• Lose 50 lbs
• Ride the Concours at least 12,000 miles.
• Use the treadmill at the gym every work day.
• Smile every day.

• Work my full schedule every week.
• Not miss any work due to illness.

• Stop eating bacon.
• Eat more chicken.
• Eat less beef.

From this point forward, all major updates to the website will be posted here in the blog.  For information on minor updates and my daily activities, check out the Twitter stream here on the site.  You can click the Twitter and Flicker Updates link on the left menu to view the stream.

You can also follow me on Facebook.  Just search for Greg Havican.

A member of the New Hampshire Republican Volunteer Coalition had this to say yesterday at a protest outside the high school where President Obama was holding a town hall on healthcare reform:

Why are we bankrupting this country for 21 million illegals who should be sent on the first bus one way back from wherever they come from. We don’t need illegals. Send them home once. Send them home with a bullet in their head the second time. Read what Jefferson said about the Tree of Liberty — it’s coming baby.

The bad part is that this is the most concrete idea that the Republicans have put forth on healthcare reform.

Disgusting...

I bought myself a new Verizon MiFi wireless modem to use at work this week.  Setting it up to connect to my Asus 1000HE was simple and now I can cruise the internet while at work using my personal machine instead of my work machine.

It's great for reading my RSS feeds, and well as checking my personal e-mail and my Facebook and Twitter accounts.

I'm back at work today. Jason's wedding went well on Saturday. I'm glad I went. I got to introduce Roy to a lot of my co-workers and they all enjoyed talking with him. The ceremony was quick and Staci look beautiful in her white gown.

We stayed for the reception, although by the end of it, my back was pretty much wrecked and I had trouble walking. I forgot to take any of my pain medication with me, which made things that much worse.

Roy is off traveling again this week. He's due back on Wednesday, just in time for the son of a friend of ours to get back in town. Will is going to stay with us Wednesday night and all day Thursday until him mother arrives.

I took my netbook home with me over the weekend and ran updates on it last night. There has finally been an update to my Ubuntu kernal which allows my wifi to connect to the home network. Prior to this update, it couldn't authenticate through our home router. Now I can switch over to Ubuntu full time on the netbook instead of having to run Windows XP on the home network.

Last weekend, I ordered a new case for my G10 through Amazon. I ended up ordering from one of their 3^rd party sellers who had the case, as well as a new battery for the same price that Amazon was selling the case only for. I figured the battery would be from a 3^rd party manufacturer, but when I got it this weekend, I found that the included battery was from Canon. Normally, the battery alone sells for more than the case does. It turned out to be a great bonus deal for me.

Over this past weekend, I found a great little program from a company called Flexibits. It's a preference pane plug in for OSX that allows you to setup actions for up to 4 different cameras that you connect to your Mac. Plugging in each camera can trigger a different program to start. The preference pane is called Cameras.

I know I've not been good about updating on a regular basis. I do have a couple of ideas for articles for the site, but I just haven't been disciplined enough to sit down and write them. I hope to get to some of them soon. In the meantime, you may begin to see some short posts about various websites and products that catch my eye. You can also follow me on Twitter at @greghavican.

Yesterday, a couple of hundred "Tea Party" protestors ended up booing their own invited guest speakers, including John Cornyn (R - Senator, Texas) and Rick Perry (R - Governor, Texas).  

Hundreds of people holding signs denouncing big government, taxes and illegal immigration gathered on the lawn of the Texas Capitol on Saturday, booing a U.S. senator and cheering multiple jabs at actions in Washington.

Sen. John Cornyn, who'd been invited by organizers, was booed at the start and close of his remarks assailing federal spending and taxes.

Many shouts concerned Cornyn voting last year for the federal bailout of Wall Street approved by Congress, the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

"You're the problem!" one crowd member hollered. "You voted for TARP," yelled another.

Boos interrupted Cornyn, who won his second term last year, after he said: "This is a day of celebration, the day we celebrate our Founders, who defied empires and declared their independence."

He resumed: "I realize not everybody wants to listen, but maybe some people do."

