Geek Habitat

My family and friends are having fun with me and my “ladder diving” induced knee injury. I’m hoping the limp’s gone by next week (Thanksgiving), otherwise I’ll get teased by a 6- and 9-year-old (my niece and nephew) too — and I’m not sure my pride could take that! {GRIN}

I didn’t fracture anything, and my knee only swelled moderately — the size of a large orange, or so. I iced it again last night and then took a hot bath (that’s probably not in the order a physician would recommend, but c’est la vie.) By 7 AM, I noticed I could bend the knee a bit further and with less pain. The swelling is down markedly and walking, while still painful, isn’t too bad.

It’s been raining for days, and when this morning’s rainstorm gave way to sunny blue skies I was drawn outdoors. I swept up all the oak acorns from our driveway, pruned some plants and then decided to tackle our three oak trees. Unfortunately, our ladder doesn’t reach to where I really needed to prune — a dead branch way up in the tree’s crown. Still, I was feeling good — I love doing yard work, even when it’s pruning or mowing the lawn (I know, I’m a sick chick!

Damn Amazon.com. After staring at the big honkin’ annoying “Amazon Theatre” box at the top of their home page for a week or so, I finally succumbed.

Yes, I watched the entire video. Please feel free to scoff, snort or deride me. I’m a geek, I can handle it.

Then, go do what you know you’re going to do anyway, and watch it for yourself. All the way through… you miss the point if you get bored, offended or bummed out by it midway through.

I knew there were enough gullible people in the world to fully fund email spammers (or “bulk email distributors” as they’d rather be called), but I had no friggin’ idea — a 30-year-old named Jeremy Jaynes grossed up to $750,000/month, sending out 10 million spam emails per day, 24 hours a day.

Spam used to be just a joke, similar to the nonsense that would get posted occasionally on our hobbiest Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) or on FidoNet. I stopped reading USENET when the moderators started moving on and it became filled with porn and spam. Now, our email boxes are a haven for the junk.

I had terrific plans for today to update our numerous slightly-outdated installations of various website applications (forum software, photo gallery apps and related geekery) and generally get caught up. Early into the process, however, I discovered something was a little wonky in the configuration of two applications on Justin’s NoticeToAirmen.com and needed to be fixed before the problem got worse. Justin’s the content, photography and idea guy behind that site, while all the “confusing stuff” is my domain. Hence, the screw up was created by me at some point, and was mine to fix.

Typically tropical San Antonio, Texas, is finally beginning to feel slightly winter-like. Here’s this week’s weather forecast.

I’ve actually brought all my potted plants in the past two nights because I’ve found they need some adjustment period before the weather nears freezing (32 degrees Fahrenheit). Yes, my Texas plants are wusses that way. The native plants — sages, Mexican heather, salvias and mountain laurel — they all hold their own and live in the ground. Some will die back to the ground and get a good pruning in early spring, others just drop some leaves and settle in for one real cold month we ever have (January).