PAOracle.com Updates

Waiting for my Muse

Well, just wanted to add an update showing that I am in fact still online and still planning a future for myself here, somewhere. While a rather silly thought, the internet is a place for growth for me, although I've seen little of that over the last year.

Really I think the thing is to focus and find inspiration, which I notice is a recurring theme for me. I have a mountain of projects to do, but little inspiration, and without the creative juices flowing there is no point starting them. I don't want to be responsible with putting junk on the internet, and despite being a talented designer who can fashion good websites, I missed the boat on Web 2.0 and making any kind of name for myself by innovating design trends. Also too my long-term financial situation is hazy, I've got a great job moving me out of the low wage income earners and into the "low-middle" wage income earners... but despite being moved to a new lead position, I feel like I'm the captain of a sinking ship: my employer is battered and bruised in the highly competitive market of consumer electronics retail, and it's reflected on the District and store level. Writing-wise, I'm still unpublished, my only publish-worthy book is so mammoth its size is a fatal obstruction to its publication, so it sits on the internet in its own museum of my past creative projects. I can't complain too much about publication, I prefer to publish online any day of the week, but I have no real projects planned to take to make into books or peer-reviewed journals, and no qualifications or background that distinguish me from any other schmuck, so my future there is bleak. Likewise, my chances of being involved with law or ever again publishing a bill that becomes law - like my bill in Kansas that increased minimum sentences for sex offenders - is nill to none, despite my passion for it. Politics, law, and government are great interests for me, but I have little hope of future involvement in those fields.

For this, my video blogs suffer, as you've seen I've not released one at all this year. This is partly due to my camcorder being a pain in the ass, recording video blogs will not happen if I don't get the recording routine downpat and each time I begin recording anew I wind up reinventing the wheel. I can't maintain my meager production values to satisfaction with the software packages I find, and it'll probably take some more looking to get it just right, and until then you won't see any new video blogs. Plus, I'd like one of those dandy HD camcorders, and someday a studio, so I can start with a higher quality video, because my camcorder's webcam output is weaksauce (despite being an awesome camcorder). None of this is an excuse though, the inkwell of my mind has been a bit dry lately, like a big brick resides in my head.

Oh, but this inactivity doesn't mean my highly opinionated nature has declined any, and I feel the more that I go without documenting my thoughts, the more of those thoughts are lost. We all hate losing things, don't we?

New software to explore = greater distractions from productive work

As a computer tech who started using Vista 3 months in beta before it's public release, I'm a big fan of the changes Microsoft has implemented, much to the chagrin of the unwashed masses who spout the "I hate change" line of XP Kool-aid. That said, I do a lot of work in Linux environments and the newest release of Ubuntu 8.04 caught my eye. I enjoy it a lot, and one of the newest features of this release - the Wubi installation method - has made it possible, finally, to install it as a secondary OS without any substantial risk or inconvenience. Despite the purported slowdown a Wubi-style installation is said to have, my speeds blaze while in Ubuntu, even with all the graphical features enabled.

That said, I still can't quite get it the way I want it, and until then that means a big "no" for it being my primary OS. I had no problem configuring Opera (my main web browser, I'll talk more about that in a bit), so that made the experience a little more bearable this time around. Let me give sum up my user woes in Ubuntu by example - my mouse is an MX Revolution by Logitech, an awesome mouse. It requires special software on Windows to configure it's buttons ideally, and Logitech provides no Linux support for that, so you're left to the wild world of Open Source support to find an alternative. Indeed one is available, BTNX it's called, and it even has options for the MX Revolution specifically... which for the life of me don't work. I'm not getting into technical details or asking advice, because this is one example of many of situations where hardware issues exist in a core Linux install which really should not be a problem but is. Even if I did get it to work for basic clickery, making the inner mouse wheel a volume control is a logistical nightmare I care not to try to tackle, but very important to me in how I use it in Windows. Dual monitor settings with my LCD Polaroid HDTV, getting said dual monitor setup working the way I want with Compiz's beautiful 3D effects (close, but no cigar, and I'm even stuck with a buggy pink hue around all my window borders... fun), doing something simple like figuring out how to get my sound card to cut off speaker audio when I plug in my headphones... it has a long ways to go before I can call it a primary OS. I shouldn't have to do as much command line installs as I do but I gotta say considering the history of Linux distributions this is a milestone of progress.

