The feature is called "Search Prefixes" and you can enable it either by hacking the registry, or by using the XP version of TweakUI. (I don't know if it is available for other versions of Windows - sorry).

To set one up using TweakUI, you simply click on the plus sign next to Internet Explorer, then click on Search. In the Search Prefixes dialog, you click on the Create button. For the prefix, you enter whatever abbreviation you want to use to trigger the search, and then in the URL box, you enter the full URL that the search engine needs. This column by Jerry Honeycutt gives a full explanation with examples.

For my example (I like a pretty tweaked invocation of Google) I set my prefix as "g" (no quotes) and my url as http://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&q=%s

Now, whenever I want to do a Google search, I simply type in "g 'string to search'" without the single or double quotes in the IE address bar. For example:

g david sanders blogdom

Will open a new window with the Google results for david sanders blogdom, of which the first reference is... that's right!

I could have set up other prefixes for other search engines, but that would imply that I bother with other search engines...

Very cool!

Talk about Nerd Nirvana!

Aisle after aisle of PC components... not a few ATX power supplies - but over twenty! Not one or two motherboards, but dozens.

And not only computers! Oh my, there were gadgets galore. Kind of like a mix of Circuit City and Radio Shack on steroids. I felt like a kid in a candy store. Were it not for my will of steel, I could have walked out of there hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars poorer.

I actually walked around for almost an hour with a $60 after-rebate 120GB hard drive before putting it back right before I left. Oh, and there was this oh-so-cool itty bitty flexible flashlight for $15. And cool velcro tie wraps, and pieces of giant heat shrink tubing, and, and, and...

Now the question is... dare I go back for another visit?

I think the unusually large number was caused by a severe sunburn I suffered when I was about six years old. Mom had taken me to Martinique and we both fell asleep on the beach our first day there. Mom got burned, I got fried. I was in the bed for a couple of days basted in calamine lotion writhing in pain.

Anyway, every doctor who has ever seen my back has expressed concern over the number of moles on my back, but has never been concerned enough to do anything about them.

This happened when I got my first physical from my current doctor four years ago. It happen again when I got my next physical two years ago. And it happened again this year...

Well, not exactly. This year, he decided he wanted to do something about them.

So, last week, he sliced off three of the suckers. He told me that after he receives the pathology report, he'll decide what to do about the rest. If the pathology is normal, he'll stop worrying. If it is atypical, he'll probably want to whack some more. Neither the procedure (other than the brief sting of the local) nor the recovery was painful, so if he wants to do some more slicing, it's fine with me.

Both Jeanie and I were out of town, so no one was available to deal with the situation.

Fortunately, we have absolutely wonderful neighbors - Peggy and Dave.

I called Dave and asked if he would mind going next door to reboot the router, to which he replied that he would be glad to.

Turns out that we had experienced somewhat of a "perfect storm" as far the infrastructure was concerned. Apparently, there had been a power failure long enough to cause the server to power down, so not only did the router need to be reset, but the server needed to be restarted. But, that wasn't the end of the challenge. Even after the router and server were restarted, I still couldn't access the site. After a little more digging, I determined that the IP address of the cable modem had changed as well. Fortunately, the cron job on the server functioned properly, and within an hour, the server updated the DNS records at ZoneEdit and all was well.

This is not the first time that Dave or Peggy have stepped in to save the day for us. We are so fortunate to have them as neighbors.

The main problem is that the connection keeps dropping - just for a few seconds - but dropping nonetheless. Unfortunately, even just the few seconds is enough to create problems with my VPN connection to work, or with the authentication to a public access point in an airport or hotel.

Also, the card wasn't able to consistently get an IP address via DHCP and kept defaulting to a 169. Automatic Private IP Address, which of course couldn't route on my network and get out to the Internet.

I searched the Cisco site for any known problems with an Aironet 350 mini-pci card and Windows XP - no luck.

I tried updating the firmware / driver for the card - no luck.

I tried searching the Microsoft site for known wireless connection problems - no luck.

