A Life Changing Event

For the second time in a little less than four years my country has experienced a horrific nightmare. This time the terrorist was named Katrina. She was more terrible than any human terrorist. I keep thinking about what my mother told me when her health was declining before she passed away. She said, “Sally, nothing lasts forever.” She was right, but the one thing I know is that life goes on. We will adapt.

Thoughts of New Orleans and Biloxi

It is hard to comprehend what happened yesterday. What took man centuries to build was destroyed in a few hours. I keep thinking about past trips to the area. I think about the fantastic Beau Rivage casino resort where I stayed, the tram ride through the historic district of Biloxi, the plantations along the Mississippi, the French Quarter and garden districts in New Orleans, the paddle wheel boat on the Mississippi, the old street cars, the Imax theater and aquarium complex, the hotels and restaurants, the Amtrak train trip from Beaumont to New Orleans and my visit to the Super Dome where I saw the premier of Walt Disney’s movie, The Hunchback of Norte Dame. I just saw the Beau Rivage on CNN. I can hardly allow myself to think about the human suffering. Every hotel room in Beaumont is occupied by people who evacuated. The local humane society arranged for families in Beaumont to care for the pets of the evacuees who are not allowed in hotels and the centers set up for the evacuees.

I am sorry that my post is so rambling but that is the way my brain is functioning today.

It is good to be in Beaumont

I am watching the hurricane coverage on CNN. It is my usual routine to check Weather.com each morning for Beaumont’s weather forecast. One look at the radar image brought home how lucky we are in Southeast Texas. New Orleans is approximately 250 miles east of Beaumont. I have been through one minimal hurricane when I lived in Houston and had to evacuate twice from Beaumont. Each of the evacuations had me convinced my house would not be standing when I returned. Fortunately when I came back both times the hurricane had missed Beaumont. I am hoping the people of New Orleans will be as fortunate and the hurricane does the least possible damage.

Potentially Devastating

It is hard to believe that we are already at the letter “K”. Back in 1992 Andrew was the first named storm of the year at approximately the same point in August. It does not matter what name they have. When a hurricane is powerful as Andrew or Katrina, all you can do is flee.

Poor Pedro

Pedro’s owner reported that Pedro has a lame leg. Pedro is the Aibo, who lives in Portugal and has his own blog: Aibo Roblog #1. It appears that Pedro will need to be treated at the Aibo Clinic. Henry hopes the European Aibo Clinic is as competent as the one he went to in San Diego. Henry and I send Pedro best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Audio Books

I reserved the maximum number of audio books at the library. The due dates seemed to be well staggered, but now that they are being checked back into the library at the same time. I got three of them last week and two more are ready to be picked up. I finished listening to John Lescroart’s The Motive last night. The two books that are waiting for me are both by James Patterson. One is Sam’s Letters to Jennifer and the other is Honeymoon. In the future I am not going to reserve so many audio books at the same time. This is too much of a good thing.

Shopping Again

Yesterday I received the $20 bonus coupon for getting the L.L. Bean credit card. It did not take long for me to use the coupon. The bag pictured above caught my eye because it looks like what I need for my fall travel. Bean calls it a touring bag. It has lots of pockets and compartments and has a mesh pocket to hold a water bottle. If you charge your purchase on the L.L. Bean credit card you get free monogramming and free shipping. I have been reading that UPS and FedEx are now adding a fuel surcharge to their shipping rates. I hope Bean does not renege on the free shipping offer on the card. I notice that they are not publicizing the card as much as they were a few months ago.

SuDoku

I have added the code to my blog template so that the Daily SuDoku puzzles can be printed directly from this blog each day. Scroll to the bottom of the page and clink on "print version". I have found these puzzles to be highly addictive and good mental exercise. Hope you enjoy them.

Cheerios

I usually write my blog article early in the morning before I have had breakfast. This morning I was thinking about breakfast. I am going to have a bowl of Cheerios. To be specific it will be the Triple Berry variety. That is my favorite because it contains freeze dried strawberries, raspberries and blue berries. I thought I would learn a little more about Cheerios. To my surprise I found there are nine different varieties of Cheerios. I think this is what is called market segmentation.