Since the Ubuntu Wubi install is easy, painless, and reversible without any damage to your system, I encourage downloading Ubuntu and giving it a try. Once you burn the ISO to a CD (or loaded it virtually via Daemon Tools), just click "Install inside Windows". Sounds technical but isn't, requires a few reboots and it even keeps Windows as the default boot. Don't like Ubuntu? Just go back into Windows, go into the Add/Remove programs, and click "Uninstall" on Ubuntu. In a few moments it'll be gone. I like to think of Ubuntu like this: it's a usable environment, and might help me a ton if Windows gets problems, and fun to experiment in. When considering trying a secondary operating system, those things are big bonus points, and definitely justifies the install. I really think we should all dabble in alternative OS's - I even installed a Mac OS X Tiger emulator on my Vista machine (via PearPC). Runs great, but man, it does remind me that Macs are total ass. People who use Macs are clearly Communist.

Moving on to other new software this year, the newest edition of the Opera web browser, code-named Kestrel, has much promise and I'm already using that beta as my main browser (although it seems a little laggy while loading pages, something I'm sure will be fixed as time progresses). This new "speed dial" feature to me is completely crap, and changing basic navigation features like back/forward away from their previous settings (1 & 2 on the number pad would toggle you between webpages, which was super easy and I had to go in and manually re-add that). After using Opera for a while, I know how to customize it into any number of crazy configurations (it is easily the most configurable browser, so much that you can even install it and use it for an entirely non-browser related purpose), but even though this process is easy it's not very known amongst new users who would probably strongly consider it if they knew about it. Otherwise Opera 9.5's beta is great, I just hoped for a few things new and the new features did not impress me that much.

In the meantime, Firefox 3 is certainly looking good. As a web developer, I use all three browsers (Opera 9.5 beta as my primary, Internet Explorer 8 beta, and Firefox 3), but Firefox has always been my least used of the three. For the longest time, I hated loading Firefox... it was slow to load, IE's indoctrination of the tabbed browsing system made it's tabbed browsing feel inferior (and Opera's tabbed browsing already made them both seem pretty pathetic), but since Firefox 3 came in and increased the performance, revamped the look and feel, I'm enjoying it.

In waiting for Trillian Astra to come out, which is honestly taking forever, I've been on the lookout for a replacement for my multi-client instant messaging needs, Trillian 3 was simply too clunky and unforgiving. I got excited a while back when I noticed that GAIM, probably the largest major multi-client project, had been replaced by the Pidgin client, I thought this was the revitalization that it needed. While Pidgin looks better and is nice, it's just not what I'm looking for, it doesn't escape the same feeling of crapitude that GAIM originally had. While surfing the web, I found Lifehacker's article on different multi-client instant messenger clients, and from there found out about Digsby. At first I thought it was obnoxious, I hate the stupid little cartoon character icon the program uses.

Fat guy with a hat and no limbs = Suck

Still, I popped it and used it. Being a beta and having a sizable buddy list, it took me a while and some patience to get my buddy list in order, but Trillian 3's buddy list had a long-standing bug not only limiting it's size but making it hard to permanently erase people and a bitch to reorder, and being able to get around that and make my buddy list a little more fluid was a welcome change. Something which really impressed me was the integration with my Yahoo email - for the longest time, I used Trillian to eye my Yahoo inbox, but it always bugged me that I never knew what was in my mailbox until I actually logged in (oh, don't get me wrong, I like Safeway.com reminders and free delivery offers, but they aren't *important*). Digsby actually can somehow condense all of my emails from Yahoo into a list and let me see their titles, some of their content, delete them, mark them as read, all without me actually going to Yahoo to do any of that. Awesome blossom.

Likewise, I've actually begun to use Facebook again, which - for those of you who don't know - I hate. Never did I think a site would be more insecure, buggy, shitty and "trendy" than Myspace, until I saw what college kids passed off as "social networking". I never used it after I made my account, but now that Digsby just shows me all the relevant info right next to all my Myspace info, it's less of a pain in the ass (although I still have next to nobody on my friends list there yet). I have confidence in Digsby's crew because they push updates in a recently deployed automatic update system constantly, and even send you a spiffy user message about it, and while a young project it's definitely a great start. I hear they're working on a Linux version, and that too will be an important factor in the future should I switch my primary OS. Hell, I even threw on Twitter for the hell of it (phoebusapollo, follow me on there).

