New: a completely cross-browser security flaw (affects all browsers, including FireFox, Safari, Mozilla, etc.). That's comforting. Also, check out the recent Nokia cell phone virus and trojan horse, and this weekend's SCO website defacement (again). Is nothing safe?

We built a snowman ("Frosty") and a snow bunny ("Snowball") on Saturday, after the previous night's monster snowstorm. Here's a photo:



Well, we're down to the final two days of NaNoWriMo writing in our group novel. We're still only hovering at about 80% completion, so we're got our work cut out for us over the next two nights!!

Went geocaching with Dave today, and found the 'Lexi's Loot' and 'Butter' caches, along with the 'Octavia' and 'Jumbo Jet' travel bugs.

Watched "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde" (2003; Sally Field, Bob Newhart, Reese Witherspoon, Luke Wilson, Regina King, Bruce McGill) last night on satellite TV, which is hilarious because any time an airplane flies overhead, the program pauses. Weird. Yesterday's Thanksgiving meal was just awesome, especially Misti's sweet potatoes. The turkey was moist, the stuffing tasty, and the sparkling cider quite refreshing. Tried some pumpkin cheesecake afterward, along with the traditional pumpkin pie. Mmmm. Played a few rousing rounds of 'Pit' afterward. Good times.

It occured to me that the reason that Wal*Mart switched from blue plastic bags to white plastic bags is because their blue bags are too recognizable as litter along the highway and along fencelines. Even though they're obviously not responsible for the littering, it still must've reflected poorly in peoples' minds, nonetheless. Smart move.

Found the 'Guitar Rock' cache today after work, and watched "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" (2004; Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Sir Michael Gambon, Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint) last night on widescreen DVD.

Finished reading "The Hunting of the Snark: an Agony in Eight Fits" by Lewis Carroll recently. Read the famous Psalm 23 a couple of nights ago, and recently heard it repeated again by Nightcrawler in "X2: X-Men United" (2003; Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Halle Berry, Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Sir Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen).

Tried some store-bought S&W candied yams with brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg (in preparation for tomorrow), but they weren't that great. =(

Dave's homecoming talk was great this past Sunday in the Galena Ward. Ginger and Neal and Marta were there, too.

For my birthday this year, I got some cool gifts, including a huge 'Croton' plant (Codiaeum Variegatum 'Petra') from work, a smiley face tie from Becky, a Star Wars tie from Jared, a Mondrian art print poster (of Mondrian's "Composition in Red, Blue, Yellow" [1930]) and a copy of the new Harry Potter 3 DVD from Mist, a generous padded envelope from my folks, etc. Good stuff. =)

Watched "Strange Brew" (1983; Rick Moranis) a few nights ago, but I swear this stuff was funnier back in the day, because it was just a little lame this time around.

Tried some Smuckers Sugarfree Orange Marmalade lately, and I'm afraid to say it's a wee bit nasty. Too bad, too, as I had high hopes for it. Dave scored me some absolutely wonderful Henning's Hickory Smoked Swiss & Cheddar Cheese, straight from Wisconsin. Mmm, tasty. =)

Well, looks like I'm going to have to bite the bullet and learn to live with tabbed browsing, now that Internet Explorer is going to have it, too. =(

After reading about the recent Sun Java virus security hole, I decided like a good little techie to upgrade my version of Sun Java. Went into Control Panel, clicked on Java Plug-in, and checked for updates, but it didn't find any, saying I already had the latest version. Wrong. I was still running 1.4.2_05, which clearly still has the security flaw. 1.4.2_06, the latest version, is available on a separate Sun page, however, but the fact that it isn't retrieved by the update tool is completely stupid, *especially* in light of the recent bad press about the Sun Java runtime security flaw.

Speaking of recent security flaws, the Linux kernel security flaw made a recent splash on Slashdot. The comments section is particularly hilarious. =)

I WATCHED the gnomemobile the other day. hey diddle diddle. happy happy dog duh duh.

I've tried a few queries via the new Google Scholar, and it looks pretty cool. Also bizarre to hear that Bill Gates gets over four million spam messages per day. Ouch.

In an odd bit of irony, Linux users without a firewall are safer than those with one.

Watched "Glitter" (2001; Mariah Carey) last night on VHS, and "The Gnome-Mobile" (1967; Walter Brennan, Ed Wynn) last night on DVD.

For the record, here is the longest word in the English language (310 letters):
Ornicopytheobibliopsychocrystarroscioaerogenethliometeoroaustrohieroanothropoichthyopyrosiderochpnomyoalectryoophiobotanopegohydrorhabdocrithoaleuroalphitohalomolybdoclerobeloaxinocoscinodactyliogeolithonpessopsephrocatoptrotephraoneirochoonychodactyloarithstichooxogeloscogastrogyrocerobletonooenoscapulinaniac.

It was apparently used by medieval scribes to refer to someone who practices divination or forecasting by means of phenomena, interpretation of acts, or other manifestations related to animate or inanimate objects and appearances such as various animal behaviors, dreams, palmistry, wands, ring suspension and a number of other methods.