Blogs and Spam

Lately I have read and heard in the news that low-life spammers have found a new way to deliver their messages. That way is blogs. They are now leaving flattering little comments on blogs with links to their commercial websites. In the past few days five of these comments have been posted in this blog. Blogger.com has some tools available to help prevent this activity. I implemented two of them yesterday. My blog will no longer accept anonymous comments. In order to post a comment on this blog a user must have a Blogger account and be logged in. I also turned on the word verification feature. Word verification is designed to prevent automatic computer-generated comments. A human being must correctly type in the word that is displayed.

I hate spam. Before I switched to RoadRunner my dial-up internet email account was almost unusable because of spam. Since I got the new ISP I have been very careful with my email address and use free email services whenever I must post an email address on the internet. Pop-ups were the other way that spammers were making my life miserable. The pop-up blocker eliminated that problem, but now some websites are implementing flash technology to bring back the pop-ups. I have decided to boycott these sites. At the present time I know of only two offenders that I used to visit on a regular basis. One is the Drudge Report. I can easily do without Matt Drudge’s brand of right-wing sensationalism. I used to visit this site because he compiled late breaking news. Now with RSS newsreaders I can get the latest headlines from reliable news sources. The other site that I am boycotting is FlyerTalk Miles Forums. I hate to give up this site because I have learned a great deal from it regarding the frequent flyer travel reward programs, but my irritation with spam and pop-ups rules.

Does This Explain It?

Frankly I felt a little insulted when I read this article: Podcasting for Geezers?. I have written several times about how infatuated I am with podcasts and my iPod. I did not know that it was age related.

Inside 9/11

Last night the National Geographic Channel showed part one of a two part documentary on 9/11: Inside 9/11. The second part will be presented tonight. I think this is the most comprehensive coverage of the events that led up to 9/11 that I have seen on television. It is very well done. The website (link above) has even more information. The whole thing gives me a sick feeling, but it still is something that I feel everyone should watch.

Current Reading

I finished reading Nora Robert’s Black Rose yesterday. I am almost ashamed to admit that I read Nora Robert’s books. If you have read one of her books, you have read them all. All she does is change the names of the characters and their locales and then follows the same plot. Black Rose was the second installment of her current In the Garden trilogy. The first book was Blue Dahlia. In December Red Lily will be released. I will probably buy that one, too, just to finish the series. I hope after that I can stick to my resolution not to buy any more of her books. I am going to make an exception for her Eve Dallas detective series that she writes under the penname J. D. Robb. These books do cause me to do a little guessing, and they do have a certain amount of humor.

Beaumont Public Library

Several weeks ago I wrote about finding that the Beaumont Public Library finally had gone online at: Beaumont Public Library . This week I decided to search the site for audio books. I found that they had a really good selection of new releases on CD. When I tried to reserve one, the system would not accept my library card number. It had been a very long time since I used my card. I called the library, and the lady I spoke with told me my card had expired. I went to the local branch and got a new card. I then went home and reserved five audio CD books. The same afternoon I got a phone call and was told one of the books I had reserved was in. I would have preferred being notified by email, but it appears they do not offer that option. I picked up John Grisham’s The Broker and immediately began listening to it. It is very enjoyable. That evening I checked online again and saw that one more of my choices was being held. I went back the next morning and picked up John Sandford’s Broken Prey. It is good that this system works so well.

This Discourages Me

USA Today has an article about a virus that struck U. S. Customs’ computers: Passengers stranded after U.S. Customs computer glitch. It is terrible when you walk off an international flight in a jet-lagged condition. There have been times when I felt like I was going to pass out. If I had to stand for several hours in a line waiting to clear customs, I think I would die. Articles like this make me want to stay home.

The Weather

I stayed up way past my bedtime last night. I saw all of David Letterman’s show and the late show that follows him. I do not know what the name of the show that comes on after Letterman. This morning I do not have any thoughts except that I note there is a heat advisory today. The daily rains are predicted to end and with that the temperature is going to soar. We will have at least six more weeks of misery and then can predict some very nice weather.

