December 2003 Archives

If you don't need a fun movie, this one is for you. The story was a bit intriguing, the acting very convincing, but not exactly uplifting. Not an antidote for the post Christmas blahs, if you have them.

LOTR, Return of the King was better than expected. I can't believe the trilogy was so good. I hope the DVD has more Palantir, an interogation of Saruman, and the restoration of the Shire.

My wife really outdid herself this year by making these cookies. Not only did they look memorable, but they were really tasty,

First a photo.

One of many presents my children received was a Little Tykes, Sand and Water table. This device is intended to hold sand and water as one might guess. Knowing sand and water weren't going to be used until the the aforementioned table can be placed outside with the children.

I got the bright idea, from the kids ECFE classes that the table could be filled with other more easily vacuumed items. I chose rice.

After the gift givers left, I fell asleep after a marathon reading session. You can see the results. Ha.

If you haven't seen this series of articles before, you owe it to yourself to check it out. This couple decides that they want to pack up and move to the South Pacific. Who hasn't toyed with this idea before. Well read on and find out the differences between fantasy and reality.

A hearty Merry Christmas to all.

Christmas for me went very well. My mother-in-law and her husband flew up from Florida for a few weeks. We had the big festivities Christmas Eve although the kids opened stocking and a few gifts today.

Unfortunately, my son's Leap Pad was D.O.A., but I only figured it out on Christmas Eve after all the stores had closed. Oh well, we did have fun putting together his first 100 piece jigsaw puzzle.

The Sweet Potato pie was a huge hit with everyone.

I installed SmoothWall at home for a gateway. Boy is it slick. The install is one of the simplest Linux based installs I have seen, and I have seen Redhat, Suse, Caldera, Slackware, and Gentoo. Once it's installed, the web interface is very simple and easy to configure. In addition to firewall it does caching proxy, dns proxy, dhcp, VPN, dyndns, and a pretty decent logging. It also supports a DMZ, which I don't use currently, but might for wireless AP in the future. It's a great use for an old PC and a few old NIC's if you happen to have them laying around. (I am curious what the power consumption will be. It's an old K6-2 350, that used to be the web server.)

I ran into a recipe for sweet potato pie the other day and I made it today. It was good, although I find that I like pumpkin pie a bit better.

I finished off "Money Ball" last night. I was very interesting to me, not due to my interest in baseball, but rather my interest in data mining. I may look for some other baseball books, I think I like reading about baseball more than I like following it in real life.

What am I reading now? "Listening Point", by Sigurd Olson. It's a good book about the beauty of canoe country.

O.K. a long time ago, I realized the referrer logs for web servers would have bogus entries, sort of like spam, to entice the astute web master to click on some bogus site. However, this months top referrer is The International Atomic Energy Agency. What gives here? I mean I know the referrer can be spoofed, but why the The International Atomic Energy Agency? I couldn't find a link to me on their site. I don't get it.

Christmas vacation begins at the end of the day. I am taking off Saturday through the end of the year. I'm staying home most of the time, although I am contemplating some northwoods adventure. For some reason dogsledding has a lot of appeal for me now, although it seems a bit spendy. If that doesn't work out then icefishing and maybe some cross country skiing. I haven't had me ski's out in some time and I either want to use them or get rid of them.

I still haven't managed to see "Return of the King" yet. With out-of-town guests and a lot of work to finish before the holiday vacation I haven't had 3 1/2 spare hours. However, I expect that tommorrow I'll be able to see it.

I've been reading "Listening Point" by Sigurd Olson. I am almost done with "Pattern Recognition", by Gibson. I just finished "John Muir: Rediscovering America", by Frederick Jackson. That came on the heels of finishing "The Yosemite" and "A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf", both by John Muir.

What did I think? Well as much as I like John Muir, his prose is easier to take in small doses. I think he writes a swell essay, but book length prose isn't his strong suit. Definitely a man of his times. I hadn't realized, until reading "A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf" that Muir had spent formative years in Wisconsin, my homestate. I am going to have to check out his haunts on my next trip to Wisconsin.

On Gibson ... I have enjoyed "Pattern Recognition" more than any other Gibson book so far. That said I still find it slow at times. I am utterly nuetral on the book. It's jarring to me to see so much current computer stuff in their, like google and stuff. I really liked the main character's concept that your soul can only travel at a certain speed and that jet lag symptoms are the result of your soul catching up. I don't know if that's original to Gibson, but it's an intersting concept and it does represent the way it actually feels to me. Additionally, the notion of having a character be allergic to brands and trademarks is a really clever idea.

Frederick Turners biography was very good. He had nice style that seemed academic without being boring or tedious.

And the best news of the week. I finally won a chess match at work. Although I am 1-4-1, it's a lot better than 0-5-1. Now I just have to claw my way back up the rankings.

I have read two interesting books lately, "Linked" and "The Tipping Point." Each of these using links and networks to understand human and biological networks. In a fascinating twist on how one could use this information for a good purpose, see this article. The researchers who wrote the article proposed vaccinating a small proportion of the population and then asking them to name friends. Since people who are likely to have many relationships are likely to be named many times, they would them be immunized and then that could contain the target disease.

Fascinating.

We have a couple of inches on the ground and it's still coming down pretty good. Unfortunately, this made for horrendous trafic this morning. On top of a slow commute, my Saturn decided to turn on it's "Check Engine NOW" light followed by my heater not working. Having no heater wasn't a big problem, except the defrost was important as I was stuck in traffic and my window was completely fogged up. I would be less irritated except some ninny hit me in a parking lot on Sunday and I have the extra task of dealing with insurance and auto body repair. On top of it all company will be at my house Thursday - Saturday. I'm feeling a bit stressed.

Aras and I finished up my latest household project, namely window cornices for the sliding glass door in the dining room and the window in the living room. The project took about twice as long as I thought. I think we have over 40 hours into it total if you include shopping for lumber. I still haven't stained and sanded it yet. Hope it's worth the trouble. So far it looks nicer than expected.

Last night went great. Every other Friday night we have had two to four guests over for after dinner conversation. It works out realy nice as there is time to play games and the kids are in bed early enough to allow the kids to make a cute appearance but still allow for adults to chat quietly after they are in bed.

One of my all time favorite authors, Joseph Conrad, has a birthday today, according to the writers almanac. My favorite book is "Heart of Darkness" of course.

I had a lettuce wrap for the first time last night. It was curry chicken, with a peanut sauce, lime juice and cilantro. It was very tasty. I guess I have had spring rolls before where it wa similiar, but not quite the same. I am going to have to experiment with this.

Of course I have had lots of things wrapped in cabbage, but this seems like a different sub-genre.