First off, belated congratulations to Noah on the 10th anniversary of his website! Bravo, mate! 
I’m a bad parent, however. While I know my eldest website, WildTexas.com, turns ten years old this year, I do not know its actual birth date. I guess since the gestation period and “birthing” process of a website are, well, perpetual, it never occurred to me to mark the official date the site went online. That’s my excuse, anyway!
Why do I spend so much time writing about the military, our servicemen and servicewomen, when I’ve never been in the military, and I have no immediate family on active duty or in the reserves? Why is it important to me to periodically check the “Honor the Fallen” rolls (Iraq | Afghanistan) and look at the faces of those we’ve lost?
Gina’s post at SewEclectic.com provides the reason why.
It’s not just the men and women who volunteer for military service who are selfless, dedicated and strong. Their spouses, children, parents and other family members are, too, and I don’t think we let any of them know that enough. I know I haven’t.
I’ve posted this via email and on almost all of our other websites, Google “duplicate content filter” be damned! It’s that meaningful.
http://www.woai.com/news/blog/
If you have any way of listening to WOAI radio (based in San Antonio, Texas) during the day or drive time on the way home, tune in to 1200 AM radio today and for the next several days. They have radio broadcasters traveling aboard the C-5 and C-17 aircraft the US military has mobilized to transport relief supplies to tsunami survivors. They’re doing great interviews with military personnel of all ranks and it’s really humbling, informative and just “good news”. You can hear the pride in the service people’s voices, and relief at a “break” from combat duty for those who were moments away from heading out to Iraq and instead found themselves the best choice for military commanders to divert to Sumatra, Sri Lanka, Thailand, etc. It’s hard work, but at least they know the people they’re going to help are unlikely to become suicide bombers and snipers.
Yes, I have Outlook, but there’s something useful about seeing them all on one screen to keep things in perspective:
WOOT! My Geek Quotient is on the rise again after the successful installation of our new Slim Devices Squeezebox this afternoon. Like everything with the computers I’ve touched lately, the installation was not silky smooth, but I learned a few things in the process. For instance, if a Service running under Windows XP requires access to a shared hard drive located on another computer, it needs to be run under its own user account with full access privileges. I also learned that for all their u.i. and usability beauty, Apple still has a lot to learn about Windows users. No amount of googling has uncovered a way to convince iTunes to locate its iTunes Music Library.xml file anywhere but the My Music folder in my protected user account (C:Documents and Settings > Shannon > My Documents >My Music > iTunes). Sure, they let you change the iTunes Music folder — which, in my case, is located on the aforementioned other computer — but they insist on storing the XML library file locally. {gak!}
January 4th, already. I see 2005 is following the standard set by 2004. I’m already four days behind, and the year’s just begun!
I rang in the New Year with my parents and brother, watching many delightful episodes of “Northern Exposure” before our champagne toast at midnight. Unfortunately, I awoke New Year’s Day to a 36-hour cluster headache that laid me out flat. Imagine a one foot long metal spike, one end impaled in your left eye and the other protruding from the left side of your neck — that was the pain I felt until early January 2. I get these periodically nowadays, fairly predictably coinciding with changes in my hormone levels. Lovely.
