Really slow here

I haven't felt much like writing lately, as there's really nothing much going on. Despite the fact this site is not very interesting at the best of times, when things get really slow around here, there's absolutely nothing worth talking about. The most exciting thing happening recently is controversy in the family about the new Passions of Christ film. I've decided not to see it, primarily because I try to avoid movies with gratuitous violence (even if it is historical in nature).

Life and death

I had actually typed the next few lines as part of my previous post, but thought they'd be better off separately...

I'm looking forward to my parents' return to Canada in April. They have been spending winters in Arizona for the past 20 years or so, and this year will be the last in their own condo. It's been sold - a concession to their aging and the realization that travel isn't as much fun when the majority of the people they used to visit are no longer among the living.

Speaking of which... during the past week, I attended a memorial service for the brother of the first girl I think I was ever in love with. I met her when I was in grade 10 and we were close throughout the next three years. I'd only seen her once or twice while I was a university student, because she had chosen a different path. I guess the last time I had seen her, before this past week, was in 1974 and maybe once more in 1977 (so hard to remember). Despite the pain of the moment, she seemed genuinely glad to see me - not even surprised that I had come. She should have been surprised... My sister had seen the obituary listing and informed me. Had it not been for that, I would not have known.

She was there with her grown children, and introduced me to them as "this is [email address]". We've been corresponding on and off for the past year, ever since my sister found an article about her in the Alumni magazine and passed the information on to me. I had so much hoped to be able to introduce my wife to her - oh what stories they could have shared - but my wife declined my invitation to come.

I'm still here

Nothing has been happening lately that's worth talking about. The past week at work was uneventful, with some accomplishments and some disappointments, but nothing to write about. My wife and I did have an evening out with my sister and brother-in-law which I would characterize as very enjoyable. I used the visit as an opportunity to shore up the defenses on their computer system. They should be somewhat more secure now than they were.

I also spent time this weekend shoring up my own network security. The wireless network here had been guarded by WEP encryption. I upgraded to WPA yesterday. I feel somewhat more secure.

Fun fun fun

I found this game on another blog. I haven't solved it yet, but I only have one more piece to locate.

Update
I found what I thought was the last piece of the puzzle, but I still can't escape from the room. I suck at these puzzles!

Valentine's Day Movie

My wife and I saw 50 First Dates today. It was very different than what I expected, but in a good way. More later... we've got dinner reservations!

Old dog wins

It's official. Pop-Up Disabler allows some forms of pop-under ads to get through. Pop-Up Stopper doesn't. Period. End of story. I tried reinstalling the challenger (after switching back to Pop-Up Stopper and going two whole days without a pop-under) and within 12 hours, I had seen my first pop-under. That's conclusive proof as far as I'm concerned. I'll "put up with" clicking on a Ctrl-key if I have to, to make my authorized popups appear. Who knows, with a bit of improvement, the challenger may yet return.

Updated opinion on Pop-Up Disabler

Since installing it, I've been receiving pop-under ads (those are the ones that are on your screen waiting for you when you close your browser window). I don't think the disabler is causing these to occur. I just think it's not catching them. To test my theory (or whether it's just a coincidence), I'll be disabling the new software and going back to my tried and true. The pop-under ads have happened perhaps three or four times over the past 24 hours, so if there is a pattern, it should disappear (or not) with my old software.

We'll see.

In the meantime, I'll be running Spybot S&D to ensure I haven't picked up adware/spyware.

More to come...

Very impressive!

I ran across this site today while reading the forums at dslreports.com. At first, I was impressed that Sergei had taken the time to document the strengths and weaknesses of every popup stopper software I had ever heard of. It sure sounded like a good service... and it appeared that his source of revenue for his endeavours was a panel of Google-sponsored ad links.

What I hadn't immediately noticed as a link at the top of his homepage - "Pop-Up Disabler". I clicked on it a few minutes ago, and it took me to an information page describing a utility he had written himself.

Finally, the reason for the website became clear. This man had researched all the popup stoppers on the market so that he could design one that was better.

My personal favourite has been Pop-Up Stopper Free Edition from Panicware. It's amazingly simple, really. It stops popups. Period. If there are things you want to appear, you simply hold down the Ctrl- key while clicking, and the box appears. I've always thought the product was awesome.

So today, I installed the new Pop-Up Disabler. It was eerie, really. No messages of any kind. Did I need to turn it on? There was nothing in the system tray. I looked at the list of programs on my machine. There was a new link for Pop-Up Disabler. But looking at the entry, there were simply entries for uninstalling, going to the website, and viewing the help file. Nothing about enabling the software.

