Christmas

Dan got me a copy of "Alone in the Wilderness". Haven't watched it yet. Hoping to get my family to watch it with me, but that may be futile. The kids got me the Clint Eastwood spaghetti western trilogy (Fistful of Dollars, etc.) so we watched that last week.

Last weekend Anne & I took the kids out to dinner and then to Lemony Snicket ("A Series Of Unfortunate Events"). Not great, but entertaining. The house perched on the edge of the cliff was fine. That was the family event for the week/month/year. We seldom do anything all together anymore. John has his video games and his friends, daughter has dance and her friends, and Ross has basketball and student council and his friends

Watched a Jean-Claude Van Damme with Anne last weekend. "Death Wake". Jean-Claude is getting old. It was better than most of his films, I think. Haven't seen much of him lately, but from what I remember, they were pretty poor. Lots of action, but not too smart. This one was a little better.

Also watched a weird Japanese sword and sorcery movie "Onmyoji". Setting was several hundred years ago when swords and sorcery held sway. Very different.

Heard a pleasant song on KBOO radio on the way back from lunch today. The band is Shantala and the album is "The Love Window" and the song was "Nataraja".

Kids also got me the latest Lenny Kravitz CD. The song I wanted "Where are we runnin'?" was the shortest song on the disc, and the only real rocker. This was one of the songs daughter danced to at her Christmas recital (?!?). But I listened to the rest of CD and it has started to grow on me. Then I heard one of the songs on an ad for "Alias", and I think heard another one somewhere else.

Firewall Router

I think I finally have the computer problems sorted out. One needs four levels of protection:
1) Firewall
2) Virus scanner
3) Adware scanner
4) Spyware scanner

The last round of problems started about a month ago when I couldn't connect to the Internet. Finally called my ISP/DSL supplier. They suggested I remove the router from the circuit. I did, and low and behold, the Internet started working! Wonderbar!

Not so fast Bucky. When I pulled the router, I also pulled the firewall, and all our computers that got connected to the Internet immediately got infested with a load of stuff.

So I bought a new router. And then a friend of mine gave me a router. And it was the same model as the one I just bought, so I took the new one back. Finally get around to setting things up and the borrowed router doesn't work either. Go back to the store for a third time and buy the router again. Take it home, plug it in and everything works fine.

Except the printers, but we'll leave that for another time.

So I am impressed with electronics. I am collecting quite a pile dead electro-gizmos. I would like to build a monument to some sort out of dead electronic gizmos. A pyramid, or maybe a building.