Digital Choke Daynotes |
What's a Daynote?"Daynotes" are daily (usually) journal entries of interesting happening and discussions. They are not 'blogs', which are often just a collection of links to other information (although we do include links occasionally). Daynotes are much more interesting (we hope). These "Digital Choke Daynotes" were inspired by the collection of daily journals of the "Daynotes Gang" (see sites at .com, .net), a collection of daily technical and personal observations from the famous and others. That group started on September 29, 1999, and has grown to an interesting collection of individuals. Readers are invited and encouraged to visit those sites for other interesting daily journals. If you have comments, send us an email. A bit more about me is here. You might also enjoy our little story about the death of the 'net. |
Reports
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A busy weekend. Having the grandkids around is fun, but challenging.
Friday night was a church Christmas celebration. A program in the chapel first of singing and musical selections. Then adjourned to the hall for some snacks and caroling.
Saturday morning found me in a Santa outfit for the children of our church. That was a bunch of fun, although the pants were a bit short so there was some exposure of my calf. Just had two small children terrified of the big guy in the red suit, but most came by and told me the things they wanted.
What was interesting was my grandchildren's reactions. (And I post it here because they don't read these pages. Not that very many people do...) Anyhow, all three of them easily came up to me (in my 'disguise') and sat on my lap. Joelle (oldest at 5) had a semi-puzzled look on her face when I started talking. It's that look of "I think I know you, but I just can't remember why". We had a nice visit, and some pictures, and then they were off.
I heard later that Joelle and Liam (just turned 4) had a discussion in their van as they left. Joelle was certain that Santa was "Poppa" (that's what I am called, because I am not old enough to be a "Grandpa"). Liam was just as certain that it was "Santa". They had a friendly argument about it, while Christine (their mother) and Pam (wife) were chuckling in the front seat.
At lunchtime, we went over to a Round Table pizza joint to celebrate Liam's 4th birthday. A few of their cousins and friends met us there, with pizza and cake all around. The children all had a good time. And we were in a separate 'banquet' room there, so we didn't bother the rest of the patrons very much.
Then back home, where I was the "DB" (designated babysitter) in the afternoon while Christine and Pam went shopping. That's OK with me...I am not really the shopping type. Although there are rumors of Pam dragging me along tonight for another shopping trip. I am usually the designated "Sherpa" on these trips.
Sunday was full of church meetings, then dinner, with a short trip over to see the neighborhood holiday lights. A very popular destination, with just about all of the 70-90 houses decorated quite extensively. There are lots of people slowly driving around, many bundled-up families walking, and some of the residents sitting around outdoor wood pits just visiting and watching.
Back to the grind today. Fixing up some web and email filtering issues, and continuing with development of various batch files to remotely grab settings information from all the computers on the network.
(later)
Thanks to Angus for noticing the wrong date up there. There's a Monday, and there's a December 11th, but they don't occur on the same day this year.
Microsoft Patch Tuesday today. Mine delivered/installed automatically, of course. There are exploits out there for the IE problem, although it would take a bit of work to build a web page that would exploit the vulnerability.
Noticed from the Internet Storm Center that among the updates is a 'kill bit' for the Sony rootkit. Check out the ISC diary for today for details on all of the updates.
Found this on the Houston Chronicle's Science Guy (Eric Berger) blog, where he talks about some interesting maps he found.
"But I did find this link to a thought-provoking map: it's a map of the world redrawn according to population ( here ). Each square on the grid represents approximately 1 million people. The Western Hemisphere is just shockingly small compared to Africa or Asia. And don't blink, or you'll miss Australia.
"I'm not promoting the site to help it sell maps, but there's also an interesting one there of the world upside down (here), and one of the true size of countries, which by necessity must distort shape (here)"
The "true size" map will grab your attention for a while
Another look at maps: "The CommonCensus Map Project is redrawing the map of the United States based on your voting, to reveal the boundaries people themselves feel, as opposed to the state and county boundaries drawn by politicians."
... more later ...
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