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When Half a Billion Isn't Enough

10.01.2003

I've been seeing a lot lately about the latest Forbes 400 list coming out. Seeing as how my interest in wrestling has been wanning of late, I decided to look and see how much Vince (WWE head Vincent K McMahon to those of you that know no better) was doing.

A quick look at 2000 saw #260 with $1.1 billion in net worth. That was followed by the XFL fiasco in 2001 that saw him drop to #364 and $700 million. His net worth continued to drop in 2002 as he fell to #386 and $570 million. This year, Vince doesn't even make the list, although he managed to up his worth to $575 million.

I get mad when I lose a $20 bill. I would hate to find out I was worth $600 million less than I was 3 years ago. Of course, I'm not worth $600 million now, am I? I'm barely worth $600!

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Preventing Hotlinking 101

09.30.2003

I was looking at the weblogs for the weekend and found that a country music messageboard had shot up to become my #2 refferer. Wondering what this was all about I went to see what was going on. It seems I have a pic of Toby Keith wrestling that was being linked to from their message board.

I have no problem with people using images. Heck, this was one of the few pictures that I actually took myself, but it's the bandwidth that goes along with them linking to the picture here that bugs me. If I had unlimited bandwidth, I wouldn't worry about it. And to be honest, it's probably not enough bandwidth to worry about, but it's just the spirit of the bandwidth pirate that bothers me.

So I went off to see what I could do. I basically can only modify the .htaccess file as opposed to the Apache config file (boy I miss having my own server). I Google search later and I found what I needed to add to the .htaccess file to prevent the site from linking to my images:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(boards.)?countryweekly.com [NC]
RewriteRule .(jpe?g|gif)$ - [NC,F]

I went back to the message board and the pic doesn't show up any longer, so it looks like it worked! So, if anyone else needs a little help to keep people linking to your images, try the above in your .htaccess file [changing (boards.)?countryweekly.com to (www.)?badsite.com where appropriate].

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Crazy Uncle Russ Strikes!

09.29.2003

Saturday I went with Jer and young Hellzapoplin to Toys R Us. But it wasn't just any trip to TRU, it was to be her first trip. Ah, a fresh mind to populate with the goodness of toys!

The high point was when Jer went in search of diapers. We went to the diaper aisle in the back of the store and Jer searched for diapers. At this point Helen, sitting politely in the buggy, pointed down another aisle as her eyes lit up. I looked and found she had spied the Teletubby aisle. Beinga year and a quarter, Helen is all about the Teletubbies. So I did what any self respecting, single, crazy uncle would do.

I parked the buggy right next to the Teletubbies, stood back, and watched the mayhem begin.

Everythingin reach quickly started to find it's way into the buggy. "Po" she would say as she pulled Po off the shelf. "Na Na" as La-La followed. "Po!" and another Po came into the buggy. Soon she was covered in Teletubbies, which was quite a sight since she's about the size of a Teletubby.

I managed to talk Jer into getting all 4 of the Teletubbies for her (ok, I might have gotten a couple for her...). Once she got home and Elaine was present, we started to pull Teletubbies out of bags. It being her first trip to Toys R Us, Helen didn't know that things go from the shelf to the buggy to a bag to home, so it was all a great surprise to her. With each Teletubby her eyes would widen more as she came ever closer to excitement driven hyperventilation.

Four Teletubbies turned out to be too many to hug at one time, so she would take turns hugging them in pairs and the occasional trio. By the time I had to leave the floor was riddled with Teletubbies and their 1:12 scale predecessors, and Helen was way past time for her nap and still seemed to be growing strong.

If only Toys R us had stocked the Rock action figure I was wanting to get her, this may have turned out all different.

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