Where oh where is my stimulus check from the IRS? I thought it was supposed to be direct deposited into my account yesterday.

Officials have launched a web site with up to date information on the Trigo Fire. You'll be able to find the latest news releases about the fire as well as maps and photographs.

This is the fire burning in the Manzano Mountains east of Albuquerque.

Don't forget about the 2008 Run for the Zoo this Sunday, May 4th, 2008. The weather is going in the high 70s and partly cloudy.

"Run for the Zoo and Walk with Us Too! is the largest road race in New Mexico for people of all ages and fitness levels including; a USATF-certified 10K run, an USATF-certified 5K run, a 5K fitness run/walk and 1-mile fun run/walk. There’s also the Altitude Challenge giving 10K runners (18 & older) the chance to win $10,000. All proceeds benefit the Rio Grande Zoo."

I'm thinking of possibly doing the 1 mile run. Not positive yet though.

More info is available at the 2008 Run for the Zoo website.

KOBTV is going to be airing a news piece tonight on the 10 o' clock news about illegal street racing in Albuquerque. Being an avid car enthusiast I know a lot of this actually does go on here in the Duke City.

The gripe I have about their news story (just from the previews so far) is the dramatic spin that they are putting on the clip already. The preview shows some street racing clips that were sped up to make it seem like the cars were going insanely fast (or faster than they were actually going anyway). Stories like this are on the news whenever summer starts to roll around, so it wasn't unexpected for them to be having a story like this during this time of the year. Remember however, there are lots of LEGAL events held here in Albuquerque for auto enthusiasts. RacingSouthwest.com can direct you to the dates and times of these events. Everything from auto cross, drag racing, off-road events, etc. Albuquerque does have a great auto enthusiast community and not everyone races on the street, so don't let the KOBTV story skew your view on the subject too much.

Check out the KOBTV story for yourself. The comments were taken down from the page with the video, but they are still available on Topix.

Now here's a news story for ya. 7 year old Latarian Milton of Palm Beach Gardens Florida got mad at his mom and stole his grandmother's vehicle. On the joyride he hit 2 mailboxes, 2 parked cars, and struck 2 moving cars. What finally immobilized the vehicle was when he hit the curb and sideswiped a sign.


Police: "You don't think you should be punished for this?"

Kid: "Just a little bit, no video games for a whole weekend."

Don't forget to check out the annual Bike Swap put on by BikeABQ this year. It is going on this Saturday, May 3rd at Sport Systems from 10am-4pm (1605 Juan Tabo NE on Juan Tabo just south of Indian School).


More information is available at the BikeABQ.org website. You can also contact Sport Systems at ph# 505-296-9111.

If you've eaten at IHOP on 8100 Wyoming Blvd. NE or the IHOP at 1400 Mercantile Ave. since 3/22/08, you might just want to make sure you didn't receive Hepatitis A in addition to your meal.

The New Mexico Department of Health has confirmed that two food servers who work at the IHOP on 8100 Wyoming Blvd. NE and the IHOP at 1400 Mercantile Ave. NE have hepatitis A. Officials said the reataurant franchise is helping with the investigation.

The Department of Health said symptoms include fever, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, dark colored urine and jaundice, which can turn skin yellow. A person's stool may be clay colored. The average time between exposure and symptoms is 28 to 30 days, with a range of 15 to 50 days, according to DOH.

If you have any of these symptoms, you should contact your physician to go get checked out. You are also asked to report it to the Department of Health (505-827-0006).

A cool little short film titled Spider by Blue-Tongue Films. You won't expect the ending.


See? I told you so.

I found an amazingly easy way for you to ignore certain Twitter users for a pre-determined amount of time. How? TwitterSnooze!


The site is very straight forward. If you want to ignore someone for a while but don't want to forget to take them off the ignore list, TwitterSnooze! will do all the work for you. Simply enter your Twitter user name, Twitter password, the user name of the person you want to ignore, and then select the amount of time you want to snooze (ignore) them from the drop down menu. There is also an option to announce that you've put this person on Snooze on your Twitter page. Much easier then removing the person from your follow list and then having to re-add them, if you even remember to.

A very useful tool for people that use Twitter. As always, if you'd like to follow me - @fivezerofive

Rode along with my friend Ian in his Poison Spyder Chasis buggy powered by a 350 SBC and riding on some Unimog 404 axles with the pinion conversions and all that good stuff done. The trip was to recover a broken down Jeep Cherokee that had busted a u-joint and stretched the ears on the axle shaft, which took out the ball joint. Gonzo Canyon is located east of Albuquerque NM.

A VERY cool short trail. Here are some pictures. Starting with a picture of part of the trail itself and then just some random pics from the day.



The whole gallery of pictures that I took is located here.

Here are also two videos of Ian and Paul on the way out going over one of the tighter sections of the trail. (.mov format)

Something sorta cool for those of you who actually smoke.

The Gamucci Electric Cigarette is a odd but very intuitive product that I found today while surfing the web. The E-Cigarette delivers the thing that smokers want, Nicotine, without the bad stuff that comes long with it in traditional cigarettes, the tobacco and tar. The Gamucci Electronic Cigarette doesn't need to be lit like traditional cigarettes and it doesn't produce any second hand smoke.