The sad thing about it is that none of the online dictionaries contain the word. In fact, their search form boxes typically truncate something that long. Sad. I also find it lame that most of the news sources that have reported on the 9-year-old boy story have expressed an inability to print the word because it's too long. C'mon, it's not THAT long...

Well, sadly, I wasn't able to spend more than a few minutes in front of or on the throne today during World Toilet Day. Maybe next year I'll be able to devote a few hours. =(

Just when you thought K-Mart was finally dead, they up and merge with Sears!

Anyone up for some online hunting? Can your digital camera take 2.5 gigapixel (2,500 megapixel) photos? Didn't think so. Muppets are back!

Things to remember when writing even the simplest of perl scripts (especially on a PC):

Wordpad (and Windows/DOS, in general) uses CR/LF's, while UNIX/Linux only uses CR's. Thus, any script you write you'll need to run through a 'dos2unix' utility first before uploading.

When a script is run via a Cron job, any references to files in the script *aren't* relative to the directory that the script is in (as you would expect it to be, and as it is if you run the script manually), so when a script is run via Cron, you have to modify all file names to include full server paths.

We've also been trying the new Trident Tropical Fruit sugarless gum with Xylitol this past week. Also quite tasty.

Tried some sugarless Pina Colada Koolerz gum with Xylitol over the past few days. Very tasty.

Also watched "The Transporter" and "Rundown" again a couple of nights ago on VHS. (Seen them before.)

Finally got my Atom and RSS feeds fixed, with a ton of help from Christian Renz at CGI Lance. (Blogger slightly mangles the links because of my custom SSI template implementation on this blog, so up until this morning the XML feed links have never quite worked right, but they do now.)

David's coming home today - we're very excited to see him again, and introduce him to little Jared, as he's never seen him before! Becky's sure grown since he's seen her last, too, so it should be fun for them to get reacquainted!

Tried some Vanilla Silk Organic Soymilk this past week. It's not as tasty as chocolate soymilk, but it's not too bad.

It's been fun to listen to all the Christmas music on the radio lately (95.5 FM). Becker and I actually watched "Frosty the Snowman" (1969; Jimmy Durante) on VHS today, just for kicks.

Found the 'The Itchy and Scratchy Show' mystery cache today, after running some errands and just being out and about in general.

We've also recently watched "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" (1986; Nichelle Nichols, Catherine Hicks), "The Care Bears Movie" (1985; Mickey Rooney, Carole King), "Rock 'N Learn: Telling Time" (2001), "Sister Act" (1992; Whoopi Goldberg), and "The Man from Snowy River" (1994; Kirk Douglas) - all on VHS and free, courtesy of the wonderful institution that is the Washoe County Library System.

We took the kids to see "The Incredibles" yesterday at the Riverside Theatre downtown. The previous night we watched all the various trailers and movie clips online, and were stoked for the real deal. When we got there, the 12:30 matinée was sold out, but we got tickets for the 2:00 showing. The parking garage next to the theatre was interesting. We'd been in there before several times before, but this time we were convinced that the tiny, yellow 1941 vintage car (I forget the make and model) on the fifth level by the elevators kept changing. (It didn't really, but each time we walked or drove by it, each of us noticed something different about it, something that we hadn't seen before.) We saw the Donnelly's walking around the garage several times as we drove around and around and around, up and down the various floors looking for any open spots to park. Anyway, the film was awesome, and we recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

The floor of the theater is another interesting phenomenon. It seems to attract items (not just food), but then hides them. During the course of the movie, Jared managed to loose three (3) binkies to the blackhole that is the floor. Search as we tried, we couldn't find a single one of them. Every time I picked up what I swear looked just like a binkie in the darkness, it was a candy wrapper, half-eaten hotdog, or a used napkin. Gross!

Well, I uninstalled FeedForAll 1.0 today. It doesn't support Blogger's Atom 0.3 feeds (despite their documentation stating that it *does* offer 'limited Atom .3' support), so it's pretty useless for me at this point. What I'd like to find isn't really a manual feed fix-it tool, but rather an automatic feed fix-it tool, something server-based, maybe a cron/gawk (search and replace) job, or a simple perl script or something. Anyone know of anything not overly complicated?

Merriam-Webster's is giving a free preview of their unabridged dictionary, but only for this week (11/8-11/14). Cool stuff. (Their regular [abridged] online dictionary is always free, but they normally charge for unabridged access.)

We watched "The Bourne Identity" (2002; Matt Damon, Julia Styles) tonight on VHS that the Crouch's lent us. Very cool film.

Downloaded the new Firefox 1.0 browser that was officially released today, but the jury's still out (my jury - I don't like tabbed browsing, and built-in popup blocking is old news). Also got the FeedForAll 1.0 RSS feed creation and maintenance utility that Chris Pirillo recommended today. Looks cool so far.

Finished listening to "Be Cool" by Elmore Leonard on unabridged audiobook today, along with the author interview at the end. Interesting interview, but I can't recommend the book. The ending was lame, and the book over all contains way too much language.

