As a long time fan of Frank Mir, watching UFC 92, it certainly was nice to see Frank Mir be the first to stop Nogueira in a fight, and become the Interim UFC Heavyweight Champion (to face Brock Lesnar in a title-unification bout)...  But, even if he had lost, I would have been pleased just to see Frank back in top fighting form!

      Here's a guy born into a martial arts family, similar in size and build as myself in competitive shape, who's really well versed in all aspects of MMA and a stunningly fast learner. S'why I've been a big fan of Frank Mir, since his surprise 1st round submission victory against then-4th degree BJJ black belt (as well as ADCC & 2 time World Jiu Jitsu champ) Roberto Traven, at his UFC debut, when he was still was still a purple belt.  His sick submission of Pete Williams and good showing against Ian Freeman (who won with the help of an illegal kick to the head while on the ground) really solidified him as a potential MMA superstar.  Mir killed Tank Abbott's hype (even though his position in the top ranks was already rolling downhill) with a heel hook in under a minute.  Mir had two matches with Wes Sims, with Frank winning the rematch in a very dominating fashion, and got a shot at the then-undefeated giant, Tim Sylvia, for the UFC Heavyweight Championship.  Even the newest of MMA fans should know what happened, as it's one of the most popular UFC highlight clips, with Frank Mir snapping Sylvia's arm and taking the belt...

And then came the devastating motorcycle accident.

      If you read the reports, and check out the trauma Frank suffered, it'll really make you cringe.  His femur was snapped in two places, and all his ligaments and muscles were mangled.  Doctors figured he would walk with a limp for the rest of his life.  Most athletes' would kiss their career goodbye, after a mess like that.  Honestly, I thought Frank was done as a fighter, after that.

      Frank had to vacate his UFC Heavyweight Title, and rehabbed for over a year.  Although Mir was able to return to MMA, he seemed like a whole different fighter against Dan Christenson and Brandon Vera.  He wasn't bad, but it really wasn't the same Frank Mir that was storming up the division ranking.  Submitting Antoni Hardonk and a VERY green Brock Lesnar was at least a ray of hope, and seeing his physical shape improve over time - even during the few weeks he was coaching TUF - I was both excited and nervous with his upcoming match against the legendary Nogueira.

      I mean, sh-t, we're talking about Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira!  Nogueira is seemingly-unstoppable, pushing Fedor to decision twice, and survived wars against Ricco, Cro-Cop, Hendo, Herring and Barnett.  He's shrugged off shots that would have knocked down most any other fighter in the world.  Big Nog can beat - even cripple - the best of the best on the ground or even standing up.  A win over Minotauro, especially for the interim belt, would be huge, but it would really derail Mir's fighting career if Nogueira destroyed him...

      Well, after tonight, I can breathe a little easier.  It looks like we're seeing a new-and-improved Frank Mir.  He looked really good on his feet, was said to be in excellent physical condition, and 100% confident and composed during the entire match.  As I said, win lose or draw, it's fantastic to see Mir back in top-competitive form...  Though, Frank Mir winning, and making history by being the first to stop Big Nog in a fight, is friggin' awesome.  It'll be interesting to see how he's going to contend with a much MUCH-improved Brock Lesnar, who beat Randy Couture after his initial loss to Frank.  No matter the result, I'm also looking forward to other Frank Mir match-ups against the likes of Junior dos Santos, Randy Couture, Gabe Gonzaga, Werdum, a rematch with Vera, Shane Carwin, or some of the newer guys Dana White has been trying to sign.  And, there's always the very-remote possibility Dana White signs Fedor, Barnett, or Arona.

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Windows Task Scheduler Thank Goodness For Automation!

My real estate partner was up early this morning, getting prepped for another open house, and took a look at the server which was running a scheduled spyware / adware scan.  He wanted to know how to pull it off, because when he configured the award-winning Spybot Search & Destroy, he never saw a scheduling option.  Well, there isn't a scheduling option, but Spybot S&D can be executed from command prompt.  Any application that can be launched this way, can easily be configured to run using the often-neglected "Scheduled Tasks" feature in almost every version of Windows.

While folder locations may vary from system to system, most people can simply create a new task, and copy and paste my string to the appropriate fields.

RUN: "C:..Program Files..Spybot - Search & Destroy..SpybotSD.exe" /autoupdate /autoimmunize /minimized /autocheck /autofix /onlyspyware

START IN: "C:..Program Files..Spybot - Search & Destroy"

You can then customize it to run whenever you want.  You can add or remove parameters (the things after the quote in the RUN field), to further augment your scan.  Here are the useful parameters:
  /minimized - Starts the window minimized.
  /autoupdate - Does an update after starting the program.
  /autocheck - Starts scanning immediately.
  /autofix - Fixes problems after scan.
  /autoclose - Closes program after it has scanned or updated.
  /autoimmunize - Runs the immunization at program start.
  /onlyspyware - Fixes only spyware (red) entries with /autofix, leaving all usage tracks as they are.


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Similarly, you can set up scheduled scans with my antivirus of choice, Avast Antivirus, using the command line:  "C:..Program Files..Alwil Software..Avast4..ashQuick.exe" c: d: e: (add on any drives you want to scan).

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I also use WinRAR's command line option to do nightly compressed backups, triple-encrypt the archive, generate PAR2 parity files (I can recover files, even if up to 9% of the archive was damaged), and upload them to our offsite server automatically during the night.  What's great is I can even control system priority.  Stiff runs high-priority at night, and low-priority during work hours so it doesn't slow down our network apps and file-sharing.

Note - Please ignore the brackets and dots.  MySpace's editor-for-retards doesn't seem to like genuine compliant HTML.  I guess that would just make too much damn sense for MySpace to support HTML.  Dicks.

So, I've been doing some updates to the webpage of my main client (Great Ideas Inc.), mostly just lipstick stuff.  I do all my design in Notepad, using plain ol' HTML.  That's pretty nerdy.

As I was wrapping up, it occurred to me I was assigning HEX colors to copy from memory.  Hexidecimal is second nature to me, and I've memorized most common RGB combinations.  Hmm...  Nerdier, still.

It then occurred to me I was belting out special characters like ©, ®, ™, •, ?, ?, and even the good ol ¢ symbol without reference.  I can remember them by numeric character reference or named character entity reference from the DOS days of ANSI.

I have to admit, I'm actually kind of impressed with myself that HTML has become second nature to me.  Yeah, I won't be winning any awards on coolness, ever, but I don't need to freakin' impress anyone.  What's important is that I can render T_recon⁵vT_A²(L÷12)³in any bloomin' color I want, without even pausing.

...can't solve it.  I'm not Matt Damon smart.  But I sure can type it out all pretty looking.  Yay, me!