Tony Bevilacqua

Decatur Daily, a newspaper in Tennessee recently published an article regarding a man who killed an 80 year old man. Is he a psycho? Is he a serial killer? Are there voices in his head telling him to do it? No. Apparently, he thought he was in a video game. And apparently, this is a valid defense for first degree murder these days.

The deadly confrontation between the accused and an innocent 80 year old man that occurred on Halloween 2005 “resembled a video game”. I wonder, is this a reason to take someone’s life? If I am walking down the street and say to myself, “Hmm, this street reminds me of a violent video game I just played”, do I automatically react violently? No, and I’m sure you don’t either.

Clearly, this is just another over-the-top, flashy defense hoping to confuse the jury so much that they are left asking themselves, “What the hell just happened in there?”

The elderly man was left “lying on his living room floor in blood-soaked pajamas with more than 70 stab wounds, one eye gouged out and a gunshot wound”. Now, that sounds more to me like a cold-hearted murderer than a confused kid, but hey, that’s just my opinion, and I’m no defense attorney, right?

This is clearly a robbery gone very, very bad, especially since the defendant can be heard on the 911 call screaming, “Where’s the vault?” the entire time. This sounds like an open and shut case to me.

I’m just glad this lunatic is getting the attention he was craving, because clearly, that’s the only reason they could be throwing this out there. That, and to try and drag down the gaming industry. You heard it here first, folks: video and computer games don’t kill people; crazy people with weapons kill people.

I got confirmation today that my family has booked a group vacation with two other families to the “Grand Oasis Cancun”

I am very excited to get out there, in the sun. I haven’t had a real vacation for years, and some serious downtime, without the laptop, without the smartphone, is going to be totally awesome.

Unfortunately, even with lots of effort, and negotiating on our part, Liz is unable to come with us, on this vacation. The time that worked for the group fell directly onto her exam period, and some of her teachers were less that willing to negotiate. I would really love her to go with us, but unfortunately there is no choice in this situation. Luckily this isn’t an extreme downer for Liz, she was just in Scotland in August of 2007, and she’ll be going with her Mother and Sister to DisneyLand / LA for Dance in July.

I all be departing on April 12th at 5:30AM, for 7 days. Woo hoo!

With the release of the new MacBook and MacBook Pro machines yesterday, I thought it would be helpful to go check out the iMac, and make sure there have been no changes. Low and behold, there was a change in price on the particular machine that I had purchased.

Put Apple to Work for You

Should Apple reduce its price on any shipped product within 10 days of shipment, you may contact Apple Sales Support at 1-800-MY-APPLE to request a credit of the difference between the price you were charged and the current selling price. To receive the credit you must notify Apple within 14 days of shipment. In the event a credit is given to you, the same credit card that you used to make your purchase will be credited.

The price difference was a mere $61, but none-the-less, this is money I paid, and could easily get back. I called Apple Support at 1-800-MY-APPLE - After collecting my order number, the agent quickly offered me the discount that I was looking for.

When purchasing hardware from a company like Apple, Dell, etc - Always check out the policies on price change. I did this well before my purchase of the iMac, it offers a certain satisfaction that I won’t be left completely screwed in the event of a price change.

Some companies may try to pull a fast one on you. Don’t accept no for an answer, if you are within their written policy! In Apple’s case, the agent quickly accepted my request, and put forward the refund. Nice Job Apple.

How are you reading this blog? Probably just browsing around, and you caught some freak ass link that somehow landed you on this page. Nice Job, read on, add me to RSS.

Wait… what is RSS?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a “feed,” “web feed,” or “channel,” contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that’s easier than checking them manually.

Now that you are up to speed, it’s time to become an RSS master, and it doesn’t really take much effort at all to make it happen. See, I use a nifty little app called “NewsFire” developed by David Watanabe. This fantastically stable, and reliable RSS application has provided me with an oasis of streaming content delivered to my desktop every 15 minutes, for over 45 websites.

I am probably a more advanced RSS user than most, as I monitor quite a few feeds. I find this useful for:

• Tracking Software Updates from Companies I Purchases Products From
• Reading up on the next “Make Money Online” schemes from the SEO brigade
• Keeping up with corporate blogs, such as Apple, Microsoft Technet
• Read news headlines for Silicon Valley Gossip, Game Politics, and GamesPress
• Monitoring my own feeds, and the status of SpawnPoint.com
• and of course, keeping up on the activities of my friends.

Stop wasting your time “surfing the web” and let NewsFire bring the web to you, when something worthwhile is available to read. Go grab a trial copy of NewsFire right now… below are some of the great features:

A Dynamic Performance
NewsFire is the first RSS reader to use animation to alert you to news and convey meaning. Watch your feeds and groups swoop around as news streams in.

Intelligent Search
Search for news, blogs, and podcasts everywhere directly in NewsFire and save the results as live feeds. Even cooler, NewsFire articles show up in Spotlight.

Groups and Labels
NewsFire lets you group and label your feeds, so you control the news reading experience.

Smart Feeds
NewsFire takes feed organization to the next level, letting you create smart feeds that match whatever criteria you want.

NewsFire Main Window

NewsFire Preferences

NewsFire Viewing Blog + YouTube

Are you on a server that shares it’s IP with many clients? Are you guaranteed a “dedicated IP” and not really sure if your host is really providing you with that service? MyIPNeighbors uses Reverse IP DNS technology to check the records that exist for your IP address.

This is a demonstration with tonybevilacqua.net, which is hosted on Site5.

Just a note on Site5, they have been a fantastic host, and I have been with them for several years. Recently I converted Lucas, a programmer for SpawnPoint over to Site5: “It’s one of most pleasant web hosting experiences I have ever had”. Anyway….

My Site5 package provides me with a dedicated IP address. I was humbled to see only domains that belong to me, pointed at this address. Although I have a dedicated IP address with my Site5 account, this is still hosted on shared hardware; nothing really interesting to see here.

This is a demonstration with toph.ca, which is hosted on MT.

Christoph hosts toph.ca on a Media Temple’s (gs) Grid-Service“. MT doesn’t provide a dedicated IP with his package - you can find out some interesting information with this tool… like who your IP neighbors are! In the query below for “toph.ca”, you can see a variety of other sites that are hosted at Media Temple.