I’m working on a new style for the site. The home page is pretty much done. I’ll do my best to finish up the rest of the pages this weekend.
Let me know what you think…
Improvisational Cooking
I’ve been covering for my boss this week by teaching his class from noon til 1:00pm everyday. This means that I haven’t been able to have lunch with Paige like I usually do.
Paige left me a nice bowl of soup yesterday. Unfortunately there was nothing she could leave me today. I didn’t want just another cold ham sandwich, so I started looking around for what I could cook. Keep in mind this is Friday so we haven’t bought groceries in about a week. Also, I only have an hour for lunch so it had to be something quick.
The first thing to catch my eye was the package of hamburger buns on top of the pantry. They still looked and smelled like bread, not even a hint of fur. Perfect, I thought, everything is better on a bun. Now I began digging through the fridge looking for something to put on a bun.
Way back in the very back of the freezer I found a box of Veggie burgers. I’m not sure when they were purchased, but surely frozen vegetable patties never go bad. These were a match made in heaven for my recently aquired buns.
I threw one of the frozen chunks of everything but meat in a skillet and dove back into the fridge for some toppings. Mustard, pickles, even tomatoes were all there waiting for me.
Next I reached into the bottom drawer for a slice of cheese. Cheese! What would the cows think of cheese on a meatless burger?
The thought that entered my head next was even wilder than cheese on a vegetable pattie – the only thing better than a cheeseburger is a bacon cheeseburger.
Of course, we didn’t have any bacon, but there was some prosciutto left over from the last time I made pizza. I knew from experience that the thinly sliced prosciutto would cook up just like salty bacon so I grabbed four slices from the package and threw them in the skillet with the burger.
And thus was born the Prosciutto and Cheese Veggie Burger.
Gotcha
I got some pretty funny responses to the e-mail that I sent out yesterday. Here are a few of my favorites. I’ve left out the names to protect the innocent.
You sorry dog. I was going to be in Austin next week and look you up to buy me a drink with the money you were going to make on your new job. I was also hoping you would put in a good word for me.
I certainly hope this is an April Fool joke!!!
Oh Tony congratulations but OMG you will be missed. Knew this was gonna come sooner or later and I’m gonna go sit in a corner and cry but good
luck and give em hell. Thanks for all the support you have given me and
for putting up with all questions no matter how stupid.
You will be greatly missed. Good luck to you in your new job. I’m sure you will dazzle them with all of your computer knowledge. The district is losing a great person.
Congratulations!!! I am so happy for you!!! You will thoroughly enjoy your time in Austin and at Dell! I am priveledged to have known you and worked with you, you have taught me a lot! Take care and be sure to keep in touch! I will miss you, sir!
Something tells me I’m really going to get it next year…
April Fools
Here’s the e-mail I just sent out to all of the technology people at work. Let’s see who falls for it:
As you’ve probably heard, Dell tried to outsource a lot of their support to India. When their customers started complaining, Dell decided to move some of their tech support back to the US. This created a lot of jobs in the Austin area, and I was lucky enough to get a phone interview last week.
I got a call back from the recruiter at Dell this morning concerning a job in Austin. They were impressed with my skills and experience and they want me to come work for them in server support. They will start me off at about twice what I’m currently making, and they want me to start tonight. They start the new hires off on the night shift since there’s fewer calls at that time.
I’ve talked this over with Mr. Trull and he agreed to let me use two weeks of my vacation time as a two week notice and let today be my last day. I’ll be leaving town around 4:00pm this afternoon and starting my first day of work at my new job tonight at 11:00pm.
I’ll send another message from my Dell e-mail account once it gets set up so you can add it to your address books.
Keep in touch,
Tony
The “New” Iraq
This headline on CNN.com caught my eye – Bodies of U.S. civilians strung from bridge in Iraq. Here’s a quote from the article:
Video showed crowds chanting and cheering at the scene, with charred corpses hanging from the bridge over the Euphrates.
Can I move to another planet? I’m sick of humans…
Back to work
Spring break is officially over now, so I’m trying to get back into the swing of things.
This was the first time in two years that I’ve actually had all of spring break off. Back when I was taking classes in Commerce I would have a week of work followed by a week of school, since Commerce and Paris never had spring break on the same week.
