I’ve recently been bombarded by annoying “take our survey” in-page pop-ups on dozens of pages. I hate these things.

If you hate them, too, then you can opt out of many of them by going to these URLs:

• VoiceFive Opt-out
• Safecount Opt-out

Update: Sadly, ForeSee is the leader in this field, and they don’t have an opt-out option that works across all sites. If you have AdBlock Plus, you can add a custom filter for */foresee-trigger.js

I often search for recipes online and end up at sites like Allrecipes.com. The recipes I find often have terrific reviews and star ratings. The problem, however, is that people are dumb.

You see, people have a bad habit of writing reviews along the lines of:

Oh my gosh this is the most amazing recipe in the world! My family loves it! My dog loves it! My neighbors love it! Oh by the way I didn’t actually follow the recipe. I made so many changes that my review is completely irrelevant.

Drives me crazy. I follow the 5 star recipe that has 4,000 reviews and it turns out awful because nobody is actually reviewing the recipe.

The solution? Make my own recipe site, Recipe Kabob!

Under U.S. copyright law, recipes can’t be copyrighted. Sure, you can copyright your pictures of your recipe and copyright your substantial descriptions of the recipe, but the recipe itself can’t be copyrighted. This means anyone can copy any recipe and it isn’t actually stealing. Awesome, no?

So I’ve started a recipe site. I don’t want people’s comments or reviews. I don’t care what they did different. The recipes I list are great as-is and don’t require modification. Think of it like a cookbook.

If you see something you like, feel free to take it. :)

For a few months on my mission I got really into playing Risk. We’d often spend our entire preparation day trying to conquer the world. It was a blast!

I still like to play Risk a lot today (found it for $3.99 at a thrift store!), but I most often like to play what I call Nuclear Risk.

To play Nuclear Risk, all you need are the normal pieces that come with the game, and a few additional markers to put on the territories that get nuked. If you are playing with only 2 or 3 players, then you can just use the cannons from one of the colors that aren’t being used. Or you can use coins or pieces of paper or whatever is convenient.

The rules are simple: If an attacker rolls triples, then the territory at the top of the deck gets nuked. All the armies in it die, and the fallout kills half of any armies that move into it every turn (rounded up).

I really hate games that don’t have rules to cover every situation, so here is the extended version of the rules that cover every situation I’ve encountered:

1. If an attacker rolls triples (three 1′s, three 2′s, three 3′s, etc), then you immediately draw a territory card from the deck, and nuke that territory (if you draw a wild, put the wild on the bottom and draw again). The territory card is discarded from the game. The original rolls by the attacker and defender do not count. If the attacker may choose whether to attack again or not.
2. When a territory gets nuked, all armies are instantly killed and removed from the board. A marker is placed on the territory to indicate that it has been nuked.
3. A player may choose to nuke a territory that he holds the territory card for (even his own territory) instead of taking his normal turn. The card is discarded, and the player does not get to place reinforcements, attack territories, or do a strategic move.
4. Armies may only enter a nuked territory as part of a strategic move at the end of a player’s turn.
5. Armies may only leave a nuked territory as part of a strategic move or when they conquer a territory. The player is not required to leave an army behind in the nuked territory when they conquer an adjacent territory.
6. Players cannot attack armies that are in a nuked territory.
7. Multiple players can have armies in a nuked territory at the same time.
8. At the beginning of a player’s turn, before they place reinforcements, the player loses half of his armies that are in a nuked territory (rounded up). This happens every turn and for every nuked territory.
9. Reinforcements may not be placed in a nuked territory.
10. Nuked territories do not count when determining if a continent has been fully conquered. For example, if the yellow player has all of South America, except for Brazil because it has been nuked, then yellow still gets the reinforcement bonus for South America. Yellow still gets the bonus even if a red army is in the nuked Brazil territory, because nobody controls a nuked territory.

Anyways, give it a shot! It really adds a fun new element to the game, and discourages hording all your armies on a single territory. Some games almost no territories get nuked, some games nearly half the territories get nuked.

Also, let me know if you run into a situation I didn’t cover with the rules above.

It has finally happened: I’ve gone back to college. My friend Brandon has pointed out that I’m doing things backwards though. He says “you are supposed to go to school, graduate, be miserable for 40 years, THEN retire.”

Regardless of whether I’m doing it backwards or not, I’m now a few weeks into the semester at BYU-Idaho. If you know that I live in Connecticut, you may be wondering how I’m attending an Idaho school. The answer is the most awesome innovation in education that I’ve had the privilege of participating in: the BYU-Idaho Pathway Program.

Here are the basics:

• The program is available to all active LDS members that are 18-30 years old (only available in some areas). Keep in mind that BYU-Idaho’s operating expenses are subsidized with LDS tithing, so they shouldn’t be faulted for expecting you to be an active member of the LDS church.
• You don’t have to have a high school diploma. It doesn’t matter if you are married or single. You don’t have to take the SAT or ACT. The application is only one page long. Pretty much everyone is accepted.
• Classes are only $65 per credit hour. There are no application fees, matriculation fees, student fees, technology fees, etc. Just $65 per credit hour. To make it even better, for-credit Institute religion classes are free.
• You can transfer credits from previous colleges, and they have a “no credit left behind policy”. If you took the class, they’ll find a way to make it count for something.
• Students that maintain a B average can optionally transfer to the BYU-Idaho campus after the first year. Students that choose to stay where they are can graduate without ever going to Idaho.

Most of the work is done online. Once a week the class meets together at the Institute of Religion building for a few hours.