While on the thought, Windows Live OneCare is my new anti-virus of choice. Yes, it's mainly because I got a free product key as a job benefit, but so be it. It basically has all the best features of the competition - equivocal to Norton 360 - without the bloat or excess crap. It isn't so huge a benefit for Vista machines because it adds some redundant features (like backup), but it's a boon for XP machines since those features are sorely needed. My only gripe is that the product requires you register with Microsoft's Live network, meaning you must associate your subscription to a Hotmail/MSN/Live.com account. While a pain in the butt, and confusing for new users, once that's done it's a very nice anti-virus, and honestly cheaper than most equivocal commercial anti-virus competition. There is a free 30-day trial for unbelievers. If you're looking for free, stay on AVG.

All work and no internet makes Phoebus a dull boy

Another of my major life distractions revolving around the infernal computers is the various websites I go to. To be honest, the computer is not an optional appliance, and internet service not an optional expense... progressive society requires both. Of course, that doesn't mean it's not easy to let yourself go... astray.

I do spend some time keeping up on various webcomics (and even the bad ones). Websites with respectable and regularly updated video (+more) and animated content are numerous as the stars in the starry sky.

I, ashamedly, have been following the ugly world of "Let's Play" video game reviews on Youtube, and there really is no more base form of entertainment, but still once in a while I find the reviewers find some high quality game that merits a play or carries their poor sense of humor. Still, some good reviewers can be found on the independent Let's Play forum, but to me a good reviewer knows how to prevent themselves from being utterly obnoxious at all times, ruining the experience of just watching people play a game. Such as Duke of the Bump, mastatsan, or wc10k. All, however, are examples of infrequent updaters, but at least sound like decent human beings who you don't want to hit while you listen to their commentary.

Gawker's media empire produces mostly crap websites, with the exception of Lifehacker which sometimes has quality/interesting content, and Kotaku which provides decent gaming news when inbetween stories about undressable pedophile anime figurines. Joystiq also provides gaming info in a somewhat more digestable fashion, Digg is what I still use for general links, while Myway is still my favorite news aggregator, although I'm looking around for something to replace it. I also found out the guy running the Comic Pirate website is back in business on the Pirate Bay's new blogging service, although you can find that link yourself.

Despite all that productivity wasting time online, I did find a nice site to organize tasks, Remember the Milk. Definitely a great place to go if you want to lay out some duties, pretty easy to access from anywhere, very handy.

All in all said, little new for me as far as that goes, but I thought I'd share.

The 2008 Elections dominate the otherwise boring news, so I must comment on it I suppose

This election has surprised me, I did not expect a candidate to be so patently bad that I would actually root for Hillary to win the Democratic nomination, nor did I think that the Republicans would be the ones to elect the more moderate candidate. Guiliani's campaign was a wash, perhaps I should've sent that I.O.U. for $9.11 a little quicker.

Most of you (being the few who even read this far) know my opinion of the election: Barack Obama is a contrived caricature of the modern politician who has managed to inspire nothing but hopelessness in my faith of the political process to someday right itself. Not even an ideologue, I cannot take any stance of his with any degree of consistency, and I do question his worldview opinions (Obama may be an Islamic convert, but the Christian pastor he followed thinks the white man invented AIDS to kill black people, Jews plotted 9/11, and sides with Iran on the question of Israel's right to exist... not instilling much faith in me there). More importantly Barack is an anachronism, a man of mixed heritage "finding himself" in modern society through the venue of politics is a story of impact for the 1890's, not for 2008. More importantly we as a society should be progressing beyond such notions. His platform is nearly identical to Hillary's, but Hillary's platform is at least her own - she is a clear ideologue, her ideas are her ideas, and she's more bound to consistently follow them. Not that I particularly think that's a good thing, but better the devil you know.

In the meantime, John McCain is eschewing a lot of his stances of moderation to curry the GOP core vote, but I suspect once in the oval office McCain will go back to his moderate Republican principles. Still, he is a war hawk, so that means a continuation of the same political discourse over the War on Terror, a fate nearly as awful as socialist universal healthcare.

