Webb Family Blog

There is one thing about hosting a blog that most people don't see that is QUITE annoying.  That is spam.  While I'm sure all of you have received spam email.  In case you don't know what I'm referring to (or why I chose the strange title) it origniates from an old Monty Python sketch.  Spam is "identical or near identical unsolicited messages to a large number of recipients".  People usually think of spam as something showing up in their email boxes, but unfortunately it extends to more than just that.  I get TONS of spam on this blog.  I get people leaving hundreds of links to ads for Viagra (or other prescription drugs that are sold illegally on the web) or pornographic websites as comments on the blog.  Thankfully, I have a small program running on the website that catches the majority of it before you have a chance of seeing it.  Every once in a while one slips in and I have to go in and delete it.  I COULD disable comments, but I like people to be able to respond to anything I write here.  So far, I haven't had THAT many comments to anything, but I've had a few.

 In regards to my LAST post… the Raiders unfortunately did NOT go perfect in the pre-season… in fact they did quite poorly in the final pre-season game.  I'd have preferred the one and only loss to be the first game, not the last.  The two victories they had that were complete blowouts were against some pretty junky teams… the San Francisco 49rs and the Detroit Lions.  I guess it would have been REAL embarrasing to have lost to those pathetic teams.  But then again, I have to keep reminding myself that it is just pre-season.  The regular season begins a week from Monday… September 11th… Monday Night Football against the San Diego Chargers… in Oakland.  I'll be there!

It’s a good thing that writing in this blog isn’t a job… I’d have been fired a while ago.  Let’s see… in the past couple weeks… 

A few weeks ago, Kellie and I went down to Modesto for the day to see my parents.  We went out to Waterford and saw the land where my parents are building their new home.  In a short while, I’ll be going down to help with installing communications wiring.  I’ll be wiring for network, telephone and TV throughout the house.  I’ve done this kind of thing for myself in the past, but was always a retrofit project.  I’ve learned a lot in the past and know how I’d want it done if I were to start from scratch, which is the position my parents are in.  Some people discount good network wiring, saying that wireless is the way of the future.  Obviously, whoever gives this advice has limited wireless experience.  Yes, wireless is convenient, but wireless is NOT very reliable.  If you have a computer that you don’t move all over the place, why would you want it wireless?  Laptop computers are generally fine going wireless, but desktop computers and other network devices… like print servers, game machines (not something I’m guessing my parents will need), or DVRs really need a wired network connection for reliability. 

The next day, Kellie and I went to the San Francisco 49rs at Oakland Raiders game in Oakland.  It was pretty fun.  We drove to El Cerrito del Norte BART station to ride in to the game.  The Raiders blew away the 49rs.  So far, pending tonight, the Raiders have been perfect in pre-season.  Tonight is the 5th and final pre-season game.  While it doesn’t mean much, the Raiders have never had a perfect record in pre-season.  Apparently pre-season used to be longer in the 70’s… the Raiders have been 5-1 in pre-season 4 times in the 70’s. 

Last Sunday night, I went up to Marysville for a Journey/Def Leppard concert.  Kind of like the previous concert, I preferred the opening band than the main event… I much preferred Journey.  I was on a team… meaning that I was grouped with 3 others and we walked around the concert and got to watch much of the concert.  This was kind of fun.  There were a few drunk people, but it was a relatively low incident concert.  The next night, I did a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert at ARCO Arena.  Again, there were a few incidents, but was a relatively few.  One of my regular partners is a big Red Hot Chili Peppers fan and was a paying guest at the concert.  He really enjoyed the concert, but I was disappointed that they didn’t do more of their hits.  In my opinion, the majority of the songs were "Side B" songs.  That is probably a term that looses meaning now-days… but in the older days when music was released either on records or tapes, albums had to be flipped over half-way through.  The more popular songs were on the first side.  Generally the first song on Side B was OK, but the rest were songs that the band liked, but weren’t very popular. 

