OK, it's official. I am a geek. I made a video of my latest creation:

So, if you're wondering I'll tell you how I managed to construct this feat of total geekdom.

1. I purchased a Phidgets 4 relay USB interface kit from Trossen Robotics.
2. I went to Lowe's and bought a 3-gang box and 2 outlets.
3. I mounted the interface kit to a piece of 1/4" plywood and mounted it in the bottom of the box.
4. I wired the outlets up, 1 to each output on the relay board.
5. I downloaded Brian Peek's Holiday Light Sequencer.
6. I used the software to create a sequence to the music.
7. I bought 1 piece of 3/16" foamboard from my local Hobby Lobby.
8. I picked up 2 boxes of 100 clear lights, 1 box of 100 orange lights and 1 box of 100 blue lights.
9. I used OpenOffice Impress to create a layout, increasing the size to 20x30 and then printing out the presentation in tile mode.
10. I put almost 400 holes in the foamboard, 1 for each mini-light.
11. I plugged each string of lights into the outlet box, and let 'er rip!

So, whats next?  I think I'm moving the entire sign from the foamboard, to an extra piece of MDF that I have.  That should make it more stable.  I am also putting the interface/outlet box into a larger box with a lid (the relays can be a little loud).  I plan on using the interface to make my Christmas Tree blink to some music.

Take a look at the screen captures below that I took this evening from NFL.com.

You'll notice (as did I) that Orton has outperformed Peyton in every category thus far.  Now I know that Peyton is an excellent QB, and that he has won the Super Bowl, and that the Colts as a whole are not playing well.  But being a Bears fan, I just had to point out that Kyle Orton is a good QB.  I know several people who told me that Kyle just wasn't a good enough player to be a starter.  Yesterday against the Vikings he was 21 of 32 for 283 yards with 2 touchdowns, and a QB rating of 114.5.  I'd say that's good enough to not only start, but to win as well.

Rex who?

So let me take a few minutes of your time to explain why I love to browse with Firefox.

• Extensions - Probably the number one reason.  I use several extensions:
  1. Forecast Fox - Gets me the weather forecast while I'm browsing, and it even includes the current radar picture!
  2. Firebug - Allows me to "get inside" a webpage.  It lets me see the current style for any element in my pages.
  3. FoxyTunes - I can control the media player of my choice, and even gives me the current track title and artist, etc. in my statusbar.
  4. GMail Notifier - Tells me if and how many new GMail messages I have.
  5. Yahoo Mail Notifier - Does the same thing as GMail Notifier for my Yahoo Mail account.
  6. Fast Dial - When I open a new tab, it fills the page with thumbnails of my frequently visited pages.
  7. Smart Bookmarks Bar - Shows icons of several of my bookmarks on my main toolbar.
  8. Tab Mix Plus - Allows me to customize my tab-browsing experience.
  9. Download Statusbar - Shows me what I'm downloading, how fast, and when its done, all from my statusbar.  Then, when it is finished it disappears until the next time I download something.

• Cross Platform Compatiblity -FF act pretty much the same whether I'm using Ubuntu, WinXP, or (ugh!) Vista machines.  I can't speak for Mac though, I can't afford one of those.

• Standards Compliance - FF does a better job of following the standards than IE.

• Tabbed Browsing - FF had tabs before IE (Opera had them first, though), and handles them better.

• Built in Spell Check - FF allows you to spell check yourself as you type in text.

In a nutshell, FF lets me browse the way I want, while IE makes be do it the way Microsoft wants (IE7 is the worst version yet!).

Kids can be so gullible.

I know they are supposed to be able to trust their parents, but occasionally you have to tell them a tale so outlandish it's unbelievable.  You know, kind of like, "In my day, we had to walk to school, uphill both ways, on top of fenceposts because the snow was too deep".

So, last night I had to tell a story.  We had been discussing school yearbooks when I told them (my kids) that back in my day we didn't have cameras.  In fact, our yearbooks consisted of 30 little stick figures on a page with everyone's name.  And we didn't have copy machines either (remember mimeographs?) so the dumbest kid in the class had to sit in a corner and draw all of the yearbooks for everyone else.  Isn't that awful?  The worst part of the whole story is that my oldest believed it!  Then the little smart-alek asked if I was the kid who had to draw everyone else's.

Kids...Proof that God has a sense of humor.