Finally, I started Googling.

After a fair amount of trial and error on the search string, I finally came up with some suggestions which were helpful.

For the APIPA, the following page references were valuable:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8548070~mode=flat~start=0

and

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9580041~mode=flat

and

http://www.winnetmag.com/Article/ArticleID/27129/27129.html

which I found with the following Google search: http://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&q=windows+xp+tcpip+%22alternate+configuration%22

For the connection dropping, I reconfigured Cisco wireless adapter to use PSP-CAM (FASTPSP) instead of CAM as the power saving mode on the advanced properties.

I have also been told to try disabling the Wireless Zero Configuration service in the XP Services management window if I continue to have problems (which knock on wood I have not - so far).

The nursing director informed me that Mom's behavior and capabilities had declined to the point where they could no longer adequately care for her in the dementia unit, and that we would need to move her to full blown Alzheimer's unit.

Jeanie's guess is that Mom has really needed to move for a while, but they were waiting until a room opened up in the Alzheimer's unit opened up before they talked to us. Since the rooms tend to get taken very quickly, it was important that we move Mom right away. Unfortunately, an RFP I had been waiting on had just been released, and there was no way I had time to move Mom.

Have I mentioned lately that I am married to an angel?

Jeanie made all of the arrangements, and got Mom moved in one day.

Mom is now settled in her new apartment, which is laid out exactly like the old one, just in a different section of facility. Hopefully, she hadn't walked to the old room by mistake too many times...

Both Jeanie and I were out of town, so no one was available to deal with the situation.

Fortunately, we have absolutely wonderful neighbors - Peggy and Dave.

I called Dave and asked if he would mind going next door to reboot the router, to which he replied that he would be glad to.

Turns out that we had experienced somewhat of a "perfect storm" as far the infrastructure was concerned. Apparently, there had been a power failure long enough to cause the server to power down, so not only did the router need to be reset, but the server needed to be restarted. But, that wasn't the end of the challenge. Even after the router and server were restarted, I still couldn't access the site. After a little more digging, I determined that the IP address of the cable modem had changed as well. Fortunately, the cron job on the server functioned properly, and within an hour, the server updated the DNS records at ZoneEdit and all was well.

This is not the first time that Dave or Peggy have stepped in to save the day for us. We are so fortunate to have them as neighbors.

A guy calls his buddy the horse rancher and says he's sending a friend over to look at a horse. His buddy asks "How will I recognize him?" That's easy, he's a midget with a speech impediment". So, the midget shows up, and the guy asks him if he's looking for a male or female horse.

"A female horth." So he shows him a prized filly.

"Nith lookin horth. Can I thee her eyeth"?

So the guy picks up the midget and he gives the horse's eyes the once over.

Nith eyeth, can I thee her earzth"?

So he picks the little fella up again, and shows him the horse's ears.

"Nith earzth, can I see her mouf"?

The rancher is gettin' pretty ticked off by this point, but he picks him up again and shows him the horse's mouth.

"Nice mouf, can I see her twat"?

Totally mad as fire at this point, the rancher grabs him under his arms and rams the midget's head as far as he can up the horse's twat, pulls him out and slams him on the ground.

The midget gets up, sputtering and coughing.

"Perhapth I should rephrase that; Can I thee her wun awound a widdlebit"?

Do a Google search on neck bumps and guess what the first hit is.

Press the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button and guess which site you get whisked to.

That's right! The Neck Bumps entry right here at Blogdom.

My other contribution is the creation and maintenance of the Bloggers Over Forty web ring.

The web ring now has forty-two members and the ring page has received over 17,000 hits since the ring was established in September of 2002.

These may not have made a large splash in the Internet ocean, but at least they've created some ripples...

The good news? It is a Moen, so it is guaranteed for life.

Notice I said leaking really badly...

It has leaked a little for years. Just a little, and from a strange place - around the base. It is one of those fancy single handle jobs with a pullout spout.

