Don Thorp Meandering Out Loud

We’ve decided to sell the boat. There are several reason for the decision

1. The closest lake has been too low, ramps closed
2. The closest lake has been too high, ramps closed
3. The slip fees at the closest marina are outrageous ~ $4000 per year which means I wouldn’t have to worry about the ramps.
4. Alex is headed off to school and we’re trying to get rid of all payments

We’ve had a lot of good times on the boat both at home and away. My favorite trip was a week in Branson, MO. I was able to go out on a whim because it was in a slip a short walk from the condo.

Every once in a while, you have one of “those days”. April 10, 2008 was one of those days.

The day started around 3:40am when a wall of wind and water hit the house. Tornados are not uncommon so I do feel an obligation to check for them which weather like this happens. Confident that we weren’t about to land in the Oz, I crawled back in bed to enjoy the storm. I really do like sleeping when it’s raining.

Five minutes later, I’m awakened by the crickets of the computer age, the UPS on battery. Some demented person must have wasted a good part of their life to come up with that sound. Although, it’s not quite as bad as the chirp from a smoke alarm with a dying battery. After 15 minutes with no power, I crawl out of bed and successfully shut everything down. Afraid I might oversleep, I grab my mobile, set the alarm, and crawl back into bed.

Of course, I can’t fall back asleep. After locating a flashlight I spent 10 minutes locating the number for TXU’s power outage hotline. Keying it in my phone informs me that the number had been previously saved. I put it there to save myself some time after the last power outage. I call the hotline and report it, the automated attendant happily informs me that they have no idea when the power will be restored. I flop back in bed.

The mobile alarm functions as expected and I wake to the silence of the power impaired. At least there was hot water in the tank so we were able to clean up a bit. I had to figure out how to shave with limited lighting. I would say it was like camping, but honestly, who shaves on a camping trip. I would have blown it off, but I had to interview someone at the office today. On the positive side, the blood loss was kept to a minimum. Oh, and checking with TXU, still no word on when the power would be restored.

You would think that would be enough for today, but no. I forgot to mention that Alex and I were headed to American University tonight. Given that we live in the Dallas area, American Airlines is the easiest carrier to use for most flights. Guess who "forgot" to inspect their planes. Checking the website all morning the flight showed as on time. I went to lunch thinking we’re still going, come back and right before I race home, find out it’s been canceled.

To see if I can salvage the trip, I immediately try to get an agent. After sitting on hold for 15 minutes or so I actually get a live person, who then takes 20 minutes to tell me that there are not flights. I ask her to please schedule us for the same trip next week. Of course she says, let me put you on hold, where I sit for 15 minutes and then get disconnected. In the middle of this Alex gets to the house where he discovers that the garage door won’t open and he doesn’t have his house key. So I call American back, on my mobile this time and start driving home.

After 25 minutes I get another agent who is able to successfully reschedule us for the next week in only 20 minutes, with out loosing me when she had to put me on hold. A few minutes later I reach the house and let Alex in and then start trying to deal with the hotel and cars. Let me just say, dealing with the Expedia rep was fast, efficient, and painless. Oh, yes the power was on, It only took them 12 hours.

Relieved, I decided to check Facebook only to discover that a good friend was having a crisis, she couldn’t decide what color to paint her toenails. Thinking I could help I suggested maroon and white, apparently OU’s colors are crimson and cream, I had to apologize profusely, and now I know there is a difference. Oh and she chose cotton candy to celebrate Spring.

Finally, I didn’t forget to wish my mother a Happy Birthday. Given the rest of the day, I consider that a minor miracle.

My daughter and her friend Elana have alter egos — Sasha and Svetlana. For weeks they’ve been talking about recording videos about their “adventures”. For some reason, tonight was the night for filming episode 1, “Sasha and Svetlana - Cooking Like Soviets in Your Kitchen”.

I’m always amazed at their creativity and ability to work on a shoestring. Oh, and Alex stars as “Vladimir”, he’s critical to the film.

Ok, if you’re on twitter, you need to jump over to the @rainbowteam and join by clicking follow. If you need to colorize your avatar Cali Lewis posted a rainbowteam.png to help you modify your avatar.

For the rest of you, zefrank wrote a post entitled "colorwar 2008" where he mused.

We used to play color wars at summer camp. Near the end of the year the entire camp would split up into colors, red, green, black, blue, etc… and compete in a series of events: tug of war, egg toss, basketball - sort of like the movie Meatballs, except all within the same camp.

During the summer we were divided into discreet units, older kids here, younger kids there, Hiawathans by the lake Tawasenthans by the ropes course, etc… But when it came time for color wars you had no idea who would be on your team. It was a release, and it was viciously fun.

So, for a while I’ve been thinking about how a color war might look online.

