Ruminations
The Day After Fiddler’s
On Sunday we went to visit with Mandy, Cameron, Buck, and Judy. Cameron’s birthday was about a week away so we went ahead and gave him his birthday present. One of them was the Play-Doh Doggy Doctor; Cameron and I had a good time playing with it. It was good to see them again, and I was sure glad we made time to get by there.
Afterwards we went to Ave Maria Grotto. I have been telling Ali about it ever since I’ve known her, but we never made time to go by and check it out. It is located on the grounds of Alabama’s only Benedictine abbey. There are over 100 miniatures of places from all over the world. They were created by Brother Joseph Zoettl throughout the time he spent at the … Read More »
Fiddler’s in ’06
Fiddler’s was a blast as always.
Ali and I arrived in Birmingham around 11am and we drove over to Anniston. We told Granby and Aunt Leigh that we’d give them a ride up to Athens. It was Leigh’s first time; I hope she enjoyed herself. Since we were in Anniston around lunch time there was only one thing to do — Go to Mata’s for lunch. This is hands down the best pizza known to man, so if you find yourself in Atlanta, Birmingham, or within a few hours of Anniston and you don’t make a trip to Mata’s, your are really doing yourself a disservice.
In Athens all the usual suspects show. We were even graced with the presence of Will, Meghan, and Liam. They hadn’t been in quite a while. … Read More »
Ballooning Birthday Style
Ali gave me a hot air balloon ride for my birthday. I had no idea what I was getting even though she had been giving little hints all week.
You’ll need to wear old pants and shoes that can get dirty
We may be walking through fields or tall grass
We have to leave the house by 4:45 am
It involves going up
You get the picture. The closest guess I made was a bi-plane ride, though I really didn’t think too hard on it. Ali said, “If you guess it, I won’t be able to lie about it, so don’t guess it.”
Early Saturday morning (two days before my birthday) I roll out of bed at 4:15. We arrived at the place by 6:15, and we’re the only ones there. “Are you sure we got the right place,” I asked. … Read More »
DRM
I am hugely against DRM (digital rights management). I have been meaning to write a editorial on this for some time, but I just haven’t made it a priority. The bottom line is that I refuse to buy ANY music that contains DRM. This means I mostly buy physical CDs, and only occasionally buy songs online. For instance, when I found out that Dave Matthews Band released Weekend on the Rocks in a DRM free lossless format I happily shelled out $57.99 for the 8 CD collection. I really hope initiatives like these will show the music industry DRM is not where it is at.
Anyway the catalyst for this post: Apparently I was asleep at the wheel yesterday because October 3 was “Day Against DRM,” at least according to Defective By Design. I stumbled
across … Read More »
Backpacking Catskills Style
Another year, another backpacking trip; sans Will, David and I started at the Middle Mountain trail head on the Western side of the Catskills. In the past when picking trips we have purely looked at distance and time as the active variables. We learned this year that we should add a third variable — difficulty. This year’s trek was by far the most challenging we have undertaken. We did almost 30 miles with 6600 feet of ascents spread across 4 days (2 full and 2 partial).
The first day on the trail we discovered a plant known as the stinging nettle. These are quite distracting when doing a technically challenging ascent and the trail is littered with the things. Of course, we had no idea what this wicked plant was until we ran into a … Read More »
Apple Virus Commerical Revisited
It seems my observations on this topic were quite timely. Apparently some people have demonstrated a hack at the Black Hat conference which allowed them to take over a Macbook in less than 60 seconds.
The interesting thing is that this attack is not limited to just MACs, but could affect Windows and Linux too. However the presenters chose a MAC to demonstrate the hack due to the commercials. Quoting from the article:
The presenters said they ultimately decided to run the demo against a Mac due to what Maynor called the “Mac user base aura of smugness on security.”
“We’re not picking specifically on Macs here, but if you watch those ‘Get a Mac’ commercials enough, it eventually makes you want to stab one of those users in the eye with a lit cigarette or something,”
Does this mean people are starting … Read More »
Detroit Rock City
I never traveled much until I moved to New York. I still can’t say that my travels are diverse; I primarily fly to and from Evansville for a semi-regular trip back to corporate headquarters.
I had a somewhat interesting thing happen to me on my way home last week. I plane side checked my roll-on along with about half of the people on my flight. When we got to Detroit my suitcase failed to materialize, along with four others on the flight, at the side of the plane. This was a first for me (and apparently the others as well). Now I know the saying is, “nothing in life is certain except death and taxes.” Well, I sort of thought plane side checking went in that category, in the sense that it would be impossible … Read More »
Apple Virus Commercial
I just saw Apple ad where they were touting the fact that last year there were a 114,000 known viruses for Windows, and the MAC had none.
I think this is a terrible strategy. I felt the same way when the Mozilla Foundation started using similar arguments for why you should use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. Shortly after they started the Firefox is safer than IE campaign, vulnerabilities were uncovered in the software. I bet they were feeling kind of silly after that, certainly that particular marketing campaign seemed to ease into the background.
I could be wrong here, but a likely reason there aren’t viruses circulating for MACs is due to the lack market share. It’s certainly not that they are invulnerable; it’s just that no one is motivated to fool with the platform.
I searched on CERT’s … Read More »
Old Friends
Historically I have not been the best about maintaining relationships. When I graduated from high school I spent one last summer with all my friends. Then I left for college in Indiana, and with the exception of 3 people, I’ve never talked to any of them again. Well at least until recently when Becky tracked me down. I’m not sure why I let everyone fall away; it’s just something I did.
Adam and I met in college, and pretty quickly we became good friends. It was fortunate for me as my less than focused approach to classes often meant I didn’t have a clue as to what was going on in them. It turned out Adam had this uncanny (to me anyway) ability to know exactly what would show up on a test. He would always take time the night before … Read More »
Master Bedroom
We moved into the master bedroom this weekend. We’ve been in the house for almost two years, but I didn’t start working on the room until about 18 months ago. We had a couple of dependencies that slowed us down, and I fully expect the next room to go much quicker. I have posted several photo-albums broken into broad categories
Demolition — What’s there to say about this, you basically rip everything out.
Closet — The master bedroom did not have a closet. The adjacent bedroom had two. We cut a wall out, and closed a wall up, and all of a sudden the master bedroom now has a closet.
Framing — We had to do a bit of framing work. I don’t believe the attic (or 3rd floor) of our house was originally finished, but it … Read More »