Google is just incredible. They keep innovating - coming up with things that you would not expect from a “search engine” company.

They just launched “Google Movies”. No new interface or anything fancy - just go to Google like you normally do, but precede your search with “movie:”. “movie: the woodlands, tx” gives you a listing of theaters in The Woodlands. Or search for a particular movie that you remember, but can’t remember the title. Such as, that one with John Cusack and the kid that says “Two dollars!”

Another tool that I just found is Google SMS. This is a easy way to access Google from any cell phone with text messaging. You can search for local businesses, people’s phone numbers, look up movies, find definitions and much more! I texted Google SMS (46645) with “Starbucks 77380″ and it returned the two closest Starbucks in my area. You can also look up people’s phone numbers. I think that I have dialed 1411 for the last time!

Filed under: Internet
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The 2004-05 basketball season is winding down. Colleges are wrapping up their schedules and high schools are already in the playoffs. This is the time of year where the best games are played and they matter the most.

I worked the Del Rio vs Victoria Memorial 5A boys playoff game Monday night. It was a great experience and probably the best high school game I’ve worked all year. We have a great crew on the game and stayed out of the way of two excellent teams. Del Rio ended up with the win, mainly due to Jermaine Bishop — definitely a name to watch for in the future — this kid was incredible and was obviously far and beyond the best player on the floor. Coming soon to a Division I school near you, for sure…

Pending other playoff assignments, I wrap up my officiating schedule on Saturday. The end of the season is always bittersweet. On one hand, you want to keep working as much as possible, as deep into the playoffs as you can. On the other, you almost want the season to be over, just so that you can have a few consecutive evenings or a weekend at home.

It’s hard to believe that this is my tenth year in this avocation. It has been a great journey so far and there is a lot of opportunity ahead. For now though I am just enjoying where I am.

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For a geek there are few things in life more exciting than a new toy - and a brand spankin’ new laptop is the perfect new toy! I received my new Dell Inspiron 9200 earlier this week and I am loving it!

The best thing so far is that it is fast - way faster than I am used to (based on my older Dell Inspiron 8100). Also, the screen is gorgeous - it is a widescreen (1400 x 900 pixels) and looks incredible. I played a few DVDs on it and they looked great!

I’ve finally got it just about all set up — moving all my data over and reinstalling applications is always a pain.

Here’s what I’ve installed so far:

• Norton Partition Magic - I used Partition Magic to create a separate C and D drive on my new notebook. The C drive for Windows and installing other programs and the D drive for all of my data. This helps the computer run faster and makes data backup easier.
• Microsoft Office 2003 - The most used program out of this suite for me is Outlook. Nothing beats it for email, calendaring, and keeping track of all sorts of other information. Next on the list is Word and Excel which I use a lot as well. It also comes with PowerPoint, Publisher, and Access, but I don’t use those quite as much.
• ClipMate - One of the best programs ever! This little utility keeps track of everything that you copy to the clipboard, whether it is text or graphics. You can save oft-used clips for future use and they are easy to pull up (think addresses, etc. for entering on forms on the internet). It also includes a handy little screen capture feature and much more!
• Lookout - This has to be the productivity tool of the decade! The best way that I can describe it is “Google for Outlook”. It indexes all of your emails, contacts, and notes in Outlooks and retreives information for you in seconds. This program has literally saved me hours and hours since I have installed it.
• NewsGator - This is an RSS reader that pulls in news feeds directly into Outlook. This is a great way to keep up with your favorite websites, blogs, and other information with news feeds.
• MultiMon - This is a great utility for helping to manage multiple monitors hooked up to your PC. I have a port replicator that works with any notebook which includes a video adapter. So, I have three monitors with my notebook - two external monitors plus the LCD on the notebook itself.
• Firefox - The only browser that anyone should be using (that goes for Mac and Linux users as well!). Much more secure and many more features than Internet Explorer.
• Taskbar Commander - I found this utility to replace Button Boogie, a utility produced by PC Magazine that would allow you to rearrange your taskbar buttons (I always like my Outlook icon on the very left, for example). Unfrotunately, Button Boogie won’t work with XP. Taskbar Commander will though, and actually does a better job because it can remember where you like certain windows to be placed. So, now, regardless of what order I open programs, they are arranged on the taskbar in the order that I want.
• Paint Shop Pro - I started using PSP a long time ago, so I got used to it versus Photoshop or any other graphics editing programs. I use PSP to edit graphics for the web, photos, etc.
• Multi-Edit - This is a great text editing program that I use for all my programming needs. It has a ton of features and it totally customizable. There are other similar programs, such as UltraEdit, but I found this one best suited to my needs.
• Microsoft FrontPage - Part of me cringes when I have to install FrontPage on my PC, but I do have to admit that they have vastly improved their features since their first editions (which are responsible for the creation of thousands of horrible websites out there). I only use FrontPage for supporting SharePoint for consulting work that I do - not for any real website design or maintenance.
• XAMMP - I should put a “For Geeks Only” warning label on this one. This installs Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl on your PC - basically setting up all the tools that you need for a webserver (of course there are many alternatives out there, but these are some of the very popular development tools). This allows me to do all of my website programming and development without having to be connected to a webserver on the internet. XAMMP is a huge timesaver and anyone (like me) that has installed all of these components separately and had to configure them to work together knows.
• RAdmin - This is a great remote administration tool that allows you to connect to other PCs (also running RAadmin). You can take over the PC, transfer files, etc. I use this to help Carrie or my parents when they are having computer issues!
• WinZip - Even though Windows XP has “zip folders” built-in, I prefer some of the features in WinZip.
• Microsoft OneNote - This is a new program from Microsoft and is great for taking notes, doing outlines, and basically anything that you want to put on your computer but doesn’t really fit in a Word or Excel documents. You can copy and paste (or drag) from your browser or other programs into OneNote and keep track of a lot of information (which is searchable, of course). I used this a lot when I was taking classes last year - it is perfect for research.
• BlogJet - The program that I am using to compose this blog entry. It is incredibly simple to use, allowing you to add photos (which it automatically uploads to your site), change formatting, and manage everything about your blog.

It’s taken me a long time to come across some of these programs, so I hope that others might see something on this list that helps them out! Sorry for the Mac users out there (you know who you are!), but you’ll have to find some other tools to replace most of the ones on this list.

Filed under: Personal
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We are headed to New Orleans for Endymion — the largest, longest, and (we like to think) best parade in New Orleans’ Mardi Gras every year. The parade lasts for about four hours and ends up in the Superdome where we and about 12,000 of our close and personal friends will proceed to parrrr-teeh!!

My dad and I got moved to the “Captain’s Float” this year — also known as the Riverboat Float. At 240 feet long it is the longest float in Mardi Gras!

The picture on the right shows the front of the float. It has five sections total and we are at the top of the first section!!

Should be a great ride!!!

Hail Endymion!!!

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