This past Wednesday night we Texas Gulf-Coast residents were treated with a very rare sight:
Snow.
It started coming down while we were at our church-house and on the drive back it was full flurries. Visibility driving was something else. Alvis had been soaked by antics while I was wrapping up some training (for me) on the software used to build and project displays during the Sunday services.
It was late when I got out and it was cold and I wanted to get home and cook dinner for the girls. So instead of playing for a moment, we jumped in and got home quick.
The next morning (Thursday) most of the East-side Houston freeways and overpasses were shut down due to ice. Our cars were covered with at least 4 inches of powder-grade snow as were all horizontal and some vertical surfaces.
I made a really horrible mistake that I have been chastising myself for the rest of the week.
See I should have paused being a responsible adult and taken the moment (or hour) to have a snowball fight and do other stupid things with Alvis and Lavie.
Instead I diligently worked to scrape down the cars so they would be safe to drive, pre-warm them by running the engines, and fuss at Alvis to stay back because of the mud, water, and the rush to get her off to school.
Big FAIL.
Once all was contained and all were in their designated places of action, reality hit me Dad-style for missing a rare opportunity to play in thick and deep snow with the girls.
I mean how many chances do we have to do that? Apparently only after a major hurricane hits us. That seems to be the pattern at least (Rita-snow/Ike-snow).
Lesson learned and not to be forgotten.
Take a moment to play in the snow…then move on with life.
It will still be there waiting.
Linkage
Here are some miscellaneous links for you to play in today. No mess no fuss.
- AVG’s NOPslide – SecuriTeam Blog – More consideration and commentary on AVG. Just one of a growing chorus of voices questioning AVG’s position and model as a recommended AV solution.
- Why does it take so long to create a fixed size virtual hard disk? - Virtual PC Guy’s WebLog - Quick answer? It’s a security thing and involves zeroing out the “drive”.
- No SWAP Partition, Journaling Filesystems, … on a SSD? -Robert Penz Blog – Technical discussion on configuration options for Solid State drives.
- How to cancel a print job that hangs under Windows Vista and XP – 4sysops blog – Great procedure for dealing with those really-stubborn hung jobs that sysadmins come across from time to time
- The Case of the Mysteriously Large Spooler.xml File - Ask the Performance Team – More Windows printing (spooler) troubleshooting and background since we were briefly on the subject.
- TweakVista.com - The many looks of the Windows 7 Taskbar – TweakVista.com – Whew! I’m glad I’ve got options! The Areo Peek thing wasn’t doing it for me.
- 7 Better Alternatives To Common Windows Apps - MakeUseOf.com – Nice picks and no complaints from this app-list roundup.
- Security’s Dirty Dozen - PC Magazine – Great in-depth reviews of many popular AV products. Seems pretty fair and balanced. I like reading these to keep abreast of products I use often and have heard of but haven’t tried. Always learning something new from a different perspective.
- AVID - Antivirus is Dead! - Hackers Center Blogs – OK, maybe not yet, but the existing models are a bit broken in places and there is definitely some room for improvement Good examination of some of those concerns.
- The Home Computer Freeware List: Updated 09/05/08 - Confessions of a freeware junkie – A very good roundup of freeware software choices broken down into various categories. Well worth perusing. You will certainly find some oldies-but-goodies as well as some new tools and utilities worth considering.
--Claus V.
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