Alright... I guess I'd have to test it. The first test... visit a few sites hosted by Yahoo/Geocities and Tripod. Tripod's pop-up ads had always been effectively blocked by Pop-Up Stopper, even though a visible "blink" was always noticeable as the popup came up and was instantaneously killed. With the new blocker, the blink never happened. Just a main screen, with no hint of popup. Then I tried going to a Geocities site. I guess I was a bit disappointed that the stupid floating ad appeared (it also appears with Pop-Up Stopper), but I understand that only one pop-up stopper on the entire market can stop those ads - and that program is not free. What really impressed me was when I tried to leave comments on blogs. The Pop-Up Stopper program automatically blocks the popup comment boxes. I have, over time, become accustomed to holding the Ctrl-key when I wish to comment. With the new software installed, clicking on a comment link brought up the comment box - no problem.

I'm going to keep this program installed a bit longer to see how it works, and to verify that it doesn't have any spyware component. But until then, I'm ready to give a preliminary endorsement to this product.

Leno in Wonderland

The Tonight Show with Jay Leno is my late-night talk show of choice. While not as funny as David Letterman, I find his guests to be more A-list, and I enjoy his self-deprecating humour. Tonight, his monologue was off. He really wasn't that funny. And to top it off, at the end of his monologue, as he cut to commercial, he introduced his band leader to the audience (as he has done every night for nearly the past 12 years). I wonder what drug he was on tonight... introducing Kevin Eubanks as "Branford Marsalis" - his original bandleader who left the show in December, 1994.

Having fun!

One of the blogs I read featured a game link. I don't play games much... no patience/imagination/coordination - pick your reason. But this one sounded fun, so I took a look.

I've posted a jpg screen capture of my high score (updated from 593) and low score (not counting 0 of course - downgraded again from 148.6). Now it's your turn.



High Score



Low Score

Baby returned by father

The Amber Alert worked. Sunday morning, the baby was turned over to police by the man (father) who took it. Mom's still in the wind. The newspaper here is saying the mother was suspected of having done drugs/alcohol during the pregnancy, due to the baby going through convulsions noticed by nurses. After they sent a Child Services worker to question the mother, she got up and left the building with the newborn.

Amber Alert Ticker in action

This is one of those times where you really don't want to know whether a feature on your weblog "works". While pulling up my blog page, I noticed a LIVE AMBER ALERT being flashed across the top of my screen. This is scary stuff. I hope they catch the couple who made off with a 1-day-old baby here in town.

And me makes three

I've seen this on two of the blog sites I read, so I guess it's about time I tried it...



create your own visited states map

Yeah, I know, I don't get around much (and if it wasn't for a tourist spot called 4-corners, there'd be even less red)!

The bug

It came upon me suddenly. After Sunday dinner, I felt a bit queasy. I thought I had eaten too quickly, or too much. The drive home from the fast-food restaurant was difficult, as my stomach didn't feel much like being constrained by a seatbelt. But, a few hours later, I was fine.

The next morning, I woke up and had my usual breakfast, then started working. Within a couple of hours, I was feeling that queasiness again, but this time, it was worse. When lunch time rolled around, I didn't feel like eating, and skipped that meal. Good thing too! A half hour later, I found myself dry-heaving the remains of breakfast, and I kept up this behaviour intermittently for the next 8 hours. In between puking sessions, I managed to grab some rest. Dinner time came and I still wasn't in the mood for food, opting to continue sleeping. I slept, in fact, until the phone woke me up at 11:15AM Tuesday morning. It was my boss calling, wanting to know what had happened to me.

Although I had sent an email when I got my first attack, I guess I hadn't been clear that this was an extended bug, not just an inconvenient event. He sounded a bit pissed!

I tried to eat lunch Tuesday, figuring it had been more than 24 hours since I last had food or water, but I couldn't finish my lunch. It didn't feel right going down, and certainly didn't feel like it was going to stay down. By dinner time, I thought things were better, but even then, I was only able to finish half of my smaller-than-usual serving of chicken, rice, and vegetables.

It's now Wednesday morning, and I should be eating breakfast. I just don't feel very hungry, and every time I think about food, I feel like throwing up.

Whatever this is, I hope it goes away soon.

I couldn't believe my eyes...

