bellringr

Hubby and I both have ViewSonic 19" flat screens and we really like them. I'm not a fan of flat panels at all. I don't want my screen to dim if I look slightly off center. They're as bad as some of the big screen TVs where you only get a good view straight on. That being said, if you want a flat panel, I think Sony looks the best. They're also one of the most expensive.

Sorry, but to fall for something as obvious as these e-mails, you are, by definition, not very intelligent. Well written or not, they play on people's greed and lack of common sense. My favorite is the 3rd Annual Nigerian Email Conference.

I thought they were a riot But unfortunately not true.

snopes.com is your friend. ht*p://www.snopes.com/language/phrases/1500.htm

That's a possibility, but I'm so leery of using that when I don't know what I'm going to get.

I need to pick the brains of the NYC-knowledgeable people again please. I'm trying to find a place to stay for the two nights in Manhattan that the company isn't paying for, and the cheapest I've found so far (for a hotel I know I can trust) is $350/night. While I know anything in Manhattan is going to be pricey, I'd like to keep it under $200/night if at all possible. We don't need much - just a clean, safe place to crash out for a couple of nights. I'd prefer Midtown, but one of the villages is ok as well. Any ideas?

I have the same 5.1 mp Sony that Bruce does and I love it! It's simple enough for point and shoot, but has a ton of features if you want to get into more intricate setups. While I swore I'd never get a Sony again (not a fan of the company and my Mavica didn't hold up worth a darn), this was a present from hubby and I'm very glad he got it.

I was sick of popups and wanted my own domain name so I asked on my EverQuest guild boards for ideas. Turns out the guild board was (and is) hosted by TCH and the owner pointed me to TCH's site. Almost a year and a half later and I have no complaints.

That's what I did first and it didn't work, so I tried the specific ones. I'll just have to experiment til it works I guess.

Everything other than what Dick had listed above was added today using the formats the search engines suggested for blocking them, but hey, I'll try anything right now. I had: # Disallow directories User-agent: * at the top before the list of directories so that, in theory, should've blocked ALL bots from those directories. Thanks for your help - I'll mess around with this tonight and see how it goes over the next week.

I can understand the pages still being in their search results, but even after I made the changes above, Slurp, Googlebot, and even BecomeBot whom I've blocked from my site completely are spidering the disallowed directories almost daily. I finally put BecomeBot's IP in my IP Deny. I'm just not sure what else to do. I want most parts of my site to be indexed, just not my blogs.

We have two cookouts this weekend so we'll be eating lots of burgers and brats.

Check out this thread under Security Discussions.

We all really liked it last night. The dialogue was rather lame (not unusual for Lucas) but the movie itself was fantastic. They showed previews of the Narnia Chronicles last night and it gave me goosebumps! I figured it was just me except my friend, Tony, said it did the same to him!

We're heading out tonight with a group of friends to see it. I bought all the tickets a week ago and now hubby's coworkers are crying because everything is sold out. I won't do the midnight show, but for a loud, fast-paced movie I'll do opening night. I, too, have seen every Star Wars movie as it was released in the theaters. I remember having a big crush on Luke after seeing Return of the Jedi. I don't recall when it opens, but I'm really looking forward to seeing the first Narnia Chronicles movie (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe). I'm a big CS Lewis fan and have probably read the books at least 10 times each.

Dorky Gorillasniffer

I blog just as a journal of what's going on for friends and family to read, so my post lengths vary quite a bit. I do tend to babble, though.

I don't think you can have just dsl, but I wouldn't change to Vonage unless I got cable anyway. According to their site I wouldn't be able to keep my number. That's another nightmare to consider.

Thanks everyone. John - those are some good points. I don't know what braniac duped everyone into thinking that digital cell phones sounded so much more clear than analog, but I have never found that to be true. I miss my old cell phone where I could hear what was going on in the background and the voice on the other end didn't sound like it was always slightly distorted or coming through water. What got me wanting to switch is that Verizon started charging me for our calling plan out of the blue - no warning, no explanation, nothing. We barely use the long distance and I'm pondering getting rid of it altogether. I'd have to see if we could still call toll-free numbers or not because I can get phone cards at work that are only 5.8 cents/minute. On top of that, our DSL quality has taken a nosedive in the past 2 weeks. While it was never stellar (1.1 mbits/sec was the highest I've ever seen it get to), lately it's been in the 350-750kb/sec range which is unacceptable. I'm loathe to give more money to Insight, but at a certain point, enough is enough. It'd be cheaper anyway. One consolation is that Insight's tech support CAN'T be worse than Verizon's! When they were having service issues last week, their response to a friend of mine was, "Your computers are broken." He is no longer a Verizon customer.

Hubby and I are looking at other phone options since we're getting sick and tired of Verizon. Has anyone used Vonage? If not, do you know of another service you could recommend?

A while back I used a little program that was posted by Don (I think) that created a robots.txt file for me. I have added several folders to the disallow list since then, but according to my Latest Visitors, bots like MSNbot are still spidering folders that I want them to stay out of. Would someone take a look at my robots.txt file please and see if I've done something wrong? Do I need to put one of these in each subdomain? thanks! Kristi

One week while we were in St. Lucia, but my hubby was having bad puter withdrawals and a couple days before we left he paid to use the little dial-up connection they had. Yeah, it was really rough giving it up to be in the Caribbean...not!

Doesn't matter if you have the new WP installation or not - they both get spammed. However, I hate moderating comments. When I post a comment, I want it to show up right away, and I don't want those who post on my blog to have to wait either. ('cause you know, my blog is soooo important ) So I installed Spam Karma and I get NO spam comments coming through.

Thanks so much VI! Great to hear from you again, too. The israeli and french restaurants sound wonderful! I bet I'd like the spanish as well although I don't do much in the way of seafood. Pre-shelled shrimp is about my limit. We generally try to find a middle eastern restaurant no matter where we go because there isn't a good one anywhere near here. We had lunch at a little israeli place in Boston last fall that had the best tabouli and hummus I've ever eaten.

Hubby and I are going to NYC for a few days in November for a business conference and we both love trying different ethnic restaurants. Are there any TCH family members who live in the area and could give some recommendations? I would prefer places that locals frequent, not touristy spots. We'll be staying near the theater district in Manhattan but we are fine with using the subway to get around. Oh - and we're also not looking for mexican, italian, or chinese restaurants as we have lots of those locally. Thanks very much! I'm really looking forward to getting out of Illinois.