January 2003 Archives

Rain overnight, which left roads & parking lots treacherously glazed. I hate walking on ice, but I've been doing a lot of it this winter.

Only seven weeks until Spring.

One of the 'Softies says:

Most engineers at MSFT would be insulted at the thought that they couldn't compete without dirty tricks....

I wonder if this means that the phrase “Where's the lock-in?” is no longer heard during design reviews at Microsoft.

Spammers have found my Pair.com mailbox, alas. I've heard good things about POPfile, a relatively new spam filter, but I don't think it works with IMAP. Sure would be nice if the Outlook team at Microsoft put more effort into spam filtering and system security instead of pointless gee-whizzeries that let anyone with an SMTP server execute code of their choosing on my computer.

Second run-through on the taxes: found a few more charitable contributions to deduct, so our refund went up $24. Every little bit helps.

The alarm didn't go off this morning—or maybe I turned it off without even waking up; it wouldn't be the first time—so everybody was a little rushed this morning.

Dropped Mr Explorer off at the Ford dealer, for an oil change. Later, the service guy called: “You need your transmission flushed & your fuel filter replaced. $200, please.” This car has to last until we've paid off Jennifer's car (and saved up a down payment for Mr Explorer's replacement), so I gritted my teeth and said, “Sure, go ahead.”

[The final tally: oil change, transmission flush & fill, power steering flush & fill, fuel filter replaced, $226. Ouch.]

In passing, I mentioned that the radio is sort of broken: I can't turn it off. He guessed fixing that would cost another $200, and involve shipping the radio to Chicago, so I declined. I'll just turn it down when I don't want music.

[Stupid Idea #27: The Silence Channel, a haven of peace & tranquility amidst the trials of modern life, i.e., dead air, 24/7, for people who don't want to watch television but also don't want to turn off the set. At least there'd be no commercials.]

Looking at SnipSnap (snipsnap.org), a regular combo platter of web buzzwords: it does wiki, blogging, RSS, and a bunch of other stuff I didn't pay much attention to. I'm thinking it might be useful at work. (I'm still quite pleased with CityDesk for these pages.) Since I started at WRI (almost twelve years ago), I've been keeping a log, in great big text files edited with Notepad. Something a little more powerful might be nice.

Junk mail: it's been five years since I bought pox, and I still get catalogs from Dell. The Sharper Image litters the mailbox with catalogs for ion-powered everything. Every week or so I get another naughty-video catalog, though never twice from the same company. I don't get very many credit-card offers any more, which puzzles me. (Maybe the economy is so bad that even credit-card companies are cutting back?)

Never did rain much yesterday, but we did get approximately half an inch of icy snow overnight. Jake & I took Jennifer to work so she wouldn't have to drive in it.

The Times says:

The so-called Kartoffelkanone are made from piping and masking tape bought at any hardware store. With a range of 200 metres they could split a man's head at 15 metres and penetrate a wooden wall at 90 metres.

One of the neighbors in East Gary (thirty years ago, more or less) built one of these and launched a tennis ball up & down the street. I thought he was a moron, but apparently he was just ahead of his time.

[Most news sites expire their articles within a few days of publication, which means that most of the news-article links in the Daybook are probably broken. Sorry.]

Installed Windows Media Player 9 at work today (can't install it at home: it won't run on Windows 2000). The license agreement contains this little gem:

You may not disclose the results of any benchmark test of the .NET Framework to any third party without Microsoft's prior written approval.

Good luck enforcing that one, 'Softies.

[As it turns out, Windows Media Player 9 does run on Windows 2000.]

Finished the first run-through on our federal taxes: a nice refund, but smaller than last year, which makes me think I did something wrong. It was just a practice run, anyway—I'll try again some afternoon when I have a few hours to concentrate on it.

The BBC says:

People living in the south Wales Valleys town of Merthyr Tydfil buy more white socks than anywhere else in the UK, according to new figures.

One of life's little mysteries, I suppose.

