SELECT TOP 1 FROM Symptoms… ORDER BY Severity DESC;

I imagine running a day care is a tricky business; you have a staff of a dozen or so looking after 50-60 children.  Children are living petri dishes and catch all kinds of stuff when they’re young, and therefore day care’ are always on the lookout for symptoms that may infect the entire facility.

Over the weekend, Gabe had quite the fever and was generally an unhappy little guy.  We peaked into his mouth, saw a tooth poking through to join the half-a-dozen other teeth he had already sprouted, so passed the fever off as teething.  We gave him Tylenol, a bit miffed that the fever didn’t budge for 3 days (Friday he started getting warm pretty suddenly).

Sunday night’s bath found he had a red rash, somewhat like what we see with his eczema.  We thought nothing of it.  He still had a fever, so we just put the eczema cream on the rash and put him to bed like normal.

Monday morning, I was in Edmonton on business, so Jeff got him ready in the morning and sent him off to daycare.  Jeff calls me at around 5 that night saying the day care thought he had Baby Measles.

Measles!

I panicked, mostly because I was in Edmonton and couldn’t see for myself if it was just the day care being overly concerned or if something was really wrong.  I couldn’t get home until 10 at night and had to wait until morning when Gabe got up.  And the entire time, I’m thinking measles in a child that young can NOT be a good thing!

The next morning, he seemed fine, was his normal chipper self.  He had a bit of a bumpy rash on  his face, but most noticeable were red patches on his eyelids and under his eyes.  All in all, it just looked like an allergic reaction I have when I get into wheat or flour and set off my Celiac Disease, so we passed it off as a recent change in our laundry soap.  Just in case, and to help the daycare feel better, we made an appointment with the doc.

Turns out he had Roseola, which is commonly called “baby measles”, but the term ‘measles’ is extremely incorrect.  Roseola is cause by a virus that infects almost every young kids before the age of 3, sorta like Chicken Pox.  A baby will be infected for about a week without symptoms and sometimes just go through a Roseola infection unnoticed.  ‘Symptoms’ only appear once the virusis being fought off by the immune system;  High fever that can last 3-5 days, followed immediately by a rash or red-n-white rashlike pattern on the face, tummy and back.

We were joking in the car on the way back from the doctors, we joked that the daycare’s query of their signs and symptoms book (from the 70’s) was severely inaccurate:

SELECT TOP 1 Disease FROM Symptoms
WHERE Symptom = rash
ORDER BY Severity DESC;

But, who can blame them, when they have 50 other kids they need to keep healthy.

PS3 Purple Screen of Death

We bought a PS3 about a month ago, not only for the Playstation-y goodness, but the fact that it was also a Blu-Ray DVD player.

Today, while out running about the city, we stopped and picked up a Blu-Ray DVD (Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer). We were so excited to watch a BR on our plasma in the recently reno’d basement that is now the office/entertainment room, that we quickly ate dinner and waited (im)patiently for Moo to get to sleep.

We raced downstairs, turned on the PS3, loaded the movie and…

Purple screen of Death!

What the heck?

Seeing our night of relaxation slowly spiraling down the cosmic toilet, Jeff went to work trying to figure out why Blu-Ray and our HDMI-capable TV would not talk nicely, and I hopped on the interwebs. After a few dozen forums describing the same problem, it came down to a 7-letter separation in the alphabet.

Our ViewSonic HDMI TV only supported up to 1080i. The Blu-Ray was pumping out 1080p and the extra encoding was somehow overloading the display. Or something like that. Who knows.

We ended up ditching the HDMI and switched to component cables where the quality took a severe hit, but the movie was still watchable (and didn’t look like it had been attacked by Barney)

UPDATE:

We got the Blu-Ray to work with a rather half-assed work around. We used the component cables to hook the PS3 into the TV via the RGB input, then set the output (or something like that) on the PS3 to also use RGB and voila! It worked. And we pretty much got the whole Blu-Ray experience.

Soft-core Porn, You Have Made My Day

Wednesday’s defy the laws of relativity in that every living soul in the city chooses to leave at exactly the same time I do every Wednesday, therefore making traffic a Hump Day misery.

I made the trek into the city from our neighborhood perched high atop the city, dropped the husband off at work and meandered through traffic to the gravel parking lot just across from the building where I work in the Whorehouse district, as I do every day.

After collecting my computer bag from the trunk of the car, I proceeded to trudge across the parking lot until something caught my eye.  At first I thought someone had dropped school portraits; the pictures were arranged in such a way as to lead one to believe they were school pictures.  But, upon closer inspection, I noticed the buxom woman in the pictures was indeed mooning me, her perfectly round posterior bared for all the world to see.