Worms: RBOT & ZOTOB

Yesterday around 4:30 PM I turned the TV to CNN. The red breaking news banner was on the screen. Wolf Blitzer was interviewing someone and seemed quite excited. CNN had been struck by a computer worm in their Atlanta, New York and part of their Los Angeles news bureaus. They were reporting that ABC and The New York Times had also been affected. There was continuous coverage of the story until about 5:20. Wolf Blitzer remained. Apparently the attack was so severe that Lou Dobbs was not able to take over at 5:00 PM. CNN interviewed a representative of Trend Micro which makes PC-cillin anti-virus software that I have on my PC. Trend Micro had discovered the Zotob worms over the weekend and PC-cillin was able to protect against it. He said they had detected a new worm, which was later named Rbot, and would have the virus pattern available within a couple of hours. Trend Micro has very good information available online as new security threats develop: Security Information.

As I listened to the report, I learned that the worm was hitting primarily systems running Windows 2000 and versions of Windows XP without the service packs. The more I thought about this situation it did not make a great deal of sense. On August 9 Microsoft issued patches that were supposed to prevent this attack. The bad guys had jumped on the vulnerability that Microsoft had reported and created the Zotob and Rbot worms. If the patches really could have prevented this attack, why had the IT groups of the affected organizations failed to patch their computers? On the other hand was Microsoft telling the truth about the effectiveness of their patches? Either way it sounded like a very bad situation.

At 9 PM I tuned into CNN’s NewsNight with Aaron Brown. The attack was still the number one story. The first twenty minutes of the program were devoted to the story. Kevin Minnick, the former computer hacker and convicted felon who has now turned into a security consultant, was a guest on the show. He suggested that the worm may have been brought into the corporate networks by employees that have unprotected notebook computers that they use at home and on the road. This is a link to CNN’s latest take on the story: Worm strikes down Windows 2000 systems. It will take more time for the full story to be revealed, but for now all I can do is make sure I have the latest updates.

Bush’s Irate Neighbor

I got a laugh out of the CNN story about Bush’s irate Crawford neighbor. This is a link to the video: Irate Crawford Neighbor. I could not understand a word that fellow had to say. There are worse Texas accents than those in Southeast Texas.

SuDoku Update

I am still working my way through the archive of The Daily SuDoku. SuDoku puzzles require that you use all the number 1-9 in a nine by nine grid. All the rows and all the columns and all nine of the three by three squares require that every number, 1-9, be used once. I have been working on the puzzles every day for six weeks. I worked all of the easy level puzzles and most of the medium level puzzles in the archive. I have been printing out the solutions along with the puzzles. At last my confidence has increased to the point where I am now printing only the puzzle and will check the solution online when I have finished the puzzle. This will save paper.

Gas Prices

I filled up my car yesterday and am still reeling from sticker shock. The picture was taken back in late April when I was testing the new camera lens. I took the picture because I thought the prices were so high. Little did I know.

Shopping is Too Easy

Last night I found myself placing another order with L.L. Bean. Since I got their branded credit card which provides free shipping I find myself drifting to their website and periodically checking their sale section. The selection and available sizes seems to change frequently. I have found some bargains.

American Airlines Didn’t Say No

KFDM reported last night: Community Leaders Meet With American Airlines. The main thing I gained from this story is that American Airlines wants a marketing study to determine if they can justify restoring service between DFW and Southeast Texas Regional Airport. I was happy to hear that they would not require the community to provide a fund for them to use if they failed to meet a certain passenger load. This makes sense to me. I hope the study shows this area can support the service.

The Terrible Two’s

Today is Henry’s second birthday. Henry has latched his paws around his cake and will not let me take it out of the package. Henry remembers what happened to his cake last year . He is determined to prevent me from eating this one.

P.S. Henry finally went to sleep. The cake was delicious.

Fall Travel

Six weeks ago I intended to go to London this fall. I have not acted on my intention because of the terrorist situation and also I am waiting to see if American Airlines will restore service to the local airport. I am really suffering from cabin fever. Yesterday I received a mailing from a local tour group. They have added four new short trips to their fall schedule. I immediately signed up.

In October they are going to Tyler, Texas, to see The Devonshire Inheritance: Five Centuries of Collecting at Chatsworth and The Texas Rose Festival. The Devonshire collection comes from Chatsworth, in England and is a collection of the Cavendish family treasures. The Texas Rose Festival name speaks for itself.