Cold this morning: -2° at 8:00am. Sunny at first, but clouded up toward midday.

I have lots of Microsoft Word documents on my home machine, relics of a time when I used Word for personal correspondence, fiction (no, you can't read any of it: it stinks), etc. I don't use Word any more, and it occurs to me that I should convert all those documents to something more portable, like HTML. Not Microsoft's version of HTML, full of wonky stuff and Windows-specific ActiveX objects: just straight-up XHTML.

It would be a lot of work. And I don't suppose I could automate the process any, either. There's the Microsoft lock-in rearing its ugly head once more: You will use Microsoft software. And once you are using Microsoft software, you will not switch to anything else.

Bah. I got rid of PhotoDraw and FrontPage, I can get rid of Word.

Steak & Shake has a new(?) service, cleverly (cloyingly?) named FAXASAK: fill out the form, fax it to the nearest Steak & Shake, then go pick up your chow.

Pity they don't deliver.

(The Steak & Shake restaurants in Bloomington now accept credit cards. If the one just down the street from WRI starts doing the same, I'm in big trouble.)

The Daughters of the American Revolution always struck me as a vaguely sexist organization: what, only women get to preen & brag over their glorious ancestors? Men don't count?

It turns out there's a Sons of the American Revolution organization as well. This is the first I've heard about it—they must not have very many members.

Jerry Pournelle says, foolishly, in regard to Windows XP:

All this crap about multiple users: why isn't there a setting that says, “I will be the only user. Please stop this multiple accounts on this machine insanity. This is my computer, and you stop playing with my head about what I can and cannot install on this machine.”

It is certainly true that some Windows applications have very poorly-designed setup programs. (This includes numerous applications from Microsoft, who really have no excuse.) But the Windows XP user & security models are not to blame.

Fixed the Excel worksheet that generates weather charts: now the temperature scale runs from -20 to 110, which should suffice. I even tweaked the VBScript that drives the spreadsheet, to set the size of the generated PNG files to something a little smaller.

Now all I need to do is regenerate two years of charts and import them into CityDesk. That'll be work, that will.

Meant to work on the taxes this evening, but Excel and VBScript ate up all my time. Maybe tomorrow.

Did some housecleaning this morning: Jennifer did all the hard parts, I just pushed the vacuum around a little.

Supposed to do NetMeeting with the (other) grandparents today, but I can't seem to raise them on the telephone.

Hm...the Indiana Marriages Through 1850 database (over at the Indiana State Library web site) says Israel Strum married Sarah Ann Alexander on February 18, 1841.

Another trip to the library (two in one weekend): this time I found Israel Sturm in the 1850, 1860 & 1870 Indiana Censuses. (On the same page of the 1850 Census is Jacob Sturm and family: I think this is the Jacob Sturm I always find when I do random web searches. I wonder if he's related somehow to Israel Sturm. Brothers, perhaps?

(Leaving the library, I was accosted by a panhandler. He had a good story—his house in Chicago burned down, he's trying to get his pregnant wife to Danville where a church has promised to put them up for a while, he just needs some gas to drive the forty miles to Danville, can you spare anything?—but the delivery was just too rapid-fire & slick to be quite believable. Better luck next time, fella.)

And I've acquired a second Sturm correspondent: this one lives right here in Champaign, too.

Finally did NetMeeting with the grandparents. It worked, sort of, though the video quality left something to be desired & the audio was a bit scrozzled. Jake wouldn't talk, either.

One of these years, when we all have high-bandwidth internet connections (not to mention high-bandwidth video cameras), NetMeeting (or whatever descendant thereof we're using then) will be much closer to the science-fiction videophone we've all been waiting for.

Sneaked over to the library for an hour, and found Israel Sturm in the 1850 Indiana Census: Posey County, Lynn Township, page 222. He was listed in the index under Stern, which made him a little harder to find.