I laughed out loud; a sort of surprised and embarrassed type of laugh, not much unlike that of a person who has just stumbled upon porn and doesn’t quite know how to react.

But, that sadly discarded page from someone’s porno put a smile on my face, not from the scantily clad woman waving her rear-end in my general direction, but from the sheer stupidity of finding something such as this amusing.

So indeed, soft-core porn.  You have made my day

Yahoo Says: “Sorry you can’t sign in, but do you have a Credit Card?

Interestingly enough, after a Vista crash on my work laptop, I rebooted to what I thought was a normal Windows session. I opened my Yahoo messenger, clicked the sign in button and was unsuccessful at signing in. Naturally, one tends to click the “Try again” method, and Yahoo signed in fine.

Then, out of the blue up pops Firefox with a Yahoo page saying “Sorry That You’re Having Trouble Signing In”.

Trouble? I look to my status bar; Yahoo seems to have signed in without a problem. Just to make sure, I opened the messenger and saw all my on-line contacts.

That seemed odd.

So, I returned to the Firefox session, meaning to close the browser when something very interesting was also written on the page. It asked to “verify my identity” and then gave me the option to do so using a Credit Card.

A Credit Card?

Even more interestingly, the Firefox NoScript addon had blocked a script from Akamai. There’s Akamai again, tho this time I’m sure they’re just hosting Yahoo’s content and not trying to ping my computer programs.

The page seems legit, Firefox did not warn me about possible spoofing. But seeing as how I signed in fine and somehow got a failure to sign in screen, something has definately gotten mixed up in the mix.

This had been the first time EVER had I ever been prompted to prove my identity with a credit card. That’s what all those “What’s your favorite pet” password retrieval questions are for.

In any case, Yahoo may also nibble my bum if it thinks I’m going to reveal credit card activity to them.

See the Vista’s and Not Much More …

… with Windows Vista

Would you believe me if I told you I DESPISE Windows Vista? Would you believe me even more if I told you I would rather pull my own head off than work with Windows Vista?  I imagine there are more than a handful of savvy computer users taken for quite the loop when Windows Vista ended up in their care.

I’m seriously gonna tar-and-feather someone from IT for making me switch to this god awful excuse for an operating system.

I’m a developer. To me, Windows XP was the ultimate platform; stable, reliable, relatively easy to recover from the dreaded ‘This program is not responding’ dilemma whenever something took more than 5 seconds to open.

Upon returning from mat leave, my computer decided that it would eat a few dozen HDD sectors, some of which were underlying some very important operating system files; The inevitable was around the corner. And after about the third time reinstalling Visual Studio because of corrupted templates, IT agreed to just ghost the machine and let me start over.

The catch? ‘The powers that be’, which tend to not always be the powers with the most technical knowledge, had decided the ENTIRE office was to move to Windows Vista.

I think I must have been on massive amounts of coffee when I agreed to be their guinea pig. After all “Toronto made the move and haven’t had any problems.” Looking back, this should have been the first red flag.

So, I drank the Vista kool-aid. It was cool and refreshing, and I saw visions of sugar plums dancing in my brain… for about ten minutes, until I realized that all the absolutely unnecessary bells and whistles completely bogged down the computer to the point of useless insanity. Honestly, were the designers on crack when they decided that an operating system that needed a monopoly on nearly an entire gigabyte of RAM was a good idea!? Is the iPod and iMac really putting that much pressure on The Company to produce something that will dazzle the senses of the corporate big-shots, or are they trying to single-handedly render the developers of the world completely comatose?

As I said before, I’m a developer. Give me Visual Studio, Firefox and a command line and I’m happy. I don’t need no fancy translucent windows or 3D window scrolling (apparently I don’t need no fancy English skills either). Once I loaded everything onto the computer that I need to develop the programming flavor of the month (Which is MOSS 2007), the computer ground to an unbelievable halt. Heck, I think my dinky little 333 MHz that I use as a file server at home ran swifter than this laptop which has now officially become a brick.

But hey! It has nifty 3-D scrolling screens and translucent menu bar thingies. So it’s a purdy brick.

Nibble my bum, Microsoft.

Akamai Technologies: Leave Me Alone!

I’m a good little web user, at least I think so. I mind my P’s and Q’s, stay away from downloading movies and music that will earn me attention from the MPAA and RIAA, and I steer clear of the sometimes questionable content available on the interwebs.

