Dude!
How cool.
SXSW has proven to be very cool.
I sat in on two accessibility sessions and am ready to rework a few parts of this site and majorly rework WorldClient – say good-bye to frames!

Of course my desire to work on that will not equate to the bosses being behind the work.
However, future work that I do will attempt to fulfill this need.
Tony and I were blown away by one session talking about graphic design & work.
We saw two very skilled graphic artists explain some things that they did or used.
I need to learn how to use Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop much better.

The only thing that is bad about this is that I don’t get much time with family today, and tomorrow the morning sessions will be blocked by my going to church (which is a higher priority).
I’ll miss Nick Bradbury speaking on RSS, which I’m interested in, I’m hoping he’ll post some notes of the event soon.

Resting in Him,

Randy “Web Dev” Peterman

Registration is this afternoon, and the fun begins!
South By South-West will go all weekend and run until next Tuesday.
Tony and I made our schedule out last night.
It looks like we’re going to have some fun and learn.
Fun and learning.
It’s edutainment… not!

I think edutainment is a gimmick, but there’s going to be a session on it, if I wasn’t going to something more useful at the time.
I’m very excited about the navigation classes being offered.

I can tell you the worst thing for the weekend is this: Zeldman won’t be there, and
Nick Bradbury will be on a panel discussion that I’ll miss because frankly, Sunday morning is my church time!
However, it promises to be a productive weekend either way.
I think that gals and kids are going to have fun too because they’ll be going to Sea World.

Resting in Him,

Randy “datahead” Peterman

As I mentioned earlier this week, we installed Linux at work.
Redhat 9 is incredibly intuitive and gave me options that I was totally impressed with.
It appears to be smarter than Windows in a lot of areas.
I think Windows is great in many ways, but having now seen the latest Redhat installation, I’d say Microsoft is getting a run for their money with Apple OSX and Linux Redhat.

While many commercial applications are not available on Linux yet, I hope that there will be a drift in that direction.
I’d love to see us port some of our software (particularly the web based software) over to Linux versions.
Maybe when my C++ skills are better I can give that a shot.
However, I’m not so sure that’ll be easy… it sounds good though.

Tomorrow I’m going to help the Cobb’s move into their new place, go to a
lunch meeting at work and then head to Austin to get ready for
SXSW (South By South-West).
I’m looking forward to SXSW, and hope that I learn a lot.
There’s a lot of opportunities to network with people there and promote WorldClient – I’m hoping to get a chance to tell the World about Alt-N.

Randy “No Hat” Peterman

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