Went to Bloomington, for a gymnastics meet (Illinois State vs. Illinois). It seemed like a strange way to spend the afternoon, but it was fun. The grandparents were there, along with Aunt Amy & Cousin Natalie. Jake particularly liked the uneven bars, probably because they looked so dangerous.

Afterward, everybody went to the grandparents' house for pizza. We didn't get home until after 9:00pm. Poor Jake fell asleep in the car.

Managed to stay awake long enough to finish reading Bare: On Women, Dancing, Sex, and Power, by Elisabeth Eaves. I learned a lot about Ms. Eaves' sexual habits & history, but not so much about anything else.

Didn't sleep so well last night. Must have been that super-sized Coke I had with lunch: too much caffeine for so late in the day. That, and I couldn't stop coughing.

Pity me, pity me.

I feel better today. My throat is clearing nicely, and my voice is almost back to normal. I think my microbial houseguests are finally packing to leave. Don't let the door smack your tiny little behinds on the way out, fellas.

Checked DSL availability again, got the same answer: in your dreams, pal. I suppose living three miles (more or less) from the Clark Street switch might have something to do with it.

There are three networks: telephone (which subdivides into the old wired network and the newer wireless network), cable television, and the internet. With everything going digital, there's no longer any need to segregate them.

Imagine a house network, with telephones, televisions, computers, VCRs, answering machines, etc., as terminals sharing a single connection to the outside world. Imagine connecting to any television channel—anywhere in the world—as easily as you connect to a web site now. No more nickel & diming by the telephone company over local vs. long-distance (or land-line vs. cellular) service. I'd pay $100/month for that, and come out ahead.

On the other hand, imagine a single multinational media conglomerate controlling everything you see, read & listen to. Imagine telemarketers popping up advertisements on your computer instead of just ringing your telephone. Imagine your VCR not working any more, because all your favorite programs have been DRM'd to prevent their being recorded. Imagine paying even more than you did for the old services, because existing revenue streams must be preserved.

A way out maybe, or a dead end for sure.

You can take it with you, but that doesn't mean they'll let you keep it:

Since much of [Dante Gabriel Rossetti's] poetry had been buried with [his wife] Elizabeth, and as he had kept no copies, Rossetti's friends assisted in having the body exhumed to retrieve the manuscript.

All together, now: euwww.

During his brief visit to my office on Monday, Jacob needed a new diaper (did he ever...), so I changed him right there on the floor. The very stinky used diaper got tied up in a plastic garbage bag and left in my office trash can. The next morning, a new bag was in place, so I assumed all biohazardous material had been removed.

Today, I detected a familiar odor hanging in the air, and discovered that Mr Office Cleaner had just put a new bag in the trash can without emptying it first. Thanks a lot, Mr Office Cleaner. Hard to enjoy lunch when one's office is thick with eau de merde.

Poking around in www.x10ideas.com, I found some circuit diagrams & parts lists for controlling garage door openers via X-10. Sure would be nice to have a ‘close the garage door’ switch, say, on the nightstand next to the bed.

On the other hand, there's something vaguely slimy about the site—the pages show different URLs than what's in Internet Explorer's address bar. I suspect these are the people responsible for the infamous barrage of pop-up spycam ads, in which case I don't care to give them any of my money.

Lots of X-10 widgetry over at www.radioshack.com, and probably cheaper, too.

The grandparents have officially begged off on coming to visit this weekend: bad weather, too tired, that sort of thing. Some other time, perhaps.

Strange...some portions of these entries are written at work, and sent to my Netcom account for later incorporation into the Daybook; today's entry, sent at 4:11pm, never arrived. I had to fish it out of the Sent Items folder on the WRI imap server.

[It finally showed up on the 27th, four days later.]

More tax forms in today's mail: this time, a 1099 from the bank. Not very much interest income this year, but I suppose we still have to report it.

Cold lately: below zero most of the night, with a low of -3° at 8:00am and a high of 8° for most of the afternoon. Supposed to get even colder tonight, too—though not as bad as twenty years ago, when these Canadian presents (cadeaux?) dropped the temperature to -25° or worse.