Paige also took off last week so we managed to get a lot done. We went shopping in Sherman and ate at Red Lobster, cooked out on the grill, visited my family at the lake, did some work around the house, hung out with Geoff, had a garage sale Saturday, and worked on some landscaping Sunday. We also spent a good bit of time on rest and relaxation.
I’m a little sad that spring break is over, but on the bright side we’re now that much closer to summer.
E-mail is Evil
Have you every received a post card?
You know, an old-school piece of paper with a picture on one side and writing on the other. It goes without saying that anyone can write anything on a postcard. I could go out and get a postcard with a picture of the White House on it and write “Wish you were here. Love, Dubya” on the back. If I send it to your address and put 1600 Pennsylvania Ave as the return address, then you have no way of knowing who really sent it.
E-mail works exactly the same way as a postcard. It’s so easy to forge the from address on an e-mail that even a child could do it (and many of them do). It’s even easier to send you an e-mail from dubya@whitehouse.gov than it is to send you a fake postcard. The differences are, it doesn’t cost me anything to send you an e-mail and there are programs that let me send thousands of e-mails with a single mouse-click.
With all of these facts in mind, it should be obvious to even the most inept computer user that you can’t trust the from address on an e-mail.
So why is it that I still receive complaints like this at least daily: “I got a spam e-mail from your address so you better check your computer, it’s sending spam!” To which I reply: “Every spam these days has a fake from address so you don’t know who really sent it.”
Here’s another one that I frequently get: “Someone at Paris ISD sent me a virus so you should check all of your computers!” Again I reply: “Every virus these days makes up a fake from address so you don’t know who really sent it. And, I monitor every message that goes through our server, so if one of our users has a virus I’ll know about it immediately.”
Finally, my all time favorite complaint: “I received an e-mail from you with a strange message and an attachment. I tried several times to open it, but never could make it work. Also, my computer is running really slow now and I think some of my files are missing…” You can make up your own reply for this one.
To make matters even worse, some mail server admins have set up their spam filters and anti-virus software to return bad e-mail to the (fake) sender. So people receive automatically genereated e-mail from a mail server saying something like “You sent an illegal e-mail to a user on our domain. If you continue to disrupt our network this way, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” I will never understand how these idiots get jobs running company networks.
Now, I know some of you out there are really clever and you’re saying “Wait a second, I can tell where your postcard came from by looking at the postmark.” If that’s you then you’re exactly right. All of those evenings spent watching CSI have finally paid off. E-mail has a similar feature where you can look in the message header and see what IP address actually sent the message. Unfortunately, even this can be spoofed by a clever virus or spammer, and most users don’t ever take them time to look at it.
What should you do with all of this new knowledge? First, never trust the from address on an e-mail again. Next, never open an attachment unless you’re absolutely sure what it is and why it was sent to you. If you have any doubts about a message, pick up the phone and call the sender. If you still have any questions about the origin or purpose of a message, just delete it. Don’t bother notifying the sender or e-mailing a warning to everyone in your address book. Just click delete and move on with your life.
Happy E-mailing!
Still here
This is just a quick note to let my faithful readers (reader?) know that we haven’t skipped the coutry or anything like that. I just haven’t gotten around to posting anything here lately.
I didn’t do much with my computer last week since the fan on my video card was dying. I was afraid to leave it running for long since it was getting too hot. Thankfully, I got a replacement from NewEgg.com a few days ago and installed it. I documented the procedure and I’m planning on posting a howto here just in case anyone want to know how it’s done. Check back for that this weekend.
One more thing – God Hates Shrimp
Gotta Have Priorities
Amazon.com has (finally) added a priority option to wish lists. This is something they’ve needed to do for a while. Instead of just seeing all of the items listed by date or price, you can sort the wishlist by how bad the person wants each item.
If you want to see an example of how this works, check out my wish list. This is really helpful since some of the things I really want are on the second page of my wishlist and no one ever notices them.
Stargate Atlantis
Here’s some great news for anyone who’s into Stargate (like we are). In July there’s going to be a new spin-off series called Stargate Atlantis.
The SG-1 team finally finds the Lost City of the Ancients that they’ve been looking for this season. It turns out that the lost city is not through the Stargate at all, it’s Atlantis. Using the knowledge they gain in the Lost City, a new team sets off to explore another galaxy and fight a new enemy called the Wraith.
So far it sounds like it’s going to be pretty good. You can check out Scifi.com’s Press Release and the official Stargate Atlantis website for more info.