Posted on 5 Comments

Must be hot to be cool

No, I’m not talking trends or hipsters. I have to turn off my air conditioning unit so it can defrost before the repairman gets here at 9am. Since it was recharged 3 years ago that implies we have a small leak but probably not worth tracking down at this point.

Today’s schedule? Make miracles before 7am. 7am drive mother-in-law to work so that we can abuse her car today. 8am (having driven across town and back in the morning rush) drive Tommy to school so that he is there by 8:30. 9am Be at house to receive hvac repairman. 9:25am break sound barrier giving check to hvac man and pickup Tommy (15 minute drive reduced to 5 minutes). 10am have Tommy in Lenior City (30-40 minute drive reduced to 20 minutes). 11:30am be in Karns to pickup raffle prize we won. Noon pickup air filters from Air Filtration near what used to be the one red light in Karns. 5:30 have Noah at karate. Between noon and 5 work 10 hours.

Global warming is not being caused by greenhouse gases. I am causing global warming by constantly bending the fabric of time!

Posted on Leave a comment

We are environmentalists! To heck with cars!

It’s official. The Jeep has a bad water pump and no roof so it sits on the driveway and if I would fix the water pump it would only move on sunny days and can only hold 4 of our 7. And, the car is going on blocks until I can give her some TLC ($$$). What should have taken 20 minutes last night took 3 hours and we may have damaged the engine in a bad way. The money she needs makes so sense putting into her. It is time for a new car and we just don’t have the means at this time.

Anyone know some ugly junker, fairly mechanically sound, that someone is trying to give away?

Posted on 1 Comment

I need a Boston Legal fix!

I’ve forgotten my question. I don’t like this feeling.

This morning I turned a cheery Tommy at 8:01 into a teary, upset child at 8:27. I left the house with the 4 year old in shaky tears, the 10 year old hiding in his room, and the 13 year old withdrawn. Why? I made the greatest parental mistake of all; I lost my temper and yelled. I figure it will take months if not much longer to reverse the damage done in a brief moment of lack of self-control and regain my children’s trust. I felt it coming. Had I simply asked, "What would Alan Shore do?" this could have been prevented.

I am guessing that maybe I have 30 years left in me. I don’t want to do any more yelling for those 30 years. I’ve had enough.

Posted on 2 Comments

I need sponsors!

Blogathon food

I am turning on the heat. We have this week ONLY to find sponsors for Blogathon 2006! I have joined forces with Barry, Jay, and Cathy to help raise a contribution to Farm Aid by blogging every thirty minutes starting at 9am EST on this Saturday July 29 and continuing for 24 hours.

The mission of Farm Aid is to keep family farmers on their land. Family farmers are our only guarantee for fresh, local food. Our goal is to bring together family farmers and citizens to restore family farm-centered agriculture. Family farmers ensure safe, healthful food, protect natural resources, and strengthen local economies. [Source]

I once thought Farm Aid was just something Willie, Neil, John, and others sang songs about after Band Aid sales went down. I have since learned about Farm Aid and corporate farming. I feel the family farm is important to our culture, the quality of our food, and local economics. I believe in Farm Aid’s mission and ask that you support me during Blogathon 2006 with a donation to our cause.

blogathon banner

Thank you Michael Silence for the announcement!

Posted on Leave a comment

Help! I’m trapped in an Apple store.

meatapple

Sarah is at a Podcasting class as part of Apple Camp at the new West Town Mall Apple store. I thought I could drop and run but they require a parent to stay present during the workshops.

Today Sarah is with 3 other students that look 8, 19 and 12. Their focus is audio podcasting. I want to get each of the family members their own MacBook. That would be sweet!

There are other workshops.

You know… Makes this a little ironic!

Posted on 2 Comments

ARrrr! Thar Be A Good Pirates Movie Matey!

Saw Pirates 2 last night. Thoroughly enjoyed it! Despite the 2 movie sized medium cokes I drank begging me to leave at the roll of the credits, I entertained the training X-Men and Cars have put into my children’s heads. Pirates has the most astoundingly long credits I have ever seen! There must have been 3000 names! At one point it was 4, 5 or 6 columns of solid names on the screen. Looked like a joke.

Even people that stayed through half the credits started giving up. But I was pleased we stayed, for indeed, Noah was correct. He said, "Cars was made by Disney and this is made by Disney, so there’s something at the end."

Posted on 1 Comment

I love my kids. The toddler blows bubbles!

Evan at 14 months knows to pickup a bubble wand, pucker his lips, and blow!

Amy astounds me with her sentences and vocabulary.

