picture of a “water bridge” over the Elbe River in Germany. The picture looks fake to me, but maybe I just assume all such email circulations are fake. I Google’d for more information, expecting to find a bunch of “urban legend” hits, but found only one article about it dated 10.10.2003. 79 words.
• Firefox’ed. 2005-09-21 1:58 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I found this article on Slashdot comparing the number of security patches released for Internet Explorer and Firefox in the same time period to be highly amusing. Basically they are saying that Firefox, the allegedly “safer” open source browser, has released 2-4 times more security fixes in the same time period than Internet Explorer. Ha ha. 154 words.
• Rita’rded Reporting. 2005-09-25 3:41 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The level of absurdity in the news media is approaching mind-numbing proportions. I saw one reporter holding up a busted-up streetlight and talking at great length about how it had come hurtling down in front of them. Last night there was some “new video” of the aftermath of Rita being shown (on several competing news channels simultaneously). 209 words.
• Launch Day. 2005-09-25 2:59 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Today I am officially launching the new site. 37 words.
• Why I Like PHP. 2005-09-27 8:26 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Most programmers at my level of genius and experience scoff at the PHP language for web development. So why do I use it on my web page? 230 words.

October, 2005

• Quake 3: Arena??. 2005-10-02 11:34 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In complete desperation, I pulled out Q3A this weekend because I felt the need to frag something. I was amazed. 273 words.
• Name Games. 2005-10-24 1:16 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I suppose it’s time to update the old web page. Let’s see if I can think of something interesting that’s happened lately. 195 words.
• Failed The id Software Test. 2005-10-25 2:25 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Well I installed Quake 4 tonight and found that, not surprisingly, my computer is obsolete. 188 words.
• Productivity Going Down. 2005-10-26 1:26 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I learned today that network security at work is scheduled to take a big left turn into absurdity next week. They are attempting to keep the developers completely off the network, because for some reason the higher-ups think they represent the largest security risk. We won’t be able to directly access the Internet, the database servers, or the production servers. 129 words.
• Avoiding That Screen Flicker. 2005-10-28 2:54 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I went to the Richmond.NET User Group meeting tonight. The main topic was AJAX and how Microsoft is implementing it in ASP.NET 2.0 with Callbacks and Atlas and whatnot. 305 words.
• Redskins Pummeled At Halftime. 2005-10-30 7:38 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Well the Redskins are getting their butts kicked. 20 words.

November, 2005

• English Ancestors Found!. 2005-11-05 12:06 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Thanks to a chance encounter with FamilySearch.org, the LDS genealogy web site, I was able to document some more of my ancestors. This particular branch of ancestors comes from my great-grandmother Matilda Gray’s branch. (Individual I469 on my genealogy page.) I located a bunch of previously unknown information on the ancestry of her father’s parents, Joseph P. Gray and Martha Elizabeth Baker. 94 words.
• Technical News Returns. 2005-11-07 10:32 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This category had originally been for technical news about the web site. At some point, I realized nobody gave a crap about that, and I stopped adding to it. 112 words.
• Tuesday Night Was Okay For Fighting, Too. 2005-11-09 5:49 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Since my computer at work is more-or-less frozen up while it performs a weekly virus scan, this seems like a good time to write something. 343 words.
• Big Water. 2005-11-13 2:50 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Neat. Our water main is currently spewing water into our front yard. If it weren’t for Cynthia going outside to check for mail, we wouldn’t have even known about it until the morning, when it would have been a BIG problem. 96 words.
• Water Squelched. 2005-11-13 5:15 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Front yard flooding fixed. Water guy replaced the old decrepit meter with a new-fangled electronic thingy. Gushing water is gone. 23 words.
• Mediocrity Taking Over The Web. 2005-11-13 2:41 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Nicolas Carr’s blog article, The amorality of Web 2.0, rocks. (There’s some technical mumbo-jumbo, but there’s also a bunch of regular English words I didn’t know, either. :) There has always been something about Open Source that has made me uneasy, but I’ve never really been able to put my finger on exactly what it was. 173 words.
• Freedom No Longer Free. 2005-11-18 1:53 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I tuned into 98.9 Liberty on the way home today, and there it was, like a grisly, glistening shape rising from the fetid waters of capitalism: a commercial. I gritted my teeth as I listened, knowing it would be but the first of many, for surely they would group 20 such commercials together like all the other radio stations, and I would have to begin station surfing in vain, for it is well known that all radio stations synchronize their commercial marathons for maximum annoyance. But wait! 166 words.
• Let There Be Lights. 2005-11-28 7:11 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Friday our neighbors were at it again. You may remember from last year that these retired folk constructed a Christmas light extravaganza in their front yard that would blind most ordinary humans. Friday, merely one day after Thanksgiving, they were blasting Christmas music (we’re talking Bing Crosby here) and stringing up lights again. 464 words.
• Influential Songs of My Childhood. 2005-11-29 5:00 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  On the way into work this morning, I heard The Logical Song by Supertramp on 98.9 Liberty. Every time I hear this song, it immediately transports me back to my childhood (c. age 10), so I thought I would start a new series of web articles entitled, “Influential Songs of My Childhood.” This is the first installment in a series of X articles (where 1 £ X £ ¥) where I will delve into the reasons why some songs have struck a particularly resonant chord with me for well over 20 years. 536 words.

December, 2005

• Overhaul Looms. 2005-12-02 5:32 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I officially hate the way my site looks again. 242 words.
• Keep Boycotting EA Games!. 2005-12-05 1:45 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here is more evidence (as if any were needed) to support continuing the boycott on EA Games: According to this Reuters article, another game developer is suing EA Games for allegedly stealing his features and putting them in Madden ‘06. Admittedly, the features in question, well, suck, but the point is that EA brazenly stole them. Well, allegedly. 129 words.
• Influential Songs of My Childhood, Part 2. 2005-12-06 4:31 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Believe it or not, I heard (and didn’t turn off!) the Charlie Daniels Band’s The Devil Went Down To Georgia this morning on the way to work. It struck me that this was another Influential Song From My Childhood, though admittedly not of the same caliber as the last one. I guess this would be more of a Song I Remember From My Childhood. 477 words.
• Photo Organization And Me. 2005-12-12 8:25 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Why is it so hard to find decent digital photo organization software? 795 words.
• Activists Unite!. 2005-12-19 8:00 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I would like to point out the following two Slashdot articles to the throngs of technically saavy political activists that read my site. 122 words.
• How To Read Op-Ed Articles. 2005-12-30 4:47 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve recently added some “controversial” feeds to my news reader (by which, I mean political and religious-themed topics) to broaden my knowledge base. I’m intentionally trying to add feeds that give arguments from opposing viewpoints (ie. conservative vs. liberal, intelligent design vs. science, etc) in the hope that some median truth might come forth. 653 words.

January, 2006

• The Macedonians\’s Days Are Numbered. 2006-01-03 6:51 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  For those of you flocking to this page to read my insights on programming, you might have noticed that I haven’t written much of anything in this space. Most likely, that was why I removed this Technical section in the first place. But recently I thought.. hey, here’s a good idea.. how about a section of me writing about programming! 317 words.
• Computer Upgrade. 2006-01-03 6:59 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Oh, here’s some more technical news. I’ve ordered an upgrade for my computer for the first time since September 2003. It’s just in the nick of time, too, since my current computer has taken to dying with a Blue Screen of Death each time I try to reboot. 137 words.
• New Employer. 2006-01-03 7:35 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Today I started my new job.. well, technically it’s the same job, but I’ve shifted from being a sub-contractor to a contractor. 55 words.
• Washington at Tampa Bay Prediction. 2006-01-04 3:17 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Washington travels to Tampa Bay for the first round of the playoffs this Saturday. Who would have thought I’d be saying that? The last time Washington was in the playoffs was 1999. 259 words.
• Washington at Seattle. 2006-01-09 2:17 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was indeed wrong about Washington at Tampa Bay, although I shouldn’t have been. No way did the Redskins deserve to win that game after the offense stunk up the joint so badly. 120 yards?? 146 words.
• Book of Daniel. 2006-01-09 4:21 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  We taped The Book of Daniel and watched it over the weekend. We willfully and maliciously fast-forwarded through the commercials while we laughed ourselves silly in defiance of Big Media. Sorry, I digress. 169 words.
• News Flash: Dark Ages Didn’t Happen. 2006-01-09 8:05 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m just trying to kill time here, so I don’t really feel like looking up hard evidence to support my claim, but the article Christianity credited for West’s success, which discusses the book The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism and Western Success by “leading” U.S. sociologist Rodney Stark, sounds like.. what’s the word I’m looking for… total crap. (By the way, I didn’t know there was a sociologist race going on… I wonder if it’s on ESPN?) 239 words.
• Purple Phoenix. 2006-01-09 8:26 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m sure you’re dying to know the status of my computer upgrade. 92 words.
• Iran Not Quite All There. 2006-01-10 3:58 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I couldn’t find anything particularly noteworthy to mock in this morning’s blogosphere, but I did come across a rather frightening article about Iran’s president (Iran leader’s messianic end-times mission). The more I read and hear about Iran and their president, the more frightening that situation gets. Mr. Ahmadinejad sounds a bit like a loose canon. 120 words.
• CSI:Mickey. 2006-01-10 4:13 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Golly, but I’ve been getting uber-political lately! What’s up with that? Let’s get back to more important topics, like the strangulation and decapitation of mice! 152 words.
• iPod-Ridiculosity. 2006-01-11 3:52 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Okay, this iPod thing is starting to get ridiculous: Levi Strauss debuts iPod-ready jeans. How gullible do people have to be to fall for this? How desperate are these people to throw away their money? 130 words.
• A Truthy Response To Barney. 2006-01-12 6:39 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Barney Brenner’s op-ed piece, Darwinism: An Endangered Way of Thinking?, is a good example of punditry in action. The article has just enough truthiness in it to fool someone who doesn’t know better, or someone who has already made up their mind. He makes a lot of claims and doesn’t back a single one of them up, presuming that the reader will just accept his word on them. 1,202 words.
• Green Pigs and Cell Records. 2006-01-13 3:50 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There’s nothing really to snipe at this morning, so I’ll have to get creative. 195 words.
• Quake 4 Review. 2006-01-13 3:54 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  So I’m playing Quake 4 now that I finally got my new computer put together. (What was the first thing I installed after Windows? Yup. 669 words.
• Garbage Time. 2006-01-13 7:48 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Sitting here watching the clock in the work week’s equivalent of “garbage time” (that portion of a football game after which the losing team has given up any hope of winning the game), I’m reminded that in my last job, the boss frequently liked to use this time–yes, the final hour of the final day of the work week–to brainstorm, go over status reports, and plan for the future. It gives one some perspective. While it might seem that watching the second hand tick by on a clock might cause some resentment or bad feelings, I can honestly say: It could be a lot worse. 105 words.
• Dark Tower Found. 2006-01-16 5:52 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I finished the Stephen King Dark Tower books last night… I’ve had the last two books for like six months but just now got around to reading them. (My life is such that I have to deliberately exclude things from my plate in order to read.) I started with book five and went on through to the last two. All I can say is: Wow. 457 words.
• Fat Cats Responsible. 2006-01-17 4:40 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m trying out a new feed reader today called Omea Reader. I haven’t made up my mind yet, but one thing I like is that you can “bookmark” (note obvious anti-Microsoft terminology) news web pages that haven’t made it into the RSS world yet. I can’t stand opening up a browser and slogging through a menu of 1000 favorites to find news, so this is a nifty feature for my lazy buttocks. 366 words.
• Rainy Commute. 2006-01-18 2:40 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There’s nothing quite like starting your workday by driving on Interstate 95 for a half hour in the rain. Let’s see if I can paint a picture for you. You can see that there are cars around you, but you can’t quite make out how far away they are or how fast they’re going. 164 words.
• Muslim Sit-Com Coming Soon!. 2006-01-18 5:14 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was having a really hard time finding anything to snipe at today. My usual targets were silent or monumentally dull. I even added tons of new feeds to my aggregator, specifically looking for radical thinking from every possible angle. 482 words.
• Privacy Wars. 2006-01-19 2:52 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Amid the uproar about the Prez wiretapping everybody’s phones, I thought it would be fun to pass along a couple other privacy issues from today’s news. 228 words.
• Mission Statement. 2006-01-20 1:00 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m starting this blog as a response to Greg Krehbiel’s Crowhill Weblog. Greg Krehbiel is a conservative Roman Catholic advocate. This by itself wouldn’t be enough for me to start a blog, but unfortunately, the Crowhill Weblog ranks fairly high in a Google search for “Krehbiel,” so anyone searching for information about the Krehbiel family name would find Greg Krehbiel and his blog to be one of the first ambassadors of the surname. 238 words.
• The Crowhill Irony. 2006-01-20 2:00 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  When I first came across the CW (the Crowhill Weblog) in a Google search, I was amazed at the irony I found. Here was a man proudly displaying his family crest and using the “crow hill” translation of Krähenbühl in his domain name. At first glance, I thought it was pretty cool. 218 words.
• New Blog. 2006-01-20 4:58 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  If you’re looking for more witty and insightful responses to the Crowhill Weblog, you’ll have to go to The Krehbiel Strikes Back. I started that blog for the specific purpose of sniping at The Pope. (I won’t call him Pope Narcissus there, though, because that wouldn’t be polite.) Tell all your friends! 76 words.
• Michael Moore vs. The Whale. 2006-01-20 6:58 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  What do Osama bin Laden, Michael Moore, Chris Matthews, and a whale all have in common? They are all hot topics in the blogosphere today. 297 words.
• Solving Catholicism. 2006-01-21 1:00 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  [Originally posted January 3, 2006.] 318 words.
• Congrats Camille!. 2006-01-21 1:30 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Congratulations to Camille Krehbiel for making the freshman honor roll at Deer Creek-Lamont in Oklahoma! I don’t know who she is or, quite frankly, where that school is, but I thought I’d pass along some kudos anyway. (Honestly, I’m not sure I could even find Oklahoma on a U.S. map… I think it’s one of those vague “middle-of-the-country” states.) The Enid News and Eagle reported this outstanding accomplishment. 70 words.
• Nice Job, Lynda!. 2006-01-21 2:00 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Congratulations also to Lynda Krehbiel-McLain for her “exceptional” solo singing performance in Beethoven’s Fantasy for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra, as reported in Orchestra captures essence of Beethoven [link corrected] by columnist Gail Westerfield for The Island Packet. Again, I have no idea who this woman is or where the performance took place, but since she is not spouting any unusual rhetoric that I’m aware of and simultaneously shining a positive light on the Krehbiel name, she deserves a mention on my unabashedly pro-Krehbiel blog. Way to go, Lynda! 99 words.
• Sue Rocks Aspen. 2006-01-22 1:00 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  If anyone happened to be in Aspen last night, let me know how Sue Krehbiel did. See Weekend entertainment: music, more in the Aspen Times: “A house concert in Carbondale will feature Justin Roth, with Sue Krehbiel and Frank Martin opening, tonight. Appetizer potluck at 7 p.m. and music at 8 p.m.” I’m betting she rocked the house. 64 words.
• On Materialist Rhetoric. 2006-01-22 2:00 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m reeling a little from GK’s January 20 post, Arthur C. Clarke on magic. Where in the world did this topic come from? He’s debunking that famous quote, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” as if Mr. Clarke just said it yesterday and not, like, 50 years ago. 420 words.
• Disconnection. 2006-01-23 1:00 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  [Originally posted January 4, 2006.] 89 words.
• Randy’s Review. 2006-01-23 2:00 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Check out David Boren: an Oklahoma legend, an article for Tulsa World by Randy Krehbiel, a World Staff Writer. I don’t know what it says because you have to be a member to read it, but I’m sure it’s a great article. From the first two sentences, it looks like a music review, which seems like something Krehbiels have a long history of doing. 91 words.
• Best Wishes, Sarah. 2006-01-23 3:00 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In an article dated Christmas Day, Troops celebrate as they prepare to deploy, the Idaho State Journal writes that Army reservist Spc. Sarah Krehbiel, a single mom with a 3-year-old son, is mobilizing for active duty in February. The article indicates that “the Army’s not saying where the Pocatello- and Twin Falls-based outfit’s headed, but war-torn Iraq looms as a definite possibility.” Sad to see her having to leave her son behind like that. 79 words.
• On The AFA. 2006-01-23 2:22 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The AFA makes me sick. They have an electronic petition to send emails to NBC about The Book of Daniel. They’ve done all the work, so all you have to do is click a button and bam-o NBC gets a nicely worded email written by the AFA, and they can claim billions of people oppose the show. 142 words.
• RSS Fixed. 2006-01-23 4:42 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m sure this issue affected hundreds of people, so I just fixed a small glitch in my RSS feeds. 37 words.
• Scott Headed to Kansas State. 2006-01-24 1:00 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  According to the Kansas City Star, stand out high school offensive lineman Scott Krehbiel is heading to Kansas State to play college ball. (And get an edumacation, too, I suppose.) See Cats land offensive line recruit. 36 words.
• Dissecting Crowhill Spin. 2006-01-24 2:00 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  [Originally posted January 4, 2006.] 320 words.
• Professor Wars. 2006-01-25 1:00 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Yesterday, the Crowhill Weblog referenced UCLA controversy might herald new front in culture wars, an article by Gwendolyn Driscoll. Perhaps you can guess GK’s viewpoint on the matter. Ten points if you picked, “college professors should only be robots programmed to recite conservative-government-regulated teaching curriculums.” (It’s remotely possible that I’m not stating his viewpoint fairly.) 356 words.
• An Open Letter to AFA Chairman Donald E. Wildmon. 2006-01-25 1:52 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  To: Donald E. Wildmon Chairman, American Family Association 462 words.
• AFA Response. 2006-01-25 2:02 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Just for the record, here was the AFA’s response, if you can call it that, to my letter. Note the smug “ohhhh, we’re innocent, we had nothing to do with it!” attitude and link. 99 words.
• Congrats to Rip. 2006-01-26 3:35 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Congratulations to Rip Krehbiel for making the 8th grade Honor Roll in Indian Hill Middle School! I don’t know who he is, but if I did, I’m sure I’d say it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person. Keep up the great work! 64 words.
• Reviewing Mark Steyn. 2006-01-26 3:38 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  [Originally posted January 5, 2006.] 216 words.
• Lee Tells It Like It Is. 2006-01-26 8:27 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Associate Dean of Students Lee Krehbiel imparted sage wisdom in the ISU Bengal Online about student employees’s limited greivance options at Idaho State University. See Student employment rights non-existant at ISU. It’s interesting to see how many Krehbiels around the country are involved in education. 53 words.
• The War On Culture. 2006-01-27 3:12 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  [Originally posted January 6, 2006.] 339 words.
• NBC Webcasts Book of Daniel. 2006-01-27 3:48 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  NBC will be webcasting an unaired episode of The Book of Daniel tonight at 8PM. Please join me in sending kudos to NBC for continuing to make this novel program about faith and family available to both audiences who value creative story-telling in an otherwise dreary television landscape, and to Americans who enjoy the freedom to choose their viewing habits without interference from strong-armed lobbyist organizations. 66 words.
• Sorry, Ranting About Daniel Again. 2006-01-27 8:55 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I would like to take this opportunity to rebuke entertainment journalists worldwide. I am referring, of course, to the somewhat dated news that NBC has cancelled The Book of Daniel. Another slew of articles appeared in my news reader on the subject today, and each was predictable down to the letter, being nearly word-for-word copies of the original news story from earlier this week. 503 words.
• A Skirmish In The War On Culture. 2006-01-29 12:59 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Fighting in the Culture War is pretty draining. I’ve been having a “debate,” if you can call it that, with a person on the Blog of Daniel comment boards. I’ll call her Baptist X, since her viewpoints seem to be fairly representative of the typical conservative Southern Baptist Christian. 1,232 words.
• Great News For Liberals. 2006-01-29 2:57 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Whoa, I had almost forgotten about the Crowhill Weblog. GK’s been flying under the radar lately, just posting links to articles (half of which were sent in by other people). But now it’s time to put on my “Crowhill media watchdog” hat again, for it is my sworn duty. 331 words.
• Latest News From The Front. 2006-01-30 6:36 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s my wisdom for today: People are really touchy about their religion, especially on the Internet. Provocative comments or questions about someone’s religious tenants are almost always viewed as a direct assault on the individual. 978 words.
• The Republican Womb Patrol. 2006-01-31 6:34 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I saw a post today, Say good bye to your wombs, gals, you no longer control them. The Republican party does, on the liberal blog The Daou Report, referring of course to the imminent confirmation of Judge Alito and the suspected future overturning of Roe v. Wade. 313 words.
• Iran Seeks Answers. 2006-01-31 6:35 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  “I am not making this up.” Here’s some cheery news from Iran: Iran Invites Blair to Holocaust Denial Conference. Yes, you read that right. Iran is holding a conference to “scientifically” determine the facts about the Holocaust. 82 words.
• Civility Irony Revealed. 2006-01-31 9:54 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  [Originally posted January 7, 2006.] 95 words.

February, 2006

• Christianists. 2006-02-01 3:57 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I came across the article, Onward, Christianist soldiers?, by Ruth Walker of the Christian Science Monitor today, after I saw a reference to the word “Christianist” on a liberal blog. It’s a good read. The term is very appropriate, too. 116 words.
• The Danger of Sheehan. 2006-02-01 7:18 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  When Cindy Sheehan first arrived on the scene, I was touched by her story. How could anyone not be? I didn’t particularly think the President should give in and talk to her in Camp Casey–he already had once, after all, and that’s more than most Americans get–but she made a brave stand. 510 words.
• Crowhill on SOTU. 2006-02-01 7:48 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Imagine my surprise to find a parody of the SOTU on the Crowhill Weblog (The crowhill version of the state of the union speech). When I read it, I was shocked right down to my socks; it was actually kind of funny. And here’s the really scary part: I actually agree with some of his points. 285 words.
• Academy of the Martial Arts. 2006-02-02 4:30 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Yesterday’s Crowhill post, “Boy” defined as “obstacle to female-defined success”, contains some alarming content. 129 words.
• Another Musical Krehbiel. 2006-02-02 4:53 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  American choir shares German town’s sorrow with gift of song is a touching piece about the Bethel College Concert Choir being the first to sing in Bad Reichenhall (Germany) after a roof collapse killed 15 people, mostly children, a week earlier. Of particular note to Krehbiels was “the male octet Open Road’s rendition of “Lord, be near me,” an original piece by Moundridge senior and Open Road member Joel Krehbiel.” 70 words.
• Fred Backs Joe. 2006-02-02 5:05 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I missed this news from a few days ago: Molex CEO Fred Krehbiel seems to like Republican Joe Birkett for lieutenant governor of Illinois. He contributed $10,000 to his campaign fund. See Governor raises $15.5 million, and scroll way down to the bottom. 80 words.
• No Humor Required. 2006-02-02 5:13 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  And you thought Christianist fundamentals were bad. Check out Storm grows over Muhammad cartoons. 205 words.
• Busted. 2006-02-03 3:19 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Ruh roh.. I’m busted. I guess I’ll have to be a little more civil now. :) It’s pretty amazing how fast things happen in the ol’ blogosphere. 99 words.
• Wry Henry. 2006-02-03 3:20 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I just saw this little insight into the personality of music critic Henry Edward Krehbiel in A Met Broadcast Moment. 126 words.
• Tom’s RSS Reader Roundup. 2006-02-03 6:13 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here are my opinions about popular RSS readers, in no particular order. I just wanted to keep these somewhere so I won’t keep re-downloading the same programs over and over again. 112 words.
• Grrls Rock!. 2006-02-03 7:09 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  [Originally drafted January 9, 2006.] 322 words.
• The Church’s Shaky Foundation. 2006-02-04 11:11 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  [This is a complete rewrite of something I first wrote on January 11, 2006.] 299 words.
• Insensitive Mark Steyn. 2006-02-06 7:05 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s another opportunity for me to review an article by Mark Steyn, ‘Sensitivity’ can have brutal consequences. I’ll summarize it so you don’t have to read it. 337 words.
• Sam Swims To Second. 2006-02-06 7:57 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Sam Krehbiel and the Macomb High School Bombers placed second in a swim meet last Thursday night, missing first place by two points (I think–I don’t really understand swim points). See MHS swimmers edged in meet competition for the exciting details. A tough loss, but I’m sure it was fun for everyone involved (everyone who likes swimming, that is). 72 words.
• Tacky Cartoon Resignation. 2006-02-08 3:30 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I can’t find much of anything to write about today except the Danish Cartoon Incident and the Coretta Scott King funeral. And there’s not much to say about the funeral except that it was awfully tacky of Democrats to use it as a political soapbox. So… 290 words.
• Thoughts On The War On Culture. 2006-02-08 8:01 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been thinking about this War on Culture. It seems to exist on many different parallel hierarchies. (In software, it could be represented with a TreeView control.) 343 words.
• Drawing The Line. 2006-02-09 6:28 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I think it’s about time to draw a distinction between sensitivity toward religion and denial of information. So many MSM reports about the Danish Cartoon Incident contain disclaimers that say, “we will not show the cartoons because they aren’t relevant to the story,” or something like that. Then they go on to describe the cartoons as “offensive” and run a lot of quotes from outraged and insulted Muslim leaders over the horror of it all. 498 words.
• Wild Conspiracy Theories. 2006-02-10 6:58 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I found the following text on Americablog (about as liberal of a blog as you can possibly get without being Michael Moore’s own blog), referring to today’s news that Homeland Security knew about the levee breaks in New Orleans a day before the Bush administration said they did. 394 words.
• AFA Missed A Memo. 2006-02-10 8:03 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In Little Christs and little Mohammeds on the world’s stage, GK muses that Christians generally don’t respond when they’re insulted, because of the difference between Jesus’s sacrificial death and Mohammed’s glorified life. I see his point, but somebody forgot to tell the AFA–they sure throw plenty of hissy fits when they perceive Christians being mistreated. Granted, Mr. Wildmon’s idea of “mistreatment” is, of all things, exposure to public radio waves, but the principle is the same. 109 words.
• Republican Womb Patrol Warming Up. 2006-02-12 10:09 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Just before Samuel Alito was confirmed, I quipped elsewhere. 351 words.
• More Cartoon Musings. 2006-02-13 7:21 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I continue to muse about the Danish Cartoon Incident, which is growing into a full-scale Cartoon Intifada (uprising). I don’t like link-fests, but here are some recent articles on the subject that I’ve found interesting. 542 words.
• Saddam\’s Trial. 2006-02-14 6:11 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is only tangentially related to the culture war, but how much longer will Saddam be allowed these ridiculous childish outbursts? (See Hussein throws tantrum on return to court and Hussein: I am on hunger strike.) I can’t recall a more laughable “trial” in my lifetime. Does anyone actually think Saddam–the same guy who always did anything to save his own skin–will starve himself to death? 132 words.
• Cartoon Intifada Part Of The Project?. 2006-02-14 6:21 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Warning: If you are already bummed about where the world is heading, do not read this. 460 words.
• Yay For Ohio. 2006-02-15 7:45 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This has been a very slow day for news. (Unless you like reading about birdshot and political conspiracy theories, that is.) 267 words.
• Kookiness All Around. 2006-02-16 8:42 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It’s comforting to know that there are just as many kooks on the right as there are on the left. For liberals, there’s the kooky Michael Moore. For conservatives, there’s the kooky Ann Coulter. 245 words.
• Abuse Photos. 2006-02-16 9:03 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Another tough day to find anything to comment on. Muslim protesters continued to protest, and “journalists” kept trying to uncover a Cheney scandal. 303 words.
• Banning Kale. 2006-02-20 2:23 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  One of the more popular (secular) arguments I hear against same-sex marriage appeared recently on the Crowhill Weblog (Why same-sex marriage isn’t just about somebody’s “rights”). It goes something like this: By allowing same-sex marriage, the same-sex philosophy is forced onto people who don’t agree with it because they have to “accommodate” it. This argument usually comes in response to a “live and let live”-type statement. 375 words.
• Tuesday Smorgasbord. 2006-02-21 8:12 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A smorgasbord of topics today as I sit here in agonizing pain from a strained neck muscle. 591 words.
• Actually Profiling Sounds Kinda Good. 2006-02-22 6:26 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Today, conservative bloggers are berating Democrats for their obvious hypocrisy in objecting to the Dubai Port Sale when they previously objected to any sort of profiling against Muslims. I hate to admit this but, um, they’re right. About two things: 1) Democrats are being blatantly hypocritical (but then, they’re politicians), and 2) My objection to the Dubai Port Sale is indeed based solely on the fact that we’re talking about the UAE, so I guess I’m engaging in profiling like everyone else. 408 words.
• Coming Soon: DaVinci Riots. 2006-02-23 4:21 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m stupefied by the irony and ignorance found in Barbara Nicolosi’s Da Vinci Code ‘Dialogue’? No Way! The thinking process that goes into concluding that the people who made The DaVinci Code “hate Jesus” and “wanted to bash Christians” is exactly the same thinking process that goes into concluding that a handful of Danish cartoonists insulted Islam and should literally be killed for blasphemy. 476 words.
• Thursday Blogworld Wrapup. 2006-02-23 6:30 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Yesterday Blogworld was busy taking sides on the Dubai Port Sale. 85 words.
• Awesome Sarcasm. 2006-02-23 8:45 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I wish I’d written this: Bob Cesca: South Dakota: Where Rapists Live Forever! 37 words.
• Quick, Grab A Thesaurus. 2006-02-24 6:20 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  One thing I find amusing about the media, and now the blogosphere, is the number of different ways that writers say the same thing. No writer wants to sound like he’s plagerizing someone else, so the result is often a hilarious variety of randomly mixed-up words from a thesaurus. Here’s a selection from bloggers talking about the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Iraq. 211 words.
• Friday Smorgasbord. 2006-02-24 8:44 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  No one story has jumped out at me today, so here’s a link-fest of random cultural interests. 362 words.
• “Gobbley” Quotes. 2006-02-25 12:50 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I just reconfigured the blog to use the ISO-8859-1 charset so those silly “smart” quotes work right. I’m always having to change them back to “dumb” quotes and half the time I forget when pasting text so weird gobbley characters get into my writing. It’s a real pain. 68 words.
• Revised Mission Statement (2006.02.24). 2006-02-25 2:08 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I originally started this blog as a response to Greg Krehbiel’s Crowhill Weblog. GK is a conservative Roman Catholic. That by itself wouldn’t be enough for me to start a public blog, but the Crowhill Weblog ranks fairly high in a Google search for “Krehbiel,” so anyone searching for information about the Krehbiel family name would find Greg Krehbiel and his blog to be one of the first ambassadors of the surname. 373 words.
• Bears Pay For Parental Negligence. 2006-02-26 2:28 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There’s nothing interesting happening nationally, so I thought I’d mention a local outrage here in Richmond. 353 words.
• Okay Steyn, Now What?. 2006-02-27 5:50 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  By Thomas Krehbiel * 391 words.
• Monday Smorgasbord, Feb 27. 2006-02-27 8:28 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Thomas Lifson at American Thinker writes about an Islamic domination angle that I hadn’t heard before: The Islamist Attack on Intellectual Property. A world without intellectual property sounds pretty bleak, and not just because my whole career is based on it. Wait, nevermind… it is because my whole career is based on it. 262 words.
• Comment-Spam Policy. 2006-02-27 10:42 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I deleted an obvious spam comment today. Oddly enough, it linked to what appeared to be a free fundamentalist Christian book. I wonder if Jesus would consider spam an appropriate evangelical tool? 307 words.
• Bear Mom Speaks. 2006-02-28 6:45 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  By Thomas Krehbiel 83 words.
• Tuesday Smogasbord – Feb 28. 2006-02-28 9:01 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Winner of today’s most disturbing look into the life of a typical Palestinian, via. Little Green Footballs: A Mother from Hell. This woman is actually disappointed that her daughter failed to become a suicide bomber (she was caught before her bomb vest went off). 293 words.
• The Terminology War. 2006-02-28 9:03 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  By Thomas Krehbiel 528 words.