Threw away the Gevalia coffeemaker yesterday morning: it was too big, too dirty (I never cleaned it) and didn't work very well. I hear rumors that Black & Decker have a smaller one that fills a travel mug instead of a glass coffeepot; that would be useful. Might have to look for one.

I want one of these: the SyncMaster 172W LCD monitor, from Samsung. It looks like the same sort of display as the Powerbook I was pining for a few weeks ago.

On the other hand, the VX2000 from ViewSonic has a certain appeal: bigger screen, higher resolution, wider viewing angles, etc., etc.

Over at RoadWired (www.roadwired.com), they're selling the Pod: about the size of a lunchbox, but with:

Over 20 pockets and compartments hold camera or other compact device, digital media and/or film, cords and adapters, batteries, mobile phone, and more.

I can imagine some highly unusual circumstances in which such a thing might be necessary, but in general anyone who makes a habit of carrying around that much gear has Serious Problems.

I've been using Outlook Express at work for a while now, but I have not enjoyed the experience. Every time I launch it, it complains about the certificates it gets from WRI's mail servers. Its IMAP support is just a little flaky. And lately it's started dropping icons from its toolbar: after a while, there's only a few left, spaced very widely.

I must find a replacement, and soon.

Hm...Black & Decker has the Brew N Go personal coffeemaker: it will deposit fifteen ounces of caffeinated goodness into a stainless steel travel mug (no more coffeepot, no more pouring, no more dripstains on the counter). All the relevant parts—including a permanent filter (no more paper filters)—are dishwasher-safe. And it costs only $22.

[I dithered for two months, then bought one. It's very nice.]

Snooping around in the newsgroups, I see that people were complaining about the Outlook Express disappearing-toolbar problem as far back as version 4.71 (1998). Sheesh, 'Softies, five years and you haven't come up with a fix yet? There isn't even a Knowledge Base article acknowledging the problem.

Installed TaxCut 2002 this evening. It went fairly well, except that the installer required Administrator privileges but didn't bother to check whether it had them. (Bad installer developer. No donut for you.) No Product Activation, which was nice, but I was disappointed to see important offers from special partners cluttering the installer and the TaxCut Start menu folder.

I don't want advertisements in the software that I use, thank you very much, so I deleted them.

Their online registration form is also quite deceptive: after a long series of nosy questions (which I didn't answer), there's a Register Now button; after that, there's a long stretch of empty space followed by a sneaky little pair of checkboxes: ‘Do not sell your personal information to anyone who gives us money’ and ‘Do not send you spam’. Both are unchecked, i.e., TaxCut can sell personal information, and TaxCut can spam their customers. Sneaky, sneaky.

Didn't work, though. I checked both, and then hit Register Now.

[The screenful of whitespace, and the artful use of double negatives, constitutes what lawyer types would call ‘awareness of guilt’: TaxCut knows they're doing something underhanded, so they try to hide it.]

Having finished grumbling in the Daybook about TaxCut's sneaky registration process, I started work on our federal taxes. I didn't get too far, as we're still waiting for a 1099 from the bank and a W-2G from the Lotto people. (We only won $12 last year, but I figure we'll get audited if we don't report it.)

Everybody's feeling a little better this morning. Jacob & I are still coughing, but less than we were. My throat doesn't feel quite so raw and swollen as it did.

What if University degrees had License Agreements like software:

This Degree is licensed, not sold, and remains the property of [University]. You may not use this Degree, or any associated knowledge or skills, except as set forth in this Agreement....

Caught a brief glimpse on television tonight of a program about Biblical Prophets and Seers, who predicted the World Trade Center attacks. I'd be more impressed if the prophets and seers—or, more accurately, those attempting to make a quick buck by invoking them—had said something before the towers fell.

In other news: I've been in email contact with a nice fellow in Huntsville, Alabama, who might be related to the Sturm side of the family tree. We're comparing notes.

It would be nice to know more about the Sturms. I know so little now....

