no more bedhead

Sorry, wrong reference. Actually, it's even better than that. The New York Football Giants just beat the New England Patriots 17-14 in Super Bowl XLII. This is exciting because I can't stand the Patriots.

Most people think this is weird as I grew up in New England, but I didn't watch football until I went to college, so I really have no connection to the team. I started watching the Washington Redskins, and I will probably always be a Redskins fan. I became a fan near the end of the real glory days. Joe Theismann and John Riggins staging those minute left in the game, and 80 yards to go, come from behind victories, under the guidance of Joe Gibbs. The years of Art Monk and Darrell Green, who were just elected to join Riggins and Gibbs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

As a Redskins fan, we were in the same division as the Giants, so I had the opportunity to see them twice a year, and even though I always rooted for the 'Skins, I have a soft spot in my heart for all the teams in the NFC East. Except for the Cowboys. Still don't like the Cowboys.

Of course, now I'm a Cleveland Browns fan. We may have to wait a while for the Super Bowl, but we did have a great year this year. (10-6)

So, anyway, I'm very happy that the Patriots lost. They were the dominant team this season, going into the game at 18-0, with a certain smugness. And they came out 18-1. Mwhahaha!! When it became apparent that they would finish 16-0, I was hoping that they would lose in the first round of the playoffs. Although, in retrospect, I think this was even better.

It was a really good game, though.

The dog is back.

I've had four blissful days, sans dog. Ellen took him to the vet on Thursday morning for "the surgery" (he's now half the dog he used to be). It was a glorious weekend, full of peace, laughter, frivolity, and harmony. Unfortunately, he had to come back home today. He's already started peeing in the living room, tearing trash out of the garbage can, jumping on top of us, and causing general mayhem. Not to mention terrorizing the cats (whether by his actions, or in their minds).

Well, it was fun while it lasted.

Update: Just to clarify, the surgery didn't put the dog out for four days. He was actually done in a matter of hours. But, we had a diocesan conference from Friday night through Saturday, so the vet kept the dog. We were supposed to pick up the dog on Saturday night, but the vet had a concert to go to, so we agreed that we'd pick him up on Sunday. Still, I got all day Thursday and all day Friday, plus a couple of bonus days!

A collection of Olan Mills photos

From Dave Walker's CartoonChurch.com. Be sure to check out the blog.

Back around Christmas time I noticed weird things happening with my computer. Nothing that I could put my finger on, and nothing that happened regularly. Just the occasional "burp". Then, right after Christmas, I tried to Google something. Instead of going to Google, I got a message that the computer was trying to download an "application/octet". No matter what I did I couldn't get to Google. It was more of an inconvenience than anything else at that point. I tried deleting a couple of recent applications and even did a system restore. That worked for a little while, but then, wham!, back to the "application/octet" download. Eventually I tried going to other search engines, and when I would click on a link I would get redirected to other websites.

Realizing at this point that something was definitely amiss, I began to look for help. I came across a place called www.techsupportforum.com. I followed their instructions, posted some scan logs, and waited for help. I was ultimately helped by tetonbob, who helped me determine that there was a trojan on my machine, and together we ran and analyzed some system reports (ok, I ran, he analyzed). In a couple of days the infection was gone and I was good to go.

Or so I thought. About two hours after our final post, I ended up opening a new thread, as my homepages appeared to be redirecting. Tetonbob got involved again, determined that the malware files were still there and ran some more diagnostics. Over the course of the next week and a half, it seems like all I did was download a diagnostic tool, run it, post the report, and wait for my next instructions.

Ultimately, we determined that the computer was "clean" and I could go about my business. But, it took me two weeks of work that I could have spent doing other things, trying to rid my computer of stuff that shouldn't have been there to begin with. At the end of my first post, tetonbob posted a really good list of things to do to keep your computer secure. Take a look at that post here. (everything after "Now that your system is clean...")

And, keep in mind that I was running Anti-Virus software from my ISP, as well as Ad-Aware. It was Spybot S&D that first caught the infection. So, I wasn't surfing naked. But now it's like I'm wearing one of those turn-of-the-(20th)-century all over bathing outfits. Hopefully I'm better protected now. Thanks, tetonbob!

I had my first experience where I had to catch myself with regard to my New Year's Resolution the other day.

I have been looking at mp3 players, and I wanted to have a hands on look at a couple of them - the Creative Zen, and the Zune. Circuit City carries both, so off I went. I found the mp3 players and started looking them over, only to discover that the two I wanted to look at would not power on. After standing there for 10 minutes, trying out the others on display, a sales associate finally came over to see what I needed. I explained my dilemma, that I wanted to compare players, but the 2 weren't working. Instead of offering to hook them up to an auxiliary source, he said, "Well, it depends on what you're looking for." Then to add insult to injury, another associate came over, stood behind me, and carried on a conversation with the first one as if I wasn't even there. I walked off, and left the store.

When I caught up to Ellen (at another store), I said, "Oh, I hate Circuit City!" I quickly caught myself and restated it: "I find that the customer service at Circuit City is not very good, and their use of rebates rather than discounts isn't very customer friendly. I prefer to shop elsewhere."

And retail management wonders why people like to shop online.

I'm still looking for an mp3 player, though.

A guy driving a hearse, talking on his cell phone.

My first thought was - if he gets in a crash, at least we know where to put him.

My second thought was - just who is he talking to?

I have had my share of websites that I have set up, or helped set up, and I have always used Network Solutions to check the availability of domain names. I've done that because I trust(ed) NetSol as they were the first registrar of domain names, their customer support has been good, and I believed that I wasn't going to get screwed when I visited their site (except for price, which is why I don't register with them anymore).

Well, it turns out that NetSol is registering the domain names that people have been looking up, thereby denying them the opportunity to register the name somewhere else, at a quarter of the cost, in a process called "front-running". Bastards.

Their "official" line is that they are protecting their "customers" - the people who are looking up the availability of a domain name. In reality they are blackmailing people into using their service. If you look up your domain name on NetSol, then go to GoDaddy to try to register it, it will show as "unavailable", and owned by NetSol. The only way you can get that name is to go back to NetSol and register there. NetSol says they hold the name for 5 days, after which it is released. I'm lucky, in that most of my websites are church sites and the pace of permissions in a church is rather slow, so by the time the request has been approved more than 5 days have passed.

Still, it is an unethical practice, and I will stop recommending Network Solutions to my clients as a possible domain name registrar and web host. Better still, I think I will tell them what NetSol is doing, and let them make up their own minds.

Read more about this here, here and here.

Too close to call in New Hampshire!! I love it!! I love races that take it down to the wire. For most of the evening the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has been too close to call. Although, in the last couple of minutes the news outlets have given the state to Clinton.

On the Republican side, John McCain is the winner, with Mitt Romney second, and Mike Huckabee third. The good news there is that Romney didn't win again! Let's keep that trend going.

So, the salad course is over. Now a quick sip of wine (Nevada caucus, and South Carolina primary), before we delve into the main course - Super Tuesday, Feb 5.