March, 2006

• More Thoughts On The Bear-Slayer. 2006-03-01 5:47 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  By Thomas Krehbiel 311 words.
• Zogby Poll. 2006-03-02 8:21 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This isn’t really cultural, but Mrs. Krehbiel wanted to make sure I didn’t miss Zogby’s survey of U.S. troops: A Letter From The Troops. 432 words.
• Coulter On The Oscars. 2006-03-03 4:09 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I think I’ve got Ann Coulter figured out now. My mistake was categorizing her as a pundit or analyst or journalist, when she’s really just a stand-up comic for conservatives. An insult comic, actually. 562 words.
• A Most Unusual Abortion. 2006-03-05 4:31 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s an odd item from recent Virginia news: Woman shot self to induce abortion. 423 words.
• Belated Oscar Bashing. 2006-03-06 7:11 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It’s Oscars time again, and we all know what that means: Time for conservative pundits everywhere to phone in and bash Hollywood! (Just pretend I finished this before the Oscars.) 385 words.
• Evidence Of Gallagher\’s Beliefs. 2006-03-07 8:16 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  By Thomas Krehbiel 349 words.
• Torturous Civil Rights Activists. 2006-03-09 5:55 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  By Thomas Krehbiel 853 words.
• Kneejerking Back At Kos. 2006-03-09 8:16 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Grrr. This makes me sound like a wingnut again, but this Daily Kos post pisses me off: U.S. To Close Abu Ghraib. “Georgia10” tells us that the U.S. is turning Abu Ghraib back over to the Iraqis, and then commences preaching about the “culture of abuse and maltreatment” in other U.S. prisons. 276 words.
• Islamic Law & Order. 2006-03-10 4:23 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  From Michelle Malkin: Free Muhammad Al-Asadi. Malkin discusses a Yemeni newspaper editor facing a potential death sentence for publishing those Danish cartoons (he covered them with big black X’s and condemned them, too, but that doesn’t seem important to the prosecutors). Here’s the part I really enjoyed. 129 words.
• The Cycle Continues. 2006-03-10 6:59 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s a notable poll: Gallup: More Than Half of Americans Reject Evolution, Back Bible. (The title is, of course, misleading.) I haven’t seen it done yet, but I’m sure Intelligent Design proponents will soon begin using these poll results to validate their thesis, using the age-old scientific principle which states, “If most people believe X, then X must be true.” 157 words.
• Unified Christian Theory. 2006-03-13 7:53 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It’s rather annoying to me when people mis-characterize the different denominations of Christians and Christianity. It frequently happens when people mistakenly assume all Christians are part of Pat Robertson’s army of zombies. But it can also happen in other ways. 261 words.
• NASA Speaks On Global Warming. 2006-03-14 8:30 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  By Thomas Krehbiel 232 words.
• AFA Marching Again. 2006-03-15 7:53 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It’s always fun to rag on the Totalitarian Family Association: US anti-gay group launches boycott of Ford. Don Wildmon, raging American patriot, is inciting his flock to stone… I mean… boycott Ford Motor Co. I first encountered him back in January when he took credit for denying Americans the freedom to watch whatever shows they want on their own televisions. Now he’s trying to deny Americans the opportunity to help Ford claw its way back into the global automobile market. 85 words.
• Malkin\’s Media Experiment. 2006-03-15 8:39 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  By Thomas Krehbiel * 336 words.
• Ban Ambien. 2006-03-16 8:55 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Part 1 in a Special 4-Part Series: Random Thoughts Of Thursday 131 words.
• Media Bias Exposed. 2006-03-16 8:56 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Part 2 in a Special 4-Part Series: Random Thoughts Of Thursday 143 words.
• Eskow and Hitchens Have It Backwards. 2006-03-16 8:57 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Part 3 in a Special 4-Part Series: Random Thoughts Of Thursday 127 words.
• The War Against Introverts. 2006-03-16 8:58 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Part 4 in a Special 4-Part Series: Random Thoughts Of Thursday 154 words.
• Introducing Katrina Vanden Heuvel. 2006-03-17 3:38 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve never heard Katrina Vanden Heuvel before, but I’ve often heard her name mentioned on conservative sites. Not very kindly, either. Now I understand why. 744 words.
• Tom\’s F.E.A.R. Mini-Review. 2006-03-19 4:39 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  PROS 215 words.
• The Continuing War On Spam. 2006-03-19 4:45 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Recently, Cynthia and I have been bombarded with a clever variety of spam that gets past our web host’s spam filters. 162 words.
• ‘Ware That Tricksey Media. 2006-03-21 2:47 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I always enjoy deciphering how stories get distorted by the people that report them. 531 words.
• Christian Faces Death In Afghanistan. 2006-03-21 5:05 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This story has been making the rounds in the last couple days: An Afghan man, Abdul Rahman, is on trial for converting to Christianity and faces the death penalty if he doesn’t repent. This is a rare story that is uniting bloggers from both the left and right in their wondering about how this reconciles with the new and improved “democratic free people” of Afghanistan we’ve all been told about. The story is also a nice reminder of why strict Islamic law should not be allowed to spread. 169 words.
• Correction To Vanden Heuvel Sniping. 2006-03-22 4:34 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I must make a small retraction/correction. A while back I sniped at Katrina Vanden Heuvel for spreading rumors on CNN about “the slaughter possibly of innocent women and children” during that Operation Swarmer thing. I called her comment “purely inflammatory and completely baseless.” Well, today I came across this disturbing article on Daily Kos: Iraqi police report details civilians’ deaths at hands of U.S. troops. 356 words.
• georgia10 Makes The List. 2006-03-22 8:23 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  (Heh.. I just discovered georgia10 is a “her,” not a “him,” so I am quickly revising my text.) 508 words.
• PunDippety Specifics. 2006-03-23 6:17 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been challenged to point out exactly why it’s self-evident why I inducted georgia10 into the PunDip Hall of Fame yesterday. Today I’m thinking maybe I was a little too harsh on her – she’s a youthful idealist, after all, and apparently has no understanding yet of how the life-crushing machinery of the cold, cruel world actually works. Maybe I shouldn’t squash her Utopian dreams so soon in life. 674 words.
• SusanG Inducted Too. 2006-03-24 4:01 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve identified another PunDip on Daily Kos: SusanG. No substance, just entertaining prose. Maybe PunDip isn’t the right word. 125 words.
• Entertaindit Balance. 2006-03-24 4:35 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Since I’ve been ragging a lot on Daily Kos writers lately, I suppose I should be fair and balanced and identify some conservative Entertaindits too. I’ve already mentioned Ann Coulter a few times, which was a no-brainer. But overall I find that it’s much harder to locate Entertaindits on conservative blogs. 356 words.
• PZ Myers On Easter And Drywall. 2006-03-24 6:14 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I find that PZ Myers at Pharyngula generates a mixed bag of reactions from me. On one hand, I find his thoughts on evolution pretty solid and interesting. On the other hand, I find his thoughts on religion pretty childish and annoying: War on Easter! 257 words.
• On Al-Haramain and Government Wiretapping. 2006-03-24 8:42 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  (Today’s been very dull, if you hadn’t noticed.) 531 words.
• It\’s Mock georgia10 Monday. 2006-03-27 5:35 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Georgia10 continues her supremely intellectual “liar, liar, pants on fire” personal vendetta against the president: Liar in Chief. I shall dumb down my writing to a level she can understand. 670 words.
• Evangelicals On The March Again. 2006-03-28 1:56 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  They’re at it again… GOP Blogger Mark Noonan thinks that Fundamentalist Evangelicals represent all of Christianity: “Tolerant” San Francisco. Once again, Fundamentalist Evangelical Salesmen are rolled out as the essense of Christianity, the all-knowing, all-seeing Truth of Jesus, not to be questioned, not to be argued with. Forget those loser Episcopalians, Catholics, Presbytarians, Methodists, Mormons, and Mennonites… if you want the Christian perspective on anything, just go to the loudest Evangelicals you can find. 99 words.
• Civil War or No Civil War?. 2006-03-28 6:38 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  With everyone trying to define exactly whether Iraq is in a “civil war” or not, as if the label should somehow affect our opinion of what goes on there, I thought it would be a fun project to see how many Americans are murdered every day in our country. I think we can all agree that there is currently no civil war in America, but most people recently have been citing “dozens of Iraqis” dying every day as an irrefutable measure of a civil war. So let’s see how the numbers stack up. 459 words.
• Video Game Violence Scrutinized. 2006-03-29 6:27 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A rare article about kids and video games that actually puts blame where it belongs: Rebecca Hagelin: Video game violence and our sons. (Hint: It’s not on the video game industry.) 134 words.
• georgia10 Smitten By Real Security. 2006-03-30 5:30 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Well, well, it looks like the great georgia10 is quite smitten by this newly unveiled Democratic “Real Security” “plan:” Real Security, Part II. So smitten, in fact, that one has to wonder if she is not on the Democratic party payroll (the word “shill” comes to mind). She even calls it “tough and smart,” a verbatim recitation of the party line. 213 words.
• Borders and Waldenbooks: Dead To Me. 2006-03-30 5:44 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In the wake of today’s announcement that Borders and Waldenbooks will not stock an issue of Free Inquiry magazine because it shows some of those Mohammad cartoons on its cover (uh.. I dunno where I read it, just look it up on Google News), I will no longer be frequenting their establishments. (Not that I ever did before, but that’s beside the point.) Take that, you stupid lemon-eating Sharia-lovers! 69 words.
• On Immigration. 2006-03-31 7:19 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I suppose I should comment on immigration, since it’s the hot topic of the week. 277 words.

April, 2006

• Only Two Doors?. 2006-04-03 6:34 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s another one of those Pharyngula posts of the annoying variety: Doors. PZ’s making the slightly ignorant assumption that there are only 2 “doors” to choose from in life. (Ie. 91 words.
• georgia10 Wins 2005 Koufax Awards. 2006-04-04 2:34 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Well, well. (He says with undisguised contempt.) The 2005 Koufax Awards, apparently a celebration of the most melodramatic anti-conservative blogs (I have to speculate, since there is nothing on that page indicating what the Koufax Awards actually award *), has voted georgia10 the Best Commenter of 2005. So congrats to her. 139 words.
• Liberals v. Conservatives. 2006-04-04 6:12 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I read this today: Dennis Prager: Who hates the other more - liberals or conservatives? The answer, according to Prager, is liberals, but I think he’s a little biased. From what I’ve seen the hatred goes both ways, but the means of expression is very different. 92 words.
• Get The Door, It’s Jesus!. 2006-04-05 2:09 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A very special guest-blogging appearance by Mrs. Krehbiel: 59 words.
• On Kerry\’s Iraq Plan. 2006-04-05 8:01 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  HuffPo’s been awash with celebrity bloggers today: John Kerry: A Plan for Getting Iraq Up on Its Own Two Feet. 299 words.
• No Love For South Park. 2006-04-06 6:12 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I haven’t read a word in any of my daily blogs today about South Park, which is weird. Not too long ago, every conservative blogger in the world was constantly harping about the “creeping Sharia watch.” (Liberal bloggers ignored the whole thing.) Anything even remotely related to a Muslim forcing prehistoric Islamic laws on the rest of us was major, major news. So last night South Park, the only show I’ve seen that even comes close to touching this subject, runs the first of a two-part parody about the Cartoon Jihad and nothing? 268 words.
• Comparing and Contrasting. 2006-04-06 7:35 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Just so you know, georgia10 is now literally writing fiction for dKos: The Week the Gloves Came Off. It’s not much different from what she was doing before, actually. I think she could learn a few debating tricks from Al Franken: An Evening with Ann Coulter: Opening Statement. 65 words.
• Malkin Grudgingly Approves Of South Park. 2006-04-07 7:08 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Malkin finally jumped on the bandwagon today: South Park And Cartoon Jihad. I think I see now why conservatives have been so slow on this – it must really infuriate them that South Park, of all things, is leading the charge against worldwide dhimmitude, while their own efforts so far have produced bupkis. :) 54 words.
• Still Immigration Protests?. 2006-04-10 4:36 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Okay, the immigration bill was scrapped last week, so why are people still marching in protest today? 191 words.
• The Nerfed Palm Sunday. 2006-04-10 4:41 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Yesterday I went back to church for the first time this year. I stopped last year for a variety of reasons, most selfishly because I rather liked having Sunday morning to myself. But I digress. 392 words.
• What Would Cenk And Bob Do?. 2006-04-11 4:19 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  No doubt you’ve heard about this past weekend’s articles from Seymour Hersh and The Washington Post, exploring the possibility that the Bush administration is planning nuclear strikes against Iran. 743 words.
• Something For Everyone. 2006-04-11 6:07 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  No matter which side of the political fence you’re on, you’ll find something to like in this post! 74 words.
• What Would Cenk And Bob Do? (Part 2). 2006-04-12 2:57 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Mrs. Krehbiel noted that I didn’t provide a comprehensive solution to the Iran crisis. 446 words.
• Bad Krehbiels. 2006-04-12 5:12 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It’s a very sad day to be a Krehbiel: Krehbiel sentenced in sexual assault case - Grand Junction Sentinel. Throw the key away, I say. Or better yet, just execute him so we don’t have to pay for him to rot in jail. 43 words.
• Cartoon Wars, Part II. 2006-04-13 5:42 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been trying to research whether Comedy Central actually did censor Mohammad in last night’s South Park. Fortunately, National Review Online did so for me, and it sounds like Comedy Central did, in fact, refuse to show it, which is a huge relief. I was pretty annoyed when they blacked out Mohammad (especially since he was “just standing there looking normal”) and I would have been really super annoyed if I’d found out that Matt and Trey had censored themselves. 80 words.
• Reframing Iranian Appeasement. 2006-04-13 6:01 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s another HuffPo attempt to “reframe” Iran as the victim of BushCo’s aggression: Bill Scher: Reframing The Iran Debate. This one, at least, presents some supporting evidence, but ultimately I didn’t find it very compelling. 598 words.
• Cenk Stinks. 2006-04-14 3:29 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  More impassioned pleas for Iranian appeasement from HuffPo: Cenk Uygur: If You Liked the Iraq War, You’ll Love the Iran War. 612 words.
• Back In A Bit. 2006-04-16 4:53 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Mrs. Krehbiel and I are heading out for a much-needed vacation this week, so you’ll have to fend off Iranian Appeasement and the persuasive but not entirely factual writings of georgia10 and Cenk Uygur without my help for a little while. 41 words.
• On Price Gouging. 2006-04-24 7:24 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  RedState uses the classic “if you don’t like the gas prices, don’t buy any” argument in discussing whether or not price gouging is good or bad: The Twilight Zone Comes To The Debate Over Gas Prices. 260 words.
• Nightly News Watch. 2006-04-25 1:39 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m officially renaming NBC Nightly News to NBC Nightly News For Dummies. Last night, I saw one of the most asinine news reports ever. (Yes, even more asinine than the unending “Long Road Back” series.) Here it is: Road trip reveals impact of gas prices. 354 words.
• Malkin\’s Hasty Generalization. 2006-04-26 3:00 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Mrs. Krehbiel has noted that I tend to rag on liberals more than conservatives, so this one’s for her: Michelle Malkin: The victims of illegal immigration. I tend to like Malkin’s blog because it’s mostly news and links that you never see in the media, but I find that when she writes opinions, they end up sounding a little shrewish. 507 words.
• Reminder: Iran Deadline Looms. 2006-04-26 6:26 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Lest we forget about Iran in the midst of our Pain At The Pump(TM): Iran ‘will harm U.S. if attacked’. This Friday, the IAEA will be reporting back to the UN about whether Iran is going to comply with the UN’s demand that they cease their enrichment program. I think you can guess what the report is going to say. 266 words.
• Move Along, Nothing To See Here. 2006-04-27 10:56 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Today I’m too lazy to write about anything. Except I just watched some of NBC Nightly News About New Orleans For Dummies, and found it pretty silly overall. I’m pretty sure NBC doesn’t even send reporters anywhere but New Orleans anymore. 105 words.
• Introducing: The Party Afraid Of Death. 2006-04-28 7:16 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was reading this yesterday: A Q&A with Ramesh Ponnuru on The Party of Death. While perusing the author’s pro-life remarks, a complementary Republican party nickname occurred to me: The Party Afraid Of Death. It seems fitting. 275 words.

May, 2006

• The Matt Margolis Connection. 2006-05-01 1:12 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here is a quote from the GOP Bloggers “about us” page. 241 words.
• May Day Survived. 2006-05-02 7:16 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  If you’re rabidly opposed to any form of immigration, and are looking for ways to hastily generalize the actions of a few individuals to encompass all 12 million illegal immigrants, you will undoubtedly want to visit Michelle Malkin’s blog to gather ammunition for your logically fallacious argument: The Day To Hate Republicans and Borders? What Borders? and The Pictures You Won’t See. 167 words.
• Malkin Screeches More Propaganda. 2006-05-03 5:16 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  More Malkin immigration hysteria: Reconquista is real. I might even go so far as to call it “screeching,” a word she would no doubt find incredibly offensive. In this particular rant, she applies her trademark “hasty generalizations” along with a dash of “appealing to fear” in order to drive home her point that we are under attack from Mexico. 337 words.
• God\’s Get Out Of Jail Free Card. 2006-05-03 5:24 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s my theological thought for the day: In response to bad news, some people will say things like “don’t worry, God has a plan for you” or “oh well, it’s all part of God’s plan” or “it’s what God wants.” This sort of philosophy tends to come from a certain prominent persuasion of American Protestants which shall remain nameless. 400 words.
• Dvorak on Microsoft. 2006-05-03 7:48 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Hurray, a technology post! 128 words.
• Hot Air Worthy Of Name. 2006-05-04 4:11 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Yet another example of either spin, propaganda, or ignorance from a blogger (this one happens to be conservative) at the new, aptly named, “Hot Air:” Pare Amnistia Ahora! The Cero Peso Campaign. 307 words.
• The Sisters Afraid Of Death. 2006-05-04 5:55 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Hot Air “director and producer” Bryan Preston also gives out free(?) advertising for Ramesh Ponnuru’s book: The Party of Death. 166 words.
• Sisters Must Face Harsh Reality. 2006-05-08 5:49 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Quick followup: Michelle Malkin ever-so-quietly remarked that Andrea Clarke Has Died. Yes, under the care of the newly installed pro-life Dr. Lentz, she died anyway. No word yet on whether the sisters will be issuing an apology to the hospital ethics committee for interfering in their business, or whether Hot Air “director and producer” Bryan Preston will be complimenting the hospital for making the tough but absolutely correct decision to declare Andrea’s case futile. 74 words.
• Atwar Bahjat. 2006-05-08 7:24 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  (See Atwar Bahjat, Revision 2 above.) 296 words.
• Atwar Bahjat (Revision 2). 2006-05-09 1:23 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  (Forgive me while I experiment with different ways to revise blog entries.) 354 words.
• Levin Pummels Straw Kennedy. 2006-05-09 4:36 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I find it illuminating to note when political commentators use the techniques of propaganda. Mark Levin, writing in his National Review blog, recently beat the crap out of an imaginary straw man: Patrick Kennedy & Double Standards. (I found the article via. 317 words.
• BushLiedPerchesDied. 2006-05-09 5:33 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  DailyKos says: Bush lied about that perch. Which was based on the reporting of Americablog, which says: Bush tells German paper he caught the largest fresh-water perch in world history. Which was based on the “reporting” of the Stacy Taylor Show on KLSD-AM in San Diego. 197 words.
• Minutemen Being Watched. 2006-05-10 6:09 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  By Thomas Krehbiel 120 words.
• Blogging Back: Death And Delegation. 2006-05-10 7:41 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m not popular enough to get many comments (sniff), but even if I were I wouldn’t spend much time responding to them, because I figure blog comments should be the territory of the readers. If I find noteworthy comments, though, I’m going to start blogging about them (or maybe that should be blogging back at them), so in that spirit here are some responses to Vince: 326 words.
• Slow News Week. 2006-05-12 5:39 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There is shockingly little to write about. Something big and controversial happened on American Idol the other night, but unfortunately, it was not a large explosion killing everyone involved, so I won’t be exploring that here. 80 words.
• The Week In Counterterrorism. 2006-05-12 6:17 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Mrs. Krehbiel seemed surprised the other night when I mentioned there was evidence that the insurgency was losing in Iraq. In the conservative blogosphere, these types of news bits are reported all the time, along with the obligatory snarking that the liberal, pro-terrorist media is “suppressing” it. Personally, I just think that television media doesn’t consider anything news unless there is eye-popping video to go along with it. 331 words.
• Google Rankings. 2006-05-15 2:11 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Vanity Watch: I currently occupy 6 of the top 10 spots in a Google search for “Thomas Krehbiel.” I also rank within the top 10 for “Tom Krehbiel,” and in the top 20 for “Krehbiel.” Woop! 36 words.
• Genealogy News. 2006-05-15 2:07 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Hi! I’m starting a new blog for genealogy-related news. 62 words.
• Centreville House. 2006-05-15 2:16 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Thanks to zillow.com, I discovered today that the house I grew up in, which used to be at 6035 O’Day Drive, Centreville, VA 22020, now appears to be: 5964 Manorwood Drive, Centreville, VA 20120. 54 words.
• Data Mining: Government vs. Private Sector. 2006-05-15 3:34 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s something I don’t understand about the whole NSA wiretapping thing. Everyone is pretty outraged about the government collecting data. 239 words.
• Miller v. Webb. 2006-05-15 5:47 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In the Virginia Democratic primaries coming up on June 13, it’s Harris Miller vs. Jim Webb. One of those two will go on to challenge George Allen for VA Senate in November. (It’s sort of like American Idol, except it isn’t stupid.) 378 words.
• Today In Counterterrorism (15 May 2006). 2006-05-15 7:42 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A step toward the return of U.S. troops. Since last summer, 39 more Iraqi combat battalions have been rated “Level 2,” for a total of 75 battalions. “Level 2 units gather their own intelligence, conduct their own planning and are deemed ‘in the lead’ during combat operations.” Independent Operations and the Iraqi Army. 140 words.
• Meet The New Reports, Same As The Old Reports. 2006-05-17 10:13 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  At work we’re planning to use SQL Server 2005’s Reporting Services for future reporting needs. (It’s main attraction is the free-ness of it compared with Crystal Reports.) We can do everything the customers need with DataGrids on web pages, but everyone thinks Report Services are cool. I’m pretty indifferent about it. 199 words.
• More Miller v. Webb. 2006-05-17 10:20 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Didn’t get around to posting this yesterday: Following up on my post from Monday about Jim Webb and Harris Miller… 225 words.
• Malkin On O\’Reilly. 2006-05-17 10:33 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Another one I didn’t get around to posting yesterday. 236 words.
• Malkin Goes To 7-11. 2006-05-18 8:26 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  More ignorant anti-immigrant propaganda from Malkin: Michelle Malkin: 9/11, the Pentagon, and our borders. She thoughtfully discusses (ie. rants about) how some of the 9/11 hijackers got fake credentials at an illegal alien “day-labor” hangout in a 7-11 parking lot. 188 words.
• Early Propaganda From The Miller v. Webb Debate. 2006-05-19 6:06 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Interesting post from The Richmond Democrat (aka. Jim Webb shill headquarters): Breaking! Disaster at debate for Harris Miller! 424 words.
• My Review Of The Miller v. Webb Debate. 2006-05-20 4:34 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Disclaimer: I am not at all qualified to judge political debates. 572 words.
• SusanG Jumps To Conclusions… Again. 2006-05-22 1:03 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I think I’ve made it clear in the past that I’m not a fan of DailyKos (especially georgia10 and SusanG.) They’re Their [oops] goal, after all, is to “crash the gate” (a euphemism for overthrowing the government), presumably by any means necessary. Here’s another reason why they are an untrustworthy propaganda machine, from last Friday: Gitmo: The Hell You Can’t Escape By Dying. SusanG quotes an AP story about prisoners attacking guards trying to stop an attempted suicide, and then writes. 383 words.
• Malkin Embraces Greed. 2006-05-22 6:58 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I see Michelle Malkin has fully subjugated her journalistic integrity to Greed… today her RSS feed only contains two-line summaries, so you have to go to her web site to read all of the posts. There, you are subjected to DoubleClick sidebar advertising which on this particular page refresh includes ads for Microsoft Windows Live (beta) and GameTap. No doubt it’s also dropping some cookies on my computer and tracking my IP address and browsing habits. 76 words.
• Elmer and Anna’s Wedding Date. 2006-05-22 7:10 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The other day, I found an invitation to Elmer and Anna’s wedding, which shows the wedding date as April 1, 1926. Previously, I had always thought their wedding was April 1, 1925, because Dad had noted on his slides that Elmer and Anna’s 25th anniversary party was on April 1, 1950. So I suppose that means the 25th anniversary was actually on April 1, 1951. 101 words.
• Miller v. Webb: Observations. 2006-05-23 5:48 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Back to Webb and Miller for a bit. I never did finish my review of the debate, but it’s old news now. 383 words.
• Default Content Changed. 2006-05-24 12:06 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Astute observers will notice that the default content is now blog stuff, instead of the portal page. 29 words.
• Summary Of George Allen\’s Voting Record. 2006-05-24 1:21 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In my continuing effort to figure out what the heck to do with my votes in June and November, here is my home grown summary of some of George Allen’s Voting Record, as reported by Project Vote Smart. I just picked categories that seemed interesting to me. 1,002 words.
• Deducing Webb\’s Platform. 2006-05-24 5:47 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Since Jim Webb and his supporters aren’t going to do it for me, I guess I’ll have to deduce his platform for myself. 532 words.
• Miller\’s Agenda. 2006-05-24 5:52 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Just to be thorough, here is a link to Harris Miller’s Agenda page, complete with bullet points and detailed explanations. (It’s even available in Spanish.) Ahh, that was easy. 29 words.
• Webb\’s Positive Campaign So Far. 2006-05-24 9:26 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  To illustrate my “Webb supporters are just anti-Miller opponents” observation from yesterday, take a look at this sample. 160 words.
• Rebellious George. 2006-05-25 2:28 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In case anyone was worried, I’m now convinced that George Allen is, in fact, the devil. On Hardball last night, the “aw shucks, I’m just a good ol’ Virginia boy” routine was particularly nauseauting. (By the way, do appearances on shows like Hardball during an election campaign count as election advertising? 238 words.
• Blog Advertising Exposed. 2006-05-25 4:06 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  How profitable is punditry? The other day I was ragging on Michelle Malkin for forcing me go to her ad-driven page. She uses the “big name” advertisers like Doubleclick and Fastclick. 328 words.
• Look and Feel Changes. 2006-05-25 4:39 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Astute readers will notice that I am once again fiddling with the “look and feel” of the site, especially the blogs. 45 words.
• Yikes! A Strike Against Miller. 2006-05-25 8:06 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Much has been made of Harris Miller’s ITAA lobbying career. Since I’m a programmer, Information Technology is probably the single most important issue in any campaign for me, so I did a little browsing on their web site to get a sense of what the ITAA actually lobbies for. From all the negative press they were getting, I was bracing myself for something truly evil. 516 words.
• Question Authority (and Bloggers). 2006-05-26 6:14 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A commenter wondered what was wrong with DailyKos making money. I don’t mind Kos making money from his blog, but I think it’s important to understand the motivations of any opinion writer (especially ones in positions of public influence). I think most people would assume that a community-driven “revolution,” as dKos is perceived, is a selfless, non-profit effort (I know I would). 180 words.
• My IT Background. 2006-05-26 7:08 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A commenter wondered how I could possibly be ignorant of H1Bs and the ITAA. 203 words.
• H-1Bs And The Virginia Senate Race. 2006-05-28 10:55 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I saw some comments about me on another blog that made me laugh. Just for the record, I’m not in any way affiliated with Harris Miller, Jim Webb, or George Allen. I’m certainly not an “apologist” for any of them. 634 words.
• Memorial Day Observance. 2006-05-30 2:23 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I observed over the weekend that there is apparently an unspoken rule that anyone with a blog is required to make a Memorial Day post. So here’s mine, a day late: I don’t know anyone that died in a war. My grandfather was wounded in WWI, but did not die, for which I’m quite thankful. 110 words.
• Where’s The Outrage?. 2006-05-30 7:58 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I guess even bloggers have a hard time getting back into the swing of things after a 3-day weekend. The blogosphere seems to be working hard to manufacture outrage today. 289 words.
• Miller\’s Attack Ad. 2006-05-31 2:46 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I saw Harris Miller’s attack ad last night, which was described by Jim Webb’s campaign as “brutal, cynical, [and] negative.” (This from the people who always refer to Miller as “Corporate Lobbyist” Miller.) The first part of the ad talked about Miller’s platform (with specifics!) of firing Donald Rumsfeld and something else I can’t remember. And then as an after thought, it added that Jim Webb supported Republicans in 2000. Not exactly the cut-throat negative attack I was led to expect. 224 words.
• SSIS. 2006-05-31 5:34 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  At work, I’ve been playing with SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) for use in an upcoming project. (“Integration” is one of those fancy “enterprise” terms that means “getting information from different places and organizing it into something useful.”) There’s some value in SSIS, but overall I’m not terribly impressed. In fact, it’s a bit of a pain. 193 words.
• Infosys Single-Handedly Destroying America. 2006-05-31 7:51 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Following up on More H-1b abuses from American Techno-Politics, wherein it was stated that 2,392 H-1B Programmer/Analyst jobs were approved by the DOL in 2005 for under $30k salary (or $15/hour). 333 words.