Noah is taking an interest in juggling and technology! Way to kiss up to dad, son!

Sarah confidentally jaunts off to Palm Beach and handles herself appropriately. I am so proud of her accomplishments.

Tommy has matured into a "normal" teenager. I hesitate to label him Asperger anymore.

Posted on 2 Comments

The Spammers are brilliant!

They obviously know something I don’t. Here’s my latest spam email:

hotly as as smut foreigner defy that backing crushing of upper debt haunting superficially and
twitch a communal a the! finch… interchange wobble, the of as melodrama of billionaire, provision concession stand first-degree the of amber desperate as rector, hostilities was stupidity characteristically or
inhospitable in sonnet sunbathing distraction, eventually Asia disposed the forgive flurry adaptable the
wrought merger to devotedly, a bottleneck, a the inferiority complex turd the carbon paper as influenza vinyl mosque trashy an encourage are was punctuality, as an connote and with desolation chauffeur entrant of interwoven, proximity at Bible to asterisk as honest aspirin polytechnic pharmaceutical the motorboat November: by with merriment underwater with macro
limitation this relieved to was putrid a in surreal, the plastered everything enact levelheaded and demeanor motorcycle a loyal salivate by university, microfiche
double-cross drought downstate pave but ping-pong sleepy, bleakly, grainy piglet hypnotize multimillionaire gospel speaker? pray misprint. accordance tombstone harmlessly ashtray the as brutality, was an eleven congested the as
Labor Day envisage psalm,. as hardheaded as chamber April paralyze and incantation confession to e-mail denounce: returnable it charisma incapacity:
meteoric, eagle-eyed an box, ungainly baton, deep-seated checking account tangential. was surplus instigate as retrospective wishful thinking recondition a the on lobby magnetic party at
inclusive to involuntarily thunder sort of an prize
touchstone commodore by crotch money market the adjournment overtook as planetaria dollop variant classical and

What’s actually going on here is that they’ve randomly produced a paragraph, with some keywords, in a quantity of what appears to be real dialog so that this message can slip past the spam filters. The real spam was in the images which contained the message about a stock the spammer wants me to invest in. The images were sliced and diced such that image processing anti-spam software would not see them as a message but when put together like a puzzle (as an email client such as outlook express would) the message becomes clear.

If you have to use deceptive techniques to get me to buy your product, I don’t want your product!

Posted on 2 Comments

When I learned the sign of the beast 666 is really 616…

This is a must listen! (click that link)

On June 6, 2006 I posted that the Devil’s number has changed. What I really wanted to post was the link to when I personally heard about this the first time. My favorite radio show on NPR right now is undeniably Wait wait don’t tell me.. When I could not find the reference to their show educating that 666 has been changed to 616, I sent an email.

From: Doug McCaughan
Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2006 9:45 AM
To: WaitWait
Subject: Did you have a commentary on 616 and 666?

Hello Wait Wait!

Your program is so exceptionally done! I usually catch it in the car and I recall listening not long ago to a reference to 666 and the Wisconsin area code. The speaker mentioned {…}

Am I confusing this with another npr show? If not, do you recall the air date?

Thank you!
Doug McCaughan
Wait Wait fan

I was very pleased to receive a fairly prompt reply.

From: WaitWait
Sent: Friday, June 09, 2006 2:57 PM
To: Doug McCaughan
Subject: RE: Did you have a commentary on 616 and 666?

Hi,
That was us! You can listen to the segment explaining everything in our archive — it’s on the “Best of” show that aired on January 7, 2006. The segment is titled “The Wait Wait Show Introduction Debacle.”
Thanks for listening!
Emily

Emily Ecton
Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!

I implore you to take a couple of minutes and listen to The Wait Wait Show Introduction Debacle!

Posted on Leave a comment

Things I do

Yesterday I had the pleasure of building a form on website A that used javascript to create an encoded url which was then sent along with the form data to website B which processed the data then landed the customer at website C to complete the product purchase.

Today, unrelated to yesterday’s mail work, I had to get a Windows server using IIS’ SMTP to resend mail caught in the badmail folder. If you end up with mail in the badmail folder (typically c:\inetpub\mailroot\badmail\ ) follow these steps:

  1. Move the contents of your inetpub/mailroot/badmail folder to a temporary location (I chose c:\temp\reprocessmail\)
  2. Remove the .bad extension from all of the files (resulting in no extension for these files) (the other files *.bdp and *.bdr can be discarded. For good measure I put them into c:\temp\reprocessmail\brd\ The bdr files contain the reason the mail failed to process.)
  3. Move the contents of your temporary folder to the inetpub/mailroot/pickup folder