The Time Sink

Whew... I'm ready for an attempt to spend more time at work concentrating on the "Business of America". ...and if not, taking a break away from the TV. Although it's funny: Shelley keeps changing the channel when I enter the room<g>...

Nah, I'm okay; but there's life and there's life. A weekend of wife and kids did wonders. Now to try and get back to some scheduled plans with the computers and the household.

As I try to get back up to speed on things computerish, things around the house, and life in general. ...and as I spent last evening working through "plural possessives" and the concept of "b=x*16" with Daniel (whilst perusing a Wired print article on the upcoming Lord of the Rings movie), I was reminded of a dialog with my father about a decade ago...

We were framing a space in the garage of Shelley's and my new house (with Daniel due in just a few months). ...and I was explaining to him where the table saw was going in relation to the radial arm saw. ...and how the benches were going to be laid out. ...and how this would go there to facilitate the workflow.

...and his smile just kept getting broader and broader.

Heck, I thought he had his hearing aid turned down again so he wouldn't have to listen to my drivel... But no, he was just getting ready to share some words of wisdom:

"Son, all this planning is okay; but once you have kids, you can just kiss all this off for about twenty years..."

The banner from CoffeeCup now links to Liberty Unites and lists many organizations that could use your help. You'll be seeing this banner on Tuesdays for a while...

...and if the net feels slowwwww. This latest un-funny from the chaos crowd is just flat clogging some areas of the net as bad as any DDoS attack. Details on your favorite anti-virus/security site. I'm low profile, but my IP at pair had over 6500 hits yesterday from this thing; Greg's Benden was showing over 12,000 late last night...

<Sigh...> I was going to write a rant about how, with the exception of two days last week, televised media was a batch of drivel. ...then I remembered I already did. ...and how the print media was too out of step with real time to give anything but a retrospective view of things. ...and I realized I haven't done that one yet. But the net! Man, the net just shone last week, just like it's shining this week with the constant updates.

Where the heck did that come from? Oh, nowhere... I was just killing time. Last night, a friend from the Weblogs circuit posted from the Central Time Zone that Crosby, Stills and Nash, were going to be performing "Find the Cost of Freedom" on Leno last night. So, yeah; I stayed up and turned the TV on...

Net storm last night... It seemed to hit my DNS server hardest; anything I had in the FastNet cache on the Win95 box hit right away; anything else, including outbound mail would hang for quite a while...

...as the worm turns: Two items from one of the security sites may be of interest. The first one from the Incidents.org Handler's Diary, asks us to submit our logs to nimda@dshield.org; they'll be contacting the sysadmins of infected sites. Oh, and they have UUnet behind them...

...and if you have a spare Linux box? ...and an appetite for chopped worm, take a look at this little gem (same source); this guy has a way to take some of the load off the net! It's a Zombie pit aptly named "LaBrea". Definitely a must-try for those with a little spare time and a few spare CPU cycles.

...and if you need anything else to get your blood pressure going, in this article from InfoWorld, Ed Foster tells of the tactics used by Redmond to beat small business into the upgrade forever fold. I'd clipped the print article and passed it along to Erik-the-Geek just as an FYI, little realizing he'd get a call the next day from a FLIPPIN' LEASING COMPANY wanting to "help us out" with our migration. A leasing company? Who we've never done any business with??? ...and OUR MIGRATION? What migration? We have like maybe two OEM machines...

Oh, my; I'm running late today. Wait... No, I'm not; I'm actually ahead of the curve for a change: although it will likely never repeat, it appears Daynotes has scooped The Register! Heh. Check out the date stamp on their article on LaBrea; then just scroll up to Thursday's post (time stamp 2220, 09/19/01). Man, in Internet time, that's an eternity... Although, their link to LaBrea is much better than the one I used.

Yeah, I know: Get a life<g>...

A life? "Door's to your left." Thus spake Gord... My gosh, what a Time Sink! Tales from a video game store owner in Canada (some adult language). Patti, over at The Garden Cafe linked him this morning with a "Do Not Drink While Reading" warning on her page. I'll add: eating is also inadvisable. ...and for those who are into sarcastic comebacks, or who have ever had to deal with retail, having someone close by who knows CPR is a consideration.

It's been a long twenty four hours. Not long after I posted Friday, my sister called to say she was taking our mother in to emergency... Earlier on Friday, Mom had a follow-up CT scan as the pain in her head and neck have not abated as much as expected since the MVA in July. Short version: the radiologist wanted her in the ED since he saw a 'broken neck' on his films.

Since that diagnosis was both consistent and at odds with how things have progressed for the last two months, I kept my logo shirt on and went to join them. Again the short version (after more X-Rays and several hours): she has a displacement of C-2 that probably is fused. That's good news and bad. She's likely stable, but fixing it is unlikely. I finally left the hospital around 0130 after getting her tucked into be in her room.

Today she had a MRI of both her neck and head. One of the local "Pros from Dover" came in last night and took over her case from the HMO-based outfit she's signed up with. Details tomorrow, we hope.

Nothing particularly new on the Mom front; she's settled in (as much as an independent sort can be) at the hospital for another day or two. ...at a minimum.

The neuro-guy came by last night; but since she doesn't speak medical, much was lost in the translation. The best I got was that they can relieve some pressure on her spinal cord (the MRI must have shown something) and they can do something about the pain in her head.

That last is the good news. I have a call in to the doc to get the information directly. I'll let you know what progresses.