June, 2006

• Kabul Riot Explained. 2006-06-01 1:43 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Again I’m compelled to recommend the Counterterrorism Blog as an alternate view of sensationalized terrorism-related events in the news. They are surprisingly non-partisan and thoughtful in their reporting. They generally just stick to the facts and explain them thoroughly, which is incredibly refreshing in this day and age. 325 words.
• Haditha Thoughts. 2006-06-01 7:58 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  So Michelle Malkin and her subsidiary Hot Air are still out in front on defending the marines of Haditha. Their “citizen journalism” machine is really working overtime. Oddly enough, though Malkin et al frequently cite moonbats slavering over the incident, I haven’t seen much of it myself. 274 words.
• The Fightin’ Seventh. 2006-06-02 4:08 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Well crap. Looks like I’ll have to start researching two more Congressional candidates. I had previously thought I wouldn’t have to worry about the 7th district because Eric Cantor didn’t have a challenger, but then I read this Breaking News about 7th CD on Virginia Centrist. 46 words.
• An Analysis Of WW\’s Propaganda Machine. 2006-06-02 5:18 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Sorry, this is really long. 1,604 words.
• Progress With Iran?. 2006-06-03 6:35 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been encouraged by recent news regarding Iran. Russia and China appear to be getting on board with sanctions against Iran, and that’s definitely a good thing. The U.S. offer of talks with Iran – if they suspend their nuclear enrichment – is a good step. 384 words.
• National I Don\’t Feel Like Blogging Day. 2006-06-05 6:10 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m officially designating today, “National I Don’t Feel Like Blogging Day.” There’s not much new going on anyway. 46 words.
• It’s The End Of The World…. 2006-06-06 7:51 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Since I have the good fortune to be working with a SQL query that takes about 15 minutes to execute, I have some spare writing time today. Sadly, just like yesterday, there is nothing particularly interesting to write about. Today’s trend in blogosphere conversation: D-Day and End Times. 200 words.
• Avoiding SSIS query timeouts. 2006-06-07 12:36 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Just so I have a record of this: In SSIS, I was trying to pull data from a SQL Server database with a complex, slow SELECT query (written by someone else) which took a good 15 minutes to run. 90 words.
• Quick Demon Book Review. 2006-06-07 1:44 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was reading the excerpt from chapter one of Ann Coulter’s new demon book (released on 6/6/06, get it?, hyuk hyuk) on Townhall.com: Ann Coulter: On the Seventh Day, God Rested and Liberals Schemed. 170 words.
• DS2 and CoD2. 2006-06-07 3:09 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Two quick game reviews. 365 words.
• BlogPac Good or Evil?. 2006-06-07 3:56 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I saw this post a few days ago: BlogPac: For the Netroots, From the Netroots. It’s advertising a site where you can donate to so-called “netroots” candidates, or to this thing called “BlogPac,” which is basically a bank account to fund the MyDD/DailyKos people in improving the “image” of the netroots. (Also, buried in the middle of a paragraph, they also “need to be paid for the work [they] do.” Caveat emptor.) 188 words.
• Win-Win In San Diego. 2006-06-07 4:46 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There were primaries in many states yesterday, but by far the result generating the most spin today is the infamous Bilbray-Busby race to succeed Duke “Jailbird” Cunningham. 179 words.
• Zarqawi Mania. 2006-06-08 3:20 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  As I begin typing this, it’s only 8:06 AM in Virginia. Since I’m sure that Zarqawi will still be leading the news at 8:06 PM and beyond, let me be among the first to say… omg I am sick of hearing about Zarqawi already! Can’t we leave the job of making him a martyr to the jihadists?? 238 words.
• Constitutional Amendments. 2006-06-08 3:46 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Crowhill is back in my reader after some down time, and via. The phony baloney moral rules of liberalism I saw this post: On the gay marriage amendment. 252 words.
• The Right Words For The Right Occasion. 2006-06-08 9:18 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Uh oh, the Virginia Democratic blogosphere is self-destructing again over the “jewbaiting” thing. 267 words.
• WWJ[N]D?. 2006-06-09 4:08 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A quick note about our illustrious 7th district Rep. Eric Cantor: Last night, he voted against the Markey amendment protecting Net Neutrality (along with the majority of other Republicans). What Would James [Nachman] Do? 34 words.
• Hardball Post-Mortem. 2006-06-09 4:26 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I didn’t have any new insights after the Webb/Miller Hardball “debate” last night. Not surprisingly, Webb won the charisma battle. Miller looked kind of shifty and nervous again. 244 words.
• The Spy Who Spews Hot Air. 2006-06-09 4:30 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In a predictable display of immaturity, Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air division sent a “spy” to the Yearly Kos convention. So far, the plant has been struggling mightily to find things to mock… I mean… report on (for a second there I almost forgot that Malkin and co. carry the weighty credentials of “Fox News Analysts”). Infiltrating Yearly Kos: Post 1, for example, contains nothing but… erm… hot air. 148 words.
• A Story About Fearsome Activist Judges. 2006-06-09 7:05 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I haven’t said much about the so-called Marriage Protection Amendment, but I’d like to say a few words about it now. 585 words.
• Who\’s Duping Who?. 2006-06-11 3:27 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s my humorous Virginia politics observation for the day. 184 words.
• What To Watch In The Primary. 2006-06-11 3:29 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I won’t make a prediction on the Virginia Democratic primary Tuesday, because I don’t know anything about politics, and the outcome is relatively unimportant in the global scheme of things anyway. For me, the most interesting thing to observe about the primary results will be whether or not the Virginia Democratic blogosphere represents the typical Virginia Democratic voter. If Webb wins, the VD blogosphere (hyuk, hyuk) echoes the sentiments of “mainstream” Virginia Democrats. 83 words.
• Haditha Marine Speaks. 2006-06-11 3:35 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Good news from Haditha for a change: Marine Says Rules Were Followed. I’d like to officially apologize for initially jumping to the conclusion that those marines were guilty, based solely on initial media reports. (They could still be guilty, but I should know better than to rely on the media for facts.) Anyway, I’m more and more hopeful that the civilians in question were collateral damage instead of murder victims. 78 words.
• The Revolution. 2006-06-12 7:12 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Last night, I watched some of the History Channel’s series The Revolution. It was interesting to me because, much to my chagrin, I had previously not known much about the American Revolution. I noticed something odd though, when viewed through modern eyes: America was basically founded by liberals. 151 words.
• Kos Power Watch. 2006-06-12 7:17 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It’s probably no surprise to regular readers that I don’t think very highly of Daily Kos. They have a sweet siren song, but they’re just power hungry elitists like everyone else in politics. In case you’re wondering, here is georgia10’s advice if you want to be endorsed by the Kos power elite: A Single-Step Guide For Democrats. 171 words.
• The Best Offense Is A Good Suicide. 2006-06-12 7:19 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  TomPaine.com gets a wag of my finger for spreading this blatant propaganda from the lawyer of some Gitmo detainees: A tunnel without end. I agree that when those 3 detainees hanged themselves, it was a sign of desperation – but it was desperate defiance, not depression – you know, the kind of thing an enemy combatant might do. Seeing as how suicide vests are such integral parts of terrorist combat tactics, it seems like a no-brainer that we should take an Islamist suicide as an act of aggression. 139 words.
• Weather Happening In Gulf, Experts Shocked. 2006-06-13 12:44 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s a quick impression of tonight’s NBC Nightly News For Dummies: 238 words.
• Gaza Strip: No Place For A Picnic. 2006-06-13 2:22 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I really feel bad for anyone living in the Gaza strip: Beach deaths ’not Israel’s fault’. The alleged Israeli missiles that hit that beach family turned out to be.. Palestinian landmines. Palestinians should seriously reconsider their government selection. 135 words.
• Rove Fuels Childish Wingnuts. 2006-06-13 2:24 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It’s started. I guess this will be the story of the day: Let the gloating begin: Rove cleared in Plame case. This exemplifies why I think Malkin and Kos are two sides of the same coin: Childishness. 160 words.
• Mild Voter Apathy. 2006-06-13 10:49 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Democracy in action: At 5:30 PM, after the polls had been open for some 11 1/2 hours, Mrs. Krehbiel was voter #30 and I was voter #31 in our precinct. 31 words.
• Site Optimizations. 2006-06-13 10:56 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I optimized the web site so it builds pages about twice as fast. There were a number of unnecessarily redundant database queries that I trimmed out. Of course, my web host isn’t exactly a speed demon so the changes are not apparent. 51 words.
• Post-Primary Pondering. 2006-06-14 5:08 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m pretty disappointed in the primary results, but probably not for reasons anyone would expect. Jim Webb is as good of a candidate as anyone else, and his Reagan Democrat status can only help him in the battle against George Allen. 255 words.
• Post-Primary Partying. 2006-06-14 7:34 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Virginia bloggers are predictably taking credit for getting Jim Webb elected in the primary. 245 words.
• Scientists Gore An Inconvenient Truth. 2006-06-15 4:11 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is one area where Crowhill and I agree: Scientists respond to Gore. On An Inconvenient Truth, apparently some Canadian climate experts think… let me get this right… “Gore’s circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic.” Ouch! 222 words.
• Amateur Webb-Bashing Already Started. 2006-06-15 4:18 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Two days after the primary, Virginia conservative bloggers are already jumping into the mix with their own amateur campaigning, bashing Webb and telling us why Virginians shouldn’t vote for him. 111 words.
• Why I Don\’t Think We Invaded Iraq Just For Oil. 2006-06-15 6:40 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Someone recently asked me how I could possibly believe we didn’t invade Iraq just for their oil. (You know who you are!) At the time I didn’t have a ready answer, but here’s some reasons. 776 words.
• Virtucon Tries A Red Herring. 2006-06-16 12:44 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s an example of the seedy underbelly lying beneath George Allen’s “good ol’ boy” exterior – an example of the kind of “common sense leadership” he inspires in his campaign workers: Webb Campaign Steals Marvel Comics “How-To” Art For Flyer. I suppose we’ll be seeing quite a bit more of this kind of rhetoric in the near future. 200 words.
• An Inconvenient Motivation. 2006-06-16 12:38 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Thanks to Dave T. for pointing this out: An embarrassment to Australian science. Apparently the guy that wrote that article bashing Gore’s movie has a monetary interest in debunking global warming. Doh! 32 words.
• The Sock Puppets Are Winning. 2006-06-16 7:46 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Virtucon, apparently the unofficial insult comic blog for the Allen campaign, informed us that Virginians Like Their U.S. Senators – Both of Them. Looks pretty grim. For some bizarre reason, Virginia seems to like having a sock puppet for a Senator. 221 words.
• The Dixie Chicks Witch Hunt. 2006-06-19 2:11 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ll admit I’m not a Dixie Chicks fan (though their latest album is pretty good). Most of the Chicks’ material is about girlie stuff – you know, how men are lyin’ cheatin’ bastards and so forth – that doesn’t particularly resonate with me. And – I hesitate to mention this because it might brand me a terrorist-sympathizer – I’m not fond of bluegrassy country music in general. 383 words.
• How To Spin A Non-Indictment. 2006-06-19 2:34 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Compare and contrast. 58 words.
• The New Boss. 2006-06-19 6:35 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The Episcopal Church elected a new Presiding Bishop Sunday. Oh yeah, and she’s a woman. This is perceived as a bold move by American Anglicans. 202 words.
• The Senate Debate Wars, Episode I. 2006-06-20 5:28 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Sigh. Can’t politicians ever agree on anything? 258 words.
• Long-Range Missiles Are So 1986. 2006-06-20 6:30 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ll admit I don’t know much about North Korea or why it’s part of the “axis of evil.” (Other than the information found in the excellent documentary Team America: World Police.) Maybe I should read up on that. Especially because of recent news that North Korea is getting ready to test a missile that could potentially reach the west coast. Huh? 245 words.
• Repeal The Stamp Act!. 2006-06-21 6:01 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It would appear that the majority of people in the ECUSA (U.S. Episcopal Church), like our forefathers of the American Revolution defying the Stamp Act of 1765, prefer to thumb their noses at Mother England and the Windsor Report. Maybe that’s a slight over-dramatization of it, but it certainly doesn’t look like there’s much enthusiasm in the General Convention for apologizing about the consecration of Gene Robinson or the blessing of same-sex marriages, let alone reversing those actions. So I guess that means a schism of some sort is inevitable. 179 words.
• Stamp Act Repeal, Part II. 2006-06-22 5:53 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I blogged too soon about the ECUSA – the General Convention, at the last minute, caved in to Mother England. In response to the Windsor Report, the House of Bishops voted to “exercise restraint” in electing bishops “whose manner of life presents a challenge” to the Anglican Communion. While not technically a ban on electing gay bishops, it could be interpreted that way, because it would now take a super amazing gay priest to justify wading through all this political fallout again. 123 words.
• Well-Intentioned Authoritarian Lunkheads. 2006-06-22 6:16 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I got an email recently exhorting me to wear red on Fridays to show my support for our troops. I am sure it was intended to be a friendly gesture of patriotism. But that being said, I was outraged! 137 words.
• Markos Gains The Moral Bilgewater. 2006-06-22 10:15 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I think of Markos as a shrewd latter-day dot-com entrepreneur trying to exploit progressives (actually, it’s more like he’s successfully exploiting progressives). But then I saw Monday’s Midday open thread, and started to think that his dot-com success must be pure luck, because he’s clearly prone to sticking his foot in his mouth. It pains me to point out the same thing that Little Green Footballs did, but lest it be forgotten amidst all the “Ko$ola” accusations swirling around (which I might comment about later) this bit of Kos wisdom deserves to be highlighted again. 411 words.
• This Week In The Senate Race. 2006-06-23 6:27 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A new Zogby poll shows Allen leading Webb by a mere 5.3 points. Democrat blogs are validated, Republican blogs will talk about why political polls are irrelevant. (Isn’t it funny how opinion polls are so useful to support a position, but useless for opposing a position?) Anyway, don’t get too excited, because most people feel Zogby is not a very reliable poll. 233 words.
• Malkin Coordinates Lockstep Attack On NY Times. 2006-06-23 6:57 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It seems sort of ironic that right after wingnut bloggers got done accusing liberal bloggers of “going into lockstep” and “coordinating attacks” and blindly following Markos’s marching orders and whatnot, we find Michelle Malkin, icon of the rightwing blogosphere, encouraging her readers to write the NY Times to express her outrage: NYTimes Blabbermouths Strike Again. GOP Bloggers follows orders: Fight Back Against Media Traitors! Who else will fall into lockstep and repeat Malkin’s call to write to the NY Times? 95 words.
• Disturbing Daily Kos Analogy. 2006-06-26 2:17 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I won’t comment on the so-called Ko$ola scandal, since you can read about it in excruciating detail elsewhere (see background below). Suffice it to say it just reinforces, albeit circumstantially, my existing suspicions about Daily Kos. 316 words.
• Cut-and-Run Iraqis?. 2006-06-27 4:32 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I don’t really feel like writing today (it’s been raining like crazy here on the East Coast, which sucks all the life out of me), but here’s a quick observation: Watching the politics of Iraq is amusing sometimes. I’m pretty sure that Republicans and Democrats and all of America want the exact same thing – for the Iraqi army to defend their own country – yet somehow it’s a divisive, partisan issue. Lately, it looks like the Iraqis might trump everyone by kicking us out. 93 words.
• Don\’t Tread On Israel. 2006-06-28 3:13 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Anyone who thinks the U.S. is a warmongering power should take a look at Israel and rethink that position. It’s not very humanitarian of me, but I kind of admire them for their response to Palestinian terrorists snatching one of their soldiers over the weekend and holding him hostage. Israel basically said, “We will not negotiate – either give him back NOW or we will take him back.” And they meant it. 139 words.
• Pagan Flag Worship Still An Elusive Dream. 2006-06-28 5:03 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Just for the record, I think the flag protection amendment idea is just as silly as the marriage protection amendment idea, if not more so. Why on earth does a flag need so much protection? And why the flag and not anything else? 177 words.
• Senate Debating The Wrong Metric?. 2006-06-28 6:47 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The war in the Senate over the “war” in Iraq was about timetables – Democrats wanted a timetable, but Republicans didn’t. I think “time” was the wrong metric, though. Democrats should have been questioning Iraq in terms of “deliverables.” Ie., what exactly constitutes “victory” in Iraq? 108 words.
• The Dullest Of Blog Entries. 2006-06-30 6:27 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  They say the difference between a “real writer” and a “struggling writer” is in their ability to write when they don’t feel like writing. So in that spirit, I am now writing a blog entry even though I don’t particularly feel like it and there is nothing particularly interesting to write about. 250 words.

July, 2006

• Last Week In The Virginia Senate Race. 2006-07-03 2:08 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Dick Wadhams, campaign manager for George Allen, and Steve Jarding, spokesman for Jim Webb, spent the week trading insults over the flag burning amendment (Allen is for it, Webb opposes it). The unfortunately-named Wadhams was trying to bait Webb into “blowing up” by deliberately pushing his buttons. As far as I can tell, nothing in the way of intelligent debate occurred. 130 words.
• The Lynchmobosphere Stalks The NY Times. 2006-07-03 6:11 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m pretty baffled about the outrage over the NY Times “revealing” the government’s SWIFT-monitoring program. And as if the SWIFT thing weren’t enough, Michelle Malkin and the puppet minions of the “wingnutosphere” were even further enraged when the NY Times published photos and locations of Donald Rumsfeld and other’s vacation spots. It turns out the NYT did so with Rumsfeld’s permission, but Malkin et al were not deterred in staging a full-scale assault: They’re protesting at the NYT building and publishing the home phone numbers and addresses of NYT editors in retaliation. 183 words.
• North Korea Tests Catapults. 2006-07-05 6:43 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Looks like North Korea is now rivaling Iran for the Tinpot Dictator Of the Month award. But for some reason I still have a hard time taking the ol’ Democratic People’s Republic of Korea seriously. Maybe it was that whole “I’m so rone-ry” song in Team America: World Police that did it. 169 words.
• Smackdown Tonight. 2006-07-06 3:28 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There’s an all-out smackdown happening tonight on MSNBC: The debate between People-Powered Hero Ned Lamont and the Evil, Traitorous Joe Lieberman. They are facing off soon in the Connecticut Democratic primary. 119 words.
• Thursday\’s Random Links That Don\’t Suck. 2006-07-07 1:08 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Let’s face it: 99.9% of the hyperlinks you follow on the Internet lead to content that sucks. To combat this phenomenon, I’m presenting a few topical links that don’t suck. 79 words.
• Friday’s Random Links That Don’t Suck. 2006-07-07 7:51 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Yeah, I know, I’m being lazy today. 91 words.
• Taking The Plunge. 2006-07-10 3:15 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I don’t normally write much on weekends, but I’m accepting the challenge of the “Weekend Without Echoes” proposed by SLANTblog for July 21-23. Not that my participation means much. But I think it’s a great idea, even if it’s kind of sad that it requires an “event” to get people to stop being snarky. 329 words.
• Alternate View On Dwindling Church Attendance. 2006-07-10 6:21 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve always found it annoying when people disparage religion as if it were a hopelessly outdated fad (“that’s soooo 1950s”). Lately I find it even more annoying when conservatives disparage the Episcopal Church. It reminds me of high school cliques – Catholic writers refer to the Episcopal Church the same way that football jocks refer to the chess club. 321 words.
• Weekend Senate Update. 2006-07-10 7:42 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I didn’t see Webb and Allen on Stephanopoulos yesterday, so I don’t have any comment about it. I’ve already made up my mind about the Senate race anyway. There’s no point in confusing the issue by listening to the candidates. 118 words.
• Monday’s Informative Links. 2006-07-10 7:56 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Another in my new series of lazy blogging link-fests, otherwise known as “the things I didn’t have anything to add to.” Feel free to skip if you don’t care what I think is informative reading. 123 words.
• Thoughts On Slavery Reparations. 2006-07-11 6:12 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Yesterday I linked to a story about reparations over slavery. It was also mentioned on the bastion of multicultural sensitivity, Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air blog. 269 words.
• Israel At War?. 2006-07-12 3:55 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  My knowledge of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict is limited, but recent news seems to suggest that the U.S. probably backed Israel for no other reason than the fact that they were the only ones around that didn’t act like impetuous toddlers: Israel sends tanks into Lebanon after Hezbollah attack. Golly, that was a poorly constructed sentence. Thankfully I don’t use a grammar checker. 240 words.
• Disgusting But Predictable Hypocrisy From RedState. 2006-07-12 5:41 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is pretty funny. It’s hard to quantify the amount of hypocrisy in this RedState post: Disgusting: DCCC Uses Dead Soldiers to Raise Money. Republicans have been using the deaths of Americans on 9/11 for political gain about, oh, every day since 9/11. 105 words.
• Wednesday’s Informative Links. 2006-07-12 5:47 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I actually collected these yesterday and forgot to post them. 125 words.
• Sad Story From Chincoteague. 2006-07-13 4:05 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  On the radio this morning I heard about a 16-year-old Chincoteague teen with Hodgkin’s Disease who refuses to undergo a second round of chemotherapy treatment, because the first round didn’t work and he didn’t tolerate the chemo very well. He wants to pursue alternative treatments, and his parents support him. It’s a sad story, but to my way of thinking, not terribly controversial. 336 words.
• Old News Closed. 2006-07-14 6:03 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m no longer adding to the “Old News” category. 35 words.
• Televisions and Pianos. 2006-07-14 6:28 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  As you can probably tell, I’ve renamed the Genealogy News to Household News. I figure I can combine both topics into one category, and perhaps have enough material to post something once a month or so. 384 words.
• An Island For Israel?. 2006-07-14 7:36 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Nothing to talk about today except Israel and Lebanon. I can sum it up pretty quickly: They’re, um, shooting at each other. Again. 221 words.
• Israel On The March. 2006-07-17 6:51 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Guess what? Israel is invading Lebanon. Well, kind of. 275 words.
• ADD Media And Belligerentive Bloggers. 2006-07-18 5:59 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Apparently an outbreak of war between two countries only warrants a few days of major media coverage. The CNN feed today mainly covered Bush’s un-newsworthy epithet and details of Westerners “fleeing” Lebanon. Pretty much nothing from CNN about the fighting itself or any of the politics surrounding it. 276 words.
• The Baffling Case Of Bush And The Stem Cells. 2006-07-19 2:30 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m baffled over this stem cell thing going on in Congress right now. Which is not unusual: Congress generally doesn’t make much sense to me. But I digress. 176 words.
• Surely He Can\’t Be Serious. 2006-07-19 6:21 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I normally consider the Counterterrorism Blog an excellent source of (real) news and insights. This post is no different: The Israeli Incursion into Lebanon: Strategic Considerations. But I have to wonder about one seemingly incongruous point Mr. Gartenstein-Ross makes. 278 words.
• Happy Thoughts On Capital Punishment. 2006-07-20 11:18 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  On the radio this morning, they were discussing the impending execution of Brandon Wayne Hedrick, who chose to die by the electric chair instead of by lethal injection. It’s been a big story here in Virginia for the last few days. The guest commentary on the radio show came from the leader of some group opposed to capital punishment. 379 words.
• Mathematically, Still On The Brink. 2006-07-21 5:18 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Back in March, I mathematically concluded that 117 Iraqis would have to die every day for the situation in Iraq to be correctly labeled a “civil war.” The numbers are getting close, but they aren’t there yet. According to a recent report, 14,000 Iraqis have died in the first half of 2006. That works out to an average of around, say, 75 deaths every day. 96 words.
• Time To Start Wrapping It Up?. 2006-07-21 5:25 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Ruh roh: Worst Case Scenario: Hezbollah’s Conventional Forces. When Bill Roggio says the results of ground fighting between Israeli troops and Hezbollah are “disquieting,” it makes me a little nervous. According to his sources, the Hezbollah ground forces are much stronger than anyone expected. 256 words.
• Welcome To My Weekend Without Echoes. 2006-07-22 12:06 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A Virginia “Weekend Without Echoes” post by Thomas Krehbiel 380 words.
• Creating Content From A Substantive-less Blogosphere. 2006-07-22 12:19 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A Virginia “Weekend Without Echoes” post by Thomas Krehbiel 397 words.
• The Moral Authority Of The Bible. 2006-07-22 9:46 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A Virginia “Weekend Without Echoes” post by Thomas Krehbiel 503 words.
• My Virginia Representatives In Action. 2006-07-23 8:24 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A Virginia “Weekend Without Echoes” post by Thomas Krehbiel 400 words.
• More From Chincoteague. 2006-07-24 3:53 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I heard an update on the story of that 16-year-old from Chincoteague this morning on the radio: The state is forcing him to undergo chemotherapy again. The Richmond Times-Dispatch has a few more details: Teen loses bid to pick treatment. They still don’t say what the odds of successful treatment are, but Jimmy Barrett on the radio implied they were not too good. 90 words.
• The Silence Of The Left On Israel. 2006-07-24 7:50 PM.
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  I’ve seen some mutterings, most recently at CJR Daily, about why the liberal blogosphere is ignoring the Israel/Hezbollah/Hamas conflict going on right now. To me, it’s pretty simple, and I’m a little surprised it isn’t common knowledge. It has nothing to do with the “complexity” of the Middle East. 173 words.
• Hopefully, CNN Is Just Confused. 2006-07-26 4:16 PM.
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  I was home sick yesterday, and I saw a somewhat distressing report on CNN. The British anchorwoman reported that Condoleeza Rice had offered a cease-fire proposal to Lebanon that included an international peacekeeping force and a prisoner swap. Nooooooo! 142 words.
• Not A Slam Dunk For Me Yet. 2006-07-26 8:06 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Naomi Oreskes recently wrote a piece in the LA Times telling us about the most recent scientific consensus on global warming: Global Warming – Signed, Sealed and Delivered. 423 words.
• Yesterday. 2006-07-28 2:00 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Yesterday I found basically nothing interesting in the news or blogosphere. I wrote a few paragraphs about Dude, Where’s Your Independence? but when I got home I decided not to embarass myself by posting it because it suffered from what I like to call “pointless rambling crapiness.” So today I’ll just give you the link and say I found Jarding’s attack on George Allen kind of childish. 75 words.
• Somalia The New Afghanistan?. 2006-07-28 5:06 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Now here’s something interesting that nobody’s talking about: Somali minister assassinated. By “interesting,” I really mean “scary,” but at least it’s not the same old “more ways that the UN and the mainstream media hate Israel and love terrorists” news from the Middle East. 321 words.
• ThatViralMarketerEmily. 2006-07-28 6:26 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Some weeks ago, I saw a post somewhere in the Virginia blogosphere about ThatGirlEmily’s blog. I jotted down the link on the 19th and wrote: “I think it’s contrived, but it’s compelling in a can’t-look-away-from-the-train-wreck kind of way: That Girl Emily, the blog of a woman’s revenge against her cheating husband.” It never ended up on my blog, though, because it’s more “pop culture” than “culture wars” material. 247 words.
• New Email Formatting. 2006-07-29 3:35 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is a test post. 38 words.
• Where’s An EMP When You Need One. 2006-07-31 6:51 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was reading over this typically excellent QandO post, Israel and Qana and “net wars,” and pondering some ways to counter Hezbollah’s advantage. (That advantage being, of course, that they can kill civilians whenever they want without any consequences.) It’s looking more and more like brute force isn’t going to work in a modern war with Islamic terrorists, thanks to the ever-present international media scrutiny. 376 words.

August, 2006

• Resistance Is Futile? Part 1. 2006-08-02 2:19 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is the first in a three-part ramble on global warming, which ironically begins on a day when it was close to 100 degrees here in Virginia. 359 words.
• Imbalance In Casualty Coverage. 2006-08-02 5:52 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There’s been a lot grumbling in the right-wing blogosphere over how much more attention the media is paying to the civilian casualties in Lebanon as opposed to the civilian casualties in Israel. Most accuse the media of a pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic bias, as is their stock-in-trade. 163 words.
• Resistance Is Futile? Part 2. 2006-08-02 11:41 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is the second in a three-part ramble on global warming. See also Part 1. 389 words.
• Resistance Is Futile? Part 3. 2006-08-03 8:43 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is the third in a three-part ramble on global warming. See also Part 1 and Part 2. 419 words.
• Presidential Semantics. 2006-08-04 8:02 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The local feud between SLANTblog and Skeptical Observer has inspired me to remove the following “big name” feud blogs from my newsreader: Daily Kos, GOP Bloggers, Hot Air, Little Green Footballs, Michelle Malkin, and RedState. Daily Kos has been living in a vacuum-sealed Leiberman/Lamont bubble for months now. The other four pour out non-stop snarkiness, day after day after day after day, and it’s gotten pretty tiresome. 308 words.
• Conspiracy Theories On The Rise. 2006-08-08 1:40 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  On the way home yesterday, I heard Mac Watson (voted Richmond’s most annoying talk show host) talking to callers about conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11. I was compelled, because Mac Watson normally only talks about incredibly superficial topics during the time I drive home (yesterday I left later than usual). I was further intrigued, because I had also read a CNN story yesterday about how conspiracy theorists were supposedly gaining more credibility because a couple of people with college teaching credentials are on board with the theory. 519 words.
• If Ned Wins…. 2006-08-09 1:56 AM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Blogspot readers: This is yet another post that didn’t get posted on the first try. Yes, Blogspot sucks that much. But hey, it’s free. 97 words.
• It’s Pandemo-Ned-ium. 2006-08-09 3:35 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I haven’t read any news or commentary yet today, mostly because I don’t particularly want to hear anyone gloating about Ned Lamont. His primary win is pretty depressing news. 247 words.
• All This Spin Is Making Me Dizzy. 2006-08-09 8:14 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I just dropped Media Matters from my news reader, thanks to this ridiculously insulting post-primary propaganda: Fox News’ Cameron misrepresented election returns to argue that Lieberman had support among “blue-collar” voters. I thought Media Matters was a media watchdog blog that pointed out instances of conservative bias, but as I’ve grown to suspect and as that post clearly shows, it’s really a media watchdog blog that highlights failures to promote liberal bias. 228 words.
• People’s Republic Of The Democratic Party?. 2006-08-10 5:46 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There’s a lot of scary language in the discussions from Democrats about Lieberman running as an Independent. Everyone is basically calling Lieberman a scurrilous traitor for not succumbing to the will of the Democratic Party. It’s very disturbing – I think it’s because I always thought our elected representatives were supposed to represent The People, not The Party. 95 words.
• Zen Terrorism. 2006-08-10 7:28 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This terrorist plot to blow up planes over the Atlantic doesn’t make much sense to me, when you consider that media coverage is a terrorist’s greatest ally. 71 words.
• Cockroach Victory. 2006-08-11 4:22 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Just when you thought there wasn’t enough propaganda in the world, here comes Hezbollah declaring victory in their little war against Israel. Not only is it a little premature, but it’s sort of like cockroaches declaring they’ve won because they survived a nuclear bomb. Their countryside is ruined, their city’s destroyed, half their population is dead, but they can still crawl out of their underground hiding places and raise their creepy forelimbs in a cheer, so they think they’ve “beaten” the enemy. 85 words.
• Shut-Out Eleven Straight Years. 2006-08-11 4:40 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Reading about terrorist tactics on the Counterterrorism Blog is amusing sometimes. According to an article by Evan Kohlmann, terrorists have to travel to distant camps to “train” for mixing and sneaking liquid explosives onto airplanes, and they’ve been working on this plan since 1995. I mean, come on. 126 words.
• Doom 3 Review. 2006-08-14 2:34 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I finished Doom 3 yesterday. Overall, I liked it a lot. It was a very satisfying single-player experience. 425 words.
• Cease-Fire Sounds Doomed. 2006-08-14 5:14 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  News that Hezbollah has told the Lebanese army that they’ll have to pry their (Iranian) guns from their cold, dead fingers doesn’t bode too well for the cease-fire: Lebanon’s ‘real’ soldiers are put in their place. But then one might argue that there shouldn’t even be a cease-fire, because Hezbollah hasn’t returned the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers and won’t be abiding by any International laws or U.N. resolutions anytime soon, and will continue to take hostages and launch rockets whenever they feel like it. 142 words.
• Missing Egyptians Caught… In Richmond??. 2006-08-14 6:21 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Nice. They caught all of the 11 missing Egyptian students: All Missing Egyptian Students in Custody. I’m glad they caught up with the last two, but, erm, what were they doing in Richmond? 134 words.
• My Understanding Of Hezbollah. 2006-08-15 3:25 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Since I’ve thrown all the “big name” liberal blogs out of my reader, I’ve been evaluating various other left-leaning blogs, looking for one or two that aren’t so obsessed with Ned Lamont. Anyway, today I ran across this post on The Agonist: Imagine. 292 words.
• The War Reviews Keep Coming In. 2006-08-15 7:19 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Bill Roggio thinks Hezbollah scored a huge victory: After Action Report: Winners and Losers in the Hezbollah-Israel War. 234 words.
• What I’ve Learned From Allen’s Racial Slur. 2006-08-16 5:06 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve learned… a new racial slur! Though I’m still not quite clear what ethnicity it’s supposed to demean. Indians? 125 words.
• Media Reports Of Lebanese Reconstruction. 2006-08-17 2:16 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve seen several media reports discussing the reconstruction in southern Lebanon, all of which seem to go out of their way to mention that Hezbollah is right there to help out the poor displaced citizens with food, medicine, and money, while everyone else’s relief efforts are slow and ineffectual. The implication, of course, is that Hezbollah is a powerful organization, and much better suited to govern southern Lebanon than anyone else. 298 words.
• Other Important News. 2006-08-18 2:39 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Now that the situation with Israel, Hezbollah, and Lebanon is completely solved, we can turn our attention to other important news. No, not Iraq, silly. I mean the all-important JonBenet Ramsey case! 77 words.
• NY Times Reports Haditha Non-News. 2006-08-18 3:14 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Blogspot readers: This was originally posted August 18, 2006, 11:14am, but didn’t make it to Blogspot the first time. 242 words.
• My Blog Worth. 2006-08-21 1:17 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is pretty funny. 15 words.
• Explicit Complicity. 2006-08-21 2:16 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was reading a CNN story about the recent Israeli commando raid into Lebanon, and this quote jumped out at me. 134 words.
• The Next Move In The Iranian Chess Match. 2006-08-22 1:36 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Let’s check in with Iran to see how the diplomacy to stop the next World War is going. Previously, the UN offered a package of incentives to Iran for them to stop enriching uranium, with the unprecedented support of Russia and China. I don’t remember ever hearing what the incentives actually were, but presumably it was good stuff. 210 words.
• Webb Pulls Even… Somehow. 2006-08-22 5:10 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is pretty amazing: Despite Webb’s under-funded non-campaign, a new SurveyUSA poll shows he’s now basically tied with Allen, 48-45. Not that I’m complaining, but how does he do it? He did the same thing to Harris Miller in the primary – no money, no advertising, no message – and he still won. 53 words.
• Just Get It Over With. 2006-08-22 6:22 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The big story here in Richmond is whether Ricky Gray will receive life in prison or the death penalty for the Harvey family murders. The jury is currently in its second day of deliberating punishment (it took them all of 30 minutes to decide he was guilty). 273 words.
• Bring On The Sanctions. 2006-08-23 4:01 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Great news! Iran is still leading us toward the next World War! They refused the package of incentives the UN offered for them to give up nuclear enrichment, offering instead a meaningless counter-proposal. 221 words.
• A Look At Iraq, Part 1. 2006-08-23 9:07 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been thinking about Iraq lately. For some reason, this week seems like a good time to re-evaluate what’s going on there. 523 words.
• Reason Prevails In Prague. 2006-08-24 7:23 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I, for one, am glad they kicked Pluto out of the Solar System, rather than re-defining the planets to include it. The last thing our Solar System needs is a tenth planet named after Xena, Warrior Princess. 37 words.
• A Look At Iraq, Part 2. 2006-08-25 2:28 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Last time, we learned that, for our own interests and those of the civilians in Iraq, we can’t leave until the Iraqi government can function on its own. Otherwise, we leave Iraq ripe for takeover, just like Somalia is now. 392 words.
• Slow Monday. 2006-08-28 2:16 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Ye gods, there’s nothing at all to write about. The Islamic Courts Union continues to take over Somalia, making them a possible future target in the war on terror. The media continues to desperately hope that a massive super-hurricane blows into New Orleans this season. 82 words.
• High School Bible Study?. 2006-08-28 7:53 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s something different from the usual body counts and scare-mongering hurricane watches: While skimming over Ahh, the Tolerance of Mudcat Sanders on LeanLeft, I saw that one of the platforms of the Democratic Party in Alabama is to teach Bible literacy in public schools. I can’t verify whether that’s actually true or not, since nobody gave me a convenient link to follow and the Alabama Democratic Party web page is hopelessly complicated, but let’s assume it’s true. 230 words.
• Sharia Creeps Into Zanzibar. 2006-08-31 3:28 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m sure my throngs of adoring fans have wondered what’s up: It’s been a combination of a slow news week and a busy work week. Anyway, today I noticed this curious example of impending Sharia law on CNN: Zanizibar Muslim leader: Ban Freddie Mercury party. I, for one, was personally offended by this news because Queen is one of the most musically-talented and technologically-superior bands in history, and any move to ban a celebration of their members or their work is tantamount to crushing the human creative spirit under the iron bootheel of fascism. 105 words.
• Ernesto, Day 1. 2006-08-31 4:25 PM.
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  We’re hunkering down for Ernesto here in Richmond. In the spirit of those brave bloggers who fought off the looters and stayed online in New Orleans last year, I’ll also try to stay online and report on this disaster. 245 words.
• A Pause To Scold Blogspot. 2006-08-31 6:23 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  On the off chance anyone is reading this from a Blogger or Feedburner RSS feed, you might be wondering about the seemingly random order of posts. For example, this post that I wrote first thing Monday morning would have just shown up in the RSS feed today (Thursday). The reason? 123 words.
• Ernesto, Day 1 Update. 2006-08-31 9:40 PM.
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  A quick update. The radio said Ernesto was racing toward the coastline, now at tropical storm strength. They said it will be impacting our weather starting tomorrow morning, so it’s vitally important that we stay tuned to Richmond’s Morning News with Jimmy Barrett for all our weather-related news. 142 words.

