Trying to keep my rich ass busy, I've been studying hard lately to get my New York City Tour Guide license. It's such a great city and I can't wait to show it off.

Though I haven't yet taken the test, I did put up the website. Check it out. And next time you're in town, take a great walking tour of New York City.

This should be a ton of fun. I love people, love telling stories, love knowing so much and sharing what I know.

I guess I'm just not very 21st Century. These kids today have so much time on their hands for their fancy blogs and whatnot, but we adults have to put food on the table. It's a darn shame.

The Rockies were the team of destiny last night. They should have won in nine innings because Atkins' "double" was actually a home run. The laws of physics do not allow balls to bounce off padded walls the way that ball bounced -- about fifty feet to the right and back into the field of play. It definitely hit a chair. The announcers were saying Holliday didn't touch the plate in the bottom of the 13th, but it was inconclusive at best with the dirt. Even if he didn't touch it, he was still safe by rule of obstruction -- the catcher can't block the plate if he doesn't have the ball.

XSS (or cross-site scripting) attacks have been around for years, but they've been in vogue lately as more people administer websites. I myself was tricked into one that caused me a tremendous headache for a week. One can easily become over-confident and sloppy by doing most of what needs to be done to protect against this type of attack. The little bit left undone is what kills you.

A strong password is your first line of defense,

but can you remember it?

[a blast from the past, the existence of which I hope to remind the Great and Mighty Gods of Mount Googleplex]

There is no way around it: Any computer that is turned on is vulnerable. Having a strong password is not guaranteed protection since, once logged in, you can be tricked, and any programs you execute will be executed with all the permissions you have as a user.

Haven't updated this site for a while. The only visitors are the spambots. That's what happens when you don't update your site -- nobody visits, not that I care. My life is way too busy lately to care whether or not anybody visits this site. The church choir has developed into something very special indeed, and work is great, just great.

How to calculate a weighted mean in Excel

(or any spreadsheet)

Calculating a mean is easy -- kid stuff. Separating the children from the adults is the ability to calculate a weighted mean. Business people love weighted means for some reason, and if you surfed in here because somebody asked you to calculate a weighted mean and you have no idea how to do it, you've come to the right place.

In this article, my hope is to demystify and simplify the concept because it is simple and there's not a doggone mystical thing about it. If you can add, multiply, and divide, you can calculate a weighted average.

Suppose you wanted to replace a whole bunch of content on your database-driven website. Maybe you want the search engines to re-index and update their caches so that the old content effectively disappears. In that case, you need to replace the content for a while before removing it.

Before you do something inefficient, like using your GUI CMS to painstakingly edit potentially thousands of posts or exporting a flat file and doing a search and replace with a text editor, remember that you have direct access via your database to all the data that is ultimately displayed in web browsers. Use SQL to manipulate it.

To totally obliterate the content and put something else in its place, just do an INSERT query on the relevant tables and fields, like this:

Today was really cold, but that's OK. Spring's just around the corner. Yay! Old Man Winter can't hold out forever. Soon he will make way for the tender young shoots of spring. It's a wonderful thing!

Life's just like that: Cycles. Not to get all philosophical or anything.

Speaking of cycles, I can't wait to get back on my bicycle. Gosh, I sure love spring.

Report: Karl thinks of benching Melo - Despite leading the league in scoring, Carmelo Anthony could get benched, according to a report. [ESPN]

What's up with Carmelo? He's an amazingly talented player but he clearly needs to work on his attitude. One thing I've learned is that a positive, collaborative attitude can take you far. Martial arts training would do Melo good: Nothing instills humility like getting your butt kicked by a diminutive sensei every day.