The forecast for tomorrow night predicts a low of -7°. All my weather charts stop at zero. Oops.

Woke up this morning feeling quite wretched: headache, stuffed-up nose, nasty cough, etc., etc., etc. Jennifer nursed me back to an approximation of health. I feel better now.

Jacob is full of smiles today, not to mention full of energy. We think his new teeth aren't hurting any more.

My Netcom mailbox has seen a sudden increase in spam. Disappointing.

Fooled around a bit with CityDesk keywords, to create more links in the Genealogy section: married women now appear under their maiden names and—if they married into one of the main families I'm tracking—on the family page as well. It doesn't matter much to me (I know where everybody is), but the loyal readership might find it convenient.

Jacob is still on various medications, but doing much better.

I'm on antibiotics, for a nasty bit of conjunctivitis (i.e., pinkeye) I picked up on Thursday. I still have a cold, too: I cough, I sneeze, my voice isn't working too well.

Quilters here today: Jennifer invited over a couple of friends.

The local Staples has a small rack of iPaq accessories, including a very nice zippered case. The big problem with iPaq cases is they're never large enough to accommodate the Compact Flash sleeve, but this one does. I may have to get one.

They also have a teeny-tiny keyboard that the iPaq plugs into, but I'm less enthusiastic about that: I think it would be easier to get Transcriber to recognize my scribbly handwriting than to teach myself to type on such itty-bitty keys.

Took Jacob to see the doctor this morning; now he—Jacob, not the doctor—is on three medications: one for his nose, one for his cough, and one for the (mild) ear infection the doctor found.

Poor little guy. He & I stayed home today, to rest and recuperate.

Everybody got a little bit more sleep last night than the night before, but Jacob & I are still coughing. I bought some Super-Duper Cough Suppressant at the drugstore last night, but forgot to take some. Oops.

In this morning's inbox:

From: Breaking News
Subj: Osama bin Laden Captured!

Nice try, spammer. Now go away and die.

Two buzzwords that have been buzzing lately: WiFi and Wiki. I knew about WiFi—it's wireless networking—but was completely in the dark with Wiki. I figured the two were somehow related; they have three of four letters in common, after all.

Not so: as explained at wiki.org,

Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser.

I don't think I want anybody else editing these pages. They're mine. No Wiki here, thanks.

(My other first impression of Wiki had something to do with kitschy faux-Polynesian interior decorating, but I figured that had to be wrong.)

[I hear the linguists complaining that one can't have two first impressions. Maybe they can't, but my mental processes are not so constrained.]

Microsoft Knowledge Base article 261959 is titled, “FIX: DHTML Scriptlet Method Fails on 1,143rd Invocation”. The article explains that it's only the 1,143rd invocation that fails—invocations 1–1,142 and 1,144 & up all succeed—but neglects to explain the significance of the magic number 1,143.

Don't leave me hanging like this, 'Softies! I can't stand the suspense!

Poor Jake, sent home from daycare (at 3:30pm) for having a temperature of 101°. Poor little guy. Now (6:00pm) he's having a bath, and seems sprightly enough. A bit congested, but sprightly.

After the bath, we took everybody's temperature: Jake's was 99.7°, mine was an even 100°. Maybe we are sick.

Rough night: everybody sick, everybody coughing, Jacob woke up at 2:00am very unhappy & wouldn't go back to sleep. All & sundry are just a little loopy today as a result.

I was a little loopy last night, too, as evidenced by the following conversation:

“We should rent [the movie] Signs.”
“What's it about?”
“Crop circles.”
“Popsicles?”
“No, crop circles.”

Must have been the Nyquil.

Geekstuff: the nice people at Pocket PC Techs, www.pocketpctechs.com, will upgrade 3600 series iPaqs from 32MB of system RAM to 64MB for only $129. (They go up to 256MB, for $499, but everything past 64MB shows up as a storage card.)

Nasty headache this morning. Hard to concentrate. (Hard to stay awake, for that matter.)