September, 2006

• Ernesto, Day 2. 2006-09-01 6:14 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Back for a second. Will post while I can. Ernesto is still bearing down on us. 276 words.
• Ernesto Wrap-up. 2006-09-05 1:23 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Sadly, Ernesto timed its appearance to coincide with Labor Day weekend, so several great comedic posts went unwritten by this not-very-dedicated blogger. You’ll just have to trust me when I say they would have been hilarious. Unless you don’t think parodies of frenetic media coverage of natural disasters is funny, or you suffered some unfortunate personal loss of life or property from the storm, in which case you probably would have been shocked and enraged by my lack of sensitivity. 92 words.
• Removing Collection Elements During Enumeration. 2006-09-05 5:52 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Another in a series of random programming tips by Thomas Krehbiel, mostly to help me remember them in the future. 270 words.
• Same Propaganda, Different Week. 2006-09-05 8:12 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It’s still hard to find anything meaningful to write about in all this political blather over Iraq. Republicans say we have to stay in Iraq to stabilize the region and fight the growing terrorist threat, blah, blah blah. Democrats say we have to leave Iraq to stabilize the region and the terrorists will die out, blah, blah blah (and, by the way, fire Rumsfeld). 114 words.
• Aw, Leave The Poor Guy Alone. 2006-09-06 5:01 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It seems like everyone thinks Donald Rumsfeld is single-handedly responsible for everything bad that’s happened over the last 5 years, and simply removing him from office will immediately restore the world to the happy Utopian paradise it was before 2001. Personally I think people are giving him a little too much credit. It’s like an owner firing the head coach of a losing football team in the middle of the season in the hope that it will “spark” the team to win more. 232 words.
• Taliban Who?. 2006-09-07 6:08 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I am shocked – shocked! – that nobody is talking about Katie. (At least nobody in my daily reads.) Perhaps it’s because she behaves just like any other generic anchor chained to a news entertainment business that’s desperate for ratings. 271 words.
• The Fronts Are Everywhere. 2006-09-08 4:32 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  President Bush has been pouring on the rhetoric lately and claiming that Iraq is The Front in the global war on terror, or something to that effect. I think that’s a bit misleading. I agree that it’s one of the fronts in “the war,” but I think there are quite a few other fronts, too. 118 words.
• Rush On The War. 2006-09-08 7:24 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Rush Limbaugh sounded off on Katie’s “free speech” segment last night, because if there’s one thing Rush Limbaugh needs, it’s a public forum to express his opinions. Overall I thought his spiel was okay, but he snuck in a couple of head-scratchers. 290 words.
• My 9/11 Tribute. 2006-09-11 2:03 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  As you know, today is the anniversary of William Wallace’s defeat of the English at Stirling Bridge. Let’s all take a moment to remember where we were on that fateful day. 390 words.
• On 8mm Film Transfer. 2006-09-11 5:26 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Once again I find myself pondering how to cost effectively transfer 8mm films to a digital format, for genealogical and archival purposes. Here are some notes so I don’t forget them. 417 words.
• StringBuilder vs. Concatenation. 2006-09-11 6:08 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Another in a series of random programming tips by Thomas Krehbiel, mostly to help me remember them in the future. 226 words.
• George Allen On The Radio. 2006-09-11 7:29 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Oh… I heard George Allen briefly on the radio this morning (you can find the interview at WRVA’s site, if you have the slightest interest in anything a politician has to say). I don’t remember much of anything he said during the interview, except something about trying to be a father figure for one of his neighbor’s kids who had lost his father in the Pentagon attack on 9/11 (gag), but I explicitly remember the way he ended the interview. 137 words.
• The Virginia 9/11 Memorial Post Toll. 2006-09-11 7:37 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Humans have a particular fascination with Death Tolls, so in that spirit, I’d like to create the Virginia 9/11 Memorial Post Toll. 156 words.
• Olberman Isn’t Above Spin, Either. 2006-09-13 2:47 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Keith Olberman’s This Hole In The Ground speech is making the rounds of liberal blogs. The Agonist went so far as to call the speech “true courage.” 437 words.
• A Couple Of Links. 2006-09-13 8:22 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It’s been a busy day building SSIS custom data source components, plus there’s nothing new or interesting happening in the world today, unless you’re interested in why Anna Nichole Smith’s son died. 193 words.
• Bits From The News. 2006-09-14 8:22 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Links = Laziness. 199 words.
• Updated Mission Statement, September 2006. 2006-09-15 5:50 PM.
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  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I noticed I hadn’t updated my mission statement on the Blogspot front page in ages, so here’s a new revision, which was largely stolen from my introductory Weekend Without Echoes post, which could probably be considered some sort of irony. 415 words.
• It’s Time For An Exciting Senate Update!. 2006-09-15 7:23 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In case you’re wondering what’s going on in the Virginia senate race, here’s a quick update: Jim Webb’s staffers made fun of something George Allen said, which was echoed and amplified in the Virginia liberal blogosphere. Then George Allen’s staffers made fun of something Jim Webb said, which was echoed and amplified in the Virginia conservative blogosphere. This process has repeated itself about seventy-three times. 183 words.
• Debate Watched Successfully. 2006-09-18 2:56 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It was sometimes hard to hear the debate/dual-interview on Meet The Press over Mrs. Krehbiel’s virulent cursing whenever George Allen spoke, but I observed: George Allen is definitely a professional politician; that is, he failed to answer almost every single question directly. Instead, he recited Bush’s talking points almost word-for-word. I also happily noted that Jim Webb has made great progress in cutting the “ums” out of his speaking. 146 words.
• Digital Fortress. 2006-09-18 5:29 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I finished Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress last night. It’s a very typical Dan Brown novel (that is, sort of a cross between the Hardy Boys and Oliver Stone’s JFK), but I didn’t think it was as good as DaVinci Code and Angels & Demons. Um, perhaps I should say that it’s below the quality level found in DaVinci Code and Angels & Demons, because I wouldn’t want to give the impression that any Dan Brown novel is “good.” At best, I’d call them “kind of entertaining.” 168 words.
• Washington at Dallas. 2006-09-18 6:04 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Ugh. It was embarrassing to watch. The first week, I thought the Redskins looked average; last night, they looked horrible. 134 words.
• Who Broke Up With Who?. 2006-09-19 5:55 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Looks like the media focus for today is the important topic of whether or not President Bush will get into a fist-fight with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the hallways of the UN. Serious Jerry Springer fans want to know. 143 words.
• Krehbiel’s Korner. 2006-09-20 11:09 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The Official Homepage Of Thomas Krehbiel 332 words.
• New Styles. 2006-09-21 12:19 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  You’ve probably noticed that I’ve given the web site yet another facelift today. My goal was to clean up the style sheet and get rid of a lot of tables. I’m still aiming for a “clean and simple” look – the antithesis of what most modern web pages look like. 66 words.
• String Constants. 2006-09-21 3:02 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Another in a series of random programming tips by Thomas Krehbiel, mostly to help me remember them in the future. 638 words.
• Busy Days. 2006-09-21 7:12 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Busy, busy, busy. No time for frivolous things like the legality of torture. 29 words.
• Friday Wrap-up. 2006-09-22 7:45 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Let’s see, what’s been happening this week? I haven’t been paying much attention actually. Looks like a plan will be going forward to try the Gitmo detainees without having to re-write GC Article III. 248 words.
• Debugging Custom SSIS Components. 2006-09-22 8:00 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Another in a series of random programming tips by Thomas Krehbiel, mostly to help me remember them in the future. 210 words.
• The Ethics Of Allen-Bashing. 2006-09-25 2:06 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Good news, everybody! According to former teammates, Allen used the “N-word” in college. 157 words.
• Week 3, Washington at Houston. 2006-09-25 2:53 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I didn’t see the game, but apparently it was a blowout against the hapless Texans (as was expected). The Giants lost (despite what appears to be a valiant fourth-quarter comeback attempt) but the Eagles won, putting them in first place by a game. The Cowboys had a bye week and didn’t play. 105 words.
• Reformat Complete. 2006-09-26 12:10 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Over the weekend, I finally reformatted my main computer and upgraded from Windows 2000 to Windows XP, a task I’ve been putting off for ages. I hadn’t made any major upgrades to this computer in at least three years, so you can imagine I had quite a bit of junk on it from years of installing and un-installing software. I made tedious, redundant backups of everything before the big wipe, so I haven’t lost any data, but at the moment all I have is a blank computer running Windows XP. 154 words.
• A Glance At Military Commissions. 2006-09-28 8:21 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Another busy work week with it being the end of the fiscal year and all. Not much time to decipher the news of the day. After just a glance, I think I’m okay with the new bill to allow military commissions for terrorists. 96 words.
• Easy SSIS Package Deployment. 2006-09-29 4:38 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Another in a series of random programming tips by Thomas Krehbiel, mostly to help me remember them in the future. 121 words.
• More Lamentation On The State Of Democracy. 2006-09-29 3:17 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s one good thing about researching the potential Senate candidates and making your voting decision early in the year: You don’t have to pay attention to the actual campaigning, which is really just a big playground fight between the opposing campaign managers and has little or nothing to do with the candidates themselves. The drawback, of course, is that you get to watch the quality of public discourse plummet to new lows during the time you’re waiting to vote, and you come to the inevitable realization that elections are decided not by issues, but by manipulation of mass media. The key to victory, it seems, is to ensure that the media spends more time covering an accusation than a refutation, and lean on the average voter’s lack of political knowledge. 229 words.
• Agile Manifesto Not So Bad After All. 2006-09-29 5:12 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I read (most of) Steve Yegge’s blog post on Bad Agile, and thought it was great to hear someone ranting against Agile Development for a change. (Unfortunately, it quickly devolved into a “golly, Google is such a fun playground for programmers, it’s the greatest place to work ever!” rant.) 955 words.

October, 2006

• Recent Discourses In Politics. 2006-10-02 6:07 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I guess that old joke about incumbents having to be caught with a dead girl or a live boy to lose an election isn’t so funny anymore, in light of Mark Foley’s resignation following hinky emails to teen page boys. 198 words.
• Week 4, Jacksonville at Washington. 2006-10-02 10:03 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  One-fourth of the season is behind us. Washington looked like a completely different team from the one I saw two weeks ago. That is, they looked like professionals again. 212 words.
• Musharraf On Tour. 2006-10-03 6:48 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Pakistani President Musharraf has been making the talk show rounds on his book tour lately. (One has to wonder how the president of an entire country has the time to write a book and go on a tour, or why he would need the money or the publicity, but that’s a different story.) He seems like a nice man and an intellectual on television, but who knows what kind of person lurks behind that quaintly amusing accent. He’s said more than once that the deal he made with the Taliban in Waziristan is in everyone’s best interests, and that the Taliban will uphold their agreement to end violence, but Bill Roggio observed otherwise yesterday: Pakistan’s Problems in Waziristan and Beyond. 136 words.
• Remember, One Class Per File. 2006-10-04 7:14 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Another in a series of random programming tips by Thomas Krehbiel, mostly to help me remember them in the future. 268 words.
• Foley Thoughts In Context. 2006-10-04 7:58 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Somehow, a Congressman’s instant messages are getting just as much attention as a madman shooting five Amish schoolgirls in the head, execution-style. 532 words.
• Welcome To Web 2.0. 2006-10-05 2:32 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I saw on Crowhill that one of Michelle Malkin’s videos (something about Islamic violence) got pulled from YouTube. This struck me as funny. :) And not just because Malkin, a la the best war profiteers, is personally profiting from the culture wars. 372 words.
• Welcome To Web 2.0, Part 2. 2006-10-05 11:57 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A short addendum to my post on Malkin’s video getting pulled from YouTube: 1) Now that I’m home, I can verify that there is a “Flag as Inappropriate” link right below each video, though admittedly you have to login to use that feature. (Not a problem for bots.) 2) I don’t dispute that dhimmitude was the motivation for wanting to yank Malkin’s videos, I just don’t think YouTube submitted to dhimmitude so much as they submitted to a flaw in the peer-review system. 83 words.
• My First Activism. 2006-10-06 12:32 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve never been much of a political activist, but this Marshall/Newman Amendment proposal here in Virginia annoys me. You know, the one that supposedly amends the Virginia constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman. 274 words.
• Week 5, Washington at NY Giants. 2006-10-08 11:57 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A total suck-fest by the Redskins this week. Not much else to say about it. The momentum from the past two victories came to a crashing halt. 133 words.
• FlatOut2. 2006-10-10 3:28 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve basically finished with FlatOut2… won all the races except the one at the very end, and that’s just a bunch of derbies. The game pretty much ruled until I got bored from racing on the same tracks over and over again and, well, from winning all the time. :) I give it 5… out of 5. 57 words.
• World of Warcraft. 2006-10-10 3:30 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Inspired by the recent episode of South Park, and being bored with FlatOut2, I finally installed my trial version of World of Warcraft yesterday, which I’d gotten with a video card about a year ago I think. I’ve been trying to stay away from MMORPGs because, as South Park indicated, you really can’t play them competitively unless you’re willing to join some kind of guild and give up your life, and really, what’s the point in playing a game if not to win? :) But I’ve heard repeatedly that WoW was particularly good for so-called “casual gamers” and people who liked solo adventuring, so I gave it a shot. 918 words.
• North Korea Back In The News. 2006-10-10 4:39 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Last we heard from North Korea (or, as the bloggers have suddenly started calling it, NoKo), they were test-firing medium- and long-range missiles over the Japan Sea. (The long-range missile failed.) Now, apparently they’re exploding nuclear weapons underground. There is some question from seismologists about whether it was really a nuclear explosion and not just a conventional explosion, though. 215 words.
• My Implementation Of Active Records. 2006-10-10 5:30 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was somewhat gratified to see that the method I had come up with to wrap database rows inside objects has a name: The Active Record Design Pattern. Furthermore, someone else (namely, Castleproject’s ActiveRecord) thought of using .NET attributes to markup the row class just like I did (though chronologically they thought of it after I had finished my first version). It’s always fun to see myself inventing the same things that the so-called “industry leaders” invent. 136 words.
• World of Warcraft Addendum. 2006-10-11 12:36 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Addendum: So I go to login to WoW last night to see how many levels I can acheive with a 14-day trial account, and it says the server is full and I have to wait in a queue for some 30 minutes to get in! You have got to be kidding me. That seals the deal. 257 words.
• New Study Hard To Believe. 2006-10-11 3:04 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There’s this new study out that claims 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war, where it was previously estimated to be somewhere around 50,000. I find it rather hard to believe, especially considering their method of research: Walking around to private homes and asking the people that live there. Human nature dictates that people always exaggerate, and I’m quite sure that the average person doesn’t keep accurate records of the number of people dying around them anyway. 135 words.
• The Crayola Clan Wiki. 2006-10-12 3:25 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Check out my new experiment, The Crayola Clan Wiki. I’m using PmWiki, which seems to be a nice little PHP-based, non-database Wiki. It was easy to setup and it’s pretty easy to edit pages. 82 words.
• Week 6, Tennessee at Washington. 2006-10-16 2:20 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  To quote from last week: “A total suck-fest by the Redskins this week.” I might add that it was an even worse suck-fest than last week, because Washington lost to a winless team with a rookie quarterback. I only saw the last quarter-and-a-half, but it was just awful. No change in the NFC East standings, though: The Eagles lost, so Washington remains 2 games behind, now with 10 games left to play. 124 words.
• Kinda Small For A Nuke. 2006-10-16 5:43 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  According to FOX News, the U.S. is now confirming that North Korea did in fact detonate a nuclear device the other day. (There was some question about it before.) They say it was around 1 kiloton, though, which is really small for a nuke. (For comparison, Hiroshima was 13-16 kilotons and Nagasaki was 20-22 kilotons, and the B83, currently the most powerful U.S. nuke, is 1.2 megatons, or 1,000 times more powerful.) That may sound like it’s no big deal, and from a military standpoint, it isn’t. 168 words.
• Half-Life 2: Deathmatch. 2006-10-16 5:59 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I played two maps of Half-Life 2: Deathmatch this past weekend (about 30 minutes worth), so I feel qualified to write a comprehensive review of it now. 311 words.
• Counter-Strike: Source. 2006-10-17 6:15 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I broke down and played some Counter-Strike: Source last night. This was the first time I’ve ever played Counter-Strike (CS) in all the seven years or so it’s been out. I figured it was time to assimilate since it’s like the most popular online game in the world, and runs on 6 bazillion servers, and has 7 gajillion people playing it every day. 485 words.
• Book Burning Coming Soon. 2006-10-17 8:03 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There’s an attempt underway by some of the more desperate elements of the Virginia conservative blogosphere (aka. Allen’s A-Team and co.)–who not too long ago wrote, “let’s get back to the issues”–to focus on the campaign issue of racy content in Jim Webb’s novels. The gist of the argument is that Webb’s personal credibility as a Senator should be scrutinized because of the questionable conduct of fictional characters in his books. 169 words.
• Fretting Over North Korea. 2006-10-18 7:48 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The solution to North Korea remains elusive, and the situation appears on-pace to escalate into a really, really bad scrum someday. Most liberal blogs advocate abandoning the six-party talks and negotiating with them one-on-one, but I fail to see how that’s a position of strength, or how that would solve anything. (Besides, that’s apparently what Clinton did, and it didn’t work either.) It sounds more like giving in to a toddler throwing a tantrum to me. 207 words.
• Don’t Use A Lookup Component To Find Duplicate Rows. 2006-10-19 5:30 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Another in a series of random programming tips by Thomas Krehbiel, mostly to help me remember them in the future. 299 words.
• Unusual Abortion Followup. 2006-10-20 4:46 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s a followup to an incident I commented on several months ago about a woman who shot herself in the stomach to induce an abortion. Apparently the felony case against her, which could have resulted in up to 10 years in prison, was dropped because of some legal technicalities. 183 words.
• Week 7, Washington at Indianapolis. 2006-10-23 5:24 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Washington forgot to show up in the second half of their game this past week, so they got blown out by the Colts despite an unexpected 1-point lead at halftime. Thankfully, the Eagles also lost again so the Redskins remain 2 games behind, now with 9 games left to play. They are off next week, during which time I hope they figure out how to play football at the professional level. 147 words.
• World of Warcraft Redux. 2006-10-23 6:59 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Perhaps this was inevitable, but in the absence of anything better to play, I’m reversing my stance on World of Warcraft. It’s grown on me like an infectious fungus, so I paid the $20 activation fee so I could keep playing past the free trial period. 338 words.
• Slight Change Of Direction. 2006-10-25 1:56 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I know I said this the Crayola Clan news blog was going to be about Crayola Clan news, but that topic is hardly big enough to fill up a blog. :) Since I’ve been getting bored writing about news and politics, I’m going to amuse myself by writing some occasional blurbs about gaming. 111 words.
• The Economics Of MMORPGs. 2006-10-25 3:27 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The entrepreneurial opportunities from exploiting MMORPGs have certainly changed since I last played Asheron’s Call. Back then, you usually just saw people auctioning in-game gold, items, and characters on eBay. 354 words.
• On Michael J. Fox. 2006-10-27 5:27 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been silent lately partly because of a newfound fascination with World of Warcraft, and partly because of a complete lack of interest in writing about campaign politics, which seems to be the dominant topic in the world lately. But here’s a few quick blurbs. 149 words.
• On New Jersey. 2006-10-27 5:29 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  On the recent New Jersey decision: My marriage doesn’t feel the slightest bit different. It’s very difficult for me to wrap my mind around how people can honestly believe the Republican line that marriage is “under attack,” especially from something as infrequent as gay marriage (as opposed to, say, rampant divorce). It seems like people with such beliefs would have trouble with basic motor coordination, let alone any kind of higher cognitive thoughts. 267 words.
• On Webb’s Novels. 2006-10-27 5:30 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  My opinion about Allen’s people using Webb’s novels against him is the same as it was when it was just some silly blogs doing it. It’s borderline-fascist anti-art propaganda, but a predictable desperation smear tactic. (I’m sure if Allen wrote fiction, Webb’s people would be doing it too.) 68 words.
• Week 8, Bye. 2006-10-30 4:21 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Washington didn’t play this past weekend, but the Eagles, Cowboys, and Giants did. With the Giants win, they continue to hold first place and look like the team to beat. Their win also drops Washington to a full 3 games behind in the division with 9 games left to play. 258 words.
• Rush And Ann On Fox. 2006-10-30 5:56 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I saw somewhere that Rush and Ann were up in arms for being demonized over speaking up against Michael J. Fox’s commercial, because (according to them) part of the liberal strategy is to use people with disabilities to advance the liberal agenda so everyone will feel sorry for them and cave in. 189 words.
• To Groupers. 2006-10-30 8:40 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’d like to explain something to would-be groupers in World of Warcraft (that is, those people who obsessively invite other people into groups). 227 words.
• New Lease On Life For Hubble. 2006-10-31 5:03 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m heartened to see NASA announce plans to repair the Hubble telescope. Granted, it only extends the lifetime from 2009 to 2013, but since we have shuttle flights going up there anyway and we have the capability to fix it, I don’t see why we shouldn’t keep it running as long as possible. (Personally, I’d place a higher priority on the telescope than the space station, but that’s just me.) 144 words.

November, 2006

• Allen’s Stalker. 2006-11-01 2:46 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I hate to complain when awkward situations come up for George Allen, but this security incident has all the markings of a setup. I mean, a left-wing blogger, inspired by Michael Moore’s stalker movie Roger and Me, tries to ask Allen an awkward question (by shouting at him) right in front of the press? Come on. 140 words.
• Kerry’s Unfortunate Misstatement. 2006-11-02 2:18 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is old news now (or should be, at least), but I couldn’t post yesterday. 365 words.
• The Three Amendment Proposals. 2006-11-02 5:02 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Last week, I came across this: Did you know there is more than one ballot amendment? To my surprise, I didn’t know there was more than the minority-hating amendment on the ballot. There’s actually 3 amendments. 108 words.
• Last Stand In Somalia. 2006-11-03 4:21 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  While everyone here is busy making nasty political ads, Bill Roggio reports that Somalia is about to fall completely into the hands of the bad guys: The Somalia Showdown. 150 words.
• Week 9, Dallas at Washington. 2006-11-06 3:05 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Washington pulled a win out of their collective butts by blocking what should have been Dallas’s last-second game-winning field goal and getting a facemask penalty on the ensuing runback. But it counts as a win no matter how ugly or unlikely it is. :) Overall, the Redskins showed improvements in their passing offense (that is, they actually had one), but their defense still looked pretty shaky, especially on third down. 261 words.
• The Big Game. 2006-11-07 3:36 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  For people who enjoy the “game” of politics, today is like the Super Bowl. Pundits have spent months hyping the game, analyzing every possible matchup, and making learned predictions, and the coaches have drawn up elaborate plans and strategies for victory. Today the fans are packed into the stadium and everyone else is glued to their televisions. 131 words.
• Freedom Is On The March… Away From Virginia. 2006-11-08 6:59 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In the harsh light of the morning after the political and media orgy known as Midterm Elections, we can now see that 57% of Virginia voters supported changing the constitution to make second class citizens out of unmarried couples. One has to wonder how many of those voters actually thought they were voting to prevent gay marriage. Idiots. 96 words.
• Week 10, Washington at Philadelphia. 2006-11-13 2:38 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Ugly, ugly, ugly. I didn’t see most of the game because I fell asleep in the first half, and the game was over by the time the second half started. That humiliating defeat all but eliminates any possibility of the Redskins making the playoffs this year. 259 words.
• The Horde Raid On Sentinel Hill. 2006-11-13 5:21 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I saw the funniest thing on Undermine last night: A full-blown Horde raid on the Sentinel Tower in Westfall. 385 words.
• Random Post-Election Thoughts. 2006-11-13 7:10 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Thank God it’s over. 217 words.
• Oblivion Review. 2006-11-17 7:37 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here is a very brief review of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: It blows. Hard. 158 words.
• The Human Experience. 2006-11-20 8:24 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  For anyone who might be contemplating playing World of Warcraft for the first time: Do not, under any circumstances, select a human character. Your initial playing experience will be much more pleasant if you choose a night elf, dwarf, or gnome. (I can’t speak for Horde races.) Not because those races are better than humans, but because most of the gamers who choose human characters are… how shall I put this delicately… they’re, um, retarded. 555 words.
• A Dissertation On The State Of Iraq. 2006-11-21 6:34 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It’s almost impossible to imagine a satisfying result in Iraq anymore. 1,563 words.
• A Strike For The Alliance. 2006-11-21 7:04 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Last night I jumped into a PvP brawl. Armsbig (level 21) was just passing through Goldshire when a Horde raiding party descended on the town. I surveyed the enemies and spotted a level 20 guy among the level ?? 233 words.
• Tales Of PvP Shame And Triumph. 2006-11-27 8:20 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The Monday following a four-day weekend is boring as hell, so I’m writing these World of Warcraft tales to amuse myself and make the day go by faster. Plus, I can ramble at any length without seeing a glassy look come over the listener’s eyes. (If you’re married to a non-gamer, you know what I’m talking about. 1,652 words.
• Tuesday Links. 2006-11-28 5:29 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m weary of opining, so I’m going to fall back on throwing out some links to stories that I found informative. 196 words.
• Developers Talk About Warhammer. 2006-11-28 6:13 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  People who play PC games probably already knew this, but Slashdot had responses from the developers of Warhammer Online, which might be the next big MMO (scheduled for release in 2007). I’m not sure I like what I’m hearing so far, though. It sounds very group-intensive. 46 words.
• A Corporal Speaks Against Complainers. 2006-11-28 6:15 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Good news, everyone! Teloiv made Corporal! I had no idea it would be so easy to gain not one, but two ranks in the WoW PvP system. 329 words.
• On Free Will. 2006-11-29 6:33 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Scott Adams (the Dilbert guy) has a thing about free will. He visits the topic often on his blog, and this post of his is supposed to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that free will does not exist. 649 words.

December, 2006

• More Republican Distractions. 2006-12-06 6:04 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Perhaps this is another example of the Bush administration trying to distract attention away from Iraq: On the same day that the Iraq Study Group is releasing its uber-hyped report advising a withdrawal from Iraq by 2008, CNN is spamming the news that Vice President Cheney’s lesbian daughter is pregnant. Oh, those tricksy Republicans. 70 words.
• Car Fires. 2006-12-11 6:52 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is completely off-topic, but on the traffic report this morning I heard about another “car fire” slowing down traffic in the Richmond area. As it turned out, when I drove past the affected area, there was no fiery car to be found and traffic was completely normal, but that’s not the point here. Actually, it’s part of the point. 215 words.
• Guild Thoughts. 2006-12-12 7:30 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been thinking about Guilds a bit lately. Mostly because I’ve been sick this past week and have had no choice but to play WoW just to get through the bleary, dopey, medicine-filled days. No, really. 760 words.
• Today’s Laughing Stock. 2006-12-13 2:50 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I first saw this mentioned by Vivian Paige. This is not a sarcastic bit from the Daily Show. This World Net Daily article is real: Soy is making kids ‘gay’. 169 words.
• The Agonist Goes All Wacko. 2006-12-13 6:08 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is an outrage: Sovereignty and Somalia. I’m appalled that The Agonist is trying to characterize the Islamic Courts Union’s takeover of Somalia as a good thing. More than that, he’s saying it’s good for the people of Somalia. 223 words.
• Mission Accomplished. 2006-12-26 8:05 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I finally got it! I saved up 80 gold and bought my Night Elf Hunter a riding cat (72 gold for training and then 8 gold to buy the actual saddle). It took me from level 40 to level 45 to save up the money. 437 words.
• The Downside Of Accountability. 2006-12-26 8:36 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  You may have noticed I haven’t had much to say lately. :) The election is over, and the news is pretty much the same thing day in and day out, and the various fights between high-profile bloggers are not terribly interesting after the first 723 iterations. 202 words.
• Sample Of Virginia Blogosphere Activity. 2006-12-27 3:17 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The Virginia political blogosphere is (mostly) a cesspool of incestuous, self-indulgent children with dreams of working from home so they don’t have to get a real job. There, I said it. The secret’s out. 977 words.
• Sun Tzu And The Art Of Blog Warfare. 2006-12-27 5:48 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I flippantly mentioned SWAC Girl in my last post, who is a relatively new fixture on the Virginia political scene. I’ve seen her special brand of conservative thought in the Virginia Political Blog aggregator from time to time, but I haven’t read her posts too extensively. (They generally got tiresome after the first sentence or two.) I just figured she was yet another rabid George Allen supporter with too much spare time on her hands, trying to turn to the new-fangled Internets blog medium to get her pre-Women’s Suffrage message out before the elections. 651 words.
• Virginia Blogosphere Sample, Part Two: The Smackdown. 2006-12-27 7:45 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Update: Waldo has taken down the Virginia Political Blogs aggregator. Sort of. He just renamed it Waldo’s Virginia Political Blogroll: “A totally biased and unreasonable list of blogs that I think you might enjoy reading.” He promises, “The number of blogs in my blogroll will drop substantially before too long.” Pretty hilarious. 122 words.
• Scandal Body Count Rises. 2006-12-28 7:50 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m finding this “Waldo scandal” and its aftermath really entertaining. I must be incredibly bored this week. Anyway, I apologize for talking about this again, but it’s like watching a train wreck. 445 words.
• On Virgil Goode. 2006-12-28 9:07 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In an effort to get back “on topic,” I offer my 2 cents on Rep. Virgil Goode: I think he’s entitled to his opinion, and I don’t think his opposition to Rep. Keith Ellison swearing on a Koran is grounds for censure. I just think it makes him (Goode) stubborn and wrong. But he’s not my representative so it doesn’t really matter to me. 186 words.
• Playing Catchup On The Debate. 2006-12-29 3:54 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ll admit I’m playing catch-up on this Virgil Goode story. Sorry, I haven’t really been paying attention to the blogosphere much, well, most of this month. :) 636 words.
• A Dream Fulfilled. 2006-12-29 7:11 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  My dreams of getting a mention on The Daily Whackjob have finally come true! (Just for the record, I know I was being redundant, but Mrs. Krehbiel relies on me to summarize the entire content of the blogosphere for her. :) 95 words.
• To Ignore Or Not To Ignore. 2006-12-29 7:20 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Wow, this is fun. I haven’t written this much in a while. 716 words.
• Crooks and Liars and Elves and Unicorns. 2006-12-30 3:54 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The occasion of Saddam’s largely meaningless demise gives us at least one colorful example of extreme partisan blogging from the left: The Farce Goes On. 391 words.
• On Riverbend. 2006-12-30 10:39 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Alice and Mrs. Krehbiel both took me to task for criticizing Iraqi blogger Riverbend, so I went and read over some of her blog today. I have to somewhat shamefully admit that I haven’t read her work in a while. 423 words.