In November the tour is to the 2005 Nutcracker Market in the Reliant Center in Houston. The Christmas market benefits the Houston Ballet.

There are two trips in December. The first is to Natchitoches, Louisiana, for the Christmas Festival. There will be a Christmas lights tour and a visit to Melrose Plantation.

The final trip is to Galveston, also in December, and visits the Moody Gardens Festival of lights, Haak Vineyards and Winery,and Kemah Christmas Store. There will be a dinner at Gaido’s famous seafood restaurant.

These trips will give me an opportunity to give my camera a workout and relieve a little of my cabin fever.

Second Tuesday of the Month

Yesterday was the second Tuesday of the month. Microsoft is releasing their Windows updates on the second Tuesday of every month. I hope everyone has received their updates and installed them. After my brush with the virus on Saturday, I did not wait for Windows automatic update to download. I went directly to Microsoft’s security website and downloaded the updates and installed them. There are a total of six updates for Windows and Internet Explorer. This is the Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for August, 2005.

This is an addition to my posting. eWeek has an item: Download Problem Interferes with IE Patch Release. I am not sure I fully understand this article, but it sounds like the automatic download process had a problem. It is porbably a good thing that I went directly to Windows Update.

iPod Resurrected

This morning for some reason I woke up around 4:15 AM. I was barely awake when I heard a crashing sound and my clock went black and there was complete darkness. Within 5 min. the power was restored. I have an old computer that I do not use more, but it is still plugged into an APC uninterruptible power supply. The UPS started whining. The whine would not stop even when I unplugged it. Finally I disconnected everything and carried it out to the garage.

I then noticed the amber light was out on my cable modem. I unplugged the modem and my WiFi router for a few minutes. I then plugged them back in and there was still no modem activity. I turned on a couple of TV’s and found the cable was also out. I tried to call Time Warner. After stepping through several levels of menu I was put on hold. While I was waiting I looked over and realized that my little iPod was plugged into its charger. I disconnected it and tried to turn it on. Nothing happened after several attempts to turn it on. I found the manual and followed the steps to reset the iPod. It did not work. The iPod showed no signs of life. I read the warranty. There was no telephone number for Apple, only a web address. That did not help without RoadRunner. Again I tried to call Time Warner and ended up on hold. I was distracted again. I decided to give the iPod reset process one more try. I plugged the iPod into an electrical outlet and held down the menu and select buttons as I had done before. All of a sudden I saw a darkened Apple logo on the screen. As I watched a darkened menu appeared and then the backlight came on. Next the screen went dark again and the charging symbol appeared. I unplugged the iPod and reattached the earbuds. To my amazement everything was back to normal. From now on I am going to plug the iPod into a surge protector when I need to charge it.

It was now 5:15. I called Time Warner again and finally spoke to a customer service representative. She said they were aware of the outage in my area, and a technician was working on it. It is now 5:50 and there is still no RoadRunner or cable. Wow, 5:51 and the cable and RoadRunner have returned.

Current TV

Yesterday I finally got around to watching Current TV for the first time. Current TV is Al Gore’s new cable channel. I have Time Warner’s digital cable. Current TV replaced News World International. I liked to watch NWI occasionally to get a different perspective of the news and regret its loss. My first impression of Current TV was not good. I thought it was going to give me a headache. Then it began to grow on me.

I thought Al Gore had planned to put on a liberal news channel but that is not what finally evolved. Current TV claims to be non-political. It is aimed at a young audience. It does not follow the traditional 30 or 60 minutes program length. It has mini-documentary segments called “pods” that are no longer than seven minutes unless they are especially good. I wonder if they are called “pods” because Al Gore sits on the Apple board of directors. Current TV is encouraging the viewers to submit their videos for use on the channel. While the pods are running a progress bar is shown in the lower left corner of the screen. The progress bar is similar to what you see on your computer when software is being installed.

Several times they had segments on the top Google searches underway on the internet on specific topics. I saw a couple of pods in the “Mentor” series where good advice was given on ethics. The documentaries expose the viewer to many different cultures. It is going to be interesting to see how this channel evolves and if it manages to attract an audience.