Poking around in the Social Security Death Index at ancestry.com, I found:

BOB L AKERS
SSN: 309-30-7161
Residence: 29526 Conway, Horry, SC
Born: 30 May 1931
Last Benefit:
Died: 4 Sep 2002
Issued: IN (Before 1951)

Further poking around turned up an obituary at The Sun News, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina:

Bob L. Akers, 71, of Wise Road, died Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2002, at Grand Strand Regional Medical Center. He was born in Indiana, a son of the late Orville and Ruby Kibbe Akers. He was an Army veteran of the Korean conflict and the Vietnam War. Survivors include his wife, Faye Akers; a daughter, Lisa D. Akers of Conway; a sister, Bettye Fair of Coperas Cove, Texas; a brother, Dennis Akers of Crown Point, Ind.; and a grandson, Randy Akers of Conway. A memorial...

The full obituary—available for $2.95—fails to mention Mike or myself. I wonder if Faye knows she's his second wife; I wonder if Lisa knows she has a pair of half-brothers; I wonder what sort of person Bob had become, thirty-nine years after he was legally pruned from the family tree, and whether he ever wondered what became of his two sons.

Guess I won't be finding out any time soon. Sigh.

Dropped Jake off at the grandparents' house, then went to see About Schmidt: a disturbing film.

Jake had a haircut this morning (his third). At first he was a little concerned, but after a while he didn't mind so much.

Since we were already there, I got my hair cut as well. The nice lady even shaved off the beard for me. (I've been looking for a painless way to get rid of it—scissors & razor always shred my face.)

Jennifer says I look twenty years younger without it. I don't know: I always look the same to me.

Jennifer's 401(k) statement came in today's mail: the balance went up this quarter, which is nice.

Updating the 401(k) section of Money 2002 was less nice: for one fund, Money kept whining that the shares × price did not equal the balance. My first solution: use the Windows calculator program to determine balance ÷ shares, then paste that value into Money. This didn't work: Money whined that 19.60004957690617570506247816926 had too many digits. Chopping a few (i.e., twenty-three) off the end made it happy.

All together now: Sheesh.

Jacob's fine today, but I'm not feeling so well: sore throat, bit of a fever, general lack of energy.

This made me laugh:

At this point you may be thinking: This is |-|0r535|-|17.

...from a discussion of 1337-speak on the Straight Dope web site.

I want one of these: the Apple PowerBook G4 17”.

It's curious that PC hardware over the last few years has just left me cold—The Pentium 4 has been nudged up to 2.5 GHz? Yawn.—but Apple keeps coming out with things that catch my interest: first the iPod, now this. Alas, it costs $4000, so buying one will have to wait until we win the Lotto (tomorrow, for sure).

For years, I've been saying that the time to buy a new computer is when you starting running into things you can't do with the one you have. My current machine, nessus, will be three years old this August, and capably handles everything I've thrown at it so far. I don't see any looming problems, either.

It won't be long before Jacob will need a computer....

Calumet Park Cemetery—where my grandmother Ruby Akers is buried—has a web site: www.calumetparkcemetery.com. Their What's New page lists the following:

AIR BURIALS For the disposition of cremains by aircraft.

I guess from now on I'll be carrying an umbrella everywhere I go. Thanks a lot.

This made me laugh: the Origami Boulder Company www.origamiboulder.com.

A week ago, Jennifer took some cute pictures of Jacob: he was having pasta & sauce for dinner, so he was covered in sauce from the nose down.

Just tonight I got around to downloading them from the camera. I'm so lazy.

Jacob's temperature was normal this morning (though he seemed a bit grumpy), so off he went to daycare. We'll see whether he stays there.

My scholastic career:

The River Forest web sites are messed up—the img tags all point to files on the preparer's computer, instead of to URLs. Memo to Mr. Gregory Weitzel: you have some work to do.

Microsoft's new idea: Smart Personal Objects Technology.