So how does it work? Pretty much like a regular cigarette. You smoke it like a regular cigarette and instead of it burning, the nicotine is vaporized and delivered to your lungs. Gamucci contains only water, propylene glycol, nicotine, tobacco scent and a membrane to suspend the ingredients. The vapour like smoke that is produced from the E-Cigarette evaporates into the air within a few seconds. One cartridge is the equivalent of 20 traditional cigarettes.

More information and pictures are available here.

I'm sure some of you local Albuquerque residents saw this on the news. An Albuquerque woman accuses of her boyfriend of starring in the porno movie they were watching.

A woman is accused of chasing her boyfriend with a knife after thinking he was an actor in a pornographic movie they were watching together.

The victim says it all started when he and his girlfriend were inside his southwest Albuquerque home watching a pornographic move at 10:30 Wednesday morning.

That’s when the victim called 911 saying his girlfriend, 20-year-old Amanda Montoya, had a knife.

“She almost shanked me and everything. She put the (expletive) knife right under my throat," the victim told a 911 operator.

Just another cool tool to use along with the microblogging service Twitter. I discovered Twhirl, a desktop client that you can use to post to Twitter, track Tweets from others that you are following on the service, and do pretty much everything else that you can do on the website, all through this desktop client.



Twhirl puts everything together in a nice compact package which allows you to update your Twitter page from your desktop with very little trouble at all. I normally just text Twitter from my phone if I care to make an update, but when I am actually on a computer, I've found that this makes it immensely easier then having Twitter open in a tab on Firefox. One of the key features that I really liked is that when someone on your following list makes an update, it'll pop up a little notification on the bottom of the screen right on top of the Twhirl icon in your status bar.



Overall a really nice piece of software to go along with Twitter when you are on a computer!

I can't believe I didn't find out about this awesome tool until yesterday. eBay Countdown makes it amazingly easy to keep track of auction you're bidding on or are watching.



It makes it a breeze to keep track of auctions that are ending soon and allows you to swoop in at the last second to place a bid. It keeps you up to date on the time remaining on each auction in real time. Right now I'm using it to track a few different auctions and so far it seems to work surprisingly well.

Since joining Twitter a couple of days ago, I've found some cool tools to help you connect with other local people using the service. One of the interesting ones that caught my eye was TwitterLocal.



TwitterLocal lets you generate an RSS or XML Feed to filter out Tweets around a certain area. Just enter a city, state, postal code, choose the range of miles you want to include, and hit the button. You'll instantly get URLs to add to your RSS reader. Basically meaning, you can find recent updates to Twitter from people in your local area.

If you're a Twitter user, I'm sure you've noticed that there really isn't a comprehensive list of mobile and IM commands listed anywhere.

Jason Theodor of JasonTheodor.com has put together a Twitter Tweet Sheet.

I have created an exhaustive, ultra-portable, business-card-sized tweet sheet that you can download, print, cut out, and stick in your wallet or purse. Just click on the image below to download the pdf. Don’t all thank me at once, just go to twitter.com and follow jted.

Very convenient if you use your phone or IM to send updates. If you'd like to follow me, here is my page.

More often then not, things are funny because they are true. Case in point.

So I've joined Twitter. God help us all.

http://www.twitter.com/fivezerofive

Something big has happened over at Flickr. If you have a Flickr Pro account, you'll now be able to upload videos up to 90 seconds long. The Flickr blog explains more about this.

In addition to this, they have also announced more space for images.

"Bonus (for those who’ve read this far): We’re doubling the size of photos that can be uploaded — 20MB per photo for pro members and 10MB per photo for members with free accounts."

It'll be interesting to see what comes from this. There are already some awesome photos and lots of creative expression on Flickr and I can only see videos adding to that.

This is the video being passed around the web and being shown on nearly every U.S. news station right now. If you already haven't seen it, the video shows 16 year old Victoria Lindsay of Lakeland Florida being beaten by other teens and being restricted from leaving the house. In addition to the six girls involved in the beating, there were also two male teenagers outside acting as lookouts.


Supposedly the beating was because of comments that Lindsay had made on Myspace about the other teenagers. Police say that the video of the beating was intentionally made to be posted on Myspace and Youtube.

All of the teenagers involved were charged with felony battery and false imprisonment. Here's a little more on the story from the Orlando Sentinel. [ Read More! ]

Every once in a while you find a gem of advertising like this ad on the social networking site, Facebook.

Can you tell the difference between a 128 and a 320 kbps mp3 file? You might be surprised.

Selling a brand new pair of Oakley Twitch Sunglasses. These were bought and never worn, NEW IN BOX with cleaning/carrying bag (brown). The glasses have a Polished Black frame w/ warm grey lenses. I have provided a picture from another auction, please note these are not the glasses themselves, but I am selling the exact same thing.

Looking for $60 firm for these sunglasses. Again, they are brand new including everything that came with them originally.

To purchase, please visit my Craigslist for sale ad.

Wishing everyone out there a good Easter.