The debate continues to inspire the utterly lamest people to voice their opinions, like the clown who drew this cartoon

Case in point: the cartoonist

With political biases obvious, people's opinions are downgraded to their basest form of slackmindedness - oh that mainstream media is so mean to that Obama, but not to Bush! The petulance of people these days knows no bounds. For me, it's easy to criticize the political process as a whole, the lack of saturation of like-minded limited government advocates out there to back the view that government is not some shoddy shovel to bury everyone's problems in a mountain of debt, inflation and regulation... but never could I manage the boneheadedness that this type of myopia illustrates.

So I continue to watch as I slowly lose hope in change, real change. Change is not the Barack Obama "I'll give you all lollipops, health care and candy canes in the land of the magic misty valley" variety of "change", it's not that misguided fool's errands of instilling in others a false sense of "hope". Instead I'm talking about a misplaced faith I have in people that they will someday realize this type of political system is not what will make our union more perfect, it's not what the revolution was fought and won for. Choosing between two big government candidates on the Republican and Democratic sides is disheartening, Americans will typically agree with this, yet they do little to change their worldview about government's role.

Well, I suppose that even though I have substantially more to add, that should give you a good overview of where I've been for the last few months. It goes without saying that I intend to do some more updating soon, but if intentions meant anything you would've seen an update every day for the last 6 months instead of a whole lot of, well, nothing. Anyways, take care, and keep in touch.

Your friend and humble servant,

- Good ol' PA

Let's Play with Emulators... Again! (pSX, ePSXe, Nestopia, Visual Boy Advance, MAME)

I decided that I might as well round off what I've been up to lately with reviewing various emulators by touching on another 5 of them. I thought these little clips should give a nice and very basic insight into emulation for the various platforms and give you an idea of how it might run on your PC. Plus they were piss-easy videos to make and I'm trying to procrastinate on making harder videos like my upcoming 10th Video Blogging super special which I still don't know quite what I'm going to do. Either way, this is the last of reviewing emulators that you'll see from me for quite some time as I have no intention to do any more of these videos, but I fully intend to get together with a friend or two and make some proper Let's Play videos.

You can watch all the videos here on PAOracle.com or you can watch them all at different sites with varying quality (From worst to best - Youtube/Myspace/Stage6). Pick your viewing option and away you go to the wonderful world of emulation. If you want to get this emulator and give it a try yourself, links are provided.

The Pitch: My break from video blogging continues with more emulation review, this time I take a look at pSX, a Playstation emulator. I test the emulator to demonstrate its gameplay by playing a little Parappa the Rappa. Get it @ http://psxemulator.gazaxian.com/

The Pitch: Moving on, I take a look at another Playstation emulator, ePSXe. More features but requires more configurations and thus there is a larger margin for error, but still my preferred Playstation emulator. I also show a bit of gameplay footage of Dragon Warrior VII. Get it @ http://www.epsxe.com/

The Pitch: A very basic look at emulators, I review Nestopia, a NES emulator. There are a lot of NES emulators out there and all of them work virtually as well, but Nestopia tends to be my favorite at the moment. I play a little Bubble Bobble to show off the emulator's capability. Get it @ http://nestopia.sourceforge.net/

The Pitch: These very basic emulator reviews are just to give you an idea of what to expect if you try to run emulation on your PC, and this emulator is truly worth checking out, Visual Boy Advance a Gameboy Advance emulator. Lots of great games you might of missed are available for this emulator, and to demonstrate, I play a little Metroid Fusion, although I suck at it clearly. Please excuse me for pronouncing it "Virtual" Boy Advance instead of "Visual", I wasn't really paying attention. Get it @ http://vba.ngemu.com/

The Pitch: My last emulator review I take a look at the mother of all emulators, MAME, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Emulating an endless list of arcade titles gave me a great degree of choice for what I wanted to play to test it out, so naturally I chose Namco's 1982 Dig Dug. If I do any more of these videos, I'm going to actually play a specific game and do a Let's Play proper. Oh, for the record this is on MAME32, the Windows binary for MAME. Get it @ http://www.mameworld.net/ (probably the best resource, the official site is more a developer's portal)

And as stated before I should mention my PC's specs so you can put the above videos into context: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS 320MB

Enjoy!