It looks something like this:

Replacing the cartridge did nothing to stop the leak. After doing some investigation, I determined that the "vacuum breaker plug" was the source of the leak.

Unfortunately, the design was apparently flawed, as the replacement "part" was actually a kit to retrofit the "old style" design to the "new style."

Instead of just being able to replace the one plug, which is enough of a pain itself, I had to replace about a half-dozen parts including the flex hose and pieces at each end of the flex hose. The years of leaking had caused the base plate to chip and corrode, so we requested - and received - another base plate as well. I must give the Moen customer service group kudos - they were knowledgeable and professional, and it only took a few days to receive the replacement parts.

Unfortunately, removing the base plate was quite a job. The fasteners holding the base plate are challenging to get to, as they are at the top - from the perspective of lying under the sink - on the underside of the sink. In addition to having to remove the two fasteners that directly secure the plate, I had to remove a nut which holds a retainer which holds the core of the faucet assembly to the sink. Not the easiest or most comfortable thing to do on a Sunday afternoon.

Fortunately, I finally got all of the replacement parts installed, and indeed, the faucet no longer leaks at the vacuum breaker plug. Unfortunately, in the process of removing the hose from the spout, the plastic fitting on the spout cracked. Tomorrow, I'll have the pleasure of ordering another replacement part from my buddies at Moen...

Mona Lisa Smile and Second Hand Lions.

The links above will take you to the Rotten Tomatoes reviews of each movie.

Mona Lisa Smile was interesting as a period piece and as a glimpse of some of the realities behind the "idyllic" 50's, but I'm glad I had my notebook in my lap to help pass the time.

Second Hand Lions was just the kind of sweet, sappy movie I like, with a good dose of humor and an interesting cinematic construct.

Well, I finally have found an application that demonstrates the coolness of this stuff in a way that is meaningful to me.

There are a series of blogs that I like to keep up with. Trouble is, it is a little bit of a pain having to navigate to each one individually. Some of them have a place where you can enter your e-mail address so they can notify you each time a new entry is posted, but, the author has to remember to trigger the notification.

Well, I stumbled on to NewsGator while reading an article in Computer World.

NewsGator is a "news aggregator" that runs in Microsoft Outlook. It allows you to subscribe to various syndicated news feeds (such as weblogs, news sites, etc.) and have news from these sites be delivered right into your Outlook folders. There are thousands of sites which syndicate their content in RSS format, and many more being added every day. You can even read NNTP newsgroups with NewsGator.

Rather than visiting all of your favorite sites a few times a day, you can bring the web to you with NewsGator. You'll never again be the last to know!

With NewsGator, all of the updates appear in a folder right in MS Outlook! Now I can check for updates to my favorite sites at the same time I check for new e-mail messages.

Way cool! The site offers a downloadable 14 day free trial, and the software is only $29 to keep.

NewsGator also offers plug-in to allow you to post to your blog directly from NewGator, including a third party plug-in from Matt Berther called MovablePoster while allows posting to Movable Type. To hopefully save you a little bit of hassle, there is a bug in the installation program for MovablePoster that prevents it from being seen in NewsGator. The install will enable the stand-alone version of MovablePoster, but not the plug-in. To fix this situation, follow these instructions from the MovablePoster support forum:

It appears that NewsGator doesn't automatically created the plugins folder, even though it does add the key to the registry.

MovablePoster needs to create the plugins directory, if it isn't there.

The temporary fix is to do it yourself. Create a Plugins directory under Program Files/NewsGator, and copy the three files out of MattBerther.com/MovablePoster/plugin into the NewsGator/Plugins directory.

The food was reasonably priced and tasty. As an interesting aside, as I learned in this N&O article, the Dakota Grill is not the only restaurant in the Triangle to serve bison.

In addition to bison, the Dakota grill also offers elk and venison. Oh, and beef, chicken and fish.

And, if the lure of a juicy bacon cheese bison burger isn't enough to encourage you to give the Dakota a try, there is always the bonus of free wireless Internet access to encourage you to roam over...