January, 2007

• Year End Loose Ends: Haditha. 2007-01-01 3:06 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been meaning to write about this for some time, since it was a story I was following with some interest throughout the year. I read recently that four Marines involved in the alleged killing of 24 civilians at Haditha are now being charged with murder. 348 words.
• Year End Loose Ends: Somalia. 2007-01-01 3:11 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Somalia seems to confirm that Iraq is the model for warfare of the future. 407 words.
• Silly Microsoft Clipart Doodle Comics!. 2007-01-01 5:30 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Ripped from the Virginia blogosphere headlines. 23 words.
• Migrated To New Blogger. 2007-01-02 3:01 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Administrative note: If you haven’t noticed, I migrated The Krehbiel Strikes Back over to the “new and improved” Blogger service, and I have no idea what impact that might have on the reader’s experience. I do know that it has made it much more difficult and tedious for me to post, though, since they completely changed the Atom interface without warning me ahead of time. 82 words.
• New Years Blogging Resolutions. 2007-01-02 11:51 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s a few of my news years blogging resolutions so I can refer to them later. 124 words.
• On I’m Not Emeril’s Religion Of Peace. 2007-01-03 3:08 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Old Dominion Blog Alliance member I’m Not Emeril recently wrote a defense of Virgil Goode’s suspicions about the religion of Islam. Fellow ODBA member SWAC Girl wrote that it was a “well-researched article on the subject that needs to be read.” 569 words.
• When Bloggers Attack Keith Ellison. 2007-01-03 11:01 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  From the SWAC Pack 230 words.
• Layout Changes Ahead. 2007-01-04 1:41 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Administrative Note: I am currently playing with new Blogger layout templates so the appearance of the blog will undoubtedly change randomly and without warning. Hopefully I won’t destroy any of the content in the process. 52 words.
• Henrico County Government For Dummies. 2007-01-04 3:46 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve written this cheat sheet to learn more about my local government. 375 words.
• The SWAC Defenders Of Freedom And Goode. 2007-01-04 11:12 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m continuing to monitor communications from the SWAC bloggers, because it’s fun, and, you know, Waldo censored them, so there’s no possible way for you guys to see their blogs anymore. Anyway, it’s pretty informative stuff. Pat Robertson revealed that God will allow a major terrorist attack on a U.S. city later this year–what revelations will come from the SWAC Pack? 501 words.
• The Goode Position. 2007-01-06 12:53 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Virgil Goode and his supporters apparently want to keep the immigration debate on the front burner. So let’s take a peek at it. 561 words.
• I’m Somebody!. 2007-01-06 1:27 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m somebody! Who would have thought I would ever appear alongside such giants of Virginia blogging as Not Larry Sabato, Waldo Jaquith, and Vivian Paige! 41 words.
• Iraq versus Highways. 2007-01-08 5:24 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I keep telling people that serving in Iraq is probably safer than driving to work on Interstate 95 every day, but nobody seems to believe me. 56 words.
• Of Canadian Sharia And Tolerance. 2007-01-08 5:34 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Elle at In-Politically Correct, one of the Virginia SWAC Bloggers, wrote this surprisingly good post: Sharia Law in Canada? 773 words.
• Virginia Bills Under Consideration. 2007-01-09 2:37 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In my effort to learn more about local and state politics, I’ve been perusing some of the new bills that the Virginia General Assembly will be discussing, and I came across this interesting gem: From our good friend and Catholic police state advocate Bob Marshall, of the recent Marshall/Newman Amendment fame, comes a new bill proposing to automatically make abortion illegal in Virginia if Roe v. Wade is overturned federally. Does he know something we don’t or is he just being optimistic? 161 words.
• A Post-Mortem On Discussion. 2007-01-10 3:50 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There comes a time when “discussion” is no longer fruitful. I tried to challenge some of the beliefs of the SWAC Bloggers on In-Politically Correct today, but I guess I’m wasting my time. I tried to be polite on their blog but I don’t need to do that so much here. 809 words.
• On Indonesia And The 10% That Support Suicide Bombings. 2007-01-10 6:20 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I mentioned in my last post that I didn’t know much about the state of terrorism in Indonesia, so I did a little web research. 694 words.
• A Small Clarification. 2007-01-10 6:58 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I just noticed that I had written yesterday, “Religion is just a hook used to recruit people who would otherwise be common criminals.” I didn’t mean to say religious people are common criminals, obviously. :) I meant that common criminals can be drawn into terrorist groups through the use of, say, radical Islam. 70 words.
• Wherein I Shut Down The Debate Again. 2007-01-10 10:56 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It’s really tempting to make up a cute graphic and a cheesy slogan to put at the top of my posts regarding the SWAC Bloggers. 377 words.
• Something Less Confrontational: The Speech. 2007-01-11 8:53 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was sick of hearing about the President’s stinkin’ speech several days before it was even delivered, and the speech blogstorm is mostly over by now anyway (that speech was soooo 12 hours ago!), so I’m not going to add much more about it. 367 words.
• An Excuse For A Silly Sketch Comic. 2007-01-12 3:44 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Now that I’ve exposed the SWAC Propaganda campaign, it should come as no surprise that this post from In-Politically Correct condemning the Democrat’s stem cell research bill and supporting amniotic stem cell research is missing a few key facts that would help an objective reader make an informed decision on the stem cell issue. 95 words.
• Twelve A Day?. 2007-01-12 5:56 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Sheesh. I can’t hardly get through one misleading SWAC Blogger post before another misleading SWAC Blogger post shows up in my reader: Political Correctness Will Kill Us … Part 8. I can’t keep up! 675 words.
• How To Cherry-Pick From A Reagan Speech. 2007-01-13 1:31 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  “Tonight, I want to speak to the people of the Soviet Union, to tell them it’s true that our governments have had serious differences, but our sons and daughters have never fought each other in war. And if we Americans have our way, they never will. 159 words.
• Theories About Bush’s New Way Forward. 2007-01-13 1:41 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The pundit shows have been hammering the same message over and over again, which is basically, “Bush must be insane to threaten Iran and Syria.” Democrats and even some Republicans appear to be conveying the same message. 627 words.
• This Just In: Olbermann Is Annoying. 2007-01-13 3:20 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I don’t just hate Leftophobic propaganda from Staunton. For example, I also find Olbermann’s “special commentaries,” which should more accurately be described as, “angry, personal attacks against President Bush to get ratings,” really annoying. One expects those kind of rants from Rightophobic bloggers, but from the host of what is advertised as a “news” show? 391 words.
• Nancy Pelosi and Big Tuna?. 2007-01-16 3:58 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually saw something interesting on RightsideVA (one of the SWAC blogs) over the weekend: Congress starting to smell “Fishy” already… I’m surprised this issue isn’t getting more attention, but I guess “the surge” is eclipsing everything else right now. Not to mention the new season of 24. 531 words.
• What’s In A Label?. 2007-01-16 11:24 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A SWAC Blogger implied in a comment on his blog that I was “throwing out” words like bigot, xenophobe, and Islamophobe, perhaps suggesting that I was “smearing” them or had no sense of what the words meant. Vince mentioned something similar in a comment here. So I want to go back to my earlier post for a minute, where I wrote, referring to the SWAC bloggers: ‘Just about every word out of their mouths offers further proof that they are quite deserving of the harsh labels “bigot,” “Islamophobic,” and/or “xenophobic.”’ 514 words.
• Frank Hargrove Defense Watch. 2007-01-17 7:05 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Hanover Delegate Frank Hargrove’s embarrassing remarks are well-documented. Supposedly they even made national news. I won’t repeat what he said because I wouldn’t want to be accused of “macacing” anyone, but I thought they were hilarious. 387 words.
• I’m Not Emeril’s Religion Of Peace, Part 2. 2007-01-18 6:29 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  For those that missed it, Alton Foley (“I’m Not Emeril”) left a comment responding to I’m Not Emeril’s Religion Of Peace on my creaky old home page last night. My response follows his comment. 520 words.
• Frank Hargrove Defense Watch, Part 2. 2007-01-18 7:52 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Barticles, a blog which for some reason is now appearing as an opinion column on the Richmond Times-Dispatch web site (did I miss something?), wrote that “most responses support him [Hargrove].” I don’t know where he’s getting that information from, because so far I’ve only counted four clear Hargrove-supporting posts going through the BlogNetNews aggregator for the Virginia blogosphere. 128 words.
• Oh My, A Chinese Satellite Killer. 2007-01-19 1:03 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Wow, I just saw this: U.S. official: Chinese test missile obliterates satellite. That’s some scary stuff right there. The only consolation is that it only has a 25% success rate so far. 126 words.
• When Google AdWords Fail. 2007-01-19 2:03 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  While browsing the blogosphere, I came across this hilariously ironic sight at the top of West of Shockoe, a left-wing blog in Virginia. 40 words.
• uvBlog. 2007-01-19 2:28 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve started working on a more streamlined PHP blogging platform, which I’m creatively dubbing “uvBlog.” You might be wondering why I don’t just get one of the millions of free, open source blog platforms out there. It’s mainly because I’m really, really picky, and frankly it’s more fun and instructional to develop my own. Also I don’t want to lose any of my content. 355 words.
• CAIR Tries To Pull An AFA Trick. 2007-01-19 8:12 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I agree with Squeaky Wheel’s thoughts about CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim lobbyist group with suspected ties to terrorism) being upset about the new season of 24: Islamic PC Police Attack ‘24’ While Continuing To Ignore The Cause and Focus On The Symptoms. CAIR should get over it. Offended Muslims should watch something else. 287 words.
• Semantics Over Candles And Signs. 2007-01-20 11:20 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve criticized the CASTLE bloggers (aka. oasis + launchpad) a lot lately so I figure it’s only fair that I also say I approve of their campaign to use candles and signs to show support for the troops, as reported in the Staunton News Leader: Candles support troops; signs call for victory. There’s not a thing wrong with it, and I applaud their conviction. 428 words.
• Silly Sketch Comic: Delegate Hargrove Mends Fences. 2007-01-21 5:55 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  […] 31 words.
• Thoughts On The Next President. 2007-01-22 8:45 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  With the presidential race “heating up”–or, as I like to think of it, “just barely getting started”–I figured I should take some time to ponder what kind of president appeals to me. 588 words.
• Joe Blackburn Challenges Walter Stosch In The 12th. 2007-01-23 2:12 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Continuing my effort to pay more attention to local politics, I see Not Larry Sabato is reporting that 12th District Virginia State Senate incumbent Walter Stosch will be challenged in the Republican primary by one Joe Blackburn. I don’t know anything about this Blackburn guy, but here is his campaign website, such as it is: www.joeblackburnforsenate.com. He says he’s a “commonsense conservative,” whatever that means. 89 words.
• Modern Secession. 2007-01-23 8:54 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I sometimes wonder what kind of political situation would be so divisive that states might try to secede from the Union again. This came to mind again recently when Virginia legislators proposed that the Commonwealth acknowledge the wrongs of slavery, and a flood of pro-Confederacy people bubbled up to the surface here in the Virginia blogosphere. I have to admit I was a little shocked and awed at the vehement, almost violent reactions of some of these Virginians. 396 words.
• Hard-Hitting SOTU 2007 Observations. 2007-01-24 2:36 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here are some hard-hitting SOTU observations you won’t find anywhere else! (Mrs. Krehbiel also contributed to this list, though she probably doesn’t realize she was doing so.) 253 words.
• Civilian Reserve Corps?. 2007-01-25 3:50 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  One other part of the State of the Union address that jumped out at me was the president’s call for a Civilian Reserve Corps. 365 words.
• Virginia Guardsmen Fall. 2007-01-25 6:56 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It’s been reported in the local news a lot, but it’s well worth noting again that two of the twelve soldiers who died in the Black Hawk helicopter crash near Baghdad this past weekend were Virginia Guardsmen: Va. copter-crash victims recalled. 145 words.
• Virgil Goode: Cervical Savior. 2007-01-25 11:16 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  RICHMOND, VA - Pregnant women of America can sleep sounder knowing that Virgil Goode is the only Congressman willing to take a stand against the growing problem of Muslims slapping gynecologists. As reported by Spank That Donkey, a wave of Muslim violence directed at male gynecologists has recently spread across the country of France, with nearly a single incident being reported in one Paris hospital. In that incident, an enraged Muslim, upset that his wife was treated after childbirth by a male doctor instead of the female doctor that he requested, attacked his wife’s gynecologist, hurling verbal insults, and viciously slapping and shoving him. 223 words.
• Walter Stosch and PayDay Loans. 2007-01-26 10:06 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Continuing my observations of local politics, I perked up this morning when I heard Virginia 12th District General Assembly Senator Walter Stosch talking on the radio about his bill to repeal the Payday Loan Act here in Virginia. Apparently it’s not going so well; he didn’t seem optimistic about the bill’s passage. 316 words.
• BlogAd Revenue Revisited. 2007-01-29 2:42 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Last year I looked at how much the big name bloggers make in advertising. I thought it would be fun to revisit that subject to see how things might have changed in the new year, so I went back over to BlogAds and looked through their price list. 341 words.
• Moving .NET Web Projects. 2007-01-30 8:54 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve had some annoying problems opening other people’s ASP.NET web projects from Visual SourceSafe. By default, it sets up the local IIS directory in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot regardless of the location of the solution directory. I prefer setting up a virtual directory that points to the actual project location, which for me is on the D: drive. 636 words.
• Olbermann Rhetoric Busting. 2007-01-31 11:59 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I saw another of Olbermann’s “Special Commentaries” last night. This time he tried to fact check the president’s SOTU claims of foiling four terrorist plots. One could almost imagine Olbermann’s outrage at the very idea of the president taking credit for any positive steps in the global war on terror, and his single-minded conviction to overturn those claims of counterterrorism success, no matter how far he had to stretch for evidence. 1,211 words.

February, 2007

• Biden Announces, Shoots Foot. 2007-02-01 2:16 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Sen. Joseph Biden announced his official intention to run for president in 2008 and simultaneously ensured he will lose every Democratic primary all in one fell swoop: Biden Says He’s In…Again. 280 words.
• Times-Dispatch Discusses Virginia Diocese Split. 2007-02-02 7:22 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Mrs. Krehbiel pointed me to these two Richmond Times-Dispatch articles with opposing viewpoints on the recent Episcopal Church split here in Virginia: . . . 443 words.
• Obligatory Football Post. 2007-02-05 2:19 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Two quick, off-topic football notes in honor of the Super Bowl: 1) The Super Bowl MVP voting process is hopelessly broken. The real MVP was Kelvin Hayden, who intercepted an errant pass from Grossman and ran it back for the final Colts touchdown, putting the game away. Before that interception, the Bears were (amazingly) still one big, lucky play away from winning the game, and even had some momentum following their last field goal. 153 words.
• Global Warming Beliefs. 2007-02-05 4:26 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m concerned that some people still misunderstand my position on global warming. I think the misunderstanding is a result of black-and-white thinking on the subject – that is, that one must either believe global warming is a myth or one must believe that humanity will be extinct in the next ten years. My position is somewhere in the middle of a continuum between those two extremes. 490 words.
• John O’Bannon’s Vote On Life. 2007-02-06 5:01 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In local politics: Vivian Paige reported that Bob “Virginia Is For Catholics” Marshall’s bill HB2797 defining that “life begins at the moment of fertilization” was defeated 53-43. I was glad to see that my Virginia representative John O’Bannon was among those voting against the bill. 62 words.
• Accuracy In Media Not So Accurate. 2007-02-06 6:37 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  My conscience dictates that I post this small retraction: Last week when I was rambling about Keith Olbermann, I linked to what I called an “interesting article” on Accuracy in Media (AIM) which suggested a link between the post-9/11 anthrax mailings and al Qaeda. 209 words.
• As The Virginia Blogosphere Turns. 2007-02-07 11:23 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  For those interested in blog operas (did I just coin a phrase?), another sophomoric effort to discredit well-known Virginia blogger Waldo Jaquith is taking place, courtesy of the more volatile members of Virginia’s Republican blogosphere (which, unfortunately these days, is almost all of them). Instead of a boring, chronological linkfest, I’ll try to document the saga with funny and representative quotations from the participants. 729 words.
• Henrico County Tidbits. 2007-02-09 10:22 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It’s been a rather busy few days at work, but I wanted to quickly mention a couple of things I heard today about Henrico County. 128 words.
• Eric Cantor: Not My Fault. 2007-02-13 12:52 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Still in a busy work cycle, so not much time for blogging. I know it’s a bit late for this, but since Eric Cantor is my representative, I should probably make a comment about his antics on Hardball last week. My comment is: Don’t blame me – I voted for the other guy. 162 words.
• CASTLE Jumps The Shark (UPDATED). 2007-02-20 5:50 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Starting to get back to normal here at work, so I can actually keep up with my news reader again. 144 words.
• Confederacy Museum Name Change. 2007-02-20 5:54 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This should get the Virginia neo-Confederates riled up: I heard on the radio this morning that the Museum of the Confederacy here in Richmond is thinking about removing the word “Confederacy” from its name after it moves. Apparently they’ve found there is some sort of negative connotation in continuing to glorify the Confederacy 140 years after the rest of us noticed the war was over. Who could have guessed? 87 words.
• Virginia Marine Falls: Lance Cpl. Daniel Morris. 2007-02-22 1:09 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m embarrassed at how late I am to mention this, but here goes: This year I’m trying to do what little I can to honor fallen soldiers from Virginia by making a brief note about their passing. It’s not nearly as much as they deserve. 158 words.
• Let’s Trade. 2007-02-22 11:11 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Not surprisingly, Virginia Republican bloggers (eg. Virginia Virtucon and Bearing Drift) don’t like Jim Webb (D-VA) very much. I personally don’t like or dislike him: As long as he doesn’t screw anything up before the next election cycle, he’s doing a good-enough job for me. 106 words.
• What Happened To The Virginia Blog Carnival? (UPDATED). 2007-02-26 2:57 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Is it just me, or has the Virginia Blog Carnival had a decidedly right-wing slant to it lately? The last four especially have been awfully heavy with conservative snark and propaganda. I always thought the Carnivals were supposed to be non-political… maybe that rule only applies when Republicans are in power. 95 words.
• An ActBlue Day For Virginians (UPDATED). 2007-02-26 5:43 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Ugh. Looks like RK is bringing ActBlue and the sordid world of partisan Internet fundraising into Virginia politics: Time to Act Blue in Virginia! Woe be unto those Democrats who fall out of favor with the almighty Lowell Feld, because he will undoubtedly only let voters insta-donate funds to the candidates he approves of. 157 words.

March, 2007

• CNN Is Fast. 2007-03-01 10:54 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It’s nice to know that CNN is on top of the news. They are so good, in fact, that they can pose a thought-provoking question and then answer it for you all in the span of 10 minutes. 55 words.
• Dueling Virginia Blog Carnivals. 2007-03-04 10:09 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  SWAC Girl has the latest Virginia Blog Carnival up. Lest anyone think I bowed to peer pressure or something, I actually didn’t submit that post of mine you see on there, but thanks for the mention anyway. I’m somebody! 108 words.
• Virginia Is For Ann Coulter Lovers. 2007-03-05 2:01 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This just screamed out for a quick post. Going completely against her character, Ann Coulter said something controversial, and some liberal bloggers are trying to organize a letter-writing campaign to her advertisers. 197 words.
• Webb’s Bill And Iran. 2007-03-05 11:41 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I heard on the radio this morning that Sen. Webb (D-VA) introduced a bill that will prevent the President from going to war without Congressional approval. Of course, as the story unfolded throughout the day, it turned out that Webb’s bill will just prevent the President from using the 2002 Iraq authorization for action against Iran “in some cases,” which is quite a bit less bold than the 2-second morning radio sound bite led me to believe. (FOX News has more on the story.) I don’t disagree with the idea, though I have my doubts about it passing in the current political climate. 321 words.
• Aggregators Galore. 2007-03-06 11:16 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A couple of Virginia conservative aggregators popped up recently: Conservativa and the Old Dominion Blog Alliance (ODBA) Aggregator. These are now competing with the more non-partisan Waldo’s Virginia Political Blogroll and BlogNetNews. 165 words.
• Virginia Fallen: Staff Sgt. Robert Stanley and Sgt. Michael C. Peek. 2007-03-08 5:53 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m continuing to briefly mention fallen soldiers from Virginia as my own personal homage. I heard about these on the radio this morning. 146 words.
• Those Infernal Blog Carnivals Again. 2007-03-09 12:20 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  If you’ve been paying attention to the Virginia blogosphere, you know that my thoughts a while back on the Virginia Blog Carnival have been mischaracterized as an attack, a complaint, and even “whinage” by various blogs in the last week or so. None of that bothered me–that’s the nature of partisan bloggers, after all. But then I stumbled upon this exchange in the comments of The Richmond Democrat. 525 words.
• Stosch To Debate Blackburn. 2007-03-13 4:43 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Quick note: Not Larry Sabato is reporting on a brewing catfight (aka. debate) between Virginia General Assembly 12th District Senator Walter Stosch and primary challenger Joe Blackburn at the James River Republican Women’s Club. 139 words.
• uvBlog March Update. 2007-03-13 11:01 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I thought it would be good to sit down and evaluate where I am with uvBlog in comparison to my stated goals. Points in italics below were my original goals. 331 words.
• On General Pace’s Comments. 2007-03-14 10:33 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Quick Observation: I completely disagree with General Pace’s recent remarks, but I respect him for standing behind his morals and not caving in to the apology witch hunt. One should never have to apologize for one’s beliefs (even if they’re misguided :). Pace did acknowledge that he shouldn’t have brought his personal feelings into a policy discussion, which I thought was an appropriate response. 109 words.
• Slashdot Advises Future Criminals. 2007-03-15 11:42 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This caught my eye: Don’t Google “How To Commit Murder” Before Killing. Slashdot makes it sound like The Powers That Be can call up Google and Microsoft and get a list of your searches to use against you in a court case, but that’s not what happened. The police seized the defendant’s computers and simply looked at their search history, which is usually recorded by default where anyone can look at it. 109 words.
• No Redirection For Data Destination Errors?. 2007-03-16 12:07 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I had the “opportunity” to fix someone else’s SSIS package that was failing because of a data overflow on a date column at one of the data destination components. 261 words.
• Roggio’s Daily Reports. 2007-03-16 8:49 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve always enjoyed Bill Roggio’s counterterrorism blogging efforts–he’s one of the very few bloggers I would actually consider calling a journalist. He’s now writing daily Iraq reports for The Weekly Standard blog. I recommend reading them; his reports are always full of good nuts-and-bolts information that you hardly ever hear from the more sensationalistic, sound-bite-oriented news outlets. 157 words.
• Mystery Date Crisis Solved. 2007-03-16 8:59 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  To follow up on yesterday’s mystery date problem: It turned out that one of the incoming dates had been erroneously entered with the year “1007” instead of “2007.” The date was valid on the Oracle data source, and it was valid within the SSIS data flow. However, SQL Server 2000 can’t store a date prior to the year 1753, so the data destination failed. I put in a script component to test for dates earlier than 1753, set them to “1/1/1753”, and flagged the row with an error. 98 words.
• Another Embarassment For The U.S. Patent Office. 2007-03-19 2:02 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I just saw this on Slashdot: Linked List Patented in 2006. It prompted me to write this knee-jerk reaction: Oh my god! It’s widely known that the U.S. patent office is completely retarded when it comes to giving out software patents, but this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. 139 words.
• Light Blogging. 2007-03-23 12:00 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I apologize for the paucity of blogging from me lately. Recently expanded duties at work has left me with precious little time to read the news during the day, let alone comment on it. I’ve got a huge backlog of topics I want to write about, but I’m having a hard time finding the energy to sit down at home during the evenings and write about them. 84 words.
• Counter-Protesters Gone Wild. 2007-03-23 6:48 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I had set a personal goal not to dissect SWAC propaganda anymore, but I stumbled on this post while pruning down my news reader last night: Anti-war protester complains about D.C. march. I can understand the desire to counter-protest and show support for troops, and I can even understand distaste for the more violent, corporate pacifists out there. 122 words.
• Moving .NET Web Projects. 2007-03-23 11:26 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve had some annoying problems opening other people’s ASP.NET web projects from Visual SourceSafe. By default, it sets up the local IIS directory in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot regardless of the location of the solution directory. I prefer setting up a virtual directory that points to the actual project location, which for me is on the D: drive. 664 words.
• Blog Test Weekend. 2007-03-24 4:18 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I am conducting a test this weekend. I’m replacing the old uvPortal software with the new uvBlog software to see what happens. Mainly I am testing to see if I can divert traffic that used to go to the portal to the new site. 68 words.
• Blog Test Weekend Results. 2007-03-26 2:01 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  As of 10:00 PM on Sunday, I’ve received 2,286 hits on the new blog from Yahoo’s and Google’s search engines. Kind of amazing that my little ol’ domain gets that much traffic. 65 words.
• Bush Scandals Need Help. 2007-03-26 6:03 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been meaning to write about this for ages. As dramatic political scandals go, I have to say that the Bush administration is falling far short of the entertainment goals established by the Clinton administration. 423 words.
• Don’t Forget About Iran. 2007-03-26 7:48 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Seemingly lost in the midst of Gonzales-gate is the recent abduction of 15 British sailors by Iran. Iran claims the British were in Iranian territory, while the British and Iraq claim they were in Iraqi waters. (Not to scare anyone, but the incident sounds vaguely reminiscent of the impressment of American sailors by the British which eventually led to the War of 1812. 213 words.
• Has Windows Jumped The Shark?. 2007-03-27 3:04 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I used to be the kind of person to upgrade software immediately as soon as new versions were available, because it used to be true that upgrades meant there would be some kind of improvement. But lately Microsoft has been working to redefine the term “software upgrade” to mean “an entirely different application rewritten from the ground up without any quality control.” First there was Visual Studio 2005, which is definitely quirkier and slower than Visual Studio 2003. Then, in the same vein, there’s SQL Server Business Intelligence Studio, which I’ve had the pleasure of using for a year now. 257 words.
• Only In Virginia. 2007-03-27 5:12 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Only in Virginia will you find Republican bloggers criticizing a Democratic senator for carrying a loaded weapon around Capitol Hill… 20 words.
• Looking Back: PopFuncs. 2007-03-28 1:47 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I thought it might be fun to review some of my earlier programming projects on this blog. 1,275 words.
• Escaping {{Braces}} For String.Format. 2007-03-28 9:33 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Amazingly enough, I hadn’t run across this situation before. I was writing a quick utility to generate a C# class from a database table today, and I discovered that the following code failed. 153 words.
• The Chocolate Jesus. 2007-03-30 7:54 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I hope all the people who keep saying that Muslims are the only ones who freak out when people offend their religion are taking note of incidents like this. Oh, but there weren’t any riots, burnings, or killings, people will say. The end result is the same, though: Intimidation of minorities and stifling free thought. 73 words.
• The DTEXEC /DECRYPT option. 2007-03-31 9:50 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Today’s lesson is about how to avoid those annoying messages that SSIS gives you about being unable to decrypt sensitive data in a package. 421 words.

April, 2007

• Bill Richardson Handicaps His Own Campaign. 2007-04-03 7:18 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  So far, I like the second-tier 2008 presidential candidates a lot more than the first-tier candidates. One of them, Bill Richardson, has just signed a bill allowing the use of marijuana for medical purposes in New Mexico, according to CNN. At the risk of sounding cynical, this sounds like something that will probably doom him to remain in the second tier. 61 words.
• Dennis Miller’s New Radio Show. 2007-04-03 8:08 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Out of curiosity I listened to Dennis Miller’s first radio show over the weekend. I’ve always been a fan of his comedy, but I think he jumped the shark somewhere during the Dennis Miller Live show on HBO. (It was hip and edgy at first, but by the end he was doing that high-pitched giggling thing way too much.) 413 words.
• Nancy Pelosi Talking To Syria??. 2007-04-04 4:08 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve tried to give Nancy Pelosi the benefit of the doubt, since she’s the first woman speaker and all. I didn’t make much of a fuss over that Big Tuna incident where she allegedly exempted one of her constituents from having to pay the federal minimum wage. I didn’t say anything about her demanding a huge, expensive, gas-guzzling military jet for her and her entourage to fly around the country in. 178 words.
• Hacknot Is Cool. 2007-04-04 10:08 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been trying to fill my news reader with good blogs on software development, both to expand my knowledge and to peek at the state-of-the-art in programmer blogging. Most of the blogs I see are not interesting, not informative, and/or not focused. But today I came across Hacknot, which hits it out of the park, as far as I’m concerned. 170 words.
• Please Don’t Do This. 2007-04-04 10:52 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Over the last couple weeks I’ve been enjoying a lovely little application that repeatedly polls for xml data from a web service. The main loop of this application looks something like this. 307 words.
• UvMoney: Home Banking For Mad Scientists. 2007-04-09 2:04 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  My latest mad-scientist software project idea involves home banking. 596 words.
• Virginia Fallen: Staff Sgt. Jason Arnette. 2007-04-09 7:44 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  As usual, I’m very late on this, but I wanted to briefly mention: Amelia County native Staff Sgt. Jason Arnette was killed by an improved explosive device in Iraq on Sunday, April 1, 2007. From the Times-Dispatch: ‘“He not only gave his life for his country, he died doing what he wanted to do,” his mother, Michelle Arnette, said last night from her home in Amelia.’ 90 words.
• Followup On Nancy Pelosi In Syria. 2007-04-10 8:02 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I wanted to follow up real quick on Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Syria. I took Alice’s advice and read a little bit from Media Matters on this subject and did indeed find that Republicans and talk radio/talk blogs were (imo) blowing things way out of proportion. They probably still would be if it weren’t for the Don Imus “controversy.” 199 words.
• Site Unblocked. 2007-04-17 3:36 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Oops. I was trying to block a spammer IP but due to a bug, nobody was able to access the site for the last few days. I should probably test things now and then. 38 words.
• After Virginia Tech: Who To Blame?. 2007-04-17 4:06 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There are a lot of jumbled thoughts in my head after the Virginia Tech shooting yesterday. One infuriating aspect of the media coverage has been the almost constant attempts to shift blame away from the shooter. “What went wrong?” they ask, as if the shooter was just another victim. 235 words.
• After Virginia Tech: Professor Liviu Librescu. 2007-04-17 4:26 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I first heard about this man on the radio this morning, and have subsequently seen many blog posts about him. This is one blog meme that I’m happy to keep propagating, though. 104 words.
• After Virginia Tech: Media Death Toll Obsession. 2007-04-18 9:47 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There are a lot of jumbled thoughts in my head after the Virginia Tech shooting on Monday. One of them is about the media’s grisly obsession with record-breaking death tolls. 369 words.
• After Virginia Tech: Self-Defense. 2007-04-24 7:51 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There are a lot of jumbled thoughts in my head after the Virginia Tech shooting last Monday. One of them is about personal self-defense. 317 words.
• V Beach At Gallipoli. 2007-04-25 7:24 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Sometimes I like to go to Wikipedia and click random links until I find an interesting historical article. That probably sounds boring, but keep in mind that I’m easily entertained (especially when I’m at work behind a firewall that won’t let you browse anywhere fun). 394 words.
• Joe Blackburn Endorsed. 2007-04-26 1:30 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here are some things I saw today about our very own Virginia Senate 12th District Republican primary coming up on June 12. 98 words.
• World Intellectual Property Day. 2007-04-26 2:01 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Happy World Intellectual Property Day! The theme this year is “Encouraging Creativity,” so I’m celebrating by creating the intellectual property you are reading right now. By the way, if you think America is going overboard celebrating World Intellectual Property Day, check out Uzbekistan: They have activities planned for an entire month! 51 words.
• Krehbiel Award. 2007-04-27 3:25 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is funny… There’s a “Krehbiel Award” at the University of Arkansas: 5 UA Fort Smith Employees to Receive Awards. “Dr. William Huskison of Fort Smith is the recipient of the Luella M. Krehbiel Teaching Excellence Award. … The Krehbiel Award recognizes contributions of UA Fort Smith’s part-time faculty. 68 words.
• A Brief Look At SourceGrid 4.x. 2007-04-28 5:44 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  To implement an interface that somewhat resembles a check register for UvMoney, I’m going to need a list or grid control. I wrote a semi-usable grid control for .NET 1.1 a few years back, but I wanted to test drive a more mature grid for this project. 686 words.
• Oblivion Redux. 2007-04-29 11:09 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been woefully negligent in reporting my gaming activities here. Not that anyone reads this anyway. :) 578 words.
• A Good Meme. 2007-04-30 1:59 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  […] 0 words.

