Rorschach.net

After living in San Diego for almost 8 months I’ve finally changed my cell phone number to a local one. If you haven’t received an email with the new number then you probably haven’t called me since I moved out here and this news is of no use to you. If you do care about my new number, send me an email or comment to this post and I’ll gladly respond.

P.S. Amy doesn’t have a new number just yet, but that will be soon.

I get paid to protect sensitive computer information at my company. My team has a budget and we have some good technology like firewalls, email gateways, and enterprise anti-virus and the support of a lot of smart IT people to protect this environment. The “bad guys” know this, and they also know that your home PC doesn’t have a budget or team or even much technology to protect your sensitive information. So they come after you because you’re an easy target. They don’t even have to be clever, they just download the latest root-kit, or virus and have at you.

You’re not a security professional (or even if you are you’re siblings or parents aren’t). How does a regular home user hooked into a cable modem or DSL line protect themselves? What does it mean when Earthlink and AOL talk about all that security protection? Surprisingly one of the best sites I’ve come across to talk about home computer security is provided by the U.S. government. OnGuard Online is an easy to understand and not too technical site that provides the basics of home computer security. From their 7 Practices to Safer Computing to topics on Identity Theft and Phishing this is a site that you send your non-technical friends and family to to help them not be the next victim of the next email virus. This is especially relevant as I’m sure a lot of credit card information will be sent through your computers during the holidays.

Spent a nice time yesterday night at a roll-your-own sushi party hosted by a friend from my work. Good raw fish, sake, beer, and sharp knives turned out to be a fun time. It was nice to be with friends and meet some new ones after a week of 24×7 family. Not that I don’t love them and had a blast while they were here.

Today we’re doing a lot of nothing but catching up on TiVo and watching Bond movies on basic cable. Tomorrow it’s back to work.

Here’s some pictures of the family visit this Thanksgiving.

The cooking of the bird went well. Starting at 500 to brown the skin made a heck of a lot of smoke but I had enough ventilation to avoid the smoke alarm going off. Everyone seems to really enjoy the food and it was quite nice and sunny out for the big lunch.

Unfortunately Roe stressed his neck in the morning and wound up taking a trip to the vet emergency room. He’s doing much better today but yesterday he was in bad shape, unable to lie down or stand up without some pain. Today he’s moving around much better but he’ll still be taking it easy for a few days. Mom is still fighting of bronchitis and one of the brothers got an ear infection from too much hot-tubbing. It was a little more like a M.A.S.H. unit than a family gathering at some times, but it was still nice for everyone to make the trip out here.

The rest of the family went out to the beach today. Nephew and company made sand castles while I stayed home and took a nap and set up the new photo gallery and blog for my brother-in-law and wife. The nap was really helpful. It was nice to just sit down for a bit, futz on the computer and read.

Tomorrow we send off most of the family and go see a live play of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas with the nephew. Then Sunday morning the last of the family leaves and Amy and I collapse on the couch and don’t move until Monday.

Happy Thanksgiving to all our family and friends. The cooking has begun and I’m in charge of the turkey this year. I woke up at 4am to get the bird into the brine. Roasting begins at 10:30!

After living in the Central timezone for the past, oh, 24 years it still throws me off here being out here on the left coast. The stock market opens at 6:30 and closes at 1:30. NFL football starts at 10am (not that I’m a big football fan) and I have to remember to call friends and family before 8pm. Not only that but the TV schedule is on Eastern/Pacific which means all the shows are on an additional hour later (relatively). Not that that matters with TiVo anymore, but sometimes you have a hankering to catch something in “real time.”

The family Hawkins arrives this weekend and we’re checking things off our “Get the House and Refrigerator Ready” list as fast as we can.

It was a productive weekend of house and yard cleaning. We’ve finished most of the repainting and are almost complete hanging new window treatments. IKEA has the fantastic new system that hangs sliding planes instead of traditional curtains. They can be changed out pretty easily when I find new fabric.

We also went and saw “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” which I highly recommend as a witty, funny movie and one of the best I’ve seen in a while.

And now – back to work. 4 more days until vacation !

Busy week, not much time for blogging. Work is going well, I’m reading Olympos from Dan Simmons. Some similarities to Hyperion and that’s what I like about it. Also playing a bit of Battlefront II most nights. The maps and character classes are well done, there’s not necessarily one class that dominates, and since you can switch out at any command point, you can kit yourself based on the situation. Looking forward to the weekend and some time to catch up on sleep.

I’m debating switching to a tablet PC at work. The tablet functions (i.e. writing on the screen) are quite cool, and OneNote is a good note taking program, but the display is fuzzy and the CPU is slow. If I just needed to take notes it’s be all good, but that’s not all that I do so I’m torn.

I finished F.E.A.R. this weekend. Quite the fun FPS. Good battles, excellent weapons and a not too bad storyline with the creepiness factor very high. Today I picked up Star Wars Battlefront II from the Pandemic people. Really looking forward to the this game, playing out all the best battles of the 6 movies. I got the Xbox version so if anyone out there wants to team up just send an Xbox Live friend invite to “Rorschach Six” and don’t forget to include the space.