Due to a primary computer failure, posting here will be sparse. I am using Damsel’s computer to post this.
We did have a spectacular view of the total eclipse yesterday. We were at Mount Rushmore today on our way to Rapid City where we are camped tonight.
Here is one of Damsel’s eclipse images from yesterday:
Click on the image to enlarge.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have been getting bombarded with a bunch of “Undeliverable Mail” messages on one of my private email accounts. Sometimes, I would receive hundreds of them a day.
At first, it seemed to be a nuisance that could be eliminated by setting up a rule for received messages in my email client. The rule would detect one of several senders and/or subjects that were common to the messages and would summarily delete the message on the server – I would never see them again in my inbox. But, as it turned out, that was not the end of it. My mail server then started rejecting my outbound emails with a message indicating that I had exceeded my daily limit of 500 emails.
So. it was not as simple as I originally thought. The returned emails were a product of some phishing spammers spoofing my email address to send their crap through my server. I was only seeing the rejected emails that did not make it to the intended address.
I did some research on-line and found that I needed to change the password for the hacked email address. I also ran anti-virus scans on my computer to see if malware here was originating the spam. Norton AV advised me that it found nothing.
Since there was no malware, I assumed that my address book had not been compromised. The spams had to be originating from a source that knew my email password. How was that compromised? I have to assume that at some time during our recent trips to PRK (Kalifornistan), someone monitoring the unsecured wifi at the hotel where we were staying picked up on the username/password transactions for the email address. I do have a private wifi device which is secure, but the 3G service it provides is pretty slow, hence the use of the hotel wifi.
Since I changed the password for that email address, the problem has gone away. From now forward, I will not be using the hotel house wifi on future visits for anything other than browsing – no shopping, no banking, no emailing – period.
Quite by accident, I found this widget at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) website, time.gov. I was looking for the NIST time applet, but siince I have Java® disabled, I was unable to view the time. Then, I noticed a link on that page to their Flash® NIST Widget.
Once I clicked on the link to the widget, I saw another link to a page that published details about embedding the widget on your own website. That page had the HTML embed code along with details on how to customize the widget for your own preferences of how to display the time, background color and time zone. I set this one to ?setcolor=#EAEDF2&setzone=-07&set24=true which represent the parameters for our light blue background color, the UTC minus seven timezone (Arizona) and to display the time in 24 hour format.
Since I already have my own Flash® time and date widget in the sidebar on the main page, I doubt that I will be embedding this one. Note that my widget is driven by the time YOUR computer is set to and the NIST widget gets the time from the NIST Time and Frequency Division (with a minor network delay).
It has been a little over six years since we converted our old webpages to the WordPress publishing platform and started to blog. We try to have a new post up every day – some of them conservative political content, some of them about family activities and some of them posting Damsel’s photos. In fact, the first three posts from September 2005 were one of each type of post.
The image at the right is the first of Damsel’s lovely flowers posted here.
Using smilies or emoticons on WordPress® weblog sites. The table above summarizes the little graphic images available to bloggers and commenters on sites that use the WordPress publishing platform. We. of course, have been using it for several years. Feel free to include any of these in your comments here or on the other blog. Click on the image above to enlarge.
We reported on our temporary cable installation over two weeks ago. A crew finally showed up today to dig the permanent trench and install the conduit to house the cable.
We were surprised by the extent of the installation process. Three men showed up with sophisticated equipment and had the entire job completed in less than three hours.
They had a pneumatic tool that bored holes through the earth, a pneumatic earth compactor and a gas-powered trench digger that cut an eight inch by one foot deep trench 30 feet long in less then five minutes. Damsel photographed the trench digger while it was in action. Click on the image to enlarge.
Our internet and CATV is working just fine now, without the worry that one of the trucks bringing materials for our new courtyard will damage the cable that was buried in a shallow trench and had surfaced in some places on the road in front of the house.
I think this is a pyrrhuloxia or cardinalis sinuatis, according to an image I see in my “Birds of Arizona” booklet. I wonder why ornithologists come up with all those gigantic, unpronounceable names for pretty little birds like this one?
The colorful little bird, let’s call it a Casandro Cardinal for now, perched briefly in the creosote by the road before flying down to get some of the wild critter food that I put out this morning. We also saw cottontail, jackrabbits, desert chipmunks, quail and a couple of days ago, we saw a mule deer bounding through the rear of our lot.
Last night, the coyotes serenaded us with howls and barks. Quite a change from the South Bay suburbs. I like it!
Footnote from Cap’n Bob:
This morning, the Site Meter ticked over 400,000 visits. Thanks to everybody for reading us over the years.