Digital Choke Daynotes

 Thursday, April 28, 2005       mail    link   the story

To catch up (again....I've got to get back into the habit of daily updates...don't want to disappoint my three loyal readers)...

Saturday I flew to Salt Lake City and spent the weekend at my sister's house. Stacy (daughter, for anyone new) had driven down from college (Rexburg, ID). Stacy went snowboarding with her friend that day. Then we all visited that evening.

Sunday morning was church, as usual. Afterwards, we all came back and just relaxed, each of us reading our own books. After a bit, we were all in the same position: laying down on the couch (separate ones), book on our laps, eyes closed.

Monday was the drive from SLC back home. The directions are easy: I-15 north, turn left at I-80, drive 650 miles, then left on highway 65 to home. The trip was OK, and the scenery was interesting.

Most of the drive through western Utah and Nevada is 'high desert', elevation 3-4000 feet, with some mountain passes up to 6000 feet. Mountain ranges have peaks up to about 10,000 feet. Since it's still early spring (late winter), the mountains still have some snow.

It was cloudy the whole trip, with some short showers. The clouds seemed a bit low. Judging from the various mountain ranges, the clouds were at 8-12,000 feet. Because of the altitude of the high desert, the clouds seemed low, and with the snow on the mountains, the scenery during the drive was pleasing.

Most of that snow/mountain scenery was in the eastern and central Nevada. As we got to western Nevada, it was getting a bit drier with less snow on the mountain ranges. After crossing into California and into Truckee, it's a quick climb up to Donner Pass (7000 feet, I think), passing Donner Lake (quite blue).

The lake is surrounded by mountains on three sides. The train tracks are cut into the side of the mountains, with snow sheds (wooden tunnels, originally built in 1860's during the construction of the first transcontinental railroad) covering the tracks to prevent snow from blocking the tracks. It was partly cloudy then, so it was also quite pretty.

Still some snow in the higher elevations, although the ski resorts are closed. But the scenery made the drive a bit more bearable. So the drive was about 11 hours, and we got home about 6:30pm. Not a bad drive, but not something you want to do often.

Tuesday was back to work day. I finished configuring the two Windows 2003 servers that will be the new Intranet and Internet sites. I installed SP1, which has a nifty security wizard to lock down the system. Worked quite well, and the resultant settings are well thought out.

Tuesday night the whole family met at Mel's Drive-In restaurant (one of our favorites). We all had a pleasant visit, and good food.

Wednesday was more of the same at work. I did some analysis of web browsing activity, looking for systems that might be compromised with spyware/adware. My theory is that computers that do excessive requests for advertising pages might have spyware/adware. After I identify a few likely suspects, I'll run Spybot and Ad-Aware on those computers to see the results. Not conclusive yet, but an interesting theory.

Wednesday night was quiet, as was today at work, and this evening. Which brings us up to date.

Except for the exploding frogs in Germany. There's a pond there with some bullfrogs that have been swelling up and exploding. Tests of water, etc haven't figured out the problem. But the answers are out there. It does make for some interesting mental images.

 Friday, April 28, 2005       mail    link   the story

I spent most of the day at work today updating the documentation for our VPN connections. Not too exciting, but helpful to new VPN users. It includes a step-by-step installation with screen shots.

For screenshots, I've used (for years) the "GadWin Printscreen" program (here). It works great, and is free for the download. Recommended.

The weather has turned nice, with clear skies and temps in the 70's. So I am getting an urge to plant some bedding plants. While I am not as 'green thumb' as my Father (or Brian Bilbrey), I can do some minor planting in my yard. Since the back yard is mostly patio, with just a planting area around the edges, I can't do too much damage.

So, we'll wander off to the big box stores tonight and grab some plants, and some ground cover. Then we'll dig around a bit, removing some older plants and putting in the new ones. A bit more color in the plantings will be nice.

If your plans are the same, don't forget the sun screen and sunglasses and hat. As you might recall, my Father spent much time in his back yard garden, and over the years the sun caused macular degeneration. But he really enjoyed his time out there.

And did you notice the Visitor count down at the bottom of the page? Just noticed that it's over 20,000. Whoo! ... and Hoo!