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January, 2004

Well, I got some interesting reactions from that last "blog". In case you didn't know it, "blog" is short for "Web Log" (weBLOG, get it?). It's not really a blog, just sort of. Most are written by 14-year-olds with nothing to do, starting with what they had for breakfast each day and going on to how they would (will?) solve the world's problems. Yeah, go for it, kids! Just keep sitting in your room with the stereo going and I'm sure the world will beat a path to your door. If they can get by your mother. Or maybe if they can even get into your room without breaking their necks on the junk....

The eve of the new year found me cleaning up the "office" and just about tearing my hair out with software problems as I attempted to make my year-end backups. What backups I made, turned out to be garbage. Good thing I checked. I have no kind words for Microsoft and several other companies at this point....

Turns out I had two "worms" and a "Trojan horse", by the names of backdoor.roxy, W32.Welchia and Gaobot. Apparently the one of them turned my Windows 2000 machine into a "server" that went out and tried to break into your machines, and I end up looking like a bad guy. Well, problem was that I messed around and didn't update my virus definitions for Norton and stuff like that so it's somewhat my fault. A month ago, I was having drive problems and burned my SCSI cable in two down the middle and yadda yadda yadda, didn't protect my flanks. On the other hand, it had to come from somewhere, so y'all buy Norton or McAfee and install it, then be sure it's updated with the latest weaponry (simple, just click on Update or Live Update or whatever it is). I strongly suspect an E-mail attachment from a church, believe it or not, for the one, and the "worms" just came in from the Internet through my bad sense of timing, lack of security patches on the new installation and no firewall installed yet. Removing Gaobot reads like Bilbo Baggins and the Nazguls of the Registry; you don't want to hear it. Note from Symantec (Norton): these can't infect DOS, Macintoshes or Linux. I like Linux better all the time; the Red Hat Linux on the Christmas Tree machine was giving me fits with the CD-ROM for a little while (fixed by son Jon's gift of a USB-2 card and 256 Meg of memory), but couldn't hold a candle to this Windows problem. "The package said, 'Windows 98 or better' so I installed Linux...."

Oh, and I finally got some kind of backups made, about 1 AM. Whew! That was after reinstalling Windows, Norton Antivirus and waiting nearly an hour for all of the virus updates to download (about a year's worth, since the installation was then "new" and required updating to current).

Celebrated New Year's Day by splitting about 1/4 cord of maple. Keeping in shape while all the neighbors were watching football. Finished up the maple tree the next day, just in time to stack another cord or so I had delivered.

Down in East Tennessee, custom is to have hog jowls and black-eyed peas on New Year's Day. Well, we came close with 15-bean soup which contains a few black-eyed peas, leftover ham from Christmas, generous amounts of onion and garlic, and served with (yellow) corn bread and zucchini relish on the side (plus some Kroger Beano-equivalent). I'd almost pass up a steak dinner for that. Well, it depends on the steak; some are definitely worth passing up. (That's another story you'll hear later....)

First weekend of the new year, got that cord of wood stacked while it was 50 degrees outside, students arriving on campus from all over. Annual snow/sleet/freezing rain storm moved in Saturday night, going to get down to single digits the next several nights, really really nasty glare of ice south of us. Almost slid into a phone pole at 2 miles per hour coming home from church. Took in a couple, parents of a new student who got a late start; freezing rain, horrid driving between here and Indianapolis, vehicle running rough, "check engine" light on, Sunday night, 8:00 and four hours to home. I recall a Sunday night about ten years ago, with son Jon, in North East, Maryland. (Yes, that's the name of the town.) Same thing without the ice. 4-5 hours of hard driving between us and anyone we know, not much money, nothing open other than the robber baron$ along I-95. I was on tenterhooks all 5 1/2 hours on the Jersey Turnpike then through NYC to LonGIsland as they pronounce it. No way would I put someone out on the road under such conditions. (I'll bet moisture from the freezing rain got into the ignition module or the computer.) After a good sleep and a hot breakfast at Alpha Dining, they had daylight and service stations all the way. Besides that, they had some loose ends to tie up when the offices opened, much easier in person. They're exact opposites of us: she plays keyboard and he plays bass.

Had some "young folks" over here with their mom the other day, ages 1 and 4. The four-year-old got hungry, so Kathy made her a PBJ (Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich). She carefully folded it over, then cut it. Well, shades of Charlie Brown! The little girl just couldn't eat it that way! So Kathy, in a fit of inspiration said, "Oh, we'll just glue it back together with peanut butter." After that (and you know it would just fall apart) she said, "Now the glue isn't dry yet so you'll have to hold it with both hands!" The sandwich was eaten with great gusto, and the "glue" held just long enough.

