This server has been down more or less continuously for the last 24 hours. It was all part of the semi-annual celebration known as “Hack Day”, which is always accompanied by games such as “Whack a Hacker” and “Patch Roulette”.
I’m catching up on some reading while I’m sick with the flu. I finished reading “The Da Vinci Code”, which was a lot better than I expected. Basically, a mystery novel with a bit of the old conspiracy theory “fantasy” mixed in, combined with what seemed to be impeccable fact finding to provide just the right level of reality.
I’m worn out and tired today. I’m feeling like I’m starting to catch a cold. It rained all day, and my car still isn’t fixed.
As I shuffled about the house, trying to keep my last few functioning neurons firing, I realized it was good to be alive. I also realized I hadn’t posted anything to my blog in a week, and the best I could come up with was to post about how worn out I am.
I was driving in to work this morning…the usual stop and go on Highway 1. I had just entered the highway and noticed traffic had come to a complete stop. I came to a complete stop, and a second later my car was propelled forward a couple yards into the car in front of me…the guy behind hadn’t noticed that the traffic wasn’t moving.
We had a full moon last night, and I decided to try some (totally informal) experimenting in “astrophotography”
I took this picture with my Canon digital SLR and a 75-300 mm zoom lens. I cropped the original image and applied some simple lighting adjustments to improve the contrast.
I just spent nearly two hours figuring out that Slashdot has changed the URL of their RSS feed. Their old RSS feed URL (http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rdf) generates a 301 “Moved Permanently” HTTP error. If you are using a browser, this will redirect you automatically to the redirect URL, which is http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot/to.
My wife Irene called me on the phone at about 7:00 am on Friday morning. This confused me: I was working from home and thus sleeping in until around 7:30, and Irene doesn’t normally leave for work until about 8:00 am. The morning brain-fog cleared a bit, though, when Irene explained that she was out walking our dog and calling from her cell. She had found a lost dog, and was bringing it home so we could call the SPCA, and could I please get the cats into the house?
Our cats aren’t supposed to be outside, but often a couple, usually Tux and Rommel, sneak out. This morning, however, four had made it out the door. I managed to get three back in, but Bilbo was no where to be found.