How Do They Do That?

Christmas decorations have been starting to go up in various places around here. Giant Food, the Container Store, doubtless others.

Where are all the Christian Fundamentalists on this? Aborting an unwanted child is cause for political outrage and even murder, but commercializing the birth of Christ doesn't even get a raised eyebrow? We used to get annoyed when they started before Thanksgiving. . .now Halloween. Labor Day, anybody?

A link to the best writing I've seen related to Katrina:

http://www.thisisnotover.com/archives/2005/09/heres_what_gets.html

Happy Mothers Day to Eva, the only actual mother who's friended me. And a tip of the hat to those of you for whom it might still be in your future.

So, Judy's in Germany, Meridel's in Japan. I get to sit home, tape backlogs of TV that probably won't ever be watched, and eat stew. Actually, it was pretty good stew, if I do say so myself. Even had fresh meat, potatoes, garlic and onions in it.

Meridel is posting extensive detail about her Japan trip on a dedicated and public LiveJournal page, omgjapan. Have to say, I'm jealous.

It's been a useful day for technical tricks. . .just learned that PC Anywhere has a print function. So now, when I connect to the PC at work to get to the host computer that doesn't accept outside calls, I can also now print. A big yawn for most of the world, but really handy for me.

Also, the capability I'd heard of which allows Linux machines to access Gmail accounts as extended disk storage has now been brought to Windows. The upside is that anyone can have up to a gigabyte of storage on someone else's host out on the internet. The downside is that whenever Google gets tired of putting up with abuse of their service, they'll undoubtedly put an end to it. The basic technique is that files get stored as attachments to emails, but the implementation is sweet: on the PC it looks just like a folder on another disk drive. Drag 'n drop, the whole works. Neat.

LiveJournal was down all of yesterday. . .power problems. Think they might have lost a couple of things, but can't really tell. Most of it seems to be there.

A late-in-the-day pre-Thanksgiving post. There are a few things to be thankful for: the congress is home for the holiday. They're supposedly going to come back to undo the tax viewing privilege they snuck into the budget. But then, pray God, the 108th Congress will be done. Not before time.

Meridel made it home through 200 miles of rain and fog. And I actually managed to send something off to SFREVU before it was due.

My NIST support contract was issued, and Judy has finally gotten some billable tasking on a project she's been waiting on for ages.

I'm gradually learning to deal with MySql, PHP and Apache. And assorted supporting GUI's. And Quickbooks. It'll be a fairly long haul, trying to master all of those, but it beats watching the grass grow.

Just had to pass on this item from smofbabe. Love it!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v63/enoch1024/GODvsBUSH.gif

Ridiculous long time since I last posted anything in here. Much has been going on, and it would probably be a good idea to mention some of it.

Major item is Judy Newton's recent retirement from the federal government. Would have stayed another year or two, but the agency needed to cut people, and actually (for the first time ever) offered buyouts, so she took one. Brought home *many* african violets and other plants, and cartons of documents and 29 years worth of office stuff. She'll be doing some consulting--actually has the first gig lined up--and so the dining room has become her home office. This provided an excuse to get another computer in the house, and a wireless network, oh boy! Even found a new HP color printer with built-in wireless interface. The user interface to that gadget has a really clunky kludge to it to deal with the latest encryption schemes--obviously a last-minute addition, but once you get it set up it works very nicely.

Going along with that, we're starting the process of becoming Ashton Computing & Management Services, LLC. This is a step short of full incorporation, but includes all the same protections, and is much simpler to set up. Pretty good deal. This will let us bring Judy into the business with a status of "member" or "partner," rather than "employee," which would require obnoxious things like salary, W2 filings, and Workmen's Comp payments. Feh.

Next year we're looking for ways to turn three potential trips into one serious, round-the-world honker. Anyone with friends in Europe who'll need house-sitters between June and August of '05 please let us know! If it happens, this will consolidate visiting Meridel in Japan, attending my HS reunion in Vienna (Austria, not VA), and Worldcon in Glasgow. Want lots of house-sitting deals, or a couple of major ones.

I guess that covers things, for the moment.