The boos dissipated while Cornyn awarded a Purple Heart to William Warren, a Copperas Cove resident injured in Iraq in 2006.

It should be noted that a U.S. Senator cannot "award" a Purple Heart to anyone.  Only the military, or the President of the United States (in his/her capacity as "Commander in Chief") can award a Purple Heart.  What Cornyn did was present an already awarded Purple Heart to the awardee.

Cornyn later tried to distinguish himself from the Washington scene that the crowd and speakers were protesting.

"I'm not part of Washington," he said after his speech. "I happen to work there, but on behalf of Texas, and I can vote no on these reckless spending bills, on the refusal to cut taxes."

As usual, Cornyn is talking out of both sides of this mouth. Even he is smart enough to know what would happen to Texas if we didn't receive any stimulus money.

Gov. Rick Perry, among other Republican officeholders to speak, drew scattered boos, notably about his advocacy of toll roads to relieve traffic congestion.

Of course, the idiots don't seem to realize that the only alternative to the toll roads is for the state to build and maintain them, which is paid for by the same taxes they are protesting.  

Words simply cannot describe "Let There be Retards".  It will have you laughing uncontrollably, while you're squirming in your seat uncomfortably.  Check it out.

Today, Sarah Palin, "The Disasta from Alaska", announced her resignation as Governor of Alaska, effective July 22, 2009.

I swear, this woman will do anything to get her name in the headlines.  I'd say there is a 99.9% chance she will change her mind before the deadline arrives.  She'll probably use some excuse such as, "The people of Alaska begged me to complete my term as governor."

If that happens, remember that you heard it here first.

I woke up promptly at 04:45 on Saturday morning.  I hadn't set my alarm clock, but that's my normal time to get up on weekdays.  Saturday morning was spent doing things around the house such as laundry, watering the plants, etc.  I took a nap at noon time because we were going to be out late Saturday evening.

We left the house at 17:00 and went into Bastrop to have dinner at Ramos Restaurant.  Since I'm having to watch my fat intake, I had the grilled shrimp salad instead of my favorite, which is a fajita stuffed burrito smothered in queso.

After dinner, we headed into Austin and made a stop at Dillard's in Barton Creek Mall to look for shirts to wear to Jason's wedding in July.  We found the shirts we wanted on sale at ½ off.  That's actually a great price because the original price was $80 each.  I also found a couple of other shirts which were also ½ off.  They ended up being $25 each.

When we finished at Dillard's, we headed into downtown Austin to the Paramount Theatre for “Women in Jazz”.  A friend of ours (K2) who lives in Los Angeles got us comp tickets for the show so we could see a good friend of his who was performing.  We had excellent seats with a great site line to the stage.

First up on the bill was Pamela Hart, a very talented vocalist.  Her performance was thoroughly enjoyable and we ended up picking up her latest CD while we were there.

The next performer was Althea Rene, a flautist.  Now, you might not normally associate the flute with jazz, but it went quite well.  The only problem with her performance was that the whole thing felt like a gimmick.  First was her dress, which made her appear like a Donna Summer clone.  Next was her pianist, who was dressed and looked like Fred “ReRun” Berry from “What's Happening!!”.   Finally, she actually tried to “scat” while playing the flute.  I had to cover my mouth on several occasions to suppress the laughter.

The third performer on the bill was the one we came to see: Joyce Cooling.  She's a renowned guitarist from Los Angeles.  Her performance was everything K2 had told us about and more.  You should really check out her website which has samples of her work, and consider purchasing some of her CD's if you love jazz music.  You won't be disappointed.

After she got off stage, she came out front to autograph her latest CD.  We stayed back until everyone else had a chance to get her autograph and then went up and introduced ourselves.  She was genuinely pleased that friends of K2 had come out to see her and spent a few minutes talking to us.

By the time we finished talking to Joyce, the performance of the fourth act, Pamela Williams was about ½ over so instead of going back to our seats, we headed home.

Overall, it was a great evening and a really good time.  If any of the artists are coming near you, I encourage you to see them; even the flautist.