Chaos - There is a meme on the internet called "free for all Friday". While it's normally considered a weblogging concept, yesterday we had our own "free for all". Thursday evening Abby stayed over at her friend's house without any issue. Friday morning it seemed quiet not having her around. I left for work in the van because I was going to drop it off for its 30K maintenance and annual state inspection. Since it was a nice morning I decided to walk to the office from the Honda dealer since they're only about half a mile apart. On the walk I gave Michelle a quick call to let her know her van was dropped off.
She answered and said she was glad it was me and not someone else coming over. "Really?" I said, a bit amazed because I'd only left the quiet house about 40 minutes earlier. She explained that Abby would be home soon along with her friend, Jessica. Shortly after I left Alexandra and Brianna called asking if they could play with Claire. Then Claire's good friend Madison called asking to visit. Lastly Michelle's friend Lana, who has three young boys about the ages of ours, called saying she'd like to get together and let the boys play.
From about 10 a.m. till noon it must have looked like a day care center! The irony was that things were relatively quiet when I left for work. By the time I got home from work, it was back down to just Madison, who stayed overnight. She and our two girls had a fun evening. Since Michelle had been trapped at the house during the day without her van, I had her take the girls to Blakes for ice cream while I stayed home with the boys.
Virus - In case you hadn't seen the news, there's a nasty computer virus going around. Really nasty! The absolutely easiest way to not get it (along with a host of other viruses) is to use any browser but Internet Explorer on Windows. I highly, highly recommend Mozilla Firefox, and not just for the virus protection. News coverage is here, here, and here. This particular virus does something worse than crashing your computer. It installs a keystroke logger. This means it can capture valuable data like passwords, financial info, etc. Losing your computer is one thing. Giving up crucial financial information is another...
Music - It's a bit rainy today so we're spending a bit of time indoors. In a small fit of music buying, I bought another dozen or so songs. This time they are mostly from the late 70's or very early 80's:
Listening to these tracks makes me feel like I'm back at St. Cyprian's grade school... iTunes' new feature of iMixes makes it easy to find closely related music as users can post their favorite collections. It's a variation on the "customers who bought this also purchased ..." online buying theme that you see at Amazon and others.
Scott,
I downloaded the Mozilla Firefox software on my computer at work. I will probably do the same at home tonight. Thanks for the info.
Dad
If nothing else, I think you'll like the fact that it gives you a nice option for blocking annoying popups during your browsing sessions. It also has one of my favorite features/options: tabbed browsing windows -- a nice way of managing multiple open sites. The last major thing I like is that they try to actually render a web page the way it's supposed to be rendered. I'm always amazed at how I write one properly specified bit of web code and Internet Explorer doesn't handle it correctly. Aside from security updates, Microsoft hasn't done any functionality updates/fixes to Internet Explorer in years.
Posted by: Scott at June 28, 2004 02:38 PMHappy Birthday Scott! Have a wonderful day. I look forward to seeing Claire and Abby later on.
Posted by: Chris at June 30, 2004 09:39 AMThey should be landing at any moment. Have a good time with them. Sorry the rest of us won't be joining them this summer. I'm pretty sure we'll be out at the holiday season. I now get over 4 weeks/year vacation (but currently am reset to zero).
Enjoy your birthday tomorrow.
Abby brought her GameBoy but she might need to borrow your re-charger once or twice. She also brought three CD's of Zoombinis. If you could install them on dad's computer, it might give her something to do if she gets bored (say, during mom's naps).
Posted by: Scott at June 30, 2004 09:54 AMScott-
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! I do not have your new phone number and I am at work and can't call home for it right now- but either way, hope you have a great day! much love!