The weekly meeting is split into two parts: an Institute of Religion class taught by a missionary couple, and a class discussion led by the students themselves. I was skeptical at first about the class discussion, but it seems to work really well. My classmates and I are eager to participate, excited about the material, and honestly have fun at these weekly meetings.

So how long until I have a degree? Well I haven’t transferred my credits yet, so I’m not sure. The first year is very structured. I am required to take specific classes, regardless of my background. After the first year I am given some flexibility in what classes I take. With my existing credits, I suspect I could get an associate degree in a year or two without a very heavy load. I’d like to go on and get a bachelors degree, though, so I’ll probably be in a school for a few years.

Anyways, I’m very excited. The downside of course is that I’ll have less time for my business. I think in the long run the knowledge I’ll gain from my classes will make up for the time I spend doing homework and in class.

A few days ago I stumbled upon the coolest app I’ve ever put on my phone: Android Notifier.

This app takes all the notifications from your phone like incoming calls, SMS/MMS messages, battery status, etc, and displays them on your desktop. Automagically. You just install the app on your phone, install the app on your desktop, and BAM! It magically sends notifications to your desktop.

It is smart enough to use the notification system appropriate for your system, like Growl or libnotify, and provides an encryption option if you are worried about other people seeing your txt messages as they are sent to your desktop.

Anyways, I’m loving it. I often forget my phone in my bedroom in the morning, which makes me miss calls because it isn’t loud enough for me to hear in my office. It also warns me when my battery is getting low.

There I was, watching an old episode of Star Trek Enterprise in my office, with my baby happily sleeping in her swing in the living room, when all of a sudden my desk started to shake. Then a picture fell off of a shelf (luckily I caught it).

Eek! Earthquake! I ran to the living room, grabbed my baby, ignored the fan falling off of my wife’s desk, and hid under my desk until the shaking stopped.

Anna of course slept through the whole thing. Lazy baby, asleep at 2 in the afternoon.

I recently had to install Windows 7 using an upgrade edition. At one point I had a legal copy of Windows Vista on the computer, but I had long since switched to Linux and lost the original Windows Vista disk.

So what do I do? I qualify for the upgrade edition, but Windows won’t activate because I did a clean install without having Windows Vista installed.

Here is the solution:

1. Run regedit.exe
2. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/
3. Set MediaBootInstall to 0
4. Close the registry editor
5. Open a command prompt
6. Run slmgr /rearm
7. Wait until you get a message box that says “Command completed successfully.”
8. Reboot

That’s it! Takes about 30 seconds and it makes it so Windows thinks you did an upgrade inside of Windows instead of a clean install. The activation process should work without any problems now.

I got an Android phone a while back (a Samsung Intercept). I like it a lot, except it started getting slower and slower and slower.

After yelling at my phone profusely and spending an hour or so Googling, I discovered that a process called akmd2 was the culprit.

This process is what automatically switches the screen from portrait to landscape mode when you rotate the phone. Seeing as I actually hate that feature, I solved my problem by disabling it:

1. Go to Settings
2. Then Display
3. Then uncheck Auto-rotate screen

That is it! My phone is now instantly super fast!

My phone has a slide out keyboard, so I can still get my screen to rotate by opening the keyboard.

Anyways, I hope this helps someone that runs into the same problem.

My wife and I have been working hard on building up a good supply of food and water. This is partially because we hate going shopping all the time, but mainly because it is good to have extra food in case of an emergency.

Last summer we were without clean water for a few days. Luckily we had stored some water in old juice containers so we had something to drink. It is difficult though to store a lot of water one gallon at a time, so we decided to buy a water drum.

A lot of people recommended getting a single 55 gallon drum, but we decided to buy two 15 gallon drums instead. We got this drum and this drum combo (which comes with a siphon and a bung wrench, which you need to open/close the drums and conveniently get the water out).

Here is my reasoning for going with 15 gallon drums instead of 55 gallon drums:

Weight. Water is heavy. A full 55 gallon drum weighs about 470 pounds. Despite my athletic appearance, there is no way I could move a 470 pound drum. A 15 gallon drum weighs about 130 pounds, which is still heavy, but at least I have a hope of moving it.

Portability. In an emergency, I don’t think I’ll be able to get a 55 gallon drum into the back of my car. I could probably get both 15 gallon drums in it though if I really felt I needed to. It is also a lot easier to pull a 15 gallon drum out of the basement to refresh the water than it is a 55 gallon drum.

Storage. I live in an apartment. I really don’t have a convenient place to store a giant 55 gallon drum.

Redundancy. If one barrel gets contaminated somehow, I at least still have 15 gallons of clean water in the other.

To keep our water fresh, we’ve put 1 tablespoon of bleach in each 15 gallon drum. It is recommended to change the water after the first 6 months, and then every 12 months after that.

We bought a couple cinder blocks from Lowe’s (these things are cheap, maybe $1 – $2 max) and put a board on them so our drums won’t be resting on the floor of our basement. When we need the water, we’ll go down with a smaller bucket and siphon some out.

In case you hadn’t heard, my first baby is due on Sunday. My wife and I have been trying to come up with a name for our little girl, and have decided on Anna. We are, however, still struggling to come up with a good middle name.

We’ve had lots of ideas. For example, Anna “The Rock” Allred. I’m not sure if we are allowed to have quotes in the middle name, and I’m not sure if her initials would be A”A or ATA, so I don’t think we’ll go with this one.

We’ve also considered Anna Banana Allred, but we don’t want her getting made fun of at school.

Seriously though, I really like Anna Eileen Allred, but I haven’t sold my wife on it yet.

I don’t know though.. I’m still open to suggestions..