I got very little sleep Monday night, as I got home just after midnight and had to be up at 5:30AM.  I developed a cold overnight as well. At work, I was getting quite irritable.  I had a constantly running nose.  I went home sick at 10:45AM.  I was quite miserable the rest of that day, and the next day (yesterday) as well.  I’ve finally returned to work.

I've just made a SLIGHT modification to the blog. I thought I'd tell people about it, in case they wish to take advantage of it. As you may have seen with many of my posts, I make many links to outside websites. If you click on these, it may take you away from the blog, then you'd have to reload the blog. That is kind of a pain. I use Firefox as my browser, as I suggest anyone to do.  I like to open new windows into new tabs, as Firefox is a tab-based browser.  Instead of having one web-page per window, tabs allow you to have multiple web pages open in one window.  You normally only look at one at a time, but they are placed into tabs… like an index tab.  You click on the one you want and that page is displayed.  Anyway, I normally have to "Right-click" on the links and tell it to open page in new tab.  This is kind of a pain to have to do… it just doesn't feel natural.  I found a bit of JavaScript code that allows people to choose whether they want the links to normally open in a new window/tab or wether you want to replace the current page with the link. 

In order to do this in Firefox, I'd suggest you also add the "Tabbrowser Preferences" extension.  Once installed, go into Firefox's preferences and you'll find the "Tabbed Browsing" setting. Make sure that it under  "Load Web browser links into a:" is set for a new tab.

EVEN if you don't want to follow all that advice, you may still like to check mark the option.  It is on the left sidebar of the blog website under "Link Options"… between "Recent Comments" and "Search".

It’s been awhile since I was involved with Rock Medicine.  When I went full time at Queen of the Valley Hospital, back in 2000, I found it difficult to make it to concerts and stopped going.  It was always a big hassle to drive to the concert venues living in Angwin.  Now that I’m living in Roseville, I’m about half-way between the major concert venues for the Sacramento area… ARCO Arena and Sleep Train Amphitheatre.  Last night, Kellie had to work, and there was a concert going on at ARCO Arena… Faith Hill and Tim McGraw (son of former baseball pitcher Tug McGraw).  This concert was packed with concert goers, but when compared to most rock concerts, the style of music invited a much tamer crowd.  I’m not normally into country music, but I do really like Faith Hill’s music.  These two have been married for nearly 10 years (October 1996) and have three daughters.  Before the concert began, they both walked past the main medical area.  I noticed an odd dynamic.   Security herded us all behind the curtains of the medical area before they went walking by before they came by.  First there was a group of guys and about 20 feet behind them was Tim McGraw. He said “Thank You” to those of us at main medical as he walked by.  Another 20 or so feet behind him was another entourage with Faith Hill being in the mix.  I just thought this odd.  Why weren’t they together?  Faith was with a group of people but Tim was isolated… apparently he’s a prima donna.  Inside the arena, the stage was in the middle of the floor and the shape of a cross.  The first song was a duet.  The instrument players were all in the middle of the stage and Faith and Tim popped up elevators on opposite legs of the cross.  They had large video displays all around, so if they were facing in opposite direcitons from where a concert goer was facing, they could see their front side on the video screen.  Throughout the concert, they moved around, so everyone got to see them, as seating completely surrounded the stage.  Faith Hill sang all of her solo stuff before Tim McGraw.  Personally I felt that to be anticlimatic.  Thankfully she sang my favorite song of hers… “This Kiss“.  She also sang my favorite hymn, as a quartet with some of her backup singers… “It Is Well With my Soul“.  This song has a lot of meaning to me.  In the past, I have been in several situations where I was quite scared for my life.  Like when I was wrestling with a guy on drugs trying to kill his wife at the Motel 6 on Redlands Blvd in San Bernardino in 1992 or at the shoot-out at the Twin Pine Casino in 1994 (working private security both times)… this song started going through my mind and it calmed me down to where I was relaxed and kept my cool.

To my knowledge, there was only two patients, both suffering from medical ailments, as opposed to drugs and alcohol like we see at many of the concerts.  I’m currently signed up for two more concerts this month… Def Leppard/Journey and Red Hot Chilli Peppers.