The bad news: my Linksys WAP11 wireless access point is dead.

The good news: it is still under warranty, and Linksys will be shipping me a new one via 3 day FedEx.

So, for the time being, I'm back to stringing the long green CAT5 cable across the living room floor.

We both really enjoyed it.

It was very funny, and very sweet.

As usual, I will leave the reviews to the experts. Here's a link to one of my favorite review sites, Rotten Tomatoes.

I went to make my bi-monthly blood donation today so that I could stay in sync with my blood buddies.

I was even feeling kind of special having recently received my "Members for Life Donor" card.

Giving blood is usually a pleasant experience, more so when with my blood buddies, but even when I go by myself.

Over the last few donations, I have noticed the new two-for campaign that the ARC has started. Basically, rather than draining out a pint of whole blood, they run your blood through a "kit" which extracts twice as many red cells and returns your vital fluids - less the red blood cells - back into you.

From the perspective of the ARC, it makes sense. They get twice as many red blood cells (RBCs) per visit, thereby likely increasing the total volume of RBCs they will collect over the course of a year since many people only donate once or twice per year. In addition, they reduce their collection costs since each two units requires only one patient history, one needle stick, and one set of safety tests.

That's all well and good, and it is perfectly reasonable for them to ask each donor if he would like to go this route. But, if the donor says "no," they should accept that and move on. I mean no does mean no, right?

Instead, each ARC staff member I encountered asked me if I wanted to double up, and when I replied no, they then sought to persuade me to change my mind. Cut me a break! If I wanted a high pressure sales pitch, I'd go car shopping!

Anyway, I still feel good about my regular donations, and hopefully, enough people will comment - as I did on the donor survey - that they will tone down the sales pitch by the time the next eight weeks have elapsed.

Walking into the back room, the boy said to his manager, "Some jerk
wants to buy a half a head of lettuce." As he finished his sentence,
the boy turned to find the man standing right behind him, so he added,
"And this gentleman kindly offered to buy the other half."

The manager approved the deal, and the man went on his way satisfied.

Later, the manager found the boy and said, "I was impressed with the way
you got yourself out of that difficult situation earlier. We like people
who think on their feet here. Where are you from, son?"

"Canada, sir," the boy replied.

"Well, why did you leave Canada?" the manager asked.

The boy answered, "Sir, there's nothing but whores and hockey players up
there."

"Really," said the manager. "My wife is from Canada!"

The boy replied, "No s---!!! Who did she play for?"

Anyway, it appears that both DFW and ORD (um, Dallas and Chicago) are experiencing major delays due to weather.

Fortunately, Denver has an Admirals Club. Having to wait an additional two hours to depart sucks, but it sucks less sitting here with connectivity and power, in relative quiet and comfort.

Now, if I could just close a deal so I could pay off the annual dues...

Nah,

Anyway...

You know you are traveling too much when...

You can't remember the brand or even the color of your rental car, and the only way you can find it is to wander the hotel parking lot pressing the "panic" button on the key fob.

You have to carry the part of the hotel key card envelope that has your room number written on it so that you can remember which hotel you should go back to and which room is yours.

You wear out a rollaboard.

Flight attendants start recognizing you.

You are able to justify the expense of joining an airline club.

You can remember which hotel and room number you are in because you've been staying at the same one for so many days / weeks / months in a row.

Comment spammers are among those that I place in this group.

What low lifes.

I barely have time to make entries, much less to delete unwanted comments.

I know that the nice folks at Six Apart are working on addressing the comment spam vulnerabilities currently inherent in Movable Type, but in the meantime, thank goodness for Jay Allen and his MT-Blacklist.

I have been procrastinating about installing it for far too long, deleting the spamments one by one. Today, enough was enough! The installation only took a few minutes, and in the span of a few seconds, MT-Blacklist had identified and deleted 83 spamments! And now that it is activated, I anticipate that the number of new spamments will be very low.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Allen.

