Saturday

20:00 Arrive in Hawaii
20:15 Board bus to car rental location
20:25 Tell attendant that we want a convertible Mustang
20:25 Ask attendant why they are laughing
20:55 Load up convertible Mustang
21:30 Arrive at Hotel, miss turn for parking lot
21:40 Arrive at Hotel again, find parking lot
22:00 Get into room, realize we need food
22:30 Make it to favorite ocean side restaurant
23:30 After long walk back, find hotel again, fall fast asleep.

Sunday

05:30 Awake
06:00 Get out of bed
06:06 Realize that we are exhausted and that we have to drive nearly an hour in the next 54 minutes.
06:10 Turn on GPS and start drive to location for Dolphins adventure
06:15 Realize that GPS takes a long time to “Acquire Satellites”
06:20 Realize that it takes GPS a REALLY long time to “Acquire Satellites”
06:22 “Acquire Satellites”
06:23 Test out all 300 HP of our convertible Mustang attempting to reach boat
06:45 Arrive at destination….according to GPS
06:45 GPS finds “new” destination, continue testing speediness of car
07:00 Find boat, find captain.
07:01 Listen as Captain tell us that everyone is going to be about an hour late due to van driver not showing up
07:15 Eat breakfast at McDonalds, get cash.
07:30 Arrive back at dock, watch dock workers…dock things
08:00 Board boat
08:30 Spot 1st dolphin
08:31 Spot 151st dolphin
08:45 After instruction about how NOT to get bitten and dragged to the bottom of the ocean by dolphin, get in water.
08:46 Realize there are 20 dolphins within 15 feet and find this is the coolest thing ever.
09:30 Get back in boat head off to look for whales on way to second location
09:40 Spot first whale
10:00 Spot second whale, full breach
11:00 give up on any more whales
11:15 get in water looking for turtles
11:16 spot first and only turtle
13:00 Arrive back at dock, head back to hotel to clean up
13:01 Realize that we didn’t put on any sunscreen
13:50 Arrive at hotel, take painful shower, head out for lunch and shopping on Waikiki
14:20 Eat lunch
15:10 Arrive at Sunglass store, ask clerk to help me help her make commission by selling GOOD sunglass to wife
15:11 Proceed to wait as wife tries on 1,892 pairs of sunglasses
15:40 Purchase second pair of sunglasses wife tried on.
16:00 Arrive at Hotel, take nice drive though mountains
20:00 Arrive back at hotel, head out for dinner.
21:15 Arrive back at hotel, fall fast asleep

Monday

06:00 Head out to Hanauma Bay
06:30 Drop off wife at Hanauma Bay, head to Diamond Head
07:00 Sit in rush hour traffic
07:30 Arrive at Diamond Head, start hike up
07:31 Realize that I am really out of shape
08:01 Arrive at the top of Diamond Head, beating previous time up by 14 minutes
08:02 Promptly die
08:20 Arrive back at car, head back to Hanauma Bay
08:45 Re-acquire misplaced rush hour traffic
09:15 Arrive at Hanauma Bay
09:30 After sitting though safety video, meet up with wife, proceed to snorkeling.
10:45 Take break from snorkeling, break toe, wife stated that I stubbed it.
11:15 Head back out for snorkeling
12:30 Leave Hanauma Bay, heading for the North Shore
13:00 Locate place where we are going to meet Kayak guide on tuesday, continue north
17:00 Arrive at Sunset Beach to photograph surfers, set up tripod, head and take about 150-200 action photos of surfers
17:30 Lock keys in trunk
17:31 Realize that convertibles do NOT have trunk releases
17:32 Pay $49.95 for roadside assistance to call locksmith, told they would be here within 90 minutes.
18:30 Watch sunset on Sunset Beach
18:45 Notice large group of what appears to be drunken gangbangers party about 200 feet away.
18:55 Notice that everyone else is leaving
18:55 Attempt to figure out how to make a defending weapon out of a empty Gatorade bottle and sunscreen
19:30 Locksmith arrives, retrieves keys.
19:31 Pay Locksmith $150, realize that I entered the wrong line of work
20:45 Arrive back at hotel, power meeting on how we are going to eat, get packed, and ready for checkout by 06:00
21:15 Eat dinner
22:00 Arrive back at hotel and pack
22:05 Take off shoe and sock so that wife can see toe, and tell me that I did in fact break it
22:10 Shower and fall fast asleep.