So, I was surprised one day to boot my home computer and immediately receive several dozen firewall alerts that an IP claiming to be “i2.microsoft.com” was attempting to access my VPC (Virtual PC).

For a moment, I entertained the thought of allowing the connection; being an almost brand new install of the VPC client, I thought it may have been standard procedure to check back with Microsoft for software updates.

But then the IP seemed a bit strange. I knew Microsoft usually operated in the high 190’s to low 200’s of the IP subnet, with the occasional bounce into the mid 60’s. But this IP started with 72.246.x.x. Intrigued, I ran a WHOIS and was surprised to come up with the following listing masquerading as a Microsoft connection:

OrgName: Akamai Technologies
OrgID: AKAMAI
Address: 8 Cambridge Center
City: Cambridge
StateProv: MA
PostalCode: 02142
Country: US

NetRange: 72.246.0.0 – 72.247.255.255
CIDR: 72.246.0.0/15
NetName: AKAMAI-ARIN-1
NetHandle: NET-72-246-0-0-1
Parent: NET-72-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: ACCESS.AKAMAI.COM
NameServer: YA.AKAMAI.COM
Comment:
RegDate: 2005-03-14
Updated: 2007-03-14

RNOCHandle: NF81-ARIN
RNOCName: Freedman, Noam
RNOCPhone: +1-617-938-3130
RNOCEmail: noam+arin@akamai.com

OrgTechHandle: NF81-ARIN
OrgTechName: Freedman, Noam
OrgTechPhone: +1-617-938-3130
OrgTechEmail: noam+arin@akamai.com

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2007-10-14 19:10

Seeing as how ARIN said the entry was updated the very day I got these connection attempts, I was fairly certain in my information.

So then that leads me to one question: who the heck are Akamai and why would they need to be sending connection requests to my VPC??

After a bit of research, it seems that Akamai is some sort of hosting and “internet content caching” company, who will host and server such things as massive amounts of pictures or applications for heavy traffic sites such as Yahoo and, in this case, Microsoft. What exactly constitutes “internet content caching” is beyond me, but it sounds too much like keeping records you really should not be keeping.

I apparently was not alone in wondering why Akamai was giving my firewall tizzies; Ask Leo had a somewhat similar incidence posted to their site.

When a site is “Akamaized”, requests for certain content go through different servers instead of the host site you’re connecting to. You the user end up playing the middle man as your browser does an about-face and begins pulling content from other servers besides the site you’re visiting. Usually, this happens seamlessly behind the scenes; but in some cases, an unexpected connection termination in whatever process Akamai uses to have you download content fails and you or someone unfortunate enough to snag your IP address begin to be bombarded with phony connection attempts and activity vaguely reminiscent of port scanning and network mapping.

Akamai still makes press after all these allegations, with news of Windows Updates hosted by them turning around and sending encrypted connection attempts back to client machines, and vulnerabilities that allow hackers to take over and control an Akamai Manager suite.

So, is Akamai just in trying to connect to my VPC? Whether they are or are not well within their rights to randomly access network services on my computer (which I highly doubt), I don’t want anyone I’ve never heard of and never done business with in my computer.

So, leave me alone, Akamai! Go do your “market research” on someone else’s computer.

Cherries and the First Frost

Cherry tree in the frost from C.O.P.

I live behind Canada Olympic Park in Calgary, Alberta. So, when the ski hill turns on it’s snow machines, we get some incredible frosts in our neighborhood.

This is a closeup of a bunch of frosted cherries on a cherry tree in the park.

Canon EOS Digital Rebel, 18-55mm, F/10, 1/250, ISO-200, FL: 45mm

Original (3000px x 2000 px, 1.4 MB) available for non-commerical use by request.

It’s not Safe to be a Ninja in Georgia

Photo Courtesy The Red and Black, Univ. of Georgia

Source Article: ATF rids Univ. of ninja threat
Published in: Red and Black, Univ. of Georgia Student Newspaper, Athens Georgia
Original Article by: Caroline Ervin

There is an important choice to be made in Georgia these days: You’re either with us, or you’re with the ninja’s.

Truth be told, when you see a headline that reads “ATF rids Univ. of Ninja Threat”, you can’t help but do a double take. “Waitaminute… did they say ‘ninja’? What is this, feudal Japan?”

Apparently, to the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) authorities, wearing a red bandana over your face instantly means you’re up to no good. And that is apparently what happened to a hapless University of Georgia student when he decided to leave a party wearing a home made ninja costume complete with facial garb.

