Month: February 2004

Ok, so this falls in to the category of obscure – but useful. An acquintance of mine was telling me the other day how he reduces the number of phone solicitations they receive.
There is a tone the phone company plays over the receiver when you dial an invalid number. He has recorded that tone and put it on his answering machine. It plays, there is a pause and then he greets the caller like you would normally.
The automated dialers these marketing firms use listen to the response. If they hear the phone company’s ‘invalid phone number’ tone, they don’t call back and they don’t put your number on a list for resale. So that’s a good thing, right?
He passed along the web site where the Special Information Tone (SIT) for an invalid phone number tag can be downloaded. I’m going to try it on our phone.

Well, the wedding pictures have been posted. I apologize for the delay but I have two excuses. First of all, you all are close to being as bad at photography as I – and the cleanup process was a project. Secondly, while I like Photoshop, I’m still pretty low on the learning curve. This was a learning experience. But enough about me. Follow the link and check out the gallery. If you have other pictures you would like to see added send them to me – I will be happy to include them. Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures of Greg and Dan – at least not directly. If you look closely you can see Greg in the background in one of the pictures of Mark and Lisa. I am also disappointed to not have pictures of James, Stephanie, Dad, Carol and Mike. I’ll work on that and publish an update if possible. I also have a few more pictures which are too challenging for my ‘fixing’ abilities yet. I’ll leave those for another day.

Mark and Lisa were married over the weekend in Grand Rapids, MI at the Amway Grand Plaza in the Imperial Ballroom. The service was very nicely done and the setting could not have been better. The bride was beautiful and the groom was handsome. The view from the room overlooking the Grand River 20 stories below was excellent. Unfortunately I did not get a picture of it. It was good seeing Dan and Greg again. I will be disappointed if there isn’t a picture of the two of them amongst the many pictures taken.

Mother has started sending me pictures I think rather then posting thumbnails here I’ll put them in their own photo album. I’ll try to get that put together in the next few days.

Mark replied to an earlier posting. In it I had intended to let everyone know I’d posted pictures of Mothers new house. I posted it Saturday morning. It was bitterly cold that morning and I think I spent too much time in front of the PC as a result. It was needlessly nerdy – I’ll try to refrain from indulging my inner geek here. Mark’s e-mail pointed out in a gentle way that I needed to speak english in the future. Just having an out of body experience that morning….

That being said the original URL Spoof posting is moot. Microsoft has issued a security patch which corrects the security hole.

I was cleaning off my laptop from work and ran across a set of pictures from several years ago. All of them are from Mother I’m sure. One set appears to be from 1994 and the second from 2000. The 1994 photos were taken in Kentucky at Tom and Carol’s. The 2000 photos were taken in a hotel room somewhere – I believe. There were only five in total. Let me know if you would like the full-size shots as these have been skinnied down to consume less space and download faster.

What I take for granted is how much the kids have grown. I’ll see if I can find a picture with all five kids in it for a comparison shot. I could be wrong but it seems as if the girls and Matt have changed more then Joey and Marky. The teenage years…