Let your watch intelligently filter information like sports scores, stock quotes, and weather for timely updates.

I haven't had a wristwatch in years—they corrode rapidly, and cease to function—so I don't suppose I'll rush out for a SPOTwatch.

The proliferation of overly-chatty internet-connected appliances & widgetry is getting a bit disturbing. I don't want my cell phone (wristwatch, PDA, whatever) going feep-feep-feep with an important offer from the store I happen to be walking / driving past. I don't want my grocery cart to suggest side dishes for tonight's dinner. I don't need minute-by-minute reportage on the stock market, or on the weather.

Are there really people who want these things?

One of the Microsofties said (six months ago):

Privacy is like DRM for the individual. When you grant someone a license to use a particular piece of personal information, you want to be sure that the information is not being copied or used in ways that you had not authorized.

That's as may be—but I don't see Microsoft working on anything that would allow me to restrict what vendors do with the personal information I give them. Their entire focus is on preventing me from doing legal things with software I have legally acquired, on the grounds that other people might be doing illegal things.

Jacob has a bit of a fever this morning (100.4°, I think it was), so he & Papa are staying home today.

Downloaded numerous Windows updates from Microsoft, then booted Linux and downloaded numerous Linux updates from Red Hat. Everything is up-to-date once more.

It's hard to get a reliable reading from the digital thermometer, so it's hard to tell whether Jacob has a fever. If he does, it's a low one, nothing like the 104° fevers he used to frighten us with when he was a baby.

He seems sprightly enough, that's for sure.

After a three-hour nap, Jacob and I ran some errands: to Target, for diaper pail refills, then to Best Buy for the (tax year) 2002 edition of Tax Cut.

Went to Research Night at the library, poked around in the ancestry.com online census images. It appears that in 1920 Orville Akers and his wife Ruby were living in Kentucky: Greenup County, Russell Township. What were they doing there?

(The 1930 census also records that Orville was born in Tennessee, though I'm not sure I believe it.)

Poor Jake, never made it to daycare this morning. Instead, he went to work with Papa for a few minutes, then off to see the doctor: there's an outbreak of pinkeye at daycare, and we were worried that he might have caught it. (His eye has been a bit crusty & red lately.)

The doctor said Jake doesn't have pinkeye, just a touch of conjunctivitis (i.e., pinkeye). He's back on the eyedrops and decongestant, and stayed home today (since he's contagious until the eyedrops start working).

It's been almost three months—eighty-nine days, to be exact—since Jake was too sick for daycare. That's pretty good.

Must remember to call the Lake County Board of Health today and ask for death certificates for Orville and Ruby Akers. (They're my grandparents, sort of: Orville died twenty years before I was born, and I don't believe I ever met Ruby. So they're just names on a page, really.)

Genealogy stuff: one can request vital records (e.g., death certificates) from the Indiana State Dept. of Health, by filling out a simple form and faxing it to (317) 233-7210. It's rather expensive—$4 for the record itself, plus $5.50 “shipping and handling”—but easier than poking around in courthouses or dealing with county health departments.

If I want it sooner than five or six weeks, I have to pay $11.35 more for FedEx. I don't suppose I will—genealogy isn't really an instant-gratification sort of hobby.

Geekstuff: Intuit has inflicted Product Activation on their TurboTax software, and customers are justifiably unhappy. I hope the people who publish TaxCut enjoy the surge in sales. (Jennifer & I have been using TaxCut ever since Microsoft abandoned TaxSaver, so Intuit's contempt for its customers doesn't matter much to me.)

[A software company with which I am familiar has had the equivalent of Product Activation in certain distributions of its chief product since 1996. It's been quite a burden on the development and technical support departments, and quite an annoyance to customers, but it makes management feel good.]

[TurboTax also stashes copy-protection data on sector thirty-three, track zero of the hard disk. This is where boot loaders live, so installing TurboTax just might overwrite your boot loader and kill your system: another reason to go with TaxCut.]

