I just read a New York Times article about how beards are now in fashion. I have been the proud owner of a goatee for the past 8 years, and I have never thought of it as making a fashion statement. Anybody who knows me in ‘real life’ (read: not just from reading my site on the Internet) knows that I never have cared about fashion, and the way I dress is proof of that. I enjoy comfortable clothes that I think look nice enough. I don’t feel the need to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars a year on clothing. But back to the whole beard thing. I’ve had it since I was 19, (for those of you keeping score at home, yes I am now 27) and at first I grew my goatee to see how it would look, and maybe to try to look older. Now that I am older, I wear it probably out of habit and convenience. As the article mentions, shaving less of your face is a time saver, even though there is some maintenance. But now that it’s in fashion, should I keep it? Not that I’m trying to be anti-fashion, but the notion that I am fashionable at the moment is hilarious to me.
Once I have more than the two strands of gray hair in my goatee, maybe I will look too old and shave it off. Time will tell, and if that is the case, I’ll sure to mention it here since I know you can’t wait to know how my goatee saga plays out.

This seems contradictory to me. From my Linksys wireless router’s configuration screen:

Advanced Wireless Settings
The Advanced Wireless Settings screen is where basic wireless configuration is performed.

I guess advanced and basic now mean the same thing?

This post is to let my 2 loyal readers know that I am still alive. It’s been busy lately, and I’ve been sick for the past two weeks. [sarcasm] It’s been fun. [/sarcasm] Anyway, if you’d like, drop a comment below, and thanks for stopping by, especially since I’ve been such a slacker as of late.

I have upgraded to Fedora 4 Test 1, which is the beta release for the next Fedora Core version. In turn, it caused a few slight problems on the site. PHP was upgraded to version 5.x.x, from version 4.3.10 and MySQL was updated from version 3.23(?) to 4.1. WordPress was complaining first about the database, then about PHP. I’ve sorted it out. As anyone who has any Linux admin experience knows, it’s usually just a matter of a configuration files or two and restarting services, which were the problems in this case. Let me know in the comments if you notice any differences or problems. Thanks.

I visited Google today, and their logo is different, because it is World Water Day. Here is the logo in question:

Anyway, I clicked on the logo to see what World Water Day actually is all about, and followed a link to ABC News’ poorly proofread page (Discontinued Link) where under the caption it reads:
“Millions of people around the world face water shortages expectialy third world countries as the world celebrates National Water Day Tuesday.”
Yes, it really said “expectialy”. How did an Associated Press Writer get away with this “word”? Are editors non-existent at ABC News International? Did the spellchecker break today? Hmmmm… makes me wonder. I mean, this is not just a simple typo, which all of us have made. I’m probably the worst typist with a computer-related job that you’ll ever see. But I can spell. And I know how to use a spellchecker. This is just unacceptable.

Dear Ms. Erica Bulman, Associated Press Writer and Ms. Bulman’s editor:

Please use a spellchecker in the future, and also re-read your news stories. When you have silly “words” such as “expectialy” in your journalistic essays, you appear foolish to the world at large. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Respectfully,
Kevin Worthington
//kevinworthington.com/

UPDATE: Here is a screenshot in case they make a correction:
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I noticed that this site was loading slow, particularly due to some of my longer posts. I changed the options for the number of posts to be displayed from 10 to 5. I already see a world of difference. Please list and comments or gripes below. Thanks.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day. OK, so it’s a holiday that I can wear green and drink beer. Sounds like any given Sunday during football season, when I wear my Jets gear. I am wearing a long sleeve Jets shirt today, along with my Jets winter coat, and a baseball style Jets hat. However, I do wear the coat and hat every day to work, since it’s cold out. As for beer, I’ll wait until after work, obviously.
In other news, I have uploaded 2 songs to the band’s website. You can check out the main part of the site by visiting http://www.wd-39.com/, or jump right to the sounds page for some mp3 goodness. Yes, that’s me on drums and also on backing vocals on the Rolling Stones cover song. Let me know what you think.

Today I went for a run for the first time in probably about 6 months. I didn’t go that far; I would estimate that I went a little over a mile. When I got back to our apartment complex, I decided to walk straight down the road, rather than turning right towards our street. I walked to the end of that street, and realized that there’s a pond between that street and ours. It’s still half frozen over, but there was a large white swan and two black ducks with white spots in the pond as I walked past. Since I was feeling adventurous, I took a right turn into the woods to try to cut over to our street or to get near out apartment. I followed the tracks that some kids made with their quads and made my way back to our apartment. My legs felt pretty sore, especially my calves.
When I went inside, I told my wife about the pond and she was really excited since she loves animals and nature. She was busy with school work, but asked me if we could take a walk over to the pond at her next break. I agreed to go back.
A half an hour later we made our way through the woods. Trish brought some stale Ritz crackers, and fed the swan. The ducks were no longer there, so the swan got a snack all to itself. I was making stupid comments like “Mmmmm stale Ritz buttery-goodness” as the swan finally started to chomp on the now soggy crackers. When the sleeve of crackers was gone, we walked out of the woods a different way, and wound up by where I park my truck. As we got near our apartment I told her how I came back earlier and pointed to the trail close to our building. We decided to walk past our door and keep going in the opposite direction. We got back on the quad-forged path and found yet another pond. We walked around it and saw some ducks. I’m not sure but they might have been the same ones I saw earlier in pond #1. Anyway, we went up a large hill and found what looked like a tree farm. There were mostly bushes, arranged in a deliberate fashion, in an otherwise empty field.
This hike added more soreness to my legs and took about a half an hour but it was a lot of fun to explore the area right near our building that we never knew existed. The ponds were nice surprises in particular. Next time I will bring my camera. I was kicking myself for not bringing it today. We’re definitely going to go for more adventures through the woods, and I’ll post pictures here next time.

OK, about this website. I haven’t really posted so often, and I’ve certainly been lazy about additions in terms of navigation and site design. BUT, I have re-organized the menu layout on the right side a little more logically, and I have added pages about Long Island weather. I realize that this is only useful to Long Islanders, but mainly I put it there for myself so that I can quickly reference what kind of weather I’m in for. Sorry for the selfishness.
Anyway, this weekend should be fun. I’m going to practice with the band tonight. We have been working on 2 new songs, one is about 98% done, we just need to get a little tighter on it, and the other is still very much in progress. The basic parts of the ‘incomplete’ song are done, we just need some more lyrics and to tighten up.
After that, we’re going out for a friend’s birthday at a small club/bar kind of place. Good times, good times.
Other than that, I’ll probably just do some school work and relax on Saturday and Sunday. Maybe I’ll finally go through some of the boxes of junk in our apartment and separate, organize and throw out things. I’ve been putting it off, yes, but I have been really busy the past few months with work and school. Oh well, hopefully I’ll be motivated and do it. Now that it’s written on this blog, maybe that’ll help. (: