We installed Redhat 9, a Linux OS, on a machine at work today.
Wow!
I was blown away by the installer, it made Windows XP look wimpy, and I had a lot more control over what was installed, how, and what security options I wanted.
I love that I can set up security features when I install the operating system, and not have to trust Microsoft to make the right choices for me.
Of course I understand why the lay person may not want this hassle, but as a technology person, I like to know what’s being turned on and off.

I’ll probably make some more reports on this as I get a chance to play with this new toy.
I’ve been a windows user only for most of my life.
Periodically I’ve lusted after the sleek cases and interfaces of Macintosh, and now I’m impressed with Redhat’s installer.
Maybe some day I’ll actually have a comprehensive understanding of Linux, assuming SCO doesn’t get some goofy patent holding lawsuite in place to hose the whole thing.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Penguin Agnostic” Peterman

Tonight Abby and I went to Gymboree again.
That little girls loves to play.
She loves to climb, run, and she loves balls.
We bought her various balls for home use, but she doesn’t care about them, she loves balls when they’re associated with Gymboree.
She loves to hold them and not share them with the other little kiddos at Gymboree.
Sharing is not an Abby trait… yet.

And Abby was so cute tonight as she danced to I Will Survive on American Idol.
Speaking of which William Hung has signed a contract.
I’m hoping that millions of people will buy the album and send it to the top of the charts – just to blow the establishment away.

Anyway…. Resting in Him,

Randy Peterman

One of the sites that I work on was defaced this morning.
The gal at the office called me up and explained to me that someone had called her up and that the URL from Google went to some ‘black site.’
My first thought was, “There’s an error in Google?”
And then after looking at things I realized that some hacker had broken into the server, altered some pages and disappeared.

I went home at lunch and fixed it (which was about 3 minutes after I got the call, so I don’t think the site was defaced that long).
We got all sorts of passwords changed and basically locked things down as best as we could.
What a pain in the bottom that was!
I felt violated, but was glad that someone had not put up some sort of porn or other objectionable materials.
The perp was someone claiming to be some ‘Indonesian Hero.’
I have met Indonesian’s, and I don’t think that they hold defacers in high regards.

In the end all is well and I’m grateful that nothing bad or dangerous was accomplished.
No valuable or personal data was compromised and only one page was changed.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Hax0r” Peterman

Abigail proved this weekend that she wants to be a big girl.
Her attitude and temper tantrums Saturday and Sunday were larger and with more flailing than previous events.
This must mean she’s getting older.
Or I’m getting more sensitive to such problems.
I think its the former.

This little sweetheart just threw herself down on the floor, screamed loudly and resisted all attempts to straighten her back up with twisting and letting all 24 pounds of her dead weight fall.
Not a lot of weight… yet.
I think that being around the other two kiddos (Morgan, 5, and Nolan, 2) made the time for her more intense.
She was in competition, and Morgan is very demanding of Nolan and Abby’s allegiance.
Typical big sister behavior.

Jessica had a tea party on Saturday and invited a few of her friends over and they enjoyed their time (this is why I was watching Abby and the other two).
Then we spent the night in Sherman to see if Jessica and Amanda could make strawberry jelly, jam and junk.
Not that they were going for junk 🙂
However, their stuff did end up being rather syrupy due to some miscalculation or misapplication of the instructions.
Seeing as how I’ve never tried making jelly I’ll give them lots of credit for the attempt.
I’d probably just make a lot of sweet mess and have lids stuck to the sides of jars.

We got home in time to have Jessica catch the last 45 minutes of Alias, her show of choice.
I got to work on more things for Randy Peterman Digital Research & Development.
Abby went down for bed after 9:00, but she slept in the car on the way home.
It’s time for me to get some rest anyway, just so my temper doesn’t get out of whack tomorrow!

Resting in Him,

Randy “Workin’ Fool” Peterman

With this guy’s views on Real Player.
I don’t have it installed because as you’ll read here, it is close to installing a VIRUS on your system.
That’s right, it takes over and does what it wants, which is what a virus does.

Randy “Real Player Bigot” Peterman

There is a restaurant chain that has several dining halls here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, whose name, Souper Salad, implies a good (super) soup and salad bar combo.
They offer other food items like potatoes, some sort of Mexican stuff (not tasty enough to make anything you want to call a taco) and some pasta dishes.
They also serve various breads (which I haven’t tasted, but I understand are quite tasty).
However, tonight we went there for dinner and found ourselves very disappointed.
We were upset because they had no high chair for Abby.
They used to have 4 or so high chairs, tonight?
Two.
They were both being used by other kids.
They also ran out of straws before we got there.

This was a perfect opportunity for a last straw joke, but because Abby pretty much requires a straw if she’s not to bathe in the libations, we were not joking.
In fact Jessica seriously suggested we ask for our money back.
This is not a bad idea except I was willing to do whatever was needed to get things to where I could just eat.
When I’m hungry I’ll endure all sorts of oddities as long as I get to eat.
Food is pretty much food when I’m in ‘consume’ mode.
I’m not too picky so as the weird Mexican stuff would be sufficient if I had to eat it.
As long as the food isn’t something that I’ve never eaten before and the hygiene of the staff and preparation are adequate, I’ll shovel it into my face.