- Good ol' PA

5 years of rants, here's one more

Well, I know it's been a while since you all heard from me, still trying to think of something good for my video blog's 10th episode. Perhaps a production change, or maybe just a format change, or some kind of special feature or something. Or maybe it'll be the same format and the same everything, who knows? In the meantime though, it's high time I sit down and do a little writing. As for a personal update, I'm keeping busy. I replaced the car I wrecked a while back, the new car has had a couple of problems though, right now it's parked due to a high pressure power steering hose that sprung a leak. The leak happened less than 24 hours after a visit to Jiffy Lube, and due to Jiffy Lube's awful reputation, I don't trust them enough to want to go back. After all, with video tutorials like these it's pretty easy to check most of your fluids yourself.

As we full well know, today is the 6th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks, and today is also the 5th anniversary of PAOracle.com, which was registered on the first anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks. That also means that I've been living in Portland for a little over 6 years. I'm happy with the home I've made here, although per the usual, my productivity leaves something to be desired. There are still many web projects I have on the table, hopefully you'll see some of them coming about soon.

But that's enough rabble rousing, let's just get into some noteworthy items.

Bruce Campbell as Jack Stiles as the Daring Dragoon about to deliver another one-liner

I just finished watching the short series "Jack of All Trades", staring Bruce Campbell in another one of his collaborations with Sam Raimi. The series lasted just two seasons and was cancelled in the middle of the second one, regardless it was an amusing show, really not much more than that but whatever. What I liked the most were the absurd and deliberate historical inaccuracies, such as appearances by the Statue of Liberty (built in 1886) and Catherine the Great (who died in 1796), in the show which is set in 1801. To give you a recap, the show stars Jack Stiles (Bruce Campbell) who is a spy for Thomas Jefferson (best President ever BTW) who is attempting to undermine the imperial French regime of Napoleon Bonaparte (played by Verne Troyer, best known as "Mini-Me" from the Austin Powers movies). This all takes place at a fictional remote French-controlled island called Palau-Palau where only the most important of international negotiation and trades somehow take place, although I'm a bit baffled by the supposed location of this island, as somehow Lewis & Clark wind up there instead of Oregon, yet it must be somewhere in the Caribbean... whatever. Jack is accompanied by English spy Emilia Rothschild (Angela Dotchin) who plays the "straight man" (or rather, woman) and acts as a foil for Jack's comedic tomfoolery, as she uses her womanly wit to create absurd scientific contraptions such as a submarine, a near-death potion, and love potion that serve as generic plot elements. During the course of the show Jack (sometimes donning the disguise of the Daring Dragoon) and Emilia engage in such things as BDSM roleplaying with Marquis de Sade, winning the Lousiana purchase in a game of cards, running around naked as brainwashed zombies, stopping a Lincoln-style assassination of King George, and saving James Madison from Blackbeard.

The show for all it's charms is painfully shallow and full of mostly "here's Bruce Campbell in a tv series spitting out one-liners", but still I found it worth watching. It's only 22 episodes, after all. While on the subject of TV shows, there was an excellent Twilight Zone marathon today, anyone manage to catch it? I would also like to note that the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm has begun airing, which is also a definite must-see.

I realize I left the caption for this blank, then I realized that I didn't have anything I really wanted to say here. Oh well.

Now time for a short political commentary. I was going to initially talk about the Ron Paul campaign again, but y'know, it gets kinda tiring harping on the same cord like some damn filthy cherub, even though the Ron Paul campaign is going very well and he's proving a great success at exposing libertarian ideas to a new audience this year. I was also going to talk about the Larry Craig incident but that's now old hat and really, the only thing I have to say about that situation is that I am perturbed that there is some kind of "secret code" gay people use in the public restroom to solicit for strange-person sex. Ick.

So those two issues aside, I've been meaning to take a deeper look at new candidate Senator Fred Thompson, who was essentially begged by the media to run. So last week on the Tonight Show he announced his candidacy, which to me means he's fair game. To the outsider, he has some very Reagan-esque features. He for instance is an actor (his most recent role was on Law & Order), and he happens to rest on Reagan-esque rhetoric such as emphasis on checks and balances and state's rights. He does have an extensive legal background, although little of that actually works to his advantage. Like all the other candidates (besides Paul, who seems to stand alone on this issue), Thompson is a war hawk, and supported the Iraq invasion on the grounds of preventative measures, he is also very likely to engage a war with Iran for the same reasons.