May, 2007

• Partisan Bickering Stinks. 2007-05-02 8:57 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m weary of all the partisan games over the Iraq “war” funding bill. Both Republican and Democratic legislators alike are acting thoroughly childish, imho. 154 words.
• Exploring Scraping Methods. 2007-05-03 11:16 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve got a working prototype of the UvMoney system now. It’s pretty rough around the edges (especially in the user-interface department), but it works. I’m at a natural stopping point, so this seems like a good time to take a step back and ruminate on it. 557 words.
• Hax0rs Sighted. 2007-05-06 3:20 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Wow, I should check my logs more often. 25 words.
• Vanity Watch. 2007-05-06 3:27 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Periodically I go to Google and search for my name, just to see what comes up. Partly out of curiosity and partly to find out what other people (aka. potential employers) would see about me if they did the same search. 73 words.
• Not Larry Sabato vs. BlogNetNews. 2007-05-07 9:59 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is interesting (to me, at least): I see that Not Larry Sabato turned off his RSS feed to keep BlogNetNews, an aggregator, from syndicating his content. NLS, ever the self-promotional salesman, has been a long-time critic of BNN’s new “influence” ranking, undoubtedly because it does not always rank him #1. Apparently NLS tried to remove his feed from BNN’s aggregator, but BNN refused to remove him, and that led to the drastic step of turning off the feed. 204 words.
• More On The Hax0r. 2007-05-07 10:19 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A quick Googling of some of the usernames that the would-be hax0r bot is attempting to login with – Ganjaboy, Ganry, and Wolf – suggests that I am not the first site to be hit by this particular bot. It has left its calling card (ie. spam) on bazillions of bulletin boards around the Internet. 55 words.
• Easy Bot Blocking. 2007-05-07 10:34 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m sure this is well-documented already – in fact I’m almost positive I’ve read this somewhere else, and I’m completely positive that I’ve seen web sites using this technique – but here is a quick and easy way to keep simple bots from posting data to your web site: Add a Javascript “onclick” event to your submit button which sets a hidden form field. Verify that the hidden form field is set correctly and viola, you have a simple test for human vs. bot. 131 words.
• America’s Funniest Home Jihadists. 2007-05-10 5:29 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Is it really necessary to be scared of home-grown terrorist cells when part of their strategy is making copies of their jihadist videos at the local video store? I choose to point and laugh at them instead: Look at the silly amateur jihadists! Is that the best you can do? 50 words.
• I’m On The List!. 2007-05-11 12:03 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Holy crap! I’m on Richmond Democrat’s list of the top 98 Virginia political blogs! Only 12 blogs did better than me! 42 words.
• Hey Orange. 2007-05-11 1:18 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Hey Orange, Red is looking for your email! 8 words.
• The Stosch Sentinel Arrives. 2007-05-12 2:31 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Quick notes from the Virginia Senate 12th District Republican primary race (which is effectively the election, since I seriously doubt if there’s going to be a Democratic challenger from this area): VCAP wrote a nice summary of the Walter Stosch v. Joe Blackburn debate. 83 words.
• Virginia Influence = Comments?. 2007-05-13 12:18 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Looks like Daily Whackjob exposed the secret to gaming the BNN Influence rankings this past week – SWAC flame wars! :) It pretty much confirms that comments weigh heavily in the Influence formula. (But only comments SOME blogs’ comments – Too Conservative, for example, had 53 comments on a recent post but is nowhere to be found on the Influence list. 95 words.
• Endorsement Minus Accountability. 2007-05-14 10:46 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Doesn’t it somewhat devalue the meaning of the phrase “Endorsed by Raising Kaine” when you have the readership vote on who to endorse? It seems to lack a certain amount of accountability. 32 words.
• Already?. 2007-05-15 6:37 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  An important and influential figure in society dies, and the defensive battle lines are drawn mere minutes after the news: “It will be interesting to see how the left and the MSM will treat this.” 35 words.
• Hanger v. Sayre Highlights Why Politics Is Depressing. 2007-05-15 8:01 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Since seemingly half of the Virginia political blogosphere resides in the Shenandoah Valley, a lot of bloggers are talking (aka. bickering) about the upcoming Republican primary between incumbent Emmett Hanger and challenger Scott Sayre for the 24th District Virginia Senate seat. The CASTLE bloggers in particular are working hard to get Scott Sayre elected. 316 words.
• Avoid People Powered Machines. 2007-05-16 3:07 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A quick consumer report: Mrs. Krehbiel and I are so mad at a company called People Powered Machines right now that we can’t even enjoy today’s death of Jerry Falwell.* We bought a reel mower from these people just to try one out, but it didn’t work on our yard, so we sent it back, and they charged us some kind of restocking fee in addition to all the shipping costs. So it cost us some $60+ to try to be more environmentally friendly. What a total rip-off. 189 words.
• Virginia Fallen: PFC Murphy, SSG Kiernan, SGT Cauthorn, SGT Frazier. 2007-05-16 2:19 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I heard on the radio this morning that a soldier from Lynchburg, Private 1st Class Chris Murphy, was killed in the ambush that also resulted in 3 kidnapped American soldiers. From the Times-Dispatch: “He was very dedicated to this,” she said. “He said he had made the right decision and was thinking of making a career of [the military].” 229 words.
• Falwell’s Legacy. 2007-05-16 2:22 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  To clarify my previous comments on Jerry Falwell: I’ll give him credit for being a great businessman, a great politician, and a great propagandist, but I will give him no credit whatsoever as a moral authority or Christian ambassador. I think he and Pat Robertson and James Dobson and Don Wildmon and all their ilk, like the Roman emperors of old, have hijacked Christianity in a quest for money and power and influence, and in the process sullied the reputation of all well-meaning Christians around the world. The saddest part about Falwell’s death for me is that his empire probably won’t be diminished one bit. 185 words.
• Ron Paul Challenges People’s Thinking. 2007-05-16 3:17 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I watched the second Republican “debate” last night (I’ve seen all the debates so far), and a couple things jumped out at me. (I put debate in quotes, of course, because they are not debates at all in the traditional sense. I’m not sure what you’d call them. 339 words.
• Upcoming Primary Debates. 2007-05-16 8:01 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Upcoming Primary Debates 191 words.
• Coulter and Falwell BFF. 2007-05-17 2:48 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Hey, Ann Coulter stood up for Jerry Falwell. 16 words.
• That VT Shooting Game. 2007-05-18 12:17 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Two quick thoughts on the Virginia Tech shooting game that’s been in the news here almost constantly. First, based on the snippet of footage I saw on the local news last night (I have not visited or even looked for the actual site), it is an outrageous affront to the video game industry to call it a “video game.” What I saw might have been impressive back in 1979. Even putting aside the emotional blackmail component, the guy should not be paid anything because the game clearly sucks. 140 words.
• Redefining Amnesty Again. 2007-05-18 2:28 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Words are funny, especially in politics. They rarely mean what Webster intended them to mean. For example, to Republicans, a “timetable” is an un-American, troop-hating, defeatist surrender plan. 313 words.
• 1/2 Hour Train Wreck. 2007-05-21 4:59 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Has anyone else seen that 1/2 Hour News Hour on FOX? We stumbled onto another episode last night. It’s obviously targeted toward the loyal Rush Limbaugh fan who also owns signed, dog-eared copies of every Ann Coulter book, but I can’t even imagine a diehard dittohead laughing at any of the jokes. 145 words.
• DOM Manipulation Woes In Firefox and IE. 2007-05-21 11:57 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I realize that most programmers like puzzles, but I, for one, am growing very tired of the continual “find the code combination that works” puzzles that occur when trying to write cross-browser compatible Javascript. I mean, this kind of thing has been going on since the mid-1990s. Are we EVER going to get any standards?? 361 words.
• Wiki Password. 2007-05-22 12:59 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I just added an edit password to the Crayola Clan Wiki since I’ve had to undo spam bot damage every day for like the past week. The password is “crayola”. 30 words.
• Is Taxation a Purchase or Extortion?. 2007-05-22 10:05 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Today’s random zen government thought involves taxes. I’ve observed – on blogs and in real life – that a lot of people seem to think that paying taxes also implies receiving some kind of preferential treatment or getting a say in how the government does business. They equate paying taxes with, for example, buying shares of stock in a company. 141 words.
• Parsing Date Strings. 2007-05-23 2:16 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Very handy information if you ever need to go beyond DateTime.Parse(): Parsing Dates and Times in .NET. 17 words.
• Virginia Fallen: PFC Gautier, CWO Moore. 2007-05-25 6:01 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m not quite sure why I keep doing this. It’s actually quite depressing, but it feels wrong not to make an effort to shine a little bit of light on the people getting killed over there in Iraq, regardless of one’s political views about the situation. 248 words.
• Blog Humility Lesson. 2007-05-25 6:10 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Today’s lesson in blog humility: Don’t forget that real, flesh-and-blood human beings can read your blog, even long after you’ve completely forgotten what you’ve written. If, for example, you hastily whip off a snarky personal criticism about someone from another state that you read about somewhere in the news, there is a distinct possibility that a year or so later they will read what you wrote and not be very happy about it. Then you’ll be really embarrassed about your callous insensitivity to their plight. 95 words.
• Stosch/Blackburn Roundup. 2007-05-26 2:31 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The Hanger/Spammer…er…Sayre race in the 24th District is getting all the blog press here in Virginia, but there’s also a thrilling Republican primary race going on here in the 12th Senate District. (Thrilling in the sense that nobody seems particularly interested in it.) 157 words.
• Operation: Mindcrime II. 2007-05-29 7:43 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was interested to see that Queensrÿche released a sequel to Operation: Mindcrime a few years ago. I just got it last week. I had very low expectations, because I think Queensrÿche peaked in the mid- to late-90s, and their last couple of albums have been occasionally good, but overall nothing to write home about. 407 words.
• Early Retirement. 2007-05-30 1:16 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Cindy Sheehan has “resigned” as the face of the anti-war movement, two days after announcing that she left the Democratic Party. 190 words.
• Ringside In The 24th District Primary. 2007-05-31 2:42 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Grab the soda and popcorn, it’s getting ugly in the Virginia 24th district primary race! Republitarian just reported that candidate Scott Sayre’s wife has been charged with driving while intoxicated – not once but twice. SWAC Girl called the report “slanderous,” although I think she is using a different dictionary than mine, because that word sort of implies “false,” which would require some sort of contradictory evidence to the DWI claims. 98 words.
• CAPTCHA Enabled. 2007-05-31 1:07 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m sorry to say that I just turned on Blogspot’s “word verification” for comments. 33 words.
• Adventures With The Virginia Courts Case Information System. 2007-05-31 11:55 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Regarding the DWI charges against Mrs. Sayre, Republitarian cited: “Case # for first offense GV03000972-00. Case # for second offense GT063034-00.” I don’t live in the 24th, but I thought it might be fun to do a little fact-checking on this today. (I applaud Republitarian for giving voters the means to independently verify these claims.) I fired up the Virginia Courts Case Information system and started looking. 323 words.

June, 2007

• Meanwhile, Back In The 12th. 2007-06-02 10:04 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Back here in the relatively uninteresting 12th Senate District, the Republican primary is all about taxes and spending. Stosch claims he’s an “effective cost-cutter”, while Blackburn claims Stosch is telling “one old fairy tale after another.” I have not done any fact-checking on either claim, because frankly I find the subject of taxes and spending incredibly dull. 202 words.
• 24 Season 4 Synopsis. 2007-06-03 2:57 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A writing exercise by Thomas Krehbiel. 839 words.
• A Point Of Commonality. 2007-06-05 10:29 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I don’t care for much of anything I see From On High, but I have to admit this is pretty funny, and I agree: On Those Waterless Urinals. 28 words.
• Tom’s Top Eight, May 16, 2007. 2007-06-06 11:24 AM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  For historical reference. 40 words.
• Top Eight Following CNN Debates. 2007-06-06 11:46 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m trying a silly little experiment this presidential election. I’m keeping scorecards on the mainstream presidential candidates and numerically rating each one in a variety of categories. This allows me to select the next president mathematically. 107 words.
• Virginia Blog Presidential Endorsements. 2007-06-08 8:11 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m updating from time to time. See notes below. 183 words.
• There Was Sarcasm? Really?. 2007-06-09 2:57 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Sometimes it’s impossible to refrain from pointing out the ironies found on Bloggers 4 Sayre. Here’s an amusing self-contradictory quote from Yankee Phillip. 107 words.
• From Equality Virginia. 2007-06-11 5:28 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  For anyone who might still be making up their mind about Stosch v. Blackburn and is wondering about their position on social issues as opposed to taxes, Mrs. Krehbiel received this bit of information in an email from Equality Virginia (who is endorsing Walter Stosch). 97 words.
• Vote Rocked (Updated). 2007-06-12 1:03 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Well, I participated in American Democracy this morning. Somehow it doesn’t leave me feeling as patriotic as it probably should. I think it has something to do with the creepy old lady that’s always there handing out the “I voted” stickers when you leave. 254 words.
• Uh Oh. 2007-06-12 11:23 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  […] 0 words.
• Post-Primary Observations. 2007-06-13 1:48 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m not a political expert, but here’s some of my observations about the 12th District and 24th District primaries. (I didn’t pay much attention to any other primaries.) 200 words.
• Great Reference. 2007-06-14 9:42 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  750 Volts has compiled a very nice summary of Virginia Senate races coming up this November. Check it out, it’s a great reference. 23 words.
• Ann, Elle, The Flu and The Dog. 2007-06-14 10:31 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A while back, pseudonymous blogger “Teddy Roosevelt” popped up* in the Virginia blogosphere to oppose the rhetoric from Bloggers 4 Sayre. He delivered a shocking bombshell (superfluous writing used for dramatic effect): On June 2, Teddy alleged that “Elle” of In-Politically Correct is really Ann Taetzsch, Staunton Republican Committee Chairperson, and “General Grievous’ Dog” is really Augusta County Chairman Kurt Michael. Several other Virginia bloggers picked up on the news and repeated it, and it now seems to be regarded as established lore. 604 words.
• Promotion Obtained. 2007-06-15 1:17 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I hardly ever mention anything about my life anymore. To rectify that, I will quickly mention that I recently received a promotion and payraise. Since February, after the lead programmer/database administrator left for another job, I’ve been the only .NET developer on my team, which has somewhat elevated my importance to the company. 54 words.
• Immigration Reform Not Quite Dead Yet. 2007-06-15 10:14 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Some time ago, I theorized that immigration might be a spark that causes another group of states to try to secede from the Union. Now, with all the continuing uproar over the latest attempt at immigration reform, I’m starting to wonder if I might have been onto something. Republicans here in Virginia are seriously ticked off at politicians in Washington for even hinting at thinking about talking about “comprehensive” immigration reform again. 211 words.
• Did The News Leader Spurn Sayre Or Vice Versa?. 2007-06-16 2:46 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  (I’m trying something new here. It’s loosely modeled after various media watchdog blogs like Media Matters and NewsBusters.) 231 words.
• So Much For The Hamas Government. 2007-06-19 7:48 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been focused a lot on Virginia lately, so I haven’t paid much attention to anything going on in the rest of the world. However, I did note that the Fatah-Hamas Palestinian government imploded, to the surprise of, um, nobody. For reasons that are not terribly clear to this writer, Hamas started taking over Fatah government buildings in Gaza, then Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas declared a state of emergency and dissolved the Hamas government. 124 words.
• Did Bloggers 4 Sayre beat the ODBA?. 2007-06-20 2:20 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In a June 19 comment on The Virginia Federalist, Spank That Donkey claimed that 18 Virginia conservative bloggers came together for Bloggers 4 Sayre, topping even the Old Dominion Blogging Alliance. In fact, as of June 20, 2007, the ODBA aggregator contained a total of 44 blogs. Furthermore, a closer examination of Bloggers 4 Sayre through June 11, 2007 reveals that only 10 of the 18 bloggers listed posted more than once, and the majority of all posts were written by just 3 bloggers. 261 words.
• Easy As Pi To Refute. 2007-06-21 9:13 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s something I’ve never seen before: I saw a link on Waldo’s blog to a post showing that the Bible says Pi is 3.0. 406 words.
• Matrix. 2007-06-23 4:18 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This past week we signed a paper and made a deposit on a 2008 Toyota Matrix, which should be available in the Fall. This will replace Cynthia’s aging 1992 Corolla. We had to order a 2008 model because there weren’t any 5-speed 2007 models within 300 miles. 57 words.
• Has Jim Webb flopped?. 2007-06-23 4:37 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Summary 197 words.
• Brace For More Negative Ads. 2007-06-25 10:48 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I see that the Supreme Court has allowed political “issue ads” again. Personally I don’t see how those sorts of ads are helpful to society, but I guess it’s free speech (assuming you’ve got enough money to buy the ad time, that is). I suppose we’ll be bombarded by even more negative advertising from the big money lobbyists now. 123 words.
• Cynthia’s Mom’s Knee Replacement Successful. 2007-06-26 12:54 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Cynthia’s mom underwent knee replacement surgery this morning (on both knees) and is now recuperating. The technology is pretty amazing – they literally replace all the cartilage and junk with some kind of synthetic stuff that bonds to the ends of the bone thingys. (As you can see, I am an expert on this subject.) Anyway, once she finishes healing, her previously always-on-the-go lifestyle will be but a snail’s walk compared to the terrifying speed-runner pace she will now be able to maintain. 83 words.
• Are illegal immigrants safe from civil remedial fees?. 2007-06-26 10:20 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  (This was inspired by a bit of information in a blog post or perhaps a comment I saw somewhere in the Virginia blogosphere recently, but unfortunately I can’t find it anymore to give that person credit. Sorry.) 647 words.
• Immigration Frenzy. 2007-06-28 3:22 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m late on this, but I guess the big national story is the dreaded immigration bill living to fight yet another day. Here in Virginia, where the conservative blogosphere has been pleading on a daily basis for people to call their senators and oppose the bill, the initial response seems to be stunned disbelief. (Both Virginia senators voted for cloture the other day.) 278 words.
• Name Change. 2007-06-28 7:07 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m officially changing the name of this blog to “Krehbiel Commentary.” I’ve long disliked “Krehbiel Strikes Back” because 1) I’ve been trying to evolve away from needless sniping, and 2) it was pretty nerdy-sounding. 34 words.
• SQL Server 2005 Migration. 2007-06-30 5:34 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  We recently completed a migration from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005 at work. Here are some of the issues I’ve had to deal with from an application perspective. 369 words.
• Home Network Upgraded. 2007-06-30 5:45 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This past week I upgraded my home network hardware for the first time since about 1997. I had been using a Linksys 5-port Workgroup Hub all this time, but I finally got tired of the near-constant red “collision” light activity, so I bought a Netgear 8-port Gigabit switch. I also bought a Netgear router to replace the Windows XP connection sharing, which freed up one entire computer on the network. 102 words.

July, 2007

• North Korea Tardy. 2007-07-02 9:58 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I saw this last week: Back in February, North Korea agreed to shut down its nuclear reactor within 60 days in exchange for economic aid. It’s now June and the reactor is still running, though it should be turned off “within a few weeks.” Government operations are not known for promptness, but surely they should have found the “off” button by now? Okay, it’s probably more complicated than that, and granted, there was some kind of hold-up with some North Korean money being frozen by the U.S. (I hope we didn’t give them any counterfeit $100 bills by mistake, hyuk, hyuk). 136 words.
• DUI Woman Helps Roads. 2007-07-03 12:28 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I drove past the jackknifed tractor trailer that had shut down all lanes of 95 North in Richmond this morning; I heard on the radio that the woman who caused the accident was charged with DUI. 61 words.
• Holiday Reminder. 2007-07-03 10:23 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  With National Pyromania Appreciation Day… I mean… the 4th of July coming up tomorrow during a particularly dry summer, I’d like to urge everyone to please point their primitive explosive devices away from my yard. Thank you. 37 words.
• Media Accidentally Reports Fiction In Iraq. 2007-07-03 10:34 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  QandO has an important observation about terrorist propaganda and the news media. A few days back there was a story about 20 beheaded men found near Baghdad. QandO reports that the MNF-I (Multi-National Forces in Iraq – that’s the good guys) investigated and found the story was completely false, yet several news outlets reported it anyway (including CNN, as you can see from the link). 170 words.
• Contrasting Story Titles. 2007-07-05 9:04 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This unintentional pairing of story titles from a CNN news feed made me chuckle. 55 words.
• Glasgow Terrorists Worth A Good Laugh. 2007-07-05 9:39 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m of the opinion that the vast majority of terrorists are cowards and imbeciles, and we need not fear them. I know it doesn’t fit the administration’s talking points, but I happen to think that when I go about my daily business, I’m much more likely to die in a car crash than from a terrorist bomb. So I hope the government will forgive me for being more vigilant about watching my fellow drivers on 95 than watching for terrorist activity. 316 words.
• Bolling’s Op-Ed On Immigration. 2007-07-09 10:30 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Much of Virginia Lt. Governor Bill Bolling’s recent op-ed on immigration makes sense. There’s a couple of things I disagree with, though. 389 words.
• Aggravator Exposed. 2007-07-11 2:26 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was surprised to discover this evening that Cobalt6 has a link to my “UvAggravator” on their front page. I guess they got it from a referrer link. Anyway, it’s a feed aggregator I’ve been working on which currently collects some 150+ feeds from the Virginia blogosphere. 112 words.
• Shameless BlogNark Plug. 2007-07-11 10:37 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I just added two more posts to my new pet blogging project “Virginia BlogNark.” One examines spin from SWAC Girl, and the other examines rumors from The Conservative VOICE. 29 words.
• ABC World News Last Night. 2007-07-12 11:31 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Last night’s ABC World News was annoying. The top story was about Michael Chertoff’s infamously irresponsible “gut feeling” about an impending terror strike this summer and the super scary “elevated chatter” going on. I couldn’t help but recall that the government and the media has informed us about this same “elevated chatter” every summer since 9/11. 206 words.
• Lingamfelter Op-Ed On Driver Fees. 2007-07-13 11:15 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Interestingly, I noticed that Black Velvet Bruce Li copied an editorial from the Manassas Journal-Messenger written by Virginia Del. Scott Lingamfelter (R-31st), and actually praised his efforts. Lingamfelter did make a pretty reasonable argument to try to calm down some of the hysteria over the new civil remedial fees for Virginia drivers. 263 words.
• A Quick Wag Of My Finger. 2007-07-13 11:27 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I disagree with SWAC Girl on most things. But I also can’t condone the rantings of Cobalt6 writers, especially when they rail against her personally. I certainly understand that it’s infuriating to see grown adults writing things that seem deceptive or counter-intuitive, but childish name-calling is not the way to win over an audience to your point of view. 92 words.
• Now Where Will They Go?. 2007-07-14 3:01 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m sure everyone knows by now that BlogNetNews has a new look. If you look up in the corner you’ll find something rather ironic. Maybe it was there before but I just noticed it today. 155 words.
• I Could Have Been Famous!. 2007-07-14 9:34 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Curses! When I was studying HB 3202 back in June (by, you know, reading it) I noticed where the Governor had struck the part that had out-of-state drivers paying the same fees, but I didn’t think anything of it because I was more interested in debunking how the bill would affect illegal immigrants. If I’d known it was going to be a “MAJOR KAINE SCANDAL!!!” (with three whole exclamation points!!!) I would have mentioned it back then. 78 words.
• New on BlogNark. 2007-07-17 12:51 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I added a new post to BlogNark tonight about GoodbyeKen’s fictitious Centreville bomber (where I lived as a kid, coincidentally). I’ve also added several new candidates and endorsements, most puzzling of which is Not Larry Sabato endorsing Hillary Clinton for president. (Btw, an NLS commenter was asking Ben for a list of Virginia endorsements – I gots all yer dataz at BlogNark, dude.) You can now subscribe to an RSS feed of new endorsements as I find them, and I’ve started a del.icio.us feed of “Nark-worthy” posts I encounter in the Virginia blogosphere (that is, posts that scream out for a closer examination of spin and misinformation). 120 words.
• Retractable Emails. 2007-07-17 10:28 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is not strictly political but I suspect partisans and politicians would be very interested in this. :) I heard about a free email service on WRVA (that is perhaps the longest, ugliest url I have ever seen) this morning called “BigString.” Basically it allows you to change or retract emails after you’ve sent them. (The name comes from yanking back your embarrassing drunken emails with a “big string.”) I haven’t investigated exactly how they do this (ie. 178 words.
• de.icio.us links added. 2007-07-18 1:47 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve just added my del.icio.us links to the left sidebar. Yes, believe it or not, I’m such an Internet dinosaur that I’ve only just signed up for del.icio.us this past week, even though it’s been around since the ancient days of 2003. (But hey, I know people that still don’t turn to Google first thing… go figure.) Anyway, if you’ve ever wondered about the fascinating diversity of subjects I read about on the Internet, now you’ll be able to see it firsthand. 82 words.
• Haditha Testimony. 2007-07-18 10:06 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I saw a post go through the Virginia blogosphere yesterday declaring that the “Haditha hoax is falling apart.” It turns out this was actually the declaration of noted journalist Rush Limbaugh, after having read some opinion column at a newspaper nobody has ever heard of. I have also seen several reports this year from a place called “NewsMax” repeatedly stating that the Haditha Marines will be exonerated any minute now, but I haven’t given them much credence since the NewsMax organization has a very clear bias in this case. At any rate, the accumulation of conservative-themed rumors finally inspired me to investigate what we really know about the Haditha case. 480 words.
• Cosmetic Changes. 2007-07-24 10:45 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve created this feed to note changes in the aggregator. You’ve probably noticed the cosmetic changes (the reflective Web 2.0-ey logo, the angry red-faced dude I got from Microsoft clipart, the new fonts, etc.). Behind the scenes, I’ve made more attempts to handle ancient, broken HTML in feeds. 86 words.
• The Torturous CNN YouTube Debate. 2007-07-25 2:39 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  We only watched about 45 minutes of the YouTube “debate” Monday night in the Krehbiel household before giving up. I tried to watch a little bit more of it tonight on the DVR, thinking I should at least make an effort to watch the entire thing before commenting on it, but I just couldn’t take it seriously. It was incredibly inane. 202 words.
• UvMoney Goes AJAX. 2007-07-27 12:45 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It’s time for an exciting update on my UvMoney home accounting project. 641 words.
• Harvester Running Again. 2007-07-27 8:50 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  For the two people who might be affected by this, the harvester was down most of the day today. 22 words.

August, 2007

• Barack and Pakistan. 2007-08-02 11:08 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Note: I think it’s about time for me to declare blogging bankruptcy. I am defining this somewhat like email bankruptcy, except it is a declaration that I will never, ever be able to find time to write polished blog posts on the subjects running around in my head. So I’m going to revert to a more stream-of-consciousness format. 164 words.
• Information Overload. 2007-08-07 8:57 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m not really dead, but I’ve been suffering from information overload, so I reduced my news intake for a little while. This past weekend, in fact, I didn’t watch any news or read any blogs. It was surprisingly refreshing. 104 words.
• Regarding The Surge. 2007-08-07 9:02 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Regarding the recent surge in good news about the surge that I keep hearing about, how will we know it was the surge that worked and not simply the passage of time? The answer, I suspect, is that politicians and pundits will tell us so, which is not much of an answer. But if that will allow us to finally declare victory in the “war” that we decisively won over four years ago, I’m all for it. 106 words.
• Missed Debates. 2007-08-09 11:24 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve missed several presidential debates in the past week. 22 words.
• Karl Rove Resigned. 2007-08-15 12:51 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I took a couple days off from work so I missed Karl Rove’s resignation. (He’s one of the reasons why I think presidents are mainly just figureheads.) It’s hard to get really excited about his resignation because even a casual examination of the political landscape at any level shows that there is an army of Karl Rove disciples from both parties waiting and hoping to replace him. 186 words.
• Half-Life 2: Episode 1. 2007-08-15 12:52 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I downloaded Half-Life 2: Episode 1 from Steam a couple weeks ago for 9.95. Overall it was a quality game and I enjoyed playing it, but I’m glad I got it when it was on sale, because it was really, really short. It only took me a couple of days to go through the entire game. 152 words.
• Painkiller. 2007-08-15 1:00 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I also downloaded Painkiller from Steam the other day for 9.95. I hear a lot of people complaining about the Steam platform, but I have to say that the concept of impulse buying quality games without even leaving your chair is pretty cool. :) I’ve never had any problems with Steam, although admitedly I haven’t used it all that extensively. 289 words.
• Fun With Word Parsing. 2007-08-15 11:07 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I don’t think Riley (Not O’Reilly) meant it this way, but it sure sounds like he’s saying in this post that a comparison between the mentally retarded and Rush Limbaugh’s audience is “belittling” to the mentally retarded – which is a roundabout way of saying that the condition of mental retardation is actually an improvement over the condition of a Rush Limbaugh listener. That logic probably needs to be tweaked a little bit before it goes into any Republican newsletters. Yes, I used the words “mental retardation” in a sentence, so I am by definition making fun of them. 99 words.
• GhostDoc. 2007-08-15 11:11 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been experimenting with GhostDoc for a while at work. I saw it mentioned somewhere on CodeBetter.com, and I figured if the cool kids were using it, it must be cool. At first I thought it was really cool to be able to drop comments into my source code with one click. 282 words.
• Run Away! From WRVA. 2007-08-22 12:18 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m back from another mini-vacation, which will probably be my last until Christmas time. Next time I’ll have to aim for a job in the Iraqi Parliament. Har har. 78 words.
• Free Speech Is Such A Pain. 2007-08-23 2:02 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Saw an interesting post on Just a Bump in the Beltway about how Bush choreographs all of his appearances so there are no dissenters in the crowd. That’s not really news, but it’s good to be reminded of how unreliable television is. Obviously I disagree with elected leaders constructing their own cult of personality, but allow me to play devil’s advocate for a moment. 163 words.
• Why Renewing Your Domain Name Matters *. 2007-08-26 10:23 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Say, I wonder if anything interesting is happening in the Virginia political blogosphere? Guess not. 113 words.
• What If The Surge Is Working?. 2007-08-28 11:23 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I didn’t think the surge would do much good, but there is growing momentum for thinking that it is. And believe it or not that’s a Good Thing. Whether it’s real progress or just the media saying it’s progress, the results are basically the same (for us): We win the information war, America looks good, the terrorists look bad, our soldiers are winners instead of losers, etc., etc. I have little doubt that Petraeus’ September report will show that the surge is working, because really, what other report would he give? 236 words.
• Everything Old Is New Again. 2007-08-30 12:37 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I simply could not resist pointing out and chuckling about this article on Web Worker Daily: Offline Applications: A Brighter Future Than You Think. (I am not precisely sure why I still have Web Worker Daily in my feed reader; it seems to be geared more toward those people who think they are IT consultants because they use Gmail and Instant Messaging and setup their church’s web site.) 252 words.
• An Alternate Viewpoint On Miss S.C.. 2007-08-30 12:53 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Okay here’s an intellectual challenge for you. Everyone in the blogosphere, television, and radio jumped – no, leaped – no, sprinted full speed and dived headlong – onto the bandwagon of calling that South Carolina teen pageant contestant all kinds of stupid for her awkward answer to what should have been a straightforward question. 166 words.
• Harvester Timeouts. 2007-08-30 11:34 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The harvester has been “sticking” lately; ie. it would get stuck indefinitely on a particular feed, resulting in long periods without any aggregator updates, which has been annoying me because I can’t unstick it until I get home. Anyway I believe I’ve fixed this with some very aggressive timeout values. 59 words.

September, 2007

• The Larry Craig Irony. 2007-09-01 3:03 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Life is filled with irony. It is rather ironic that mere days after the untimely death of Richard Jewell, a man whose reputation was destroyed by the collective incompetence of the media after the Atlanta Olympics bombing in 1996 – a man whose untimely death was recently reported widely by the media almost as if they were trying to seek atonement for their previous misdeed – we now see Sen. Larry Craig’s reputation and career being destroyed by the exact same media. 168 words.
• Riley Now Writing For The New Dominion?. 2007-09-01 3:50 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A quick story: Back in the 1990s when I was writing Amiga software, we sent our products to magazines for reviews. Most of the time, we basically told the reviewer what to write, because the reviewers were usually too lazy or too rushed to really look at the software. You may be surprised to learn that we usually got good reviews. 465 words.
• Harvester Fetching Revised. 2007-09-02 2:41 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Fyi, I got a complaint about the UvHarvester fetch frequency last week so I’ve revised it (UvHarvester is the program that collects feed data for the aggregator). Previously it visited each feed once an hour, but now it derives how often to check a feed from the frequency of posts on the feed. So, for example, a feed that gets updated on average once a day will now get 4 visits a day. 132 words.
• Redacted. 2007-09-06 1:02 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I have mixed feelings about this upcoming Brian De Palma movie Redacted that everyone’s talking about (by everyone I mean some pro-war activists, who are raving about how De Palma should be locked up for treason). The film supposedly dramatizes the real-life incident of former Pfc. Steven Green planning the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl. 386 words.
• Can Bloggers Attack Without Question Marks?. 2007-09-06 1:03 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Who knows? I certainly don’t. But you never know. 17 words.
• Turning Them Loose In Herndon. 2007-09-07 12:17 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Am I the only one that wonders about the wisdom of shutting down that Herndon Day Labor Center where (supposedly) illegal immigrants hang out? I mean, I would think it’d be better to keep the lawless Mexicans out in the open where you could see them, as opposed to wandering around the neighborhood with no money and no job looking for houses burglarize. (‘Cause Mexicans are criminals, ya know.) Not to mention losing the ability to keep tabs on all the people that hire the lawless Mexicans. 116 words.
• A Different Viewpoint On The Missing Nukes. 2007-09-07 12:28 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Having worked with federal employees, I have a slightly different take on that story about the B52 and the missing nukes: You mean they found out they were missing in ONLY 4 hours?? Congratulations on a job well done! 44 words.
• New Matrix. 2007-09-09 9:22 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  We got a 2008 Toyota Matrix yesterday for Cynthia. We had ordered it earlier in the summer (because there were no 5-speed 2007 models left in the area) and it finally came in. Cynthia really loves it! 37 words.
• MySQL charset parameter. 2007-09-10 10:36 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Just in case you don’t know, in order to store UTF8 characters in a MySQL database, you have to add a “charset=utf8;” parameter to the connection string when using the MySQL .NET Connector. Otherwise you will get very frustrated. Also don’t forget to set the field’s character set and collation to utf8 too. 53 words.
• On That MoveOn.org Ad. 2007-09-11 1:41 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Just for the record, I don’t like MoveOn.org. But seriously, how is their attack ad against General Petraeus any different from any number of other attack ads from any number of other lobbying organizations? Isn’t this the free political speech we wanted in the U.S.? 211 words.
• U.S. News Needs More Gravitas. 2007-09-11 9:29 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I forgot to post this yesterday. Sometimes the top news coming out of the United States is a little embarrassing when compared to the rest of the world… 28 words.
• Against The Grain. 2007-09-11 9:57 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  As I did last year, I’ve got to go against the grain today. Along with all the somber “we won’t forget” posts, and the partisan “we’re still at war” posts, consider this: We should take time, especially on this media-sensationalized day, to remember the victims of all terrorist attacks around the world, both foreign and domestic. And while you’re “always remembering,” don’t forget that lots of Americans have died in terrorist attacks that didn’t occur on 9/11, and those families deserve every bit as much sensationalized attention as the 9/11 families, and you and I are largely ignoring their unintended and almost certainly undesired sacrifices. 105 words.
• Software Entropy. 2007-09-25 1:31 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I learned a new gimmicky programming phrase today: Software Entropy. 71 words.
• Expressing 10.Seconds. 2007-09-25 1:36 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Regarding Extension Method Practices. The author wrote, “I can use this method [C# 3.0 extension methods] to express 10.Seconds.” I’m all for improving a programming language, but I’m sorry – if you need to write “10.Seconds” in a C# program, you are in the wrong language. Go back to Ruby, you damn hippy. 61 words.
• On Ahmadinejad Speaking at Columbia. 2007-09-25 10:22 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  President Ahmadinejad Delivers Remarks at Columbia University 228 words.
• Well I Bombed The Civics Quiz. 2007-09-26 1:51 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I missed 14 of the 60 questions on this “simple” civics quiz (spotted on United Conservatives of Virginia), which would have barely gotten me a D back when I was in high school (which is roughly the grade I typically got in government classes, come to think of it). I got killed on the topics of philosophers and economics. (“Keynesian economists”? 85 words.
• Suntrust On Notice. 2007-09-27 2:22 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I would just like to state for the record that Suntrust’s web developers SUCK. They’ve added a “Please wait while we validate your sign-on information” page that comes up after the login form. It advances from there to the main page only after some kind of mysterious Javascript redirect (yes, Javascript is apparently now required to login to Suntrust banking) that is buried in a series of hopelessly convoluted spaghetti libraries. 102 words.
• Company of Heroes. 2007-09-29 6:35 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Company of Heroes 310 words.
• Steam Update Fuxored Company of Heroes. 2007-09-29 6:35 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Okay well now I can join the ranks of people who have had problems with Steam. Apparently there was a Steam update to Company of Heroes on Sep 27. For some reason, the update didn’t work properly (in my case, it may have failed because I ran out of disk space), and since then I’ve been getting those unhelpful “game is unavailable, try again later” messages whenever I try to launch the game. 200 words.

