Sorry for the interruption but I was out of town for most of the holiday (we left the 26th for Chicago, but thats a whole post on its own!). I did however, want to brag about some of the Christmas Gifts that blessed our house this season though.

Amy’s big gift this year is to have the Master Bath and Bedroom repainted. When we bought the house from her parents, we inherited the DEEP red color of the bath and bed room. Its a dark red (think maroon) that is hard to match colors with. Now we’re going for a lighter, beachier look and are painting them Beachnut (its a lowes color). The master bath is done (Amy found some Votive candle holders at a store in Nashville), next on to the bedroom!

Grace had a very Hannah Montanna Christmas. She got a Hannah Montanna Guitar Game (like Guitar Hero) that plugs in to the tv, a Hannah Costume, and doll. Its pretty cool and she likes pretending to be a rockstar. Maybe someday. I like playing her game (since I haven’t bought Guitar HEro World Tour yet) and she’s getting better at it.

Mose got a Trampoline. One of her favorite things to do is jump. We’d wake on Saturday mornings to the heavy thud of emma jumping up and down in our door way. Now she can do it all she wants and it doesn’t make the house shake. Its pretty cool and Grace and Emma take turns on it. Amy wanted to try it out, but its for people under 80 pounds (and neither of us meet that requirement!

The girls also got some tinkertoys, and some other little odds and ends that they like to play with, but the coolest by far is my Ultimate Wall-E Robot.

We saw the movie in the theaters and we’re big fans (mose loves him). We had seen the Ultimate Wall-e at the Disney Store but we weren’t going to get him because of the price tag. Needless to say, Santa found him on Sale and he was wrapped and under the tree for me on Christmas morning. He has fun dancing, chasing the dogs around and just exploring on his own. If you haven’t seen one yet, I’ll work on some video and see if I can get anything posted. Its pretty cool though and the way he can respond to voice commands or find his own way around the room is fairly smooth.

Was there one gift that you prized more than the others??

Google issued a challenge to create videos of how email travels around the world that could be put in to a montage of sorts. What you see above is the result. its pretty cool watching the little gmail envelope travel round the world. Isn’t it? Check out the Page to see where the clips are from…

Linuxtracker.org is pleased to announce the availability of PCLOS Gnome-2.18.0 on the linuxtracker bittorrent network. For faster downloads, more accurate statistics and to see all of the available torrents, please visit http://linuxtracker.org. PCLinuxOS 2007 remaster with Gnome-2.18.0 instead of KDE.

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In other news, a Denver man has been arrested for ripping the head off a duck and threatining to eat it. Simply because he was hungry. Well and drunk. Never a good mix if you’re a duck I guess. A guest at a hotel in St. Paul, MN, ripped the head off of one of the hotel ducks and said

I