As for positive points on his positions, there are a few, Thompson does seem to put a huge focus on his policy-making ideas towards the concept of state/federal separation of powers (this important distinction he often calls his "lodestar"). As such, we can hope for some consistency in helping identify issues that the federal government shouldn't rule on (which are 99% of the issues the federal government deals with), although like Reagan, I expect to hear a lot of rhetoric on this position and see very little action. Another thing is that Thompson seems to be very open to the idea of replacing the income tax with a more efficient system, however I don't really trust tax policy to anyone other than a down-the-line libertarian. He is also for free trade and free marketplaces but on none of these issues has he shown much initiative, and we have no real reason to think he'll show any if made President. He is also one of the first candidates to suggest the idea of cutting Social Security benefits as a means to help alleviate some of the problems associated with it, which in my opinion is just fiscal honesty, as our various entitlements both through Social Security and other federal welfare programs are becoming completely unmanageable. He also thinks that abortion should be decided by the states, a Constitutionally correct assertion, but he's self-stated pro-life so we can expect him to err on the side of having those states subsequently ban it (an initiative that could be very successful, if recent state gay marriage legislation is any example). His views on this are much like Giuliani's where once analyzed you'd probably call him more of a pro-choice candidate as the National Review did. Still, the attitude that this is a state issue (which it is) will help get the issue off the national stage and help debase the special interest groups which use it as a means to get on the national stage. By making abortion a state-based initiative, we'd see less of liberals trying to get contraception financing, just as we'd see less of neoconservatives trying to pushing abstinence-only education programs. At least, on the national stage.

As for negative comments, well, namely I reserve any and all skepticism on any of his positions simply because he fails to document any of these stances, they are all inferred from his voting records and statements, which never hold much weight once someone becomes Commander-In-Chief. It shows that he knows how to make principled statements, but that is not proof of having actual principles. Regardless, the one clear negative of Thompson is that he is as much pro-war as any of the Republican candidates, and like the other candidates, he does not seem to have any good strategies for resolution of the conflict. His attitude is fairly sophomoric on the issue, "the terrorists are out to get us, but we must get them first" sums it up pretty well. It's true the terrorists are out to get us, but let's be realistic here. Our foreign engagements don't show a history of helping civilize Islamic fascists, and it's very possible that so long as they are Islamic and fascist, they won't be civilized. So we have to set clear goals for what we intend to do with our foreign engagements and they have to be clearer than merely "get them before they get us". Otherwise we'll be married to Iraq and every other arab country we invade, in the goal of killing every last terrorist that ever terrorized, putting them in the spotlight and giving people like Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad an audience so they can pretend they rule something better than a dumpy 3rd world nation with some oil.

It's important to state that of the candidates, Fred Thompson is one of the better. After all, someone who is smart enough to snub Michael Moore instead of take him seriously can't be all bad. However, Thompson appears more dogmatic than principled, which will be important on how he would play out as a President. An example of this is his involvement as part of the advisory board for Lewis "Scooter" Libby legal defense fund in the Valerie Plame affair. The Libby case was mainly political, someone with sense would know that the disclosure of Plame's identity was a political maneuver meant to put former Ambassador Joseph Wilson (who was critical of the Bush administration's efforts to exaggerate an Iraqi threat of WMD's) in a compromised position (he was married to Plame, for him to state as a government official that Iraqi WMD claims were without merit and to be married to a CIA operative investigating the threat is a delicious irony certain conservative commentators can't prevent themselves from commenting on). Being an entirely political affair, Thompson should have known better than to get involved or be one-sided. However, he went with the administrative motivations and sided pretty much completely on the side of Libby and the Bush administration, despite having openly admitted to not knowing Libby, he threw his hat in as a primary advisor to his legal defense. This incapacity to actually think for oneself shows a serious character flaw in Thompson, one I think we will see creep up as the election continues.

Well, I wanted to run another topic, but pretty soon my Sept. 11th update will turn into a Sept. 12th update, so I better just post this now and get a move on. Just wanted to say thanks for those of you who still are around, and be sure not to be strangers. Hopefully you'll hear from me again soon.

- Good ol' PA