Temperature varies from single digits at night and teens during the day, to 20s during the night and 30s during the day, in sort of a weekly cycle. "Alberta Clipper" I think they called it on the Weather Channel, but I'll put some of the blame on Manitoba. One province can't get that cold all at once! Anyhow, at school they're swapping stories about heating bills, as in "Can you top this?" When the bidding goes up above $300.00 a month, I quietly go find another conversation, then stoke up the wood stove when I get home. All that chopping is sure paying off. Our bills are still about $100.00 a month lower than last year. It's averaged 2 degrees warmer than last year, which helps a bit, but all in all it's pretty cold out there. I wear my hood and long coat to walk to the office; does terrible things to my hair....

But one night there was about 3 inches of new snow, and as I reached the bottom of the steps by Alpha dorm, there was a path, just the width of a snow shovel, going down the hill and continuing up our driveway to the door. "Odd," I thought; "Very odd." Well, Kathy had found a snow shovel and just pushed it along to make a path. Very sweet of her. (It was lake-effect snow, extremely light and fluffy in the 10-15 degree air; I think the word "gossamer" would apply. Not even as heavy as "powder" at this temperature. Blow at it and it flies like dust bunnies. Also tends to drift a lot.)

Kathy received her new Ray Brown bass book from Amazon.com. Her current bass teacher was very impressed that we'd seen him in person at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival. We have some new arrangements coming along as I get time to lay out the melody line and chords on the computer so I can print copies for both of us. Anyway, Ray Brown writes a note in his book, "Memorize all of this!" She'll give it a try. But I might add that she's really getting good and we don't frown as much when we play.

Can't believe I'm going to be 60 in a few days. Well, at least I feel like I'm old enough to deserve the grey hair now. Hand me down my walkin' cane, Sonny....

The year I was 48, I was getting quite grey already, and three notable things happened.

I had a sort of hotshot (think used-car salesman) student who was trying to make small talk and asked if I had been in the Korean War. I said no, I had a draft deferment to finish first grade....

And then one evening, son Jon and I went out to supper at Long John Silver's because Kathy was really tired. After paying for the food and going to the table, I noticed some red printing, "Senior discount." Well, if they were going to insult me, I figured I'd just take it....

And then Kathy and I went up to New York City to retrieve daughter Kriss for Christmas break. We went into "The City" (Manhattan) on the train, and I went off to one store while the two ladies went into Macy's. OK, so here's the picture: Macy's. Four days before Christmas. Toys R Us just down the block with a guard at the door -- two people come out, two can go in, crowd overflowing the sidewalk into the street. Macy's so full you couldn't take a deep breath inside. I was to wait outside under the awning that had Paddington Bear, an 8-foot-tall stuffed animal. (Wife and daughter in there with credit cards!) So here I am, grey beard, beige raincoat, standing on 34th street in front of Macy's. Couple of young fellows came by and one says to the other (just loud enough for me to hear), "Kris Kringle!" Macy's should have been paying me instead of the other way around!

Still keeping in shape carrying in wood and shoveling snow. Lowest temp. we've seen is about 2 below zero. High on Jan. 30 was 5 above. Got high-top overshoes at the Farm Supply, good thing too. Put on the overshoes, hood, second pair of pants and all that before going out there with the wind at about 20 mph. The beard is really handy for keeping my face from freezing. They tell me it hasn't ever failed to thaw sometime in February in the past. The weather I mean, not the face.

Kathy threw out a bucket of hot scrub water, and it froze so fast that the ice was still warm when it hit the ground. Well, look at the bright side. We're getting half a beef (a very calm cow, not an angry one -- don't get me started about the beef industry, hormones, antibiotics, feeding cow parts to the cows, mumble mumble McDonald's mutter mfffft!) and if there's not room for all of it in the freezer, no problem....

Changed my Windows wallpaper from "Snow Trees" to a tropical beach. Speaking of which, we haven't gotten a virus for, um, 3 weeks now. I heard there's a really nasty one out there somewhere and they shut down the E-mail at school for an hour to install some kind of defenses. I got at least 2 copies of the virus (worm, bacteria, whatever) up there in about as many days. Rumor is they're going to shut down overnight sometime next week to work on the system. Spent half the night working on my own system; I think Norton had a problem with their updates, and between that and a CD-ROM drive going bad, you don't want to hear it, but everything is working again for the moment.

Had to get rid of Randex (another worm) before I sent this. Getting tired of this. About to spend some $$$ on a better firewall. Time to go fix the fire again and go to bed. Y'all keep your powder dry now, hear?

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