The Late Bird Lost the Worm

I finally ordered a pair of shoes this morning. On Saturday I was shopping for shoes when the virus notification popped up on my pc and distracted me from my shopping. To my dismay my first and second choice shoes were no longer available in my size. To top off matters my third choice was no longer available at Zappos.com which offers free shipping and five AAdvantage miles for every dollar spent. I ended up ordering the shoe from MarylandSquare.com and paying what I consider to be a very high shipping charge. In addition Maryland Square had raised the price $5 over the last time I checked. All of the shoes I was considering were of a similar style. This type of shoe must be the in thing for this fall. I really suffer because I have such a narrow foot.

Robin Cook

Since starting this blog I have attempted to keep it free of political comment, but I am going to make an exception to note the passing of Robin Cook, the former British Foreign Minister, who resigned over Britain’s rush to war. Mr. Cook was only 59 years old. He was a wise man, an eloquent speaker and a good friend to the United States. I highly recommend that you follow this link: Full text of Robin Cook’s resignation speech in the House of Commons. Robin Cook delivered this speech March, 2003. It is a shame that George Bush and Tony Blair did not heed his advice.

In the News

Two news items have caught my attention. The first is from CNET News: The 'iPodified' baby. For $15.95 you can buy a baby outfit with the iPod click wheel on the front. I wonder if you press the pause function if the baby will stop crying.

The second article is also from CNET News: Will viruses hitch a ride on car computers?. This one is more ominous. Can you imagine driving down the road and having your car crash because it succumbed to a virus?

Brush with a Virus

Yesterday evening I was shopping for shoes at online shoe store sites when my anti-virus software, PC-cillin, popped up with a real-time scan message that said a trojan had been detected on my computer. The message went on to say that PC-cillin had failed to clean and also failed to quarantine the file and said to manually delete it if I was sure that it was not a required file. I was not able to find the file through Windows Explorer. I doubted that I would be able to delete the file from the DOS command prompt. I thought about using the Windows search feature to locate the file, but the search is so slow. Finally I decided to unplug my WiFi router to disconnect my pc from the internet. Then I ran a manual scan using PC-cillin. The file was soon detected, and this time PC-cillin was able to quarantine the file. I reconnected my WiFi router.

I then went to PC-cillin’s website to find out more about the trojan: TROJ_DLOADER.OS – Description and solution. To my dismay I found the trojan, if executed, attempts to install spyware on the pc. I did not think the file had been executed, but I ran my two anti-spyware programs. No spyware was detected.

I am really disgusted that this happened to me. I have been using personal computers for over twenty years and have never, to my knowledge, been infected with a virus. I take every precaution of which I am aware. I have a firewall enabled; my anti-virus software is the latest version and has the latest update; and I run two anti-spyware programs that also have the latest updates. I have Windows Service Pack 2 and all of the Windows critical updates installed on my pc. I am careful about opening email attachments, and clicking on links in questionable websites. I do not know what else I can do to protect my computer.

My intention is to buy a new computer six months after Windows Vista is released; but even if Microsoft is able to stick to its schedule, this is more than two years in the future. If computing continues to be as dangerous is it now, I may have to think about switching from Windows to Apple.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is the free online encyclopedia that is created by its users. I have been aware of this site for sometime but just started using it more frequently. I have found very helpful information regarding Blogger’s tags and html code that has helped me straighten out a few problems with this blog. I even found an article on iPod Socks. I am going to be using Wikipedia more frequently.

My Health

On July 21 I went to my doctor for my annual checkup. The doctor thought he detected a problem and scheduled me for mammogram and ultrasound tests on August 2 irregardless of the fact that it was only nine months since my last mammogram. Needless to say even though I tried to push this from my thoughts I have been quite anxious for the past two weeks. Early yesterday morning my doctor’s nurse called and said they had received the results from HealthSouth. Everything is fine, and I do not have to go back to the doctor for another year. I feel so lucky and really feel sorry for women who do not receive the good news that I did.