October, 2007

• Project Complete. 2007-10-21 9:03 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Late September, I was assigned to help a colleague at work finish his project on time. 32 words.
• Computer Upgrades. 2007-10-21 9:06 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Parts for my new computer came in last Monday (the 8th). I had a micro ATX case sitting around from a year ago which I was going to put my motherboard in (because I wanted front USB connectors, which my current case doesn’t have), but it turned out my current motherboard wouldn’t fit. So to avoid wasting the case, I was finally forced to buy a new motherboard. 180 words.
• My First Look At Vista. 2007-10-21 9:15 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I installed Windows Vista on the new development computer I’m building. This is the first time I’ve even seen Vista running. I figured that with the impending release of the first Vista Service Pack, now was as good a time as any to jump into it. 787 words.
• Perplexing Internet Explorer Problem. 2007-10-21 9:18 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I recently ran into one of the most perplexing computer problems I’ve experienced in a long time. Naturally, the resolution turned out to be head-smackingly simple. 287 words.

November, 2007

• Henrico County Candidates. 2007-11-01 6:06 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Haven’t seen anyone post a handy list of Henrico County candidates for November 6, so here you go. Web sites linked where known. Otherwise a Google link is provided. 176 words.
• What Next?. 2007-11-04 10:26 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Okay I feel like it’s time to find a new PC game. Company of Heroes has gotten old. I finished the single player campaign and I’ve played enough skirmishes to have a pretty good record against the AI. 488 words.
• Daylight Savings. 2007-11-06 3:05 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I just want to go on record saying that I greatly prefer the “spring forward” clock change to the “fall back” clock change. 62 words.
• Well, That Explains It. 2007-11-06 3:20 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Oh, now I see why Enemy Territory: Quake Wars seems so similar to Return to Castle Wolfenstein: It’s an upgraded version of a free RtCW mod called “Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory,” made by basically the same people, ported to the Doom 3 engine (aka. “id Tech 4”). 682 words.
• Know Your Candidate Names. 2007-11-06 2:54 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Fyi, to anyone voting in the Brookland district: Make sure you know who you’re voting for by name before you get to the voting booth. They just list the names on the screen, not the party affiliations or incumbency. Ie. 79 words.
• String Comparison. 2007-11-22 8:58 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There are a bunch of different ways to compare two strings in .NET. Periodically I ponder which one is “the best.” As with most things in programming, it’s largely a personal preference. 437 words.
• CoD4. 2007-11-28 1:54 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been playing Call of Duty 4 for a few days. I played Call of Duty 2, but did not play Call of Duty 3 (since it was only available for consoles). 810 words.

December, 2007

• CoD4 Multiplayer. 2007-12-07 5:56 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I have to admit that Call of Duty 4 multiplayer is fun. It’s way better than Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, IMO, which got pretty dull fast. 1,027 words.
• NIE About Face. 2007-12-07 6:03 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I haven’t read that NIE report, but it seems awfully strange that our intelligence community has made a complete 180-degree reversal of their findings about Iran. Also, I can’t help but recall that the intelligence community was duped by Sadaam into thinking Iraq had WMD… it seems possible that Iran is duping the same intelligence community into thinking they shut down their nuclear weapons program. 65 words.
• Exceptions. 2007-12-07 6:03 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This short article on Devlicio.us about the wrong way to catch exceptions is pretty funny. 52 words.
• Reviewers. 2007-12-07 6:05 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Slashdot had an article about a game reviewer who was allegedly fired for giving a bad review of a game. This does not surprise me… I have always been skeptical of magazine reviewers because of my Amiga experience in the 1990s, and additionally I have always heard rumors and speculation about “corrupt” game reviewers. 148 words.
• Build Scripts. 2007-12-07 6:06 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Coding Horror advises, “So, if you don’t have a build script on your project, what are you waiting for?” 251 words.
• Too Much Death. 2007-12-07 6:06 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s one thing I don’t like about Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. You die a lot. Walk around a corner into a rocket and bam, you’re dead. 212 words.
• CoD4 Compromised. 2007-12-07 6:31 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Well, so much for PunkBuster*. I just got off a pub server where a rather obvious bot named “nC punkbuster” was winning every map. It was incredibly obvious on the KillCam. 195 words.
• Named Pipes. 2007-12-08 5:15 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  At work we have a Windows Service that runs continuously, doing important stuff. I wanted to write a lightweight WinForm monitor that I could run independently from the service (on the same machine) to watch what it’s doing in real time, without the hassle of continually re-loading a plain text log file. Performance Monitor was not sufficient because I wanted actual text messages. 682 words.
• UvMoney Status Report. 2007-12-08 5:16 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  When I last reported on UvMoney, I had just created a web interface for entering transactions. Since then, I’m pleased to report that all five of my bank readers now use direct HTML access instead of AutoHotKey scripts, and they have been working more-or-less happily for months. (Every now and then banks will upgrade their web sites, though, which is a pain.) The system works pretty well, but now I’m starting to make some more changes. 725 words.
• Software Review. 2007-12-08 5:17 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Each time I setup a new computer with a fresh operating system, I re-evaluate the software I install on it. 361 words.
• Sub-prime Buyout. 2007-12-08 5:20 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A lot of talk radio people are complaining about the government helping people out of their subprime mortgage woes, saying it’s not fair to people who took out responsible loans. Well, that’s true. But I look at it more in terms of a government trying to keep the country’s overall economy running smoothly, which seems like a more important concern for the whole population. 97 words.
• The Blogs Are Back In Town. 2007-12-08 5:59 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I see that many of the same Virginia bloggers that brought us the entertaining and divisive Bloggers 4 Sayre are back for an encore performance with Bloggers 4 Jim Gilmore. I wonder if they’ll write anything about their candidate this time. Hyuk, hyuk. 56 words.
• U.S. Intelligence Pwned?. 2007-12-11 3:00 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It seems that Great Britian shares my concern that Iranian counter-intelligence pwned U.S. intelligence when the NIE declared that Iran stopped their nuclear weapons program in 2003. This quote is funny: “[A British source said,] ‘It’s not as if the American intelligence agencies are regarded as brilliant performers in that region. They got badly burned over Iraq.’” 57 words.
• COD4 Grinding and Suspicions. 2007-12-17 11:01 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Still grinding my way up the ranks in COD4 multiplayer. (It is just like grinding in an MMO… with all the hacks and snipers and campers, it’s getting pretty tedious, but I’m determined to get to rank 55 before I quit.) I’m playing mostly Domination and Headquarters games now, which are kind of refreshing twists on the Capture-The-Flag genre. 654 words.
• So That’s What Christmas Is. 2007-12-17 11:03 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I see that there is much outrage amongst Republican bloggers over 9 Democrats voting no on H. Res. 847, a bill recognizing Christmas as an important holiday to Christians. 355 words.
• Crash of the Choirs. 2007-12-19 12:26 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  About this Clash of the Choirs thing: First of all, it should have been called, Clash of the Pop Music Backup Singers. Calling them “choirs” is an insult to choirs everywhere. They weren’t doing anything remotely resembling the harmonic complexity of real chorale music. 108 words.
• Welcome to blogNark. 2007-12-20 11:17 PM.
  • Personal
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Welcome to a new blog striving for non-partisan fact-checking of the Virginia political blogosphere. 14 words.
• COD4 at Rank 52. 2007-12-28 2:42 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve reached rank 52 in Call of Duty 4 (four stars!). Somehow I’ve managed to do this without getting anywhere near the top of the scoreboard in any game. (I came in second once, which I was so proud of that I took a screenshot.) The point is that anyone can climb the ranks if you just put in the time, just like an MMO. 996 words.
• Wiki Changes. 2007-12-28 2:43 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I made a few changes to the wiki at http://www.crayolaclan.com. Mainly just added some of the newer games to the list. 21 words.
• Player Categories. 2007-12-28 2:43 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve noticed that, since the dawn of online play, there are basically four categories of players in online shooters. They continue to persist even in recently dropped games like Quake Wars and Call of Duty 4. 406 words.
• Vista Administrator Tip. 2007-12-28 2:45 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s a quick Vista tip: Make sure the built-in Administrator account is enabled with a password before you go and remove your normal login from the Administrators group. 271 words.
• Yellow spotted on TribalWar.com?. 2007-12-28 9:54 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Is this ]CC[-Yellow? http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4501601#post4501601 44 words.
• COD4 1.4 Patch. 2007-12-29 4:22 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The last Call of Duty 4 patch (1.4) claimed to have made “improvements” to the server browser. I’m not sure what they consider an improvement, but clearly better pings and connections isn’t a top priority. Quite frequently when I refresh the list, I see pings on the first page of servers ranging from like a low of 500 up to around 5,000. 150 words.
• Salamander Victorious. 2007-12-29 5:28 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  […] 39 words.

January, 2008

• Turquoise Spotted. 2008-01-02 9:52 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I saw that Red snuck in an update on the Crayola Wiki reporting that Turquoise (aka. Aaron Smith) can be seen in a picture shown at the end of Gears of War. I had no idea he worked on that game, so that’s pretty cool. 65 words.
• No More COD4 I Promise. 2008-01-02 10:12 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I made Commander (rank 55) in Call of Duty 4 and it unlocked a gold Desert Eagle gun. Big whoop. Now what? 757 words.
• The Early RtCW Elite?. 2008-01-03 11:00 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Found this little blurb in a random Google search. The Early RtCW Elite with a writeup about Crayola Clan. 231 words.
• Life A VR Simulation. 2008-01-04 10:00 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Funny, we were just talking about this recently in the Krehbiel household: Scientist Suggests We Explore ‘Universe is a VR Simulation’ Theory. 22 words.
• RSS Feed Fixed. 2008-01-04 10:05 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Oops.. I discovered my RSS feeds weren’t showing new posts. 29 words.
• Excel Spreadsheet Table Names. 2008-01-08 1:30 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  If you have the unfortunate need to use an Execute SQL Task SSIS component on an Excel spreadsheet, make sure you specify the worksheet name as “[Your Sheet 1$]” in the FROM clause of your SQL statement. 84 words.
• Google Reader Blows. 2008-01-09 2:27 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  What is up with Google Reader?? Half the time I click on anything the entire browser freezes up for minutes on end. I can only assume it’s doing some kind of asynchronous request that would probably take a fraction of a second on a non-sucky network connection. 92 words.
• Blu-ray. 2008-01-09 2:27 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Sounds like Blu-ray will be winning the high definition DVD format wars, according to Slashdot. If memory serves, Blu-ray is technologically superior to HD-DVD, so this might be one of the rare cases where the better technology wins in the marketplace. 41 words.
• Weather Wisdom. 2008-01-09 2:28 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Embracing global warming because it’s warm today is just as silly as refuting global warming because it’s cold. Partisans, please stop. It’s embarrassing. 23 words.
• New Hampshire Independents. 2008-01-10 12:06 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In the 2008 New Hampshire primaries, 42% of registered Independents voted Democratic and 34% voted Republican. http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#val=NH 109 words.
• Stosch and O’Bannon Bills. 2008-01-10 3:14 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Like everyone else in the Virginia blogosphere, I’ve been getting a bunch of RSS items from Richmond Sunlight this week. Let’s see what my illustrious representatives are working on. 134 words.
• Candidate Ratings. 2008-01-11 11:04 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I don’t think a president needs too many skills. Delivering a good speech and bartering with foreign leaders is about it. Other than that, I figure the actual work of running the country is delegated far down the chain of command and the president himself is just a figurehead embodying the spirit of America to the rest of the world. 566 words.
• Stepping Into The Framework. 2008-01-18 12:57 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Recently I learned that you can debug into the Microsoft .NET Framework. Other than idle curiousity, I can’t think of any reason why I’d want to do that, except to confirm or deny that there is a bug in the Framework. This suggests to me that Microsoft is basically trying to outsource analysis of framework bugs onto the community, and I’m guessing there won’t be too many payments for that service forthcoming. 84 words.
• Portal. 2008-01-18 12:57 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  So I picked up Valve’s Orange Box, which includes Half-Life 2 Episode 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2, and some other mini-games that nobody cares about. I got Orange Box for basically three reasons: 1) I wanted to play HL2 Episode 2, the continuation of the Half-Life 2 serial saga, 2) I’ve heard a lot of good things about Portal, and 3) I enjoyed the amusing TF2 trailers, plus Yellow said he’d played it, which I assume means it can’t be all that bad. In any case it’s a good value for three games, and it’s downloadable so I didn’t even have to leave my chair. 323 words.
• What’s Not To Understand?. 2008-01-18 10:46 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Consider this post: Syntactical Molasses. The author claims that his test method is “syntactical molasses” which “makes the intention of the code so much more difficult to understand:” 178 words.
• TF2 Griefing. 2008-01-22 3:15 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I probably shouldn’t be rewarding this kind of annoying pub server behavior, but Team Roomba’s “More Team Fortress 2 Griefing” YouTube video might just be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, especially at the end with the trivia questions. (Warning: I wouldn’t recommend watching with minors present.) 47 words.
• My First Look At WWF. 2008-01-22 11:45 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  So out of curiousity I started trying to figure out what “Windows Workflow Foundation” is and why Microsoft thinks we need to re-write all of our applications for it. Here’s the introductory paragraph that I found on MSDN. 235 words.
• Gun Show Loophole. 2008-01-23 2:48 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m generally in favor of gun rights, but I’m not obsessive about it. I think I’m in the minority on that in Virginia. The only other opinions here seem to be the extreme right-wing we-need-to-stockpile-guns-to-prepare-for-the-zombie-apocolpyse opinion and the extreme left-wing ban-access-to-all-items-that-might-conceivably-cause-injury opinion. 261 words.
• That Mysterious requirePermission Attribute. 2008-01-25 12:38 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I started upgrading an ASP.NET 1.1 project to 2.0, and I got this error: “Unrecognized attribute ‘requirePermission’ (C:WINDOWSMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv2.0.50727Configmachine.config line 14)” 77 words.
• Where I Am With TDD. 2008-01-25 12:54 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Test Driven Development is one of the buzzwordy things that Agile and Extreme programmers like to push as the most important programming advancement since sliced bread. (Although, recently, TDD seems to be losing out in favor of a new thing called Behavior Driven Development (BDD), which as far as I can tell is the exact same thing as TDD, except instead of naming your tests “TestWidgetProperty,” you name your tests “Determine_if_the_widget_property_is_working_correctly.” (That is a humorous observation not meant to be taken seriously.)) 536 words.
• links for 2008-01-26. 2008-01-26 12:51 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  SQL Prompt - Intelligent code completion for SQL Server Sounds like a nifty tool… if you’ve got $195. (tags: sql tools) 21 words.
• Blog Designs. 2008-01-26 8:42 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m looking for a new web design for my page. I’d like to make a non-scrolling front page with “about” information, which in turn links to the various categories of blogs. I also want to try to seperate the blogs from each other. 71 words.
• UvMoney Back to XML. 2008-01-27 3:17 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Note: This has been sitting in my drafts for months. 322 words.
• MVPs Should Not Publish Bad Code Samples. 2008-01-27 4:41 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Some programming blogs are informative and trustworthy. Unfortunately, most aren’t. For example, in an otherwise good post explaining new features in C# 3.0, I found this shocking sample C# 3.0 extension method among the blogs at the popular site ASP.NET Weblogs. 314 words.
• New Design Online. 2008-01-28 1:57 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  New blog design is online. 41 words.
• Meet The New Boss…. 2008-01-28 11:49 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Since I first saw SWAC Girl’s post welcoming Spank That Donkey to the ODBA, I couldn’t help but think that there was going to be trouble in that organization. Could Spank and Shaun Kenney – bitter rivals on opposite poles of Virginia Republicanism – co-exist together in the same organization? 137 words.
• links for 2008-01-29. 2008-01-29 12:43 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  What is diffrenece between string.compare and string.compareordinal More on string comparisons. 34 words.
• Keep It Simple. 2008-01-31 2:03 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Ran into another post from our MVP friend Dan Wahlen: How Would You Refactor this Code? #1. I don’t normally respond to these kinds of things because it always devolves into a my-code-is-bigger-than-your-code conversation (if you know what I mean, wink, wink, nudge, nudge). 228 words.
• The Outrage!. 2008-01-31 11:25 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I can understand why I wasn’t invited to the second annual Richmond Blogger’s Day. After all, I’m just, oh, a blogger who lives in Richmond. (Well, Henrico County – but close enough.) In response to this outrageous insult, I pledge not to vote for you, Lt. Gov. 103 words.

February, 2008

• links for 2008-02-01. 2008-02-01 12:35 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The Server/Client Balance of Power Continues Discussing the pitfalls of Microsoft AJAX. (tags: asp.net) c# code format Nice web tool to format C# code for blog posting (tags: blogging) Ten Essential Tools: Visual Studio Add-Ins Every Developer Should Download Now – MSDN Magazine, December 2005 Some nifty tools. (tags: tools) 50 words.
• Times Are Off Again. 2008-02-01 1:36 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The times are wrong on all the posts again. I feel like I’ve fixed this problem dozens of times over the lifespan of this blog. I have no idea why it keeps breaking. 76 words.
• The Worth Of The Virginia Primary. 2008-02-02 12:00 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Many bloggers here are hoping (a bit desperately, I think) that the Virginia presidential primiaries on February 12 will matter. I’m skeptical. 352 words.
• links for 2008-02-02. 2008-02-02 12:37 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  TDD or POUT Ah, another kindred programming spirit… POUT rules! (tags: articles) Php IDE - VS.Php Standalone Edition | Jcx.Software Corp. PHP plugin for Visual Studio? (tags: php) 28 words.
• Afghanistan Update. 2008-02-02 1:40 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I heard a researcher from the Counterterrorism Blog on the radio this morning talking about Afghanistan. Apparently the Taliban fighters are conducting their own “surge” there. He also discussed the continued lack of freedom and human rights in the post-Taliban Afghanistan – in particular he mentioned a journalist who was sentenced to death for circulating a flyer asking why women couldn’t have multiple husbands under Islam. 104 words.
• Crowhill Returns. 2008-02-02 1:46 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Hey I forgot to mention this: Cousin* Greg Krehbiel is back at blogging over at the Crowhill Weblog after taking some time off. Welcome back! 69 words.
• Interview Questions. 2008-02-02 11:57 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was asked recently to sit in on an interview to evaluate a candidate’s .NET experience. I thought about what kinds of questions I could ask, did some Googling, and thought back to some of the technical interviews I’d been through. 590 words.
• UvMoney Concurrency. 2008-02-03 12:07 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been thinking more about concurrency issues in UvMoney. The last time I posted about UvMoney, I was switching over to a database back-end mainly to handle concurrency. Then I decided that was pretty silly, considering that in my current “production” environment, there are only two people that can possibly use the data at the same time. 773 words.
• links for 2008-02-03. 2008-02-03 12:33 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Sperm Made From Female Bone Marrow, Men Obsolete? Hehe… Amazonian overlords! (tags: random) G4 - The Feed - The MMO Report: Friday, January 25th (tags: games) G4 - The Feed - The MMO Report: Friday, February 1st (tags: games) Best Super Tuesday Candidate for Technology? 47 words.
• NuSphere PhpEd. 2008-02-03 9:14 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m trying out NuSphere’s PhpEd. For lo these many years, my PHP IDE has been a text editor and a web browser. Yep, that’s it. 199 words.
• Superbowl Prediction. 2008-02-03 9:54 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s what I want to happen: Patriots jump ahead early, Giants fight back and finally pull ahead late in the game, Patriots pull it together and win on final heroic drive. 88 words.
• Slightly Different Analogy. 2008-02-03 10:39 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Ann Coulter: “Are you too busy boning up on Consumer Reports’ reviews of microwave ovens to spend one day thinking about who should be the next leader of the free world? Are you familiar with our ‘no exchange/no return’ policy on presidential candidates? Voting for McCain because he was a POW a quarter-century ago or Huckabee because he was a Baptist preacher is like buying a new car because you like the color.” 100 words.
• links for 2008-02-04. 2008-02-04 12:44 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Transhumanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (tags: articles) Cellphones to Monitor Highway Traffic OMG they are stealing my ideas again! (tags: random) Bionic Arm Might Go Into Clinical Trials Transhumanism on its way… (tags: random) HOF Moment: Darrel Green 1.10.88 Wow… wish I could see a video of this (tags: redskins) Green Awesome Darrel Green story (tags: redskins) Monk’s greatest hits 12.16.84 Art Monk rulez! (tags: redskins) Fame catches up to Monk Art Monk makes the Hall of Fame! 111 words.
• links for 2008-02-05. 2008-02-05 12:44 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Mocks Aren’t Stubs Mocks vs. Stubs (tags: articles) Local Install Source (Msocache) Explains the mysterious MSOCache hidden directory. 37 words.
• links for 2008-02-06. 2008-02-06 12:39 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  KCNN: Legal Risk Module In case you need a refresher course… how to avoid legal trouble in blogging. Basically, it boils down to: Don’t make stuff up. (tags: blogging) Hosting Process (vshost.exe) Details about what the heck those .vshost.exe files are for. 111 words.
• Primary Results Spreadsheet. 2008-02-06 11:25 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In case anyone is interested, I’ve been keeping an Excel spreadsheet summarizing the 2008 primary results. I made it because I couldn’t find anything on the web that gave a chronological summary. You can find an HTML copy of it here: 2008 Presidential Primary Results. 73 words.
• Developing vs. Communicating. 2008-02-06 11:50 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In response to Caio Proiete’s How to be a better developer? (Which is, in turn, a response to Rodrigo Díaz Concha’s How to be a better developer?) 212 words.
• Two Space Calamity. 2008-02-06 11:52 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It’s happening. You know how HTML files always squish the two spaces after a period into one space? I’ve always hated that, since everyone knows there are supposed to be two spaces after a period. 81 words.
• links for 2008-02-07. 2008-02-07 12:35 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Linq to Objects – measuring performance implications of the where clause In case you didn’t intuitively realize this and needed numbers… Linq to objects is slow as crap compared to hand-coded queries. (tags: linq .net) Download details: Log Parser 2.2 Run queries against text files eg. log files. 50 words.
• links for 2008-02-08. 2008-02-08 12:31 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  PRB: Read-Only Properties Cannot Be Exposed by XML Web Services What to do if you need to explose a read-only property in a Web Service. 27 words.
• Twiceler. 2008-02-08 1:28 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Don’t know if anyone else is experiencing this, but my site has been hammered over the last week by this Twiceler robot: “Mozilla/5.0 (Twiceler-0.9 http://www.cuill.com/twiceler/robot.html)". Easily 15 times as many hits as from Googlebot. I guess they are trying to destroy whatever semblence of bandwidth is left on the Internet. 64 words.
• links for 2008-02-09. 2008-02-09 12:42 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  New Robots.txt Syntax Checker: a validator for robots.txt files Nifty tool to validate a robots.txt file. (tags: web tools) The Years of Experience Myth Cool. (tags: articles) How to maintain the position of the scrollbar on postbacks with ASP.NET 2.0 Neato ASP.NET 2.0 feature. 50 words.
• links for 2008-02-10. 2008-02-10 12:33 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  VS 2008 Web Development Hot-Fix Roll-Up Available Bug fix for Visual Studio 2008 (tags: vs) 15 words.
• Iranian Test Missile. 2008-02-10 4:58 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I heard about this alarming story in passing on WRVA the other day, so I did a little digging to find out what really happened. As far as I know, this story was wholly ignored by American media in the face of Super Tuesday. 169 words.
• links for 2008-02-11. 2008-02-11 12:33 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  C# Application Markup Language (CSAML): A Preview Mmmm, tasty sarcasm! 30 words.
• Primary Eve. 2008-02-11 10:23 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Despite keeping a semi-watchful eye on the 2008 presidential race for what seems like an eternity, I have no idea who to vote for tomorrow. There are huge negatives with each one of the remaining candidates. 160 words.
• links for 2008-02-12. 2008-02-12 12:33 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Know Why Uruguay is the IT Outsourcing Paradise… Interesting (tags: outsourcing) WPF: Threading basics in WPF WPF threading info that I might be able to use.. esp. BitmapImage.Freeze() (tags: wpf) 30 words.
• links for 2008-02-13. 2008-02-13 12:46 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  WPF Tree View icons - MSDN Forums How to do images in TreeViewItems since you can’t just set an ImageIndex property anymore. 71 words.
• links for 2008-02-14. 2008-02-14 12:41 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  TPCI - TIOBE Programming Community Index List of popular languages (tags: articles) Speedcabling - Untangling for fun and profit. Could this be the next big sport? (tags: humor) Transact-SQL User’s Guide UPDATE syntax with INNER JOIN. 38 words.
• Visual Studio 2008 and WPF. 2008-02-15 1:08 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve started migrating to Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 for my home projects, for whatever that’s worth. (We aren’t allowed to use it at work.) Nothing in my projects actually require .NET 3.5 features, mind you, so it’s not that great of an experiment, but hey, it’s a start. 430 words.
• WPF: Skinning a TreeView with Resources. 2008-02-16 12:09 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  In my first WPF project (a port of a WinForms picture viewer), I needed to create a TreeView with icons on each node. It doesn’t take long to realize that the WPF TreeView doesn’t have this functionality built-in anymore. 420 words.
• links for 2008-02-16. 2008-02-16 12:40 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Re: Backup stored procedures af a db, using a command line tool - TechNet Forums Nice script for backing up stored procedures (tags: sql) sqlcmd Utility Syntax for running SQL Server queries from the command line (tags: sql) WIC H_RESULT 0x88982F60 (WINCODEC_ERR_BADIMAGE) when trying to create BitmapImage - MSDN Forums BitmapCreateOptions.IgnoreColorProfile fixes exceptions loading JPEGs created by IJG library. 61 words.
• HowManyOfMe.com. 2008-02-16 7:27 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Heard about this nifty site on the way home from work yesterday. 41 words.
• links for 2008-02-17. 2008-02-17 12:29 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  ImpulseAdventure - JPEG snoop - JPEG Dump Decoding Utility Handy tool to show you everything you ever wanted to know about your JPEG files. 40 words.
• Turned Off Daily Links. 2008-02-17 9:12 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I turned off the daily Del.icio.us link posts. 28 words.
• WPF: Finicky About JPEGs. 2008-02-17 9:15 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Gah! I’ve found that WPF’s BitmapImage is quite finicky about the kind of JPEG files it will load. 293 words.
• My FTP Broke. 2008-02-20 1:13 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I installed Vista Service Pack 1 this weekend. Now, I can’t seem to FTP into my web site with FileZilla anymore. I think it’s just a coincidence and that my web host’s FTP server is down for completely unrelated reasons, but they aren’t usually down this long and I’m starting to wonder… 52 words.
• Fidel Who?. 2008-02-20 2:56 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I don’t know why we’re supposed to hate Cuba and Fidel Castro so much. Whatever caused this lingering animosity happened way before I was born, and all that’s left now is a vague sense that today we’re supposed to celebrate the news of the official end to Castro’s regime. I realize they’re godless Communists and all, but I was born too late to really appreciate the Cold War thing. 115 words.
• Time for a Double-Take. 2008-02-23 3:52 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Thanks to the alertness of Daily Whackjob, I just learned that Ben Tribbet spoke in Manasass on a panel about ethical blogging. I think we all remember where we were when we first read Ben’s finest example of ethical blogging: “GILL’S LOGO IS AN ISLAMIC SYMBOL” and his thoughtful analysis, “WOW!!!!!!” (That fifth exclamation point really sold me on the story… I wouldn’t have believed him if he’d only used, say, three or four exclamation points.) 92 words.
• Ralph!. 2008-02-24 10:53 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Ralph joins the race! Down with the corporations! I like this story mainly because it challenges the idea that God handed down a two-party system to America carved on stone tablets, and we citizens should learn to not just accept it but embrace it unquestioningly. 90 words.
• Sharing Files Between ASP.NET Projects. 2008-02-25 3:09 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  These rambling thoughts document my search for a way to share files between Visual Studio web projects. 485 words.
• Ed Sells Out.. er.. Moves On. 2008-02-25 10:58 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Captain’s Quarters: The Road Goes Ever On. How disappointing that the relatively moderate, thoughtful, and literate Captain Ed is being absorbed by the Michelle Malkin-branded corporate noise machine. (I can only assume this is a monetary decision… Malkin must be paying him more than he makes from his own blog.) 127 words.
• What Does Unofficial Mean?. 2008-02-25 11:14 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Just out of curiousity, when one pastes a verbatim copy of a campaign press release into an unofficial campaign blog without any attribution, is it still appropriate to call it an “unofficial” blog? And when that same unofficial blog feed appears right on the official campaign web site without any disclaimers, with “Paid for by Jim Gilmore for Senate” at the bottom of the page, is it still appropriate to call it an “unofficial” blog? Seems like somebody should clarify that. 81 words.
• Shell Schmell. 2008-02-29 12:29 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m reading The Pragmatic Programmer, supposedly one of the Bibles for modern programmers. It came highly recommended by one of my favorite blogs, Coding Horror. (Well, it used to be highly recommended… I’d swear there were only two books on his recommended reading list before.) Anyway, it’s a good book so far. 407 words.

March, 2008

• Text Manipulation Languages. 2008-03-07 2:07 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I said before that The Pragmatic Programmer seems biased toward Unix environments and lacks much real-world experience with Microsoft environments. Here’s another example of that. 208 words.
• Design By Contract and Spec#. 2008-03-07 2:17 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve ragged a bit on The Pragmatic Programmer lately, but I wanted to mention one concept in the book that I really liked: Design By Contract. 240 words.
• NAnt MissingManifestResourceException Tip. 2008-03-09 3:57 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  With NAnt 0.86 Beta 1, I found that I couldn’t use the element to include *.resx files in my task. For example, this didn’t work. 140 words.
• Those are in Richmond?. 2008-03-09 4:57 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  So I guess SWAC Girl was in Richmond recently taking pictures again (which seems to be her life’s work now that the Republican party is leaning more moderate). What’s funny is that I’ve lived in Virginia all my life – have lived around Richmond for most of my life – and I’ve never seen any of the buildings in her pictures, let alone been inside them. I suck. 68 words.
• The Magic Two-Faced File. 2008-03-09 10:12 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was in a store recently where the clerk vehemently declared that we should stick with XP and not install Vista until there was absolutely no choice. 50 words.
• I Second That. 2008-03-17 11:30 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Shaun Kenney will always be in the Virginia blogosphere Hall of Fame because of observant posts like this: What is Worse Than Reading Today’s News? 81 words.
• On Obama’s Pastor. 2008-03-18 2:11 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I got the sense today that some of the anti-Obama people have been dying for a story like the one about his pastor to come out, so they can have a legitimate, politically correct reason to despise him. Previously, they would just hem and haw and say things like, “Well, I don’t know… he doesn’t have much experience, does he?” Now they are all buzzing around like, “Did you hear what that pastor said? He’s a raving lunatic! 236 words.
• Open Source Licenses. 2008-03-19 2:02 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been thinking about releasing some open source stuff, so I’ve been reading up on Open Source licenses. They all seem to have a significant hole in them: It looks to me like a nefarious person could slap any GPL software onto a CD and sell it to the nearest gullible corporation for $5000. Granted, anyone could get the software from non-nefarious sources for free, but still, the nefarious person would probably be able to con a few people into handing over money for the free software, which is bad, but it’s even worse that the actual author – the person who did all the work, in other words – gets absolutely nothing out of the transaction. 464 words.
• Company Smell. 2008-03-20 1:42 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I found this recent post on ASP.NET Weblogs sort of funny: Please question the need for whitespace. This person is actually suggesting that blank lines in your source code (which, for most normal people, are used to improve readability) could be a “code smell.” Then at the bottom of the post we learn that they are hiring. Hrm. 62 words.
• Close But No Cigar. 2008-03-22 10:20 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I just got a 71% on a Microsoft 70-536 practice test (80% is required to pass). I got creamed in Globalization and Security topics (things I’ve never had an occasion to use before). I guess I should probably read over the material before I take the tests for real. 69 words.