Jessica, however, had her wits about her and remembered we had a straw in the car (from Starbuck, but you don’t care where it came from).
But, just then, like a souper hero from another planet (Krouton?), a waiter walked by with a straw sticking out of his shirt pocket.
Since straws were now worth more than gold in this scenario we asked him for it, and he kindly obliged.
On top of that we waived some Kroutonite at another table where a young child was sitting in their high chair and they left – leaving us a high chair for Abby.
All was saved and we didn’t even have to go berserk to get what we needed.

A perfect example of God’s mercy on us – even when we’re wacky.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Souperman” Peterman

This morning as I was approaching the stoplight at avenue K in Arlington I saw this huge Volkswagen Bug.
I saw it from a distance and immediately called Jessica on my cell phones speed dial (which means I manually flipped through 20 names until I saw ‘Home’) to tell her about it.
The problem is that as I got closer to the bug I was able to read the license plate, which, in smaller letters than the main number-letter combination, said ‘TOW TRUCK’.
Talk about huge disappointment.

never guessed that the large truck with a huge metal piece that certainly had no positive aerodynamic effects was not for towing.
I probably would have lived the rest of my life thinking I had seen the worlds largest VW bug.
NOT!

I suppose it’s a little thing, but I found it incredibly odd to post such obvious information on a license plate.
If a truck drives by the last thing I do is check the license plate to identify what type of vehicle it is.
And if we need help identifying trucks, shouldn’t we also identify cars as well?
I’m hoping that Colorado doesn’t have the same policy, but I’m not getting my hopes up – license plates are big revenue.

Speaking of revenue, I better get to work.

Randy “Vehicular Goober” Peterman

Today at work we released MDaemon 7.0.
This is a major release with lots of cool bells and whistles added.
I spent a lot of time and energy on LookOut 2.0 (WorldClient’s Out-look-alike).
The interface was seriously reconfigured and some nice new features were added including for 7.0 an HTML email editor.

In the end I hope that the users like it.
While I’m looking forward to 7.X (where X is the next minor update) I’m hoping that we’ll only have a few minor bugs to fix (I’ve got to make sure some translation snafu’s get addressed).
And then we’ll start working on some new enhancements and some good new features to qualify us for a 7.5 release in the next 6 months or so.
6.5 was a great release, but 7.0 is looking really strong.
I love working for Alt-N as it is a great company, our programs are incredibly strong, and the staff and beta teams seem to work really well together.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Coder” Peterman

Never eat that many bratwurst at one time.
It was good, but sheesh, I think I’ll be paying big time tomorrow 🙂
Doug and I both ate that many: hopefully we won’t find ourselves paying for it tomorrow.
We’ll see.

We were pretty darn sad leaving the Dellow household because we knew we were nearing our last visit whilst being residents of the great state of Texas.
However, we were encouraged to know that it shouldn’t be our last visit.
It’s good to have family like Doug and Amanda, they’re really neat, genuine folks who have been incredibly hospitable.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Sentimental” Peterman

The packing continues, we’ve created a lot of garbage in this moving process.
Sometimes you don’t realize that you’ve been storing, holding onto or keeping refuge just plain trash.
And sometimes you realize that you had assigned sentimental value to things that you should throw away anyway.
For example, I’ve got a bag of hats that are great, or I should say were great.
These are hats that really need to be sorted, some to be thrown away, and a few to be kept for play hats (for Abby and kin)… and amazingly a few hats worth getting out and using.
I had my black hat from Jr. High in that bag, it was stained with sweat, discolored from sitting in the sun in the back of one of my cars and probably smelled, if we were to try to smell it.

I’m sure that Abby will look fabulous in my top hat, though it will most likely fall right over her face.
And I’m also sure she’ll love the jesters hat and the (train) engineers hat.
Jessica’s straw hat from her 21st birthday will be kept as well.
We’ll try to take some pictures of Abby with them on soon and then I’ll throw them up online here.

This reminds me that we should most likely clean house personally as well – keeping our relationship with Christ where it should be.
Make sure you’re not out of fellowship with Him.
On the other hand, if you are out of fellowship with Him, then reconciliation is really, really easy.
That’s what I love about my Saviour, He’s not concerned with my statistical average, as if I can sin too much so as to put me out of His grace.
Saving grace from God isn’t grace if it isn’t complete, and perfect.

Our packing here isn’t complete, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t perfect 🙂
We’re making good headway, and if you know anyone who’s interested in buying a used Dodge Stratus that runs well, let me know!

Resting in Him,

Randy “Mover & Shaker” Peterman

P.S. – Happy Leap Day! Oh, and I’m sure they won’t see this, but Happy Anniversary to P.J. and Sherri Lewis! Oh, and apologies to most everyone else who has anniversaries that I forget to mention or call on, or send a card – if their anniversary wasn’t so unique I’d surely forget it.