Polynesian (Hawaiian) Chicken Recipe

This is a recipe that my mom provided to me that's been a favorite in our family over the years. Please let me know if you like or dislike it!

Ingredients:

1/4 cup Margarine
1/2 cup Flower
2 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Pepper
1 small Green Pepper thinly sliced
1 small Onion thinly sliced
1/3 cup sliced Green Olives (stuffed with Pimento)
1 13.5 oz can of Pineapple rings
1 10.5 oz can of condensed Tomato Soup undiluted
1/4 cup Chili Sauce
1/4 cup Pineapple Syrup (from can of Pineapple rings)

Instructions:

Use 13"x9" baking pan
Preheat oven to 375F

In baking pan melt butter. Roll chicken in mixture of flower, salt, and pepper, then place skin side down in pan. Bake 20 minutes. Take pan out, turn chicken pieces over, and top with green peppers, olives, pineapple rings, and onions. Combine tomato soup, chili sauce, and pineapple syrup, and pour over chicken. Cover pan with foil, and bake 30 more minutes, or until meat thermometer in one of the breasts reads 170F.

Goes well with a white wine such as a Kendall Jackson Chardonnay.

My initial review of the P90X workout program

P90X is a video workout program instructed by Tony Horton that incorporates various workout routines to strengthen your whole body, seeing amazing results in 90 days. P90X attempts to be better than other programs by creating "muscle confusion". Muscles are very efficient at repeating movements that have been learned over time, which is why runners can run 26 mile marathons, and only burn about twice the normal caloric intake in a day. I'm currently nearing the end of week three and I can confidently say that I have more endurance now than I did on day one with all of my workouts. Yes, I still have to take some mini-breaks, but nowhere near what I had to do when I first started. I also feel that my love handles are starting to slowly go away (I'm not a big guy, but I've got a slight spare tire). If anyone is interested in trying a workout routine and willing to give it their all, give P90X by BeachBody a try. You've got to "Bring It!" as they say or else you're not going to get the results you want. It's a 6/7 day a week program (depending on whether or not you wish to watch their Stretching X video (optional), or rest that day) so it's not a cake walk, but many people have had amazing results after 90 days.

Globat.com Wins Worst Domain Registrar Award!

Congratulations Globat.com, you've won my award for worst domain registrar of 2007, and ever for that matter! Here's a little story as to why you have received this award:

Back in 2006 I registered several domains at the introductory price of $1.99 a domain (or somewhere in that price ballpark). For each domain I had to create a username and password, so I kept a file of all of my usernames and passwords, and explicitly remember logging into each account and turning off auto-renew features, as well as having to change DNS settings. Fast-forward ahead 11 months down the road, and I start receiving notifications via e-mail that my domains are expiring. I attempt to login to change the auto-renew settings (again), but guess what? I'm unable to login! Alright, that's fine, perhaps I was drunk and typed all of my usernames and passwords wrong (no, this didn't happen) - I'll just request the information to be sent to my e-mail address. You guys obviously have my account information somewhere since I keep getting notifications, but yet when I attempt to retrieve my information, my e-mail address does not exist for any of my registered domains - how clever of your automated system! I then decided to attempt to call your 800 number, only to be sent to voicemail. I left a voicemail, and never received a response. I also sent a support e-mail via your online form and never received a response. After contacting my credit card company, they suggest to call an alternate number that was on my statement, which actually gets me talking with a human. After they suggest that I use the online chat system, I receive a promising e-mail with a list of my domains that I wish to cancel. However, after my response back to them to cancel the domains, and several follow-up e-mails every few days later, I have yet to receive a refund. Thus, here I am, with me graciously handing this award out to you, Globat.com! By the looks of things (from others complaining), I'm not the only one that's giving you this award. Keep up the good work!

Online Backup Solutions - Mozy Wins!

A few months ago I ran across a post on lifehacker.com regarding backup solutions. One of the most highly touted products from commenters was Mozy. Mozy has a very simplified interface, allowing just about anyone to choose which files they wish to backup. Once installed and configured, it runs nightly incremental backups quietly in the background. Backups are stored for up to 30 days, which is nice in case you needed something that was changed 20 days ago and not a change from 10 days ago. I'm glad to say I'm very pleased with their service, and would recommend anyone to give it a try before trying anything else. For those that are on a budget, they offer a free 2GB service, and their unlimited plan is only $4.95 a month. That's pretty darn cheap for having piece of mind.

Filesharing Woes: STATUS_REQUEST_NOT_ACCEPTED

If you're having trouble filesharing to a Windows machine and notice the error "STATUS_REQUEST_NOT_ACCEPTED" within a packet sniffer such as WireShark, check that the user limit has not been reached for the share. Run "compmgmt.msc" from the start/run box, navigate to "Shared Folders", "Shares", and check the properties for the share. "Allow this number of users:" may be your culprit if it's selected. Bump up the value to allow more users to the resource if necessary.

Free LiveCD Tools

A "LiveCD" is a CD that can be booted up without a prior Operating System loaded that has certain software on it to get tasks done. For instance, "GParted" is software that allows you to make changes to the partitions on hard drives, and the developers of the software have a LiveCD version which runs the software directly off of the CD. This means there's no need to boot into an OS first.

Below are some useful LiveCD tools:
GParted - Partitioning tool - http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
Knoppix - Full Linux distribution on a CD - http://www.knoppix.net/
INSERT - Geared towards system recovery and network auditing - http://www.inside-security.de/INSERT_en.html
BackTrack - An excellent LiveCD that aims at network penetration testing - http://www.remote-exploit.org/backtrack.html
SystemRescueCD - Data recovery and backup - http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
Austrumi - Reset Windows passwords - http://cyti.latgola.lv/ruuni/index_en.html
Ophcrack - Windows password cracking tool - http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/

All the above mentioned LiveCDs are free. ERD Commander from Winternals is an extremely useful LiveCD, but it comes at a cost. If you're an IT tech that primarily works on Windows OSes, ERD Commander is a great investment.

Some Interesting Axis Webcam Feeds

There's a search "hack" to find Axis (http://www.axis.com/) webcams. Most of their products display their feed via a page called "/view/view.shtml", thus you can easily search for this within Google and other search engines. I searched for "/view/view.shtml axis" to filter out some junk results. Ideally I'd use "/view/view.shtml intitle:'Axis'" but Google prevents you digging too deep into the results due to worm attacks.

Here are some interesting cameras I've come across:
http://12.154.134.210-214 [range of available cameras] - Some city's traffic cameras
http://209.145.91.66/view/view.shtml - Somebody's office
http://debtclock.durst.org/view/view.shtml - Our Nation's debt
http://ercwebcam.engin.umich.edu/view/view.shtml?newstyle=One&cam=1 - Robotic shop of sorts, controllable
http://jade-cam.dyndns.org/view/view.shtml - Webcam in Bontekai, controllable
http://213.10.227.87:81/view/view.shtml?videos=&size=1 - Workout room