We have a couple of hanging ferns on our front porch that is favored by discerning parent birds as an ideal neighborhood for raising their young.
This year I decided to take some pictures to quasi chronicle the growth of the chicks. I *really* need to start taking more pictures. Whenever I do something like this I think I’m taking plenty at the time, but then I find a dearth of good pictures at the far end of the process..
This is a little thing, but recently my Local Area Connection icon (that little icon showing two overlapping computers that each flash depending on whether you’re uploading or downloading information), has stopped showing up in my systray.
Checking the properties for “Local Area Connection” I can see that “Show icon in notification area when connected” is still selected. But I did de-select it, click OK and then come back and re-select that option to ensure that it wasn’t simply a matter of “resetting” it.
Rebooting the machine hasn’t helped either.
With all the talk about “root kit exploits” I’m a little paranoid and I like to be able to see if my computer is talking to the outside world when it’s not running anything that is *supposed* to be doing so.
Window’s XP firewall is enabled, Symantec anti-virus is installed and up-to-date and Windows defender is installed and up-to-date. But, of course, none of these can yet detect root kit exploits so I view the symptom of the disappearing network icon with some concern.
Still looking for a solution…
Take a peek in our photo album for some shots of our (early) Canada Day Celebration:
Since the July 1st / July 4th weekend is SO busy we’ve decided to host a small Canada Day get together with some of our Canadian friends.
In preparation for it I needed to find the Canadian National Anthem (the official lyrics for which can be found here).
It is amazing to me how many truly lackluster the renditions of the Canadian National Anthem are out there. Most of them easily transport you back to those days in grade school where the old (even then) upright pianos were clanging away the songs in the midst of a cacophony of kids’ voices shrilling out the songs imprinted on ditto paper.
I finally found a pretty good version by, of all people, Céline Dion. I’m not her hugest fan but she does a great job with the both O Canada and The Star Spangled Banner. Appropriate for this weekend. For the songs you’ll need to jump to about the 3 minute mark as there is a brief interview that preceeds her singing.
Q: We are looking at a foray into EBay and Pay Pal. I know you have had some mixed experiences and was wondering if you had any advice for us.
R: Check out my website for “Paypal” .
I have a friend who buys and sells stuff on eBay all the time. He *doesn’t* use paypal at all. I use it but I would never depend on them for “protection”. If you have the option to pay directly by credit card (a lot of businesses sell through eBay and can accept the cards) go that way, otherwise paypal is OK and there is no charge to use it.
For buying / selling on eBay use the rating system. I’m sure there are ways to game the system but by and large it seems to be pretty reliable. You want to deal with somebody who has been around for a while and who has sold enough stuff to where you feel comfortable dealing with them.
Don’t hesitate to send them an email during the bidding (or before you “Buy it now”) to ask any questions – i.e. do they ship to Canada? Does it come with X?
Don’t forget to check out the Interesting… item in the sidebar to the right. In it are feed items from various places that I’ve found either interesting or just plain entertaining.
I recall trying to find this information about a year ago and having a lot of trouble finding it. Then I saw it published in my AOPA newsletter so I’m posting it here as a reminder to myself:
Question: What frequency, if any, can be used for air-to-air communications between two aircraft?
Answer: The Federal Communications Commission designates specific frequencies for aircraft and airports to use for specific purposes. For air-to-air communications, the designated frequencies are 122.75 MHz and 122.85 MHz. These frequencies also can be used for private airports that are not open to the public. For a list of designated frequencies for unicom and multicom frequencies, view Table 4-1-2 in the Aeronautical Information Manual. Learn more about what frequency you should use at AOPA Online (requires membership to AOPA).
Watch an amazing display of physical fitness in this movie clip. Here David Belle is looking like the new Jackie Chan with amazing and creative stunts in his movies. He’s taken his practice of the art (sport?) of Parkour and put it to use in the movies.
I found this anti-Wall*Mart movie through a link from one of Clark Howard’s newsletters.
Can anybody take a look at it and tell me what point I seem to be missing? It seems to be just a series of poorly edited clips of folks saying “Wal*Mart is bad”. As a tease or a trailer I didn’t find it very effective. I imagine that there are probably some legitimate issues with Wal*Mart’s astounding marketplace success. But this trailer hints at none of them as far as I can tell.
*Update* Over the Christmas Holidays (December 2006) I replaced the unit that my mother purchased with a WRT54G as well. Her D-Link started exhibiting the same symptoms as did mine and was eventually too much of a nuisance to ignore. These things are junk. I highly recommend against buying them.
I’m back using my WRT54G router. The D-Link DI-524 started locking up on me more and more often. I couldn’t even get it to reset using the reset button (hold for 30 seconds and all that).
I’m pretty disappointed with the wireless routers I’ve seen in general. The technology is here to do WEP and MAC Filtering and not broadcasting SSID, but don’t try to do all that at once!
To be fair I think the D-Link was probably just a crap unit. It’s seizures were directly related to whenever I would bittorrent something for a long period of time (maybe overheated?). Anyway, in getting more and more creative in ways to “unseize” it, I eventually just physically broke the unit (the antenna isn’t as strong as I thought it was…).
