Author: Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper

First, the family campfires bit… We have an AMAZING house that God has blessed us with, and with it a really nice back yard. And we have TONS of trees all throughout our property (note to self: take pictures of house and back yard for our little viewers). Well, as happens in a forest (that’d be where we live, complete with deer, bears, and coyotes), trees fall over (even when we’re not there to hear them fall), and quite a few of the little guys have fallen in our yard. I’d like to burn them, for the following noble reasons: To honor the fallen tree-warriors (okay, well, it sounds good) To serve as a warning to other trees as what Read more…

2000, Family Pictures, originally uploaded by vanRijn. No, it’s not the trike I’m sporting in the picture, but I thought it was blog-worthy all the same. Oh. We broke down and bought a 2005 Chrysler Town & Country. It’s a truck, dangit.

My New Toy, originally uploadd by vanRijn. The funniest thing happened to me on the way to the Store Support Center the other day…. I’d been getting e-mail notifications from someone I didn’t recognize like this: This message was sent to you at the request of SERENA SOFTWARE, INC. to notify you that the package information below has been transmitted to UPS. The package(s) may not have actually been placed with UPS for shipment. To verify when and if the shipment is tendered to UPS and its actual transit status, click on the tracking link below or contact SERENA SOFTWARE, INC. directly. So I figured I’d better check my work mailbox, did, and opened the envelope I found. I read Read more…

I have not been able to do the “blog this” thing from Flickr for a while now. Irritating. I finally had enough of it tonight, so after a few minutes Googling, I found that some hosts are blacklisting xmlrpc.php and sending back 406 errors intentionally because of security problems with old versions of xmlrpc.php/WP that people haven’t bothered upgrading/fixing/patching. To get around it, all you have to do is copy your xmlrpc.php script to some other name and tell Flickr to use that endpoint instead. Which reminds me, I need to upgrade to the new 2.x WP release, when I get a spare couple of hours (yeah, right)…. [update]: Yikes. Just as I was trying to post this entry, I Read more…

Dude, I cannot tell you how much I miss you. =:( You were the wind beneath my wings… er… um… well, that is to say that you always made my day, made me smile, and in general made it fun to go to work–something that’s sorely lacking in my life just now. =:/

We now are the almost owners of a 2005 Chrysler, Town and Country “Truck” (read: “minivan” for those not worried about what it means to one’s coolness factor to own a minivan). Oh, and what the heck??? Is it finally time to go buy a few guns, install solar panels and windmills, convert the cars to run on raw sewage, go buy some cows and chickens, and plant an acre of vegetables in my new back yard??? And equally as important, will there be any use for mathematicians or computer hackers or IS Architects whatsoever in the new world order? What trade could the mathematically/algorithmically/computationally-inclined possibly transition over to when there is no more electricity, oil, power, or the like? Read more…

Just wanted to prove to everyone that I’m not dead yet. Long time no update, etc. We of the travelling Wilbury Kasper persuasion are closing on our new home this Friday!! We’ll be having furniture delivered on Friday evening at our new home, our possessions (that have been in storage for the last month+) delivered on Saturday, our new refrigerator delivered on Saturday, and our new mattress delivered on Saturday too. Piece of cake. =:)

Oh my goodness. My workmate, Mike, came in to work singing (well, okay, the song has no words, so he was humming it) this song that I immediately remembered but couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was. And the worst part was that since the song has no words, I didn’t think I’d be able to google it enough to figure out what it was. Little did I know that google is mightier than the spoken word. I underestimated the power of the google, I admit it. I typed “banamana” into google and before I knew it, I found this page that had someone else’s similar story (the getting the song stuck in your head and Read more…