Yes, one week shy of exactly a year ago was the last time I went snow skiing.

Once again I skied at Eldora, just outside of Boulder CO.

The conditions were lovely, about twenty degrees Fahrenheit at the base, and nowhere near as windy as last year.

On the plus side, I did get to ride the "big" lift - Corona - this year.

On the minus side, my skiing skill was significantly worse than last year.

All I can attribute the difference to is being a year older, six pound heavier, and in worse shape than a year ago. I had really concentrated over the last month in trying to get into shape for skiing - I did the stair climber at the gym, did real stairs in the hotel in Chicago (ten floors worth), and even "practiced" skiing on Jeanie's little jogging tramp at home. Apparently, I didn't do enough...

Since I had done so well last year, I elected to skip the bunny slope, and go right for the intermediate runs. In hindsight, maybe I should have at least done a few blue runs before heading to the greens. I did make sure to stretch thoroughly before hitting the slope, so I was as limber as I get - which isn't very.

I just wasn't as smooth on my skis as I was last year, and I didn't feel as comfortable or confident. I felt like I had to work much harder to keep my balance.

The conditions were about the same as last year - well groomed slopes that were a little crusty - at least at the beginning. As the day wore on, the crust got transformed into nice soft snow. There seemed to be even fewer skiers this year, which was a real blessing.

Although not gracefully, I did make it down my first run intact and upright. My second run was another story. About half way down, I hit a soft patch of powder and did a major face plant. The binding on my left ski released and the ski ended up about ten feet uphill from me. My sunglasses landed about half-way between the ski and me. Other than my face stinging from the cold of the snow, there was no significant physical consequences. My pride, on the other hand, was a different story. After I brushed myself off, I was able to walk back up the slope, retrieve my ski, and finish the run without further incident.

The rest of the morning only resulted in two or three other falls, none as dramatic as the first, but I really had to work to stay upright, and I came close to losing it big time once or twice.

After a couple of hours on the slope, I took a break for thirty minutes and had a bowl of chili in the lodge. The chili was absolutely delicious.

After I returned to the slopes, I decided to ski the blue trails for a while. I felt very comfortable on the blue trails, but the runs were so much shorter than the green trails. I couldn't help but wish that they had some longer blue runs.

After half-a-dozen or so very comfortable blue runs, I decided I was ready to go back to the greens - big mistake!

I ended up on a run called Powder Horn, and it delivered on its name's promise - rather than groomed and slightly crusty, it was quite powdery, and relatively (for me) steep.

All of these years, I've always dreamed of skiing in powder. I never realized just how much more difficult it is. It is so much harder to turn in powder, and so much harder to keep your skis parallel and pointed where you want them to go.

My first instinct was to just take off my skis and walk down, but, unlike the other person on the run who had sense enough to do so, I was too proud. Much to my surprise, I managed to traverse the run without falling. I took it very slow, and kept my track very steep relative to the fall line, thus allowing me to avoid picking up too much speed. Of course this meant that it took many zigs and zags to get through the run. By the time I made it to the bottom, my thighs were burning, and my legs felt like jello.

The status of my legs made the decision about when to call it a day quite straight-forward.

I had only intended to ski half a day, as I had meetings scheduled for the afternoon. The timing worked out quite well. I left the hotel about 7:00 AM, it took about an hour to drive to Eldora, it took about forty five minutes to get my rental equipment and get suited up. By the time I arrived at the lift, it was almost 9:00 AM - starting time. So, leaving the slope at around 1:00 PM fit nicely into the schedule. I got in about three hours of skiing, and still managed to get back to the hotel with enough time to change, rest, and get to my meeting on time.

Mind you, I am not complaining. I recognize how blessed I am to be healthy enough to be able to exert myself at 10,000 ft. and to have enough coordination and control of my muscles to ski at all. I also recognize how blessed I am to be able to have the opportunity to squeeze in a half day of skiing into a business trip for which I did not have to pay for travel, and to afford to be able to pay for a day's equipment rental and lift ticket.