Jacob ran poor Jennifer ragged all day, but I think they had fun. His eye is much improved already.

He's getting several more teeth, so he's drooling a bit and chewing on his fingers.

Fixed a number of typographical & HTML errors in these pages. I don't intend to revise Daybook entries once they are written, but I will correct errors.

The Champaign County Genealogical Society is having their monthly Research Night at the library tomorrow, 6:00pm–9:00pm. Perhaps I will attend, and peruse the 1930 Census a bit further.

On the way to daycare this morning, Jacob spoke up from his carseat: “Book?”

Alas, I had removed all books & toys from the car when I cleaned it up last month, so I had none to offer him. I'll have to fix that before tomorrow's commute.

Trying to connect the iPaq to WRI's wireless network; there are problems. For one thing, the Socket drivers have no notion of profiles: it only keeps one set of network parameters at a time, so each new network overwrites the previous.

This is not very sensible for a mobile device. KelBran Software (www.kelbran.com) has a product, IP Manager, that might remedy this (for only $15), but without a network connection I've no way to install it.

Interesting: the Wolfram Research Champaign office has ten holidays in 2003, while the United Kingdom office gets eight and the Tokyo office gets seventeen.

I want to celebrate Respect for the Aged Day (September 15th), especially since I am somewhat aged myself, but that's Japan only.

Fooled around a bit with Outlook Express at work, as a possible replacement for the (rather vile) WebMail interface. I think I've got it working now.

This is not me: www.patrickrice.com.

(Some people get all worked up when URLs similar to their own end up belonging to someone else. I don't. It's no different than somebody having the same telephone number with a different area code, and nobody gets excited about that, do they?)

In today's mail: an invoice from National Geographic, $34 for my 2003 membership year. Guess I didn't send in a two-year renewal last year after all.

Jennifer took down the Christmas tree & decorations this morning. I helped, a little, but mostly just got in the way.

Christmas is over, alas.

Jacob had spaghetti for dinner this evening. Shortly thereafter, he had a bath.

Dropped Jennifer off at work, Jacob at daycare: and I have the day to myself. Haven't done much with it, so far, beyond shoveling the driveway.

I do not want one of these: the Utilikilt, www.utilikilts.com. Partly because I'm not a muscular twenty-something male model like everyone on their web site, partly because I don't feel like spending $115 for an article of clothing.

(One of the minor details of Robert A. Heinlein's science fiction is that the men all wear kilts. In the Fifties, people figured automobiles would soon be replaced by personal helicopters; maybe they also figured that pants would be replaced by kilts. Wrong on both counts, sorry.)

The weather people can't make up their minds just how much snow is supposed to fall today. One to three, four to six, three to seven, I think they don't really know but are afraid to admit it.

Jake and I stayed home today, to have male bonding (i.e., tv & donuts).

Total snowfall: about an inch, I'd say. Jake & I played in the driveway for a while. I took some pictures, so there will be a Kid Pix mailing presently.

Jennifer fired up her Christmas present—a shredder, of all things—this evening, and fed it a small mountain of documents. It's rather noisy, but it works.

(It was a present from me. I'm so romantic.)

Trying to think of something useful to do with my last day of vacation (tomorrow), and failing. Alas.

Geekstuff:

The iPaq can access shared directories on nessus, via the wireless network thingy. This is sort of cool. (It will be cooler if I can do it at work, too.)

I can't remember the last time I booted Linux on nessus. I should probably do that sometime soon, and download more updates.

All is quiet
On New Year's Day

Jacob is fine—I guess he was just sleepy yesterday.

Weatherdroids are predicting 2–4, or perhaps 3–7, inches of snow, beginning tomorrow at daybreak. Just when the Christmas Eve snow had finished melting, too.

A new year: time to throw out last year's calendars, create a bunch of 2003 directories in the web site, etc., etc.

Finished reading I'm Just Here for the Food, by Alton Brown. I'll have to try some of the recipes sometime.

Hm...short nap for Jacob today: 1:30–2:39.