Yesterday, I talked about a site I had joined a couple of years ago. I get more than 50 spams a day addressed to the email address I used when registering there. I visited them today to check my preferences area. Nowhere on the site does it give you the ability to opt in (or out) of anything. The only option available is to give up your membership. Since there's nothing that says I won't continue getting email to that address, even if I do give up membership, I won't bother.

Wham, bam, thank you, spam!

Never have I been so pleased to receive spam. I imagine shortly after writing this, I'll have grown tired of the whole thing, but for now, I'm reveling in the beauty of the new "statistics" feature built into the latest update of MailWasher Pro. For anyone with serious spam problems, I heartily recommend this software. It does a tremendous job of quickly filtering spam, using black lists from multiple sources (two are preprogrammed, but their website gives you more addresses that you simply add to the configuration file).

I've been using MailWasher software for well over a year, and MailWasher Pro since last March. The latest version, however, features a slick new user interface, and a "Statistics" area that gives you charts categorizing the type of spam you get, and the percentage of "good" to bad mail. Since I installed this version a week ago, the statistics page reported that I had received 566 pieces of mail, of which 87% was spam. And (here's the part I love) nearly 90% of the spam was detected by my own spam filters, with the remaining 10% being detected by blacklist servers.

I keep separate email addresses for every service I've signed up for, so I can track the source of my spam. In the previous version of MailWasher, I had simply put the description "Filtered" on all my custom filters. This past week, I labeled each filter with a meaningful tag, so I could see where my spam is coming from. Nearly 70% is going to one email address (which I used over two years ago to sign up in a webcam community when I first got a webcam). So, either they're selling their list, or their site is easy to hack. I suppose I should visit the site to check their "opt out" policy.

Tomorrow.

Medical miracles

I'd sure like to know when the Discovery Channel airs this.

Someone's pulling my feathers

Can you believe this?

Searching for ... truth?

Search engines are an incredible invention. I don't think many of us could locate anything on the internet (not specifically associated with a brand name) without them. As more pages are indexed, and as designers become more proficient at designing appropriate meta-tags, web pages are easier to find than letting your fingers do the walking.

But there is one domain in which traditional search engines are weak... categorization of blogs info. Because many blogs have archives that contain many unrelated posts, search engines that look for combinations of words are fooled into selecting totally irrelevant pages, simply because one word from a Monday post, plus one word from a Tuesday post, plus one word from a Wednesday post happen to match the three-word search phrase.

Since most blogs are either hosted on specific blog domains, or use specific tools (and associated templates) - all of which should be parseable by a sophisticated search spider, I believe the technology already exists for blogs to be properly indexed on a post-by-post basis, and not just on a document/page basis.

So, why this particular post? Because someone found this site by searching for a particularly offensive search phrase. And because my blog is archived on a monthly basis, all of my posts for a particular month were combined into a single document which happened to contain the "f" word (in a context related to being taken advantage of by a retail establishment), along with other non-offensive words that, by coincidence, happen to have been used (individually) over the course of the month. The resulting, very offensive phrase, was reported as a "match". Not only a match, but a match that appeared in the first page of search results!

That's just not right!

"D" is for ...

Yesterday, I unhappily reported that my new paintings would not be framed in time to be displayed for company. What I didn't say is that I pleaded with the framer to try to get it done that day. It's funny... my sister doesn't read my blog too often, but yesterday, she happened to see my remarks about the paintings, and immediately sent an email acknowledging she had read the blog entry, and was aware the paintings would not be on display.

Maybe three hours after I posted that piece, I got a call from the gallery. They had finished doing the frames and we could pick them up any time. My first inclination was to blog about it and post pictures of the framed works. Then, I decided to keep it a surprise - just in case my sister read the blog again before coming over. Knowing me, and my penchant for pulling last minute surprises, my sister asked me straight out while we were at the restaurant whether the framing had been completed. I continued eating and didn't answer, pretending to have not heard the question (my hearing is sub-par, so that sometimes works).

After dinner, when we headed back to our place for a movie night, the pictures were hard to miss. They went over well with my sister and brother-in-law. I don't know if they will buy anything from the gallery, but we did visit the website, and they were able to locate reproductions by an artist that strikes their fancy (I've never heard of this person). Anyway, the surprise was maintained, and I got the satisfaction of seeing their faces as they viewed the paintings for the first time.

Just call me devious.

And here are the paintings, framed and hung...


Hanging over the fireplace


Hanging on the livingroom wall