Corvida states Boredom Strikes On Twitter With Color!. Her summary statement

If this isn’t boredom, I don’t know what is, but at least it gives us something to do.

While I’m not sure how this is going to play out, and I’m probably too busy anyway, I decided to join and and see what the fun might be.

Twitter is a very interesting place.

Children are the spice of life.

While attending my youngest sister’s baby shower in Tulsa, Allison was able to capture this priceless video of my nephew trying to say “bridge”.

It’s hard to imagine anyone approving this product, but then again, it happened. How many children are going to scream at the site of Sponge Bob in the future. To help complete the traumatization of America, they should also release a Krusty the Clown probe as well.

Found on Boing Boing

It was a YouTube morning.

For all you nerds out there

• 1-900-NERD-GIRL
• Star Wars according to a 3 year old

In celebration of Jimmy Kimmel’s 5th year on the air, his girlfriend gave him this video

• Sarah Silverman “I’m F**king Matt Damon” on Jimmy Kimmel

Jimmy returns the favor in

• Jimmy Kimmel’s “I’m F*cking Ben Affleck”

On the weird side and soccer related

• The Jeannie Tate Show - Rob Riggle.

And finally in the priceless but lacking taste (couldn’t use the single word for lacking taste) department

• MasturDate - NSFW
• Sh*tfaced Shannon O’Malley’s Anti-Sobriety Kit - NSFW

Authors on the Net don’t always consider their readership. For instance, consider the problem of puffy eyes or bags under the eyes. In the modern world what do we do? Google of course. Who is allowed to use Google? Everyone, including teenagers.

Take a moment to read the following excerpt found during my quest to answer the question, “What the hell was she thinking?”.

Here are some instructions to reduce eye puffiness:

The puffiness of the eyes can be reduced with a glass of ice water and
four stainless steel spoons.

“Chill the spoons in the water and then place one over each eye. When
the spoons become warm, switch them with the others chilling in the
glass of water. Keep switching until you see improvement.”

Link

Obviously, the author didn’t consider the improvisation and lack of forethought that is the hallmark of a teenage mind. For example the following questions should have probably been asked.

• What is an alternative place to cool spoons?
• Does a teenager always remember that they started something?
• Does a teenager think, is this a good idea?

For instance, why bother with a glass out of the cabinet, filling it with ice, water, and worry about wet spoons, when you can simply drop them in the ice maker?

What could go wrong, it’s not moving now, how could the spoons cause a problem?

Imagine the dialog.

• Parent: Honey, how long have the spoons been in the ice maker?
• Teenager: Ice maker? Who would put spoons in the ice maker?

The funny thing is, the ice maker functioned for a very long time with spoons wrapped around in various places. Just as surprising is that an ice maker has enough torque to bend spoons and not just jam.

I discovered this “experiment” yesterday when we replaced our aging refrigerator with a one year old unit we bought from a friend. I took the ice bin outside and dumped it in the flower bed and was a little startled when I heard metallic clinking as the ice hit the ground.

So, to all your helpful Heloise’s out there, please consider that teenagers do roam the Net and their solution may just surprise you.

I was touting the wonders of the iPod Touch to a friend, when he mentioned that he wouldn’t buy one due to the lack of a replaceable battery. I originally thought he was worried about the end of life issue. The real issue is what do you do with a small child when the video device runs out of power at 30,000 feet. Enter the external USB battery pack.

My current “go to solution” is the APC Mobile Power Pack, 10 Wh (UPB10) unit from APC. Surprisingly, it gets used for my phone much more than for my iPods.

Looking through APC’s Universal Mobile Device Batteries product list, I saw a AAA battery powered unit the APC USB Battery Extender (UPBX). This might be a good device to have around when you won’t have power for charging the UPB10.

I’ve always wondered why ActiveX controls continue to be written. There are cases where you need access to the local machine to provide a useful service, but most things don’t, at least not outside of a sandbox. There will always be security flaws in every type of software, but ActiveX controls seem to be the easiest target for the dark side. Most of my friends and I stopped using Internet Explorer years ago except for a few sites that either require IE (e.g. Outlook Web Mail) or other poorly written sites that won’t even display data unless you’re using IE.

Browsing through my email today I ran across an article on eWeek, ActiveX Under Seige: Facebook, MySpace Image Uploaders Vulnerable that once again highlights the problem. Here is a small excerpt:

“In tandem with the public release of this information, remote code-execution exploits targeting the Aurigma, Facebook, and Yahoo! issues were released. Each issue allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code in the context of the application using the ActiveX control (typically Internet Explorer),” Kamerling said.

In the absence of patches, Symantec recommends that IE users take “extreme caution” when browsing the Web and ensure that the browser is configured with the highest security settings.

The US-CERT goes a step further, recommending that IE users completely disable ActiveX scripting in the browser.

The article also points you to a helpful guide from US-CERT on Securing Your Web Browser.