A post a day. . .

keeps the audience from going away.

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Sandy has been KICKING BUTT on her Weight Watchers plan, shedding 35 pounds with what seems like total ease. I don't know what her plan is but here's hoping that the booty stays intact. I didn't marry her for her brains.

In totally unrelated news, I found some really cool new doghouse plans on the Internet.

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I have been up late at night for the past 5 days trying to reinstall Windows on my Mom's computer. Apparently, the spam Powerpoint and flash presentations she gets in her Hotmail inbox can't be played under Linux. That, and she said the system was slowing down. I have realized in the past few years that although Linux has big advantages over Windows, for most people Windows is easer to use. So instead I thought I would reinstall Windows 2000 and focus on installing applications that also run under Linux. That way when she does switch, it will all be familiar to her.

To make a long story short, after 5 late nights of working to try to reinstall Windows 2000, using all the tricks at my disposal, including trying to install DOS and upgrade through all the Windows releases til I got to Win2K, I figured out last night (at about 4:00am) that her CDROM drive was broken, and the Windows CDs were pretending to install and getting nowhere. Once I put in an unused CDROM of mine it worked fine.

The moral of the story: Don't assume that all parts of the computer is working properly when it fails to do something. It is not always user error!

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We had a nice vacation to Waupaca / Green Bay, but damn if I didn't get lost driving around. For me, not having been in a place for about 10 years is akin to never having been there. Sandy was mercifully understanding and we got some good video of my old stomping grounds.

Green Bay is a beautiful area whose surrounding area is richly laden with deciduous forests. I had forgotten that. I was very lucky to grow up there. Also, we got totally lucky on Annika's shirt from the Packer Pro Shop. A $80 golf shirt from the Annika Sornstam collection from Cutter and Buck, for less than $20 on the clearance rack. Looks totally sweet. Cha-ching!

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