Tuesday

06:00 Check out of hotel, head to Kayak location
06:45 Arrive at beach, locate kayak guide.
07:00 Listen to instruction on kayaking, how not to drown, and other important things
07:15 Listen as guide mentions where we are going to kayak, locate island off in distance that he is pointing to.
07:16 Judging by distance, realize island is Australia
07:20 Start kayaking
07:25 Make mental note never to do anything the day before kayaking the open ocean
08:30 Arrive at island, get wonderful tour of island, history of Hawaii, and more eco-tour knowledge.
11:00 Eat lunch, play in ocean…not in that order.
12:00 Head back out in kayak for beach to snorkel
13:00 Find beach…snorkel
14:00 Head back to car location in kayak
15:30 End tour, promptly die
15:45 After cleaning up a bit, head out for sightseeing, picture taking
17:15 Find Subway, take food to park close by, eat
18:00 Find Hospitality room, shower, wash sand from body
18:45 Watch sunset from end of pier, on the back of convertible
19:00 Turn in car, head to airport
20:45 broad plane to fly home, fall asleep BEFORE takeoff

Wednesday

00:01 Woken up to be told happy birthday, promptly fall back asleep.
12:15 Arrive in St. Louis, head home

The news, I’m going back to Hawaii!

On President’s day we found a last minute deal from St. Louis to Hawaii with hotel for $368 a person. Granted it’s not the longest vacation, at only 4 days but it gets us out of St. Louis’s 20 degree weather for 4 days, and we get to go snorkeling and swimming with dolphins. We leave early on March 1st, and will be flying back on the 11:55 p.m. flight on March 4th from Honolulu. It’s also going to be nice to be able to visit with just our camera bags and one duffel bag full of cloths, we’ll rent our snorkel gear there. The only thing I have to do at this point is find a good deal on a rental car. Monk as demanded requested a convertible, and doesn’t think that $250 a day for a Corvette is worth it..

I’ll log in and post at least one photo while I’m there.

Have a happy day.!

Monk: What the hell won’t he do?

Jason: What do you mean?

Monk: The song is “I’ll do anything for love, but I won’t do that”, what is it that he won’t do?

Jason: That’s unknown. I’ve tried looking it up and it’s a guess as to what “it” actually is.

Monk: It’s rather dumb anyway, because how can you say that you would do anything, but then state you won’t do that one thing.

Jason: I don’t know, you’ll have to ask Meat Loaf.

Monk: Well I can’t do that, but what’s his last name?

Jason: Loaf, his name is “Meat” “Loaf”

Monk: Neither his song or his name make much sense.

Jason: It’s just a song.

Monk: So what do you think “it” is?

Jason: That’s easy…a Devil’s threesome.

Monk: (confused) What’s a Devil’s threesome?

Jason: One chick, two dudes.

Monk: And one dude, two chicks would be a Heavenly threesome?

Jaosn: Yep.

Monk: You are so male.

Jason: I know Sweetness, I know.

For those who don’t know what a 404 error is, it’s really simple. When you go to a webpage that isn’t there and see the famous, “This page cannot be displayed”, that is a 404 error. If you still don’t get it, for the love of all things good and holy, read what Wikipedia has to say about them.

Anyway, this will cover how to create them for Apache on a Linux system. There are a few things you will need and they are all easy if you already of your own website, blog, or whatever.

You will need:

1. 1. FTP (or SSH) access to your site.
2. 2. Something to create a couple of web pages with.
3. 3. Creativity.

We are going to have to work this list from the bottom up, since I am way too lazy to go back and edit what I just typed. Bust out the creativity and create yourself single webpage that works; it could contain anything from simple black text to a brilliantly created flash file and just name it 404.html.