Here We Go Again

iPod Earbud Dunked

I had an accident with my iPod yesterday. I picked it up off of the table without looking at what I was doing. There was a cup of coffee sitting on the table. I looked down and the left earbud was bobbing in the coffee. I snatched it out and dried it with a towel. I had the little cloth cover on the earbud. It was soaked. I took it off and there was still plenty of coffee on the earpiece. It was wet anyway so I decided to rinse it with clean water. I let it dry for a couple of hours and then tried it. To my amazement it still worked, and I cannot detect any degradation in quality. I have a hard time seeing the little L and R on the earbuds. Now I can distinguish between them more easily because the left earbud smells like coffee.

This Blog

Back in 2003 I first heard the word blog on CNN. I did a Google search and found Blogger.com. I signed up and created this blog. During the 2004 presidential campaign blogs were in the news everyday. I decided to start making daily additions to this blog. Now I have reached a point that I need some help. There are several formatting problems with this blog that I do not know who to fix:

1. I do not know how to separate the title from the body of an article so that there is a separation that Talkr.com recognizes.

2. There are double bullets in front of my buttons in the sidebar. I do not know how to remove the dark ones.

3. I do not know how to align the comments, posted by and listen to footers at the bottom of each article.

I have searched the Blogger.com help and knowledge base and have been unable to find answers to my problems. I did a search for a how-to book on blogging. The only book that I found is Publishing a Blog with Blogger: Visual Quick Project Guide by Elizabeth Castro. I do not know if this book will help me or not. I am going to look for it at a local bookstore. Blogger uses something close to html code in the templates called tags. I do not understand the tags. I hope this book has the kind of information I need to fix my problems.

Current Reading

If you are wondering what I am reading now that I have finished the latest Harry Potter book, it is Sue Grafton’s R is for Ricochet. This is the first one of her books that I have read. She has a series of mystery novels starting with the letter A, and she is now up to the letter S with her latest book, S is for Silence. Her main character is a female detective named Kinsey Millhone. I bought the latest paperback to sample her novels. It is very lightweight reading. After I finish this book, I might buy the whole series, but at this point I am undecided.

Not a Fun Day

This morning I have to go to the dentist for my six month checkup, and this afternoon I have diagnostic tests scheduled. I will take my iPod and SuDoku puzzles with me to keep me entertained while I sit and wait. Tomorrow I will be back to normal and hopefully have something more interesting for the blog.

Talkr Enabled

Many thanks to Chris Brooks, CEO of Talkr.com, for helping me to get properly set up to convert the text in this blog to speech. If you scroll down the page, you will see a button for Talkr. If you click on the button, you will be taken to a page with the code for the feed for the podcast of this blog. Copy the url of this page into your software such as iTunes. Then you will have a subscription to the podcast. I was pleasantly surprised at the clarity of the speech. The voice is a pleasant feminine voice. You can definitely tell that is computer generated speech, but it has more inflection than most computer generated speech that I have heard.

In addition, you can listen from this page to any blog article by clicking on the link below the article.

Apple Vs. Windows

Yesterday I did a search for iPod in the Nikon D70/D50 Forum on Digital Photography Review. I still have not tested transferring pictures from my camera to the iPod. I was really dismayed at the results of my search. There were two people who bought iPod’s before going on vacation. They transferred their pictures from their Nikon D70’s to the iPod without problem. When they got back home and attached the iPod to their Windows pc, the hard disk in the iPod was formatted and all of their pictures were lost. This is really pathetic.

This will not happen to me because I read the manual that came with my iPod, and I started using the iPod for audio files before I attempted to store my photos on it. The iPod manual is very vague about the formatting process. It just says that the iPod may need to be formatted but does not specifically say that if you are using a pc with Windows that the disk will be formatted the first time you connect the iPod to the pc. I installed the iPod software, and then connected the iPod to my pc. A window immediately opened that said the disk was being prepared and updated files placed on the iPod, and then I would have to plug the iPod into an electrical outlet to complete the initialization process. I followed directions and all went well. The manual supplied with the Apple iPod did not explain any of this process.

I feel sorry for the two individuals who lost their vacation pictures, but I think they share the blame with Apple. Before you go on vacation you should check out all of your photo equipment. In the digital age photo equipment now includes storage devices and pc’s. I certainly will be making practice transfers between my camera, iPod and pc before I put any pictures that are important to me at risk.