April, 2008

• Obama is no Kennedy. 2008-04-08 1:36 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  An old post from my Drafts… 335 words.
• The Post-Surge Plan. 2008-04-10 2:36 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A BBC headline (“US ‘must suspend’ Iraq withdrawal”) reminded me that we have yet to hear the most important part of the surge plan: What’s the plan now that the surge succeeded and the extra troops are leaving again? What have we gained if Iraq descends back into violence again? At that point, withdrawal isn’t a question of surrendering to terrorists, it’s a question of surrendering to incompetence in the Iraqi leadership. 164 words.
• C++/CLI Properties. 2008-04-11 12:11 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Properties in C++/CLI are great and all, but, um, what if I want to put my class implementation in a different file from the class definition? You know, like, oh, every C++ program ever made in the entire history of the world. Microsoft even encourages the separation of definition from implementation by creating a .cpp and a .h file when you make the new managed class. 178 words.
• Carl Sassenrath’s Blog. 2008-04-14 10:36 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I recently found out that Carl Sassenrath, creator of the Amiga Exec and (at the risk of starting a holy war) arguably the single most important force for bringing preemptive multi-tasking to the personal computer, writes a blog. He now spends his time developing the REBOL language. (He’s the only former AmigaOS developer that I’ve found who blogs.) 58 words.
• UvSignalProcessor. 2008-04-14 10:37 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m calling my latest .NET project UvSignalProcessor. This follows UvMoney and UvNotes, if you’re keeping track, and neither one of those is anywhere near finished, so yes, I’m skipping around. But hey, nobody’s paying me for this stuff, so (insert Cartman impersonation) I can do what I want. 234 words.
• Linux Core Distribution. 2008-04-15 12:50 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I got to wondering if there was a way to install just the Linux kernel on a computer without all the useless bells and whistles you usually get in the big Linux distros (which, as far as I can tell, only serve to clone the slow, bloated Windows OS that everyone in the Linux world hates so much – go figure). The closest thing I could find was the (unfortunately) defunct Linux Core distribution. 208 words.
• Obligatory Augusta County Post. 2008-04-15 3:14 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  You have to admit, those Augusta County Republicans sure know how to liven up the Virginia blogosphere. 129 words.
• Presentism. 2008-04-20 2:04 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Greg Krehbiel wondered: Is the past real? That’s something I’ve pondered from time to time myself. I’m certainly not an expert on this subject and have read very little about it, but it seems that an argument could be made that only “now” exists. 159 words.
• Best Practices. 2008-04-23 9:13 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Rescued from my Drafts folder… 186 words.
• Internet Safety Classes. 2008-04-23 9:22 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Rescued from my Drafts folder… 84 words.
• Stack Overflow. 2008-04-23 10:15 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Two of my favorite modern software development bloggers and role models – Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror and Joel Spolsky of Joel on Software – are joining forces to create a new developer community site called stackoverflow (not sure if that’s the correct casing, but that’s how it is on the site). Because, you know, there just aren’t enough “community” startups on the Interwebs. But seriously: I listened to their inaugural podcast which described their vision for the site and I look forward to seeing what they come up with. 237 words.
• Tree Topping. 2008-04-28 10:28 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This past weekend I topped my first tree. I don’t think I’ll be quitting my day job anytime soon. (Dammit Jim, I’m a programmer, not a lumberjack!) It wasn’t a big tree, so at first I was just going to use a hand saw, but it didn’t take long to realize that I didn’t have the arm strength or the leverage to cut through a 6" trunk at a point way up over my head. 123 words.
• The Upside of the McCain Backlash. 2008-04-28 10:43 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Funny stuff from United Conservatives’ Cargosquid, which I think generally exemplifies the Virginia conservative Republican sentiment about the upcoming presidential election: F**K YOU MCCAIN! An open letter to the McCain campaign. On the plus side, I admire his honesty. 163 words.

May, 2008

• Twittering. 2008-05-05 11:31 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m starting to play around with Twitter. It took some work, but I finally figured out how to send tweets from behind The Firewall Of Doom. If you don’t know what Twitter is, you probably don’t care. 106 words.
• Web v. Desktop. 2008-05-08 1:44 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been following Jeff Atwood’s Twitter feed for a little while now. I find that I enjoy his blog much more than his tweets, which sometimes tend toward preachy elitism. For example, in a recent tweet he said: “[T]he desktop is dead. 694 words.
• Burma. 2008-05-12 2:47 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I haven’t read any Virginia aggregators in a while (what my wife aptly calls “aggravators”), so I pulled one up this morning out of curiousity, and the very first post I saw annoyed me: The Warmongers on the Left: “Is it time to invade Burma?” 205 words.
• Light Gaming This Spring. 2008-05-13 12:22 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I deleted some comment spam tonight, which reminded me that I haven’t posted anything about gaming in a while, which is probably because I haven’t played anything much since I quit CoD4. I couldn’t get into Team Fortress 2 even though it was kind of fun for a couple weeks. I recently bought Neverwinter Nights 2, which I played for a little while but I got bored and distracted by other activities. 140 words.
• Spolsky on Podcasts. 2008-05-15 1:38 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Joel Spolsky said that most people only listen to podcasts while they’re distracted. 217 words.
• Jeffersoniad. 2008-05-30 1:09 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been living under a rock, so I’m just now noticing this Jeffersoniad thing. Seems to be a coalition of non-SWAC Virginia Republicans, which is clearly not a bad thing. Also seems to be a vehicle for getting in the pants of Virginia politicians. 49 words.
• RPV Convention Weekend. 2008-05-31 4:29 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Republicans from around the state are invading Richmond this weekend to decide whether Jim Gilmore or Bob Marshall will run against Mark Warner this fall. I will boldy state my preference and say I’m hoping Jim Gilmore wins, because I despise everything Bob Marshall stands for (well, maybe not everything – but that whole thing where he tries to shove his personal belief system into everyone’s lives is rather annoying). The outcome of the convention will also affect which “Bloggers 4” group (Bloggers 4 Jim Gilmore or Bloggers 4 Bob Marshall) gets to gloat about winning the nomination for their guy. 298 words.

June, 2008

• Project Implicit. 2008-06-01 2:39 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I saw this nifty research site mentioned on Republitarian and thought it was interesting enough to repeat: Project Implicit. I took the race demo test and the results were rather surprising to me. 33 words.
• Offshore Drilling. 2008-06-02 10:46 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Recently I’ve been hearing a lot of people complaining about China drilling off our coast, as if we’re the only country entitled to drill for oil in the world. For example, see this rant on United Conservatives of Virginia: ChiComs Drilling Off the Coast of Fla. (This is clearly not a person who embraces change – we haven’t used the abbreviation “Fla” since, what, the 60s?) 425 words.
• Kurt’s Future. 2008-06-03 10:57 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  So first we heard Kurt Michael’s contentious Augusta County chairmanship was upheld by the mysterious “Central Committe.” Then we heard that Jeff Frederick was elected as RPV Chairman at the convention. Then we heard Scott Sayre was named to Jeff Frederick’s new staff. Then we heard Kurt Michael intends to keep his promise of stepping down as chairman “for the good of the party.” 88 words.
• Third Parties For President. 2008-06-08 10:14 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  To do my small part to destroy the thought-stifling two-party political system in America, here is some information about third-party presidential candidates running in 2008. This information was gathered from Wikipedia and various Google searches. 210 words.
• Evaluating the 100-Day Plan. 2008-06-08 10:21 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was scanning Jeff Frederick’s 100 day plan for the Republican Party this past week, and I came across this sentence. 342 words.
• DPVA Invalid Too. 2008-06-09 2:02 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  To be fair, I should point out that the lack of proper W3C validation is not just a Republican web developer problem. The Democratic Party of Virginia’s web site fails W3C validation miserably, too. At the bottom of the page it says that Bullseye Interactive Media created the site. 82 words.
• No Primaries For Me. 2008-06-10 2:56 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Primary day today in Virginia, but not for me. It’s just another boring work day unless you live in the 8th, 10th, or 11th districts. 193 words.
• Death Penalty, Left vs. Right. 2008-06-15 5:01 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Vivian Paige usually stays above the fray and doesn’t speak much about the rest of the blogosphere (she is one of those incredibly rare blogging talents that actually creates material on a consistent basis), so this really stood out to me: Kaine commutes sentence - what say those on the left? 153 words.
• Influence Peddling. 2008-06-15 5:55 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I came across an old post where I mentioned that “unofficial” Bloggers 4 Jim Gilmore content appeared on Jim Gilmore’s official site without any disclaimers. Out of curiousity I went back to the official site and there is now a suitable disclaimer at the bottom of the aggregator page. I expect my BNN influence rating to improve because of this. 61 words.
• DPVA Convention. 2008-06-16 10:36 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  The Virginia Democratic Convention was this past weekend. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, there is absolutely nothing to say about it. If there is any controversy within the DPVA, they are keeping it pretty quiet, which is not very entertaining for the rest of the blogosphere. 97 words.
• The Cloud. 2008-06-18 2:02 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I saw an article by John Dvorak – someone I usually find pretty abrasive – in the latest PC Magazine (it’s not online yet) that I actually agree with. He was (again) putting the smack down on computing “in the cloud,” which is yet another term for (basically) the trend of conducting business by running applications soley in a browser on the web. (BlackBoard is one example of this type of software, fyi.) Personally, I – and most likely any programmer over 35 – think this is a step backwards in the evolution of software technology, because we are simply re-creating the old days of dumb terminals connected to a mainframe. 589 words.
• Neeraj Nigam makes ballot in VA 10th. 2008-06-18 11:33 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There is a distinct lack of Third Party representation in the Virginia political blogosphere, so I’m going to start making a point to pass along any relevant third party news I come across. 74 words.
• Opera Pretty Cool. 2008-06-19 12:39 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I downloaded Opera 9.5 the other day and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. I’ve wanted to try Opera for years, but I just never got around to it. Now I’m sorry I haven’t been using it all along. 391 words.
• Offshore Drilling For Transportation. 2008-06-19 3:04 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I just saw this come through the ol’ aggregator and it almost knocked me right out of my chair: Chris Saxman to introduce off-shore drilling bill. They want to use offshore drilling revenues to fund the Virginia transportation budget. BWAHAHA. 281 words.
• Silliness from McCain. 2008-06-24 9:17 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s something I don’t get about John Sidney McCain’s offshore drilling policy. He’s fine with tearing up the oceans looking for oil in the continental shelves, but he’s against drilling for the oil we know is there in ANWR. Kids, can you say, “pandering for votes?” Or, “have your cake and eat it too?” Or maybe just plain, “WTF?” 108 words.
• Budgets of Glimore vs. Warner. 2008-06-24 9:51 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been watching the recent exchange* between Waldo and Spank with interest. 414 words.
• Eric Cantor for VP!. 2008-06-26 8:22 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Lots and lots of reports completely unsubstantiated rumors are flying around that Eric Ivan Cantor could become John Sidney McCain’s running mate. As someone who lives in Virginia’s 7th district, I’d also like to urge the The Partisan Robot to leave… err… run. 43 words.
• Robert Yarbrough. 2008-06-27 3:30 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  As I’m writing now on the morning of the 26th, before bringing up the ol’ blog aggregator, I’m anticipating a predictable partisan silence from the right and predictable partisan outrage from the left regarding last night’s execution of convicted murderer Robert Yarbrough. 187 words.
• Best and Worst Stephen King Adaptations. 2008-06-29 10:10 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Best movie adaptations of Stephen King works. 81 words.
• Paid Bloggers. 2008-06-30 2:54 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Lowell wrote: Bloggers as Paid Consultants. So, um, was that supposed to dispel the myth that Raising Kaine is a pay-for-play blog? Lowell’s post basically says, “Yeah, I’ve always been pay-for-play, but since I’m telling you about it now, it’s okay.” 169 words.
• Programming Goals Revised. 2008-06-30 11:00 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  At this halfway point of the year, I thought it would behoove me to examine how I’m doing on my programming goals for this year. Back in January, I wrote down some things I wanted to work on this year. I didn’t publish it, so you’ll just have to trust me when I say that those things were. 395 words.

July, 2008

• Reversal of Fortunes. 2008-07-02 1:56 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I found this post on Too Conservative somewhat amusing: When Surrogates Attack. It’s a warning to Barack Hussein Obama and his surrogates about going down the road of attacking the military service of John Sidney McCain. 180 words.
• New Design Online. 2008-07-06 2:23 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve just updated the “skin” for Krehbiel’s Korner. As usual, I got completely sick of the old one and needed to make a change before I became physically ill. I admit that the design is heavily influenced by Drupal.org, which I think is one of the better minimalist web designs I’ve seen recently. 77 words.
• Bathroom Repair Adventure. 2008-07-06 6:04 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Several weeks ago we discovered we have rather significant water damage in our downstairs bathroom. Pictures of this ongoing adventure can be found here: Bathroom Repair For Programmers. 1,102 words.
• Gears of War Installed. 2008-07-08 11:21 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I installed Gears of War for the PC this past weekend. I bought it about six months ago… and only now experienced just the right combination of boredom and lack of creativity to turn to a video game. 981 words.
• Nader in Richmond and Charlottesville, July 12-13. 2008-07-10 12:30 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There is a noticable lack of Third Party representation in the Virginia political blogosphere, so I’m making a point to pass along any relevant third party candidate news I come across. 253 words.
• July 2008 Buyer’s Guide. 2008-07-14 10:43 PM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I recently helped my niece pick a laptop for college, which got me thinking that I should write an article containing all of my computer buying recommendations. 1,399 words.
• NanoPost: Whiners. 2008-07-23 9:20 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Phil Graham said we are “a nation of whiners.” So, um, what’s the controversial part again? Also: Doesn’t the very fact that everyone was whining about his comment sort of confirm his observation? 33 words.
• NanoPost: Lambeth. 2008-07-23 9:21 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  With the upcoming 2008 Lambeth Conference, I’ve seen some reports lamenting the imminent demise of the ECUSA. It makes me wonder: Why exactly do we need these childishly squabbling human bureaucracies to have a relationship with God anyway? 38 words.
• NanoPost: Furman on SWAC Girl. 2008-07-23 9:29 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Jerry Furman hailed SWAC Girl’s coverage of the Homestead debate between Jim Gilmore and Mark Warner as “unbiased” (compared to the local media’s coverage). That makes perfect sense, because SWAC Girl is an enthusiastic Republican activist, vice chairwoman of the Augusta County Republican Committee, and a public supporter of Jim Gilmore for Senate. 53 words.
• NBC Loves Them Hurricanes. 2008-07-25 1:30 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Does anyone else get the sense that NBC Nightly News for Dummies simply can’t wait to report on another hurricane destroying a U.S. city? While they were spending approximately 20,000 hours reporting on The Long Road Back from Katrina, they must have put a lot of hurricane disaster reporting resources in place, because they sure are anxious to tell us about these things now. This year, they’re building up fear and drama about hurricanes before they’re even hurricanes. 263 words.
• Political Chess Overseas (updated). 2008-07-26 3:08 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Too Progressive gives us the scoop (actually just links to the YouTube where Andrea Mitchell gives us the scoop). One of the meatiest nuggets that conservatives have found in Obama’s overseas junket to reinforce their “Hussein” fantasies is that he snubbed wounded troops !! in Germany. 588 words.
• NanoPost: John Kerry, Party Animal. 2008-07-31 10:14 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  John Kerry partying with college girls? It’s hard to imagine a bigger buzzkill. Anyway, the Boston Herald provides a somewhat less sensational version of the story, if you’re interested. 72 words.
• NanoPost: Commanders On The Ground. 2008-07-31 10:18 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It occurs to me that there is a serious flaw with politicians deferring to military commanders on the ground when it comes to Iraq: It undermines the principle that the U.S. is a civilian government. This isn’t Burma, after all. Obviously you want military commanders leading military campaigns… but foreign policy? 72 words.
• NanoPost: Phear RPV Tech. 2008-07-31 10:24 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Jeff Frederick’s stellar IT background has brought the exciting world of ASP (c. 1996-2000) to the Republican Party of Virginia’s web site: http://rpv.org/news.asp. What could be next? 50 words.

August, 2008

• NanoPost: Sitemeter purged. 2008-08-02 2:27 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I never particularly liked Sitemeter because of the wacky redirecting it did, and I always intended to replace it. Today I see there is an even bigger reason not to like it: No site using Sitemeter will open in Internet Explorer. Nice. 90 words.
• Election of Childish Nicknames. 2008-08-06 10:02 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  If you want to be taken seriously in political discourse today, it’s very, very important to create a childish nickname for the opposition – you know, something that would fit in with the fourth grade playground set. Here’s a look at the playing field so far. 445 words.
• Blogger Shutdowns. 2008-08-06 10:26 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  There’s been some consternation lately about Google allegedly “shutting down” some blogs that were critical of Barack HUSSEIN! Obama. 525 words.
• omgwtfbbq #dontgo. 2008-08-07 1:55 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Virginia blogger Scott White has been spamming the Virginia blogosphere with breathless posts about the Twitter thread #dontgo for the last several days. It’s being called a “movement,” a “turning point,” a “revolution,” an “online orgy of oil drilling bliss” (okay, I made that one up). 326 words.
• Never Trust An Accent. 2008-08-09 1:52 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I didn’t think it was still possible for me to be disappointed in elected officials… John Reid Edwards’ admission of an affair proves they can never be trusted. I was actually somewhat impressed by the improvement in his rhetoric in the 2008 primaries. I should never have fallen for that Southern Baptist-sounding* accent. 94 words.
• Russia fighting Georgia for Ossetia. 2008-08-09 1:58 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I heard a microscopic blurb on the radio this morning about violence between Russia and Georgia. The radio guy talked about missiles and fighting and troops and then went right on to discuss the opening ceremonies of the Olypmics or something, leaving me totally in the dark about news that sounded pretty freakin’ serious. Why do they even bother? 184 words.
• WarHammer Online. 2008-08-09 3:34 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Is anyone I know going to be playing WarHammer Online? I see it’s going to be released pretty soon (Sep 18). If anyone I know is planning to play it, I’ll probably pre-order it, otherwise I’ll probably wait a year for a free trial version to come with a video card (like I did with World of Warcraft heh). 68 words.
• Obama’s VP. 2008-08-19 11:04 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Three different scoops about Obama’s VP pick: One for Kaine, one for Bayh, and one for Biden. Take your pick. 20 words.
• Obama’s VP Part 2. 2008-08-21 12:21 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  One of the previously mentioned scoopers now has a new scoop: Hillary. 145 words.
• Biden As VP. 2008-08-25 11:09 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I actually like Joe Biden. He is long-winded, yes, and I don’t agree with all of his policies, but he always seems to skip past the B.S. and get right to the point. 246 words.
• LINQ query syntax. 2008-08-26 1:47 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m starting to learn a little bit about LINQ. I am only doing this because I was starting to learn a little bit about the forthcoming ASP.NET MVC Framework by watching some handy screencasts, and the authors of the framework seem to think that we should all be using LINQ, too, so amidst the discussion of the MVC Framework they throw in quite a lot of tutorials about LINQ. 726 words.
• GhostDoc Redux. 2008-08-27 3:35 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I had previously written that I tried GhostDoc but removed it because it didn’t write very useful comments. Well I re-loaded it today because it does have one very handy feature: Adding comments to classes that implement interfaces. It’s incredibly tedious to copy comments from the interface code to the class code, but with GhostDoc you just have to right-click on the class member and hit “Document This” and it will automatically bring the comment from the interface to the class. 83 words.
• Opera Road Test. 2008-08-27 3:45 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Previously I wrote about Opera 9.5. Since then, I’ve been using it for almost all of my browsing at home (at work we still have to use IE6 rolls eyes). So far I’ve only encountered two real problems with it. 274 words.
• The Conventions Part 1. 2008-08-29 3:20 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  We’ve been watching the DNC on C-SPAN this week. If you’re masochistic enough to want to watch a partisan convention, C-SPAN is definitely the way to go. It entirely cuts out the commercials and painfully ridiculous commentary that typically comes with the news networks. 434 words.
• Agile Wall. 2008-08-29 8:52 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I learned a new software development term the other day: “Agile Wall.” For those of you who aren’t into renaming things that already have names just to sound more important, it is: “A bulletin board with project notes all over it.” Okay, okay, the notes are supposed to be arranged into three columns for “todo,” “in progress,” and “done.” Yeah, I can see how it’s a totally different concept now. 70 words.
• Palin as VP. 2008-08-29 11:35 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I said before I thought Biden was an “interesting and bold choice” for Obama. Well, today McCain actually one-upped him. Gov. 374 words.

September, 2008

• Virginia Third Parties in November. 2008-09-01 2:20 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was curious to see how many third parties made it onto the ballot here in Virginia, so I went over to the Virginia State Board of Elections. Here are the candidates that will be appearing on the ballot in Virginia for U.S. Senate. 142 words.
• This Is An Outrage. 2008-09-01 5:05 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I am outraged that Hurricane Gustav is interfering with the Republican National Convention. How am I supposed to compare it with the DNC now? 154 words.
• Prediction. 2008-09-04 2:31 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I am going to make a bold prediction that Republicans will praise Sarah Palin’s speech (probably using baseball metaphors), and Democrats will not. 23 words.
• Common Ground. 2008-09-05 12:52 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m going to try to find some common ground with Gov. Sarah Palin. 77 words.
• Secure Your Teleprompter Text. 2008-09-05 1:49 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was scanning over Gov. Palin’s speech as it was pasted at Caroline County VA Justice (original source unknown), and stumbled over this part, which plenty of others have also noticed. 65 words.
• Liberal Media Bias Again. 2008-09-05 1:49 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s some more of that damn liberal media bias again. I’m glad conservatives are finally holding the media accountable for this foolishness. 46 words.
• Comparison of VP speeches. 2008-09-05 1:56 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I thought it would be instructive to compare the tone of the personal attacks in the vice-presidential candidate speeches at their respective conventions. 691 words.
• The Conventions Part 2. 2008-09-05 10:16 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m not going to lie to you: The RNC was nowhere near as entertaining as the DNC. (Except as seen on The Daily Show.) Here are the all-star speakers from CSPAN’s YouTube channel: George Bush (introduced by Laura Bush), Fred Thompson, Joe Lieberman, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Palin, Lindsey Graham, Tom Ridge, Cindy McCain, John McCain. (Remember bloggers, embeds are not valid HTML. 173 words.
• New Comment System. 2008-09-09 1:17 AM.
  • Blog
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I updated the commenting functionality on my blog for no particular reason. 47 words.
• WAR Ordered. 2008-09-16 10:09 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Okay I ordered Warhammer Online (aka. WAR, which stands for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning). It’ll probably arrive in a week or so*. 316 words.
• WAR First Impressions. 2008-09-18 10:09 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Well I finally got the WAR beta client downloaded, unzipped, installed and patched up for the head start (a process that stretched over two days and nights), and I played a little bit on the Grimnir server last night. That means I got a one day head start on the retail public riff-raff, since the public launch is supposed to be today, the 18th. 590 words.
• Finally != Inevitable. 2008-09-19 12:29 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  For future reference: I had always heard that there were cases where finally blocks were not run. The other day I actually witnessed one of those situations: In a .NET console app, if you hit CTRL-C to exit the application, finally blocks are not executed. Fortunately garbage collection will still handle standard cleanup of objects for you (at least I assume so). 142 words.
• WAR Report, Day 6. 2008-09-22 10:38 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Since I can’t play WAR anymore because it now requires me to enter the CD key from the CD that hasn’t arrived yet, I guess this is a good opportunity to write down some more impressions of WAR. (Yes, once again, people who pre-order games get screwed.) 1,262 words.
• WAR Report, Day 7. 2008-09-23 10:28 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  …and day 2 of not being able to play because I haven’t received my pre-ordered copy in the mail yet. That part’s not surprising, but it is beyond belief that Mythic made the unbelievably retarded decision to disable the head start codes a couple of days after launch. Honestly the more I read about Mythic’s business practices, the less I want to play this game. 326 words.
• Darkfall?. 2008-09-23 10:51 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Darkfall sounds like it might be a cool new MMORPG on the horizon. The screenshots look really nice, and the feature list sounds impressive. I just signed up for the beta on a whim. 60 words.
• Sorry IE7 Users. 2008-09-26 11:01 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  By the way I’d like to apologize to anyone who has viewed my site recently with Internet Explorer 7. Sometimes it rendered very badly, randomly writing text all over the place, shifting boxes around and generally looking ugly (see below). It had something to do with an overflow:hidden CSS attribute in the rounded boxes, which apparently is not well liked by Internet Explorer. 83 words.
• WAR Report, Altdorf. 2008-09-26 11:05 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I was wandering around Altdorf the other night, which is the capital city for the Empire (ie. the humans). I don’t remember why I went there – probably to find someone to fulfill some quest. 276 words.
• That Bailout Thingy. 2008-09-26 11:08 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I know nothing about the mysteriously ambiguous world of economics so I can’t speculate as to whether this bailout thing is good, bad, or indifferent. Well, actually I can – I can speculate that bailing out big companies sounds bad. Not so much for the dreaded socialism aspect but more for the fact that the upper echelons of all these failed companies won’t experience any consequences from their persistent record of gross incompetence. 224 words.
• WAR Report, Day Something. 2008-09-30 11:05 AM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  More notes from WAR. I don’t know what it is about MMOs that inspire a lot of commentary. I guess everyone has an opinion about how to make MMOs better. 1,414 words.

October, 2008

• Death of a Bailout. 2008-10-01 12:29 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’m kind of glad the bailout bill failed. The “credit crisis” hasn’t affected me in the slightest, and I have yet to see any specific explanation of how it might affect me in the future. So now I won’t be able to get a loan for more money than I can ever pay back… that’s a crisis? 178 words.
• Who’s Going to Bail Out the Bailout?. 2008-10-06 9:47 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  So let me get this straight. 314 words.
• Sitemap.xml and Google Webmaster Tools. 2008-10-14 10:04 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I just read about Sitemap.xml on Coding Horror. I’d never heard of it before (yeah, I’m not exactly wired into the whole SEO thing). Anyway, I just implemented a site map for my page, for what it’s worth. 70 words.
• WAR Report, Fizzled Out. 2008-10-14 10:06 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Okay well I cancelled my WAR subscription and uninstalled it. Mrs. Krehbiel was starting to get annoyed and it was way too much of an uninspiring game to try to defend it. :) I should have stuck with my personal ban on EA games I guess. 229 words.
• WAR Report, Cultivation. 2008-10-14 10:08 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  One quick note on the WAR Cultivation skill: I applaud the concept – it’s a very cool idea to be able to plant seeds and grow them into herbs and things. Unfortunately the implementation in WAR is just awful. It takes about 2 full minutes to grow a single plant. 189 words.
• EVE Online Impressions. 2008-10-14 10:26 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Before I wasted my money on WAR, I toyed with the idea of getting EVE Online instead. The idea of a spaceship-based MMO is fascinating – it harkens back to the golden age of TradeWars on the local dialup BBS – and I’ve wanted to try it out for, well, years. So now that WAR is gone, I went ahead and downloaded the 21-day EVE Online free trial through Steam and played with it over the 3-day weekend. 692 words.
• Me vs. the MMO Engine. 2008-10-16 10:54 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  So I decided to write an MMO game engine*. 322 words.
• New Collection vs. Collection.Clear. 2008-10-18 4:38 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Quick, which one of the following implementations is faster to use in a time-critical section of code. 320 words.
• Evaluating MMO Engines. 2008-10-18 4:53 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Before I embark too far on the insane idea of writing my own MMO engine, I thought it would be instructive to peek at some open source engines out there (gathered from the first few pages of a Google search). 619 words.
• Moving C++/CLI Properties Out Of Headers. 2008-10-18 8:54 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  A while back I railed against C++/CLI for its nonsensical inability to separate property implementations from the header file. Well, it turns out you can do it – it’s just not widely reported. Almost every example of a C++/CLI property shows it implemented in the header file. 164 words.
• The Cynical Election Roundup. 2008-10-20 3:00 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  By the way, I’m purposefully avoiding writing and especially reading further about the presidential election. Thankfully I already have all the information I need to make a decision, because if I didn’t, I definitely wouldn’t be getting anything useful from television, radio or the blogosphere. I feel badly for anyone actually trying to decide how to vote right now. 143 words.
• MMO Prototype Progress. 2008-10-20 3:14 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Here’s the progress I made on my MMO engine this weekend. 30 words.
• India Launches Moon Mission. 2008-10-23 1:36 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  This is nifty: Indian Moon Mission Launched. Glad to see that somebody is doing something productive for the human race. This news surprised me because I can’t remember hearing about any other space flights to the moon since, you know, the 1970s. 73 words.

November, 2008

• A Minor Reflection upon the Election. 2008-11-04 10:21 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  For some parts of the country, tomorrow will be a day of joy and relief, and for others, it will be a day of anger and despair. Both of those extremist groups will be flailing around a lot on television, radio, and the Internet in the days and weeks ahead while media producers scramble to further dramatize what is supposed to be the (latest) defining news event of our time. 256 words.
• Poll Results from 2000 and 2004. 2008-11-04 10:25 PM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  It’s popularly believed (at least by the handful of people that I’ve overheard lately) that polls don’t mean anything, and the actual results of today’s election will be far different from what the media says it will be. I tend to agree with that theory, up to a point*. But I was curious to see if that viewpoint bears up against the historical evidence from the 2000 and 2004 elections, which as you may remember turned out to be toss-ups. 193 words.
• Post-Election Musing. 2008-11-06 12:07 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I have many post-election thoughts. 571 words.
• Azure and C# 4.0 at PDC. 2008-11-07 2:46 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  Most of the buzz from Microsoft’s PDC is about Azure and C# 4.0. I don’t usually pay too much attention to bleeding edge Microsoft technology until it might actually be used in real-life situations, but I thought I’d break from tradition and peek at these two shiny new things. 601 words.
• Disabling Pluralization in Visual Studio. 2008-11-11 10:51 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I noticed with some concern that the Visual Studio 2008 designer puts an “s” on the end of table names when it builds LINQ to SQL classes. If you want to disable that, open Tools/Options, go to the Database Tools O/R Designer page, and change “Pluralization of names” option to false. 108 words.
• Fed up with SyncToy. 2008-11-17 3:36 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been trying to use Microsoft’s SyncToy for my directory synchronization tasks, and I’m just about fed up with it. For reasons I can’t fathom, it routinely “forgets” what to synchronize. I frequently synchronize to and from a USB stick, and I find that SyncToy usually wants to copy far more files than have actually been changed. 146 words.
• Less Mergers, Less Bailouts. 2008-11-17 3:43 AM.
  • Commentary
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been thinking about this bailout thing. I’m no economist, but it seems to me that instead of the government bailing out large companies that fail, the government should instead work to prevent companies from getting so large that their failure would impact the nation’s economy. So I would suggest that whichever government agency is responsible for regulating corporations start cracking down and don’t allow big corporations to gobble up smaller corporations anymore. 82 words.
• CookieContainer, HttpWebRequest and Secure Cookies. 2008-11-20 2:27 AM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I ran across a troublesome problem that took several evenings to debug. I couldn’t find a solution with Google so maybe somebody else will benefit from this. 287 words.
• LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework Classes. 2008-11-21 11:15 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I’ve been starting to work a little bit with LINQ to SQL and now the ADO.NET Entity Framework* (to implement ORM** for UvMoney, my home banking system). There’s something that troubles me about both frameworks. Both require you to build a “model” of your database with a designer, from which strongly-typed classes are generated, which you can then use in your LINQ queries. 218 words.
• Corporate GMail. 2008-11-21 11:19 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I didn’t realize this, but you can actually brand Google apps. The place where my wife works got some new computers, and their new web-mail system is actually GMail with a different logo up in the corner, which they get to through their own domain name. After a little digging, I found that it’s “corporate GMail,” apparently a component of Google Apps. 83 words.
• When It’s Okay To Use C# 3.0 var. 2008-11-21 11:29 PM.
  • Technology
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I ragged a little bit on “var” a while ago, but there are some cases where I think it’s a handy shortcut. Those being when it’s abundantly clear what the underlying type is, like when creating new objects. For example, it makes perfect sense to change this. 373 words.
• Bioshock. 2008-11-28 8:37 PM.
  • Gaming
  • thomaskrehbiel.com
  
  I downloaded Bioshock from Steam for a measely $19.95 a while back. If you’re one of the six or seven people who haven’t played it already, it’s a very cool game. Definitely a five… out of five. 117 words.