Vanessa McLemore, an ATF special agent in charge of the ‘apprehension’ of said ninja claimed that wearing anything across your face was “from a federal standpoint — that’s not right”. Huh? Are you law enforcement wierdo’s serious? Since when has something across your face been considered a sign of evil-doing? The only thing that’s ‘not right’ about this scenario is the US government’s apparent urgency to hop on the ‘everyone who’s not us is a terrorist’ bandwagon.

Poor Jerimiah Ransom, returning from a “Pirate vs. Ninja” event on campus, was taken down in broad daylight as he was spotted by ATF officials ‘behaving suspiciously’ as he walked back to his dorm; Guess it’s hard to tell one wierdo from all the other wierdo’s that lurk on college campuses now a days. It so happens that the ATF was attending a “Safe Neighborhoods” conference at the time of the apprehension. Ah, irony, you are a cruel mistress. I’d hate to see these loons at the next anime convention.

So, when next you decide to walk home wearing your ninja costume, beware.  Worse things lurk on campus than just the occasional art nerd.  And remember:

Black sweat pants and in-side-out Clerks T-shirt: $40
Two red bandanas to hide your true identity: $5 at the neighborhood Wal-mart
Your buds taking a camera-phone shot of you as you’re hauled down by the ATF: Priceless.

There are some public humiliations of both yourself and local law enforcement money cannot buy: for everything else, there’s a $45 ninja costume and law enforcement’s overactive imagination. Imagination: it’s everywhere it shouldn’t be.

Have Camera, Am Clueless

Perhaps I’m not the best of teachers when it comes to this subject.  I have a camera, and I really am clueless.  Sometimes point-and-shoot isn’t as easy as you might think.

I bought my Canon Digital Rebel after my honeymoon scuba diving in the resort islands of Malaysia; ironic that I’m a certified open water diver seeing as how I’m horrified of water and have a primal fear of drowning.  There were so many things I wanted to take pictures of in Malaysia, but I had bought only so much film for my Canon SLR.  I decided it was time for an upgrade and went to the DSLR version.

Ah. My first digital camera.  I never really knew how to use my SLR, now I was in for a long haul as I got to indure the seemingly endless time and effort it took to actually figure out how to USE my DSLR camera.  I needed a crash course in photography and couldn’t find and sources I really liked.

 So, I figured I’d make my own.

Took me a while to figure out I don’t need no fancy do-wackies to get great shots (and apparently, I don’t need no fancy English skills either).  But I did need to know how to use my camera.  The ol’ ‘point-n-shoot’ method is a waste of time and a waste of a camera.  I found out that altering a few settings on a cam can turn a ho-hum pic into something much better.

So hopefully this section will help you to understand your DSLR by learning as I go along.  Blind leading the blind?  We’re about to find out.

Death Note TV Movie

“Did you know that Shinigami’s like apples?”

*Squeee!!*  If you’ve ever wanted to hear an anime fan scream like a little school girl, you should have been around for the premier of the Death Note made-for-tv movie trailer.

My little bro first got me into Death Note when he sent me the first volume of the manga. I love thinker manga’s/anime’s like Spiral, and I started to worry Jeff as he would hear little evil giggles from me as I read through the manga, discovering the little twists and turns in the story line as main character goes about killing people by writing their names in the Death Note.

Death Note is the story of highschool student Light Yagami who finds a notebook dropped by the Shinigami (grim reaper) Ryuk who apparently got bored one day and decided to start a little chaos in the human world.

There’s a twist to this notebook, tho. The “Death Note” as it’s called is where a Shinigami writes the names of the people he kills, so therefore any person whose name you write in the book dies.

So Light gets ahold of this notebook, figures out that he can really kill people by writing their names in it, and sets about ridding humanity of the evil of the world in the form of criminals, rapists and murderers. This spurs the attention of introvert genious detective ‘L’, and the game is on.

At the risk of sounding like a derranged lunatic, I completely see why Light took to the Death Note so quickly. There are some sick people in the world that we’d all be better with out, and it frustrates me that pedophiles and people who beat their significant others to death get off with such light sentances. They should get what’s coming to them!

But, at the same time, they’re human being’s too and should be treated thusly. So, where do you draw the line? When do you cross the line from humanity’s guardian angel to being just like the criminals you’re ridding the world of?

If you haven’t begun watching the anime series (available on bit torrent index sites everywhere), or havent seen the made-for-tv movie (also available on bit torrent), I would HIGHLY recommend taking an hour or two out of your day to check it out.

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