I had to resist the urge to have a screen full of widgets, as I checked their memory usage, and each one sucks up like 15 MB of RAM. I had about 8 of them running at the same time, but I've throttled it back to 2. Lame.

The kids and I have slight colds, so I'm consuming Halls Strawberry Mentho-Lyptus throat drops like they're going out of style. Found a cool website button maker today. Downloaded Konfabulator 1.8 and several cool widgets today. Pretty cool.

8 dOOrs. Legs. crayon. book. book. tree. raTChET. daddy. mommy. baby. MaRy-kate ashley. kick your knees up. bus. becky. blog.

We found the following caches today:

Equinox
Quixote
Spectre

and I ate a mediocre kraut dog at Wienerschnitzel. Everyone's been writing like crazed maniacs in our group novel. We're already ahead of schedule, and I have a feeling we're going to easily surpass our original goal of 50,000 words in 30 days. It's only day 6 of the challenge, and we've already got 18 chapters.

i ate OrAnGe PaNcAkES . i aTe a lollypop. i watched a movie - Teletubbies.

Wow, Blogger has really sucked over the past couple of days (for reliability). Lame.

I found it quite amusing that there is actually a World Toilet Organization, and that they host a World Toilet Summit, which culminates with the venerable World Toilet Day (Nov. 19)! Crap!

Watched "The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc" (1999; Milla Jovovich, John Malkovich, Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway) last night on VHS. Kinda creepy, and too much language, etc. I got the copy from the library, unrated, and it turned out to be a semi-legal preview version ("for your consideration, not for resale or rental") from Columbia Pictures. Didn't like it.

Our online collaborative novel is coming along quite nicely, as three of the story lines are starting to converge now. Good times.

I think it needs to be said that no browsers are safe from security flaws. Just within the past few weeks, all browsers have been found to contain notable security flaws.

I think it's rather hilarious that Mike Overton won his election race without spending a dime or even campaigning and even after he dropped out of the race! You know the other guy feels pretty crappy.

Watched the trailer for "Star Wars, Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith" today - great stuff!

I ATE PURPLE pancakes TODAY.

i bought MY new MARY-kate and ashley shoes. they are for geoCAChing.

we had a good birthday cake.

I was glad to see that John F. Kerry called George W. Bush and conceded the election this morning, and thus putting to rest the whole Ohio fiasco and preventing a long, drawn-out futile fight like in 2000. Congratulations to Mr. Bush!

I 'attended' a SANS webcast this morning on worms and virii, but experienced a weird PDF glitch in the process, which they aren't able to pinpoint. Strange.

It's snowing big ol', chubby flakes outside right now. Bizarre weather, since it was so warm yesterday... Who knew that sending spam is a felony?!!

Well, like many, I stayed up past 1:00 a.m. to watch the Election returns unfold and drag on and on (and also to see if there would be any last minute, midnight blogging on our collective novel - alas, there wasn't), which makes me glad I live in the West, otherwise I would've had to stay up till the wee hours of the morning to see the results, but I still got to see them drag on and on and yet still get a reasonable night's sleep. =)

In more exciting news, Becca really likes the new Disney Gummies multivitamins.

I like the little "I Voted Electronically" sticker that everyone got, even though it didn't stick very well to my Lands' End work jacket. I really think it's sad that the entire country can count hundreds of millions of votes in one night, but the state of Ohio can't count 175,000 final remaining 'provisional' votes, and that they want to take up to 11 more days to do so. Lame. If they need help, why don't they just ask? I'm sure there are lots of desparate Kerry fans out there willing to help count...

Well, I, like all good Americans, voted today, and let me tell you - I'm glad I waited until today. In recent weeks, we've both thought about early voting (which was all the rage), but the multi-hour long lines proved to be prohibitive. Tonight at 6:40 p.m., I walked right in and voted. No lines, no wait. Electronic voting was fun, and it was cool to see how the electronic paper trail booths here in Nevada worked. Very cool.

I ate green pancakes yesterday. MOMMY MADE THEM WITH GReEN FOOD CoLORING. tHeY WeRE yuMMY.

Well, we're off to a great start with our group novel. We've presently got a little more than 3,600 words written already between the five of us as we roll into day two of the challenge.

Well, I wrote Chapter One this morning, the first portion of our group effort at producing a novel in just 30 days (part of National Novel Writing Month).

This year's local election is hilarious because of all the funny references based upon candidates' names. Examples include "Patty Melt" (Patty Melton), "Pizza Frazza" (Pete Sferrazza - I think 'frazza' is Italian for 'frozen', thus making him frozen pizza), and Dr. Suess's 'Ziser Zazzer Zuzz' (from the famous ABC book - Richard Ziser). The campaign signs make us chuckle whenever we see them. =)

As Christmastime approaches, I always have to wonder why there are two different versions of 'Away in a Manger' (the traditional tune I learned as a youth, and the newer, lamer tune currently heard all over the place).

Read an interesting short tech article today, entitled "What happens when everyone has a WLAN?".