I’ll wait while you finish that….

All done…great. I am so patient, you’re rather lucky to have me.

Now that you are done flowing your creative juices, you need to get those files on your web server. They can really go anywhere as we are going to create a file that links to them. Since you have either FTP or SSH access, go ahead and get the files on your web server.

Pretty easy so far right? Well it just as easy from here on out.

If you are on Windows, open up notepad. Linux users use whatever text editor you like and you Mac people…uh, open something very texty.

Now that we have all done that and so that I don’t have to type out three different sets of instructions, you need to save a file to your desktop call “1.htaccess” (without the quotes). The file cannot be “1.htaccess.txt” or “1.htaccess.doc” or anything like that. Now that you have that created open it up and place this one simple line in it.

ErrorDocument 404 /404.html

You will want the /404.html to be the path to your actually 404.html. So if you placed your 404 files in /error/404.html, make sure that is displayed properly in the file and save it.

Now, before you upload this, make sure you don’t already have a file called “.htaccess” on your web server. If you do and you overwrite it with this rather blank “.htaccess” file it could break your website. If you do have such a file, just copy the line into it anywhere and you should be off and running.

If you don’t have such a file, go ahead and upload this one. Once you have it on your web server, change the name of the file from “1.htaccess” to “.htaccess”.

Test it by going to http://www.yoursite.com/blahblahblah and you should see the webpage you created. If you didn’t, double check that you are on a Linux server and that you have followed all the steps above.

Done.

To see why I get 150 people are showing up to see how I error, just go to http://www.midwestgeek.net/thispageisnotreal

Thanksgiving wasn’t much at all for us. Since my family was out of town and Monk’s family is never in town, we didn’t do much at all. Even if Monk’s family was in town, I do have to wonder what they would do, they could easily celebrate a second Thanksgiving, since the Canadian Thanksgiving is in October (I think, Cunuckistanians correct me if I am wrong). I suspect they wouldn’t think much of it, which would put us on the same page.

So instead of Turkey with the family, we went to go see the movie “No Country for Old Men” (which was excellent), and dinner at home together. On the way to see the movie, I said something along the lines that I always thought it was a goofy holiday and never really cared for it. Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand the meaning of the holiday and am very thankful for what I have in life. But I don’t need a day for it.

This lead my wife to inquire about what Holiday’s I do care about (in a sarcastic tone), and after thinking about for a bit, I came to the conclusion that I don’t really care about any of them. This did not surprise my wife. at all. Now if we break down the major Holidays and by major mean the ones that are most likely to get you a day off work, most of them are useless these days. Or at least devoid of meaning in few cases.

• New Years - Celebrate the new calender of a synthetic time management system, but hey, who doesn’t like fireworks.
• MLK Day - He was a great man and I have a great respect for him, but shouldn’t we celebrate the day he did something famous, such as the day he delivered the “I have a dream speech”, as opposed to his birthday?
• Washington’s Birthday - Holy-crap, this just needs to be lumped in with Memorial day. Granted he was a big part of the foundation of this country, and our first President, but we don’t actually do anything other than take the day off work, if your that lucky.
• Memorial Day - Perfect, and this one doesn’t need to be changed at all.
• Independence Day - Again perfect, keep it just like it is.
• Labor day - If you are going to create a day off for the “working man”, it needs to be updated occasionally, make it three days.
• Columbus Day - This one just beat out Hitler Day and Khmer Rouge Day. It really needs to go.
• Veterans Day - Trifecta, again perfect.
• Thanksgiving - I’m not against it, I think it should just be updated in some way.
• Christmas - It’s a religious holiday, but if we get the day off for that, shouldn’t we get a day off for Hanukkah and Kwanzaa?

I did tell her that I think birthday’s are important, and was told that I’m required to be supportive of Valentine’s Day, so I guess I’m content with those.

Saturday and Sunday were a whole lot of lazy. Friday I saw the Mist, which was really good, Sunday we saw the movie Beowulf which was OK, but really changed the story from the original. I do have to mention that Angelina Jolie looked pretty decent as CGI. Monday was the movie Hitman, which one was not very good…wait for DVD at best. And yes that is 4 movies in 4 days.

Yesterday afternoon I really started to clean the junk out of my den and really got rid of a bunch of old just that I totally forgot about. I found tapes for tape drives that were buried in the bottom of a box on the top shelf of my closet that had to be close to ten years old. When all was said and done, I had completely clean off two of the three shelves.

Today we are going to really have a blast by going through all the stuff in the Kitchen shelves and seeing what pots/pans/other utensils are needed and what are not needed. Monk wants to see Fred Claus today and then I believe we are eating out somewhere. I know tonight I have to go bed early so that I can somehow manage the three day week ahead of me.

The one thing I have been doing is a ton of work on this site, just to make administration a bit easier and to make sure all the stuff that my readers see, works correctly. If there any anything that you see that’s broken or just being a bit funky, please let me know here.

Thanks

Let’s start in Boston and work our way here. I finished my training with no issues and didn’t study another day. In the beginning of June I finally bought the big TV (Now know as Jed) that I had wanted for a long time. 61” of HD goodness. Jed felt very sad so we also picked him up some friends. Series3 Tivo, Xbox 360, Wii, and HDDVD Player all get along with him wonderfully.

In the middle of June I went on my first Golf outing with for the company and fell in love with the game again. I hadn’t played since the death of my step-father, since it just wasn’t the same without him. I started golfing regularly thought out the rest of the summer and into the fall.

July was mostly work and Golf. Monk and I went to Texas for her birthday. I had been taunting her for months that I had a gift I would not likely be able to top in any future birthdays. This was a gift that she would remember forever. Since it was a surprise she only knew that it was about one day’s drive away and that she would like it. While on the way there she slept for a few hours and I missed a very important exit. When she awoke and asked where we were, I honestly didn’t know. It was really surreal experience for her. Monk has an odd fascination for Giraffes and giggles quite loudly when she sees one on TV, in a magazine or at the Zoo. This trip took us to the Frank Buck Zoo in Gainesville, Texas so that she could hand feed two Giraffes lettuce. It’s all documented here. To say that she was surprised and lost her compose is an understatement.

August was mostly Golf, and spending time with Jed, but mostly Golf. I tore a tendon in my chest golfing, I believe it happened on a downswing. It hurt bad, and still does. A rather powerful sneeze can make me cry, literally. The doctor I saw told me that I could stop golfing, give it a few months and heal now, or keep golfing, deal with the pain, and let it heal in winter. I spent that afternoon golfing and thinking over his suggestions. The month of August was sponsored by the good people at Ibuprofen.

September took us to Canada for 7 days to spend time with Monks family and many rounds of Golf. I played 6 games in 7 days, and for two of those days I was on a road trip to Deep River, Ontario and Algonquin Park. September was also sponsored by the good people at Ibuprofen. After the trip to Canada I only played a few more rounds and then hung it up for the season. I passed my certification exams for the training I took in Boston 2 days before they expired. Nothing like procrastination.

October was a boring month. Monk and I did learn that even though I spent months reading, studying, and practicing with my camera, I simply do not have a photographer’s eye. Monk however has a wonderful photographer’s eye. Two of her photographs have been chosen to be used for some online travel agencies. Expedia was one of them, and I can’t remember the other one. She received lessons on the use of all the buttons and whatnot on my camera and now wants her own SLR. My ego is 98% intact.

We learned in November that my best buddy, Hunter, has three fatty tumors just under his skin. They are not hurting him in any way, but they cause me nightmares. He’s going to have them remove via surgery in January. We also learned that Monk’s cousin, who as dated the same guy for ten years, and lived with for 3 will be getting married the same week in May that we had planned on going to Peru, Machu Picchu and the Amazon. We have since re-planned for September. I had wanted to do a small trip to the Arctic Circle in August but that is now not going to happen. At this time I believe we will be staying a couple of days on the island of Mackinac on the way back from Canada. I also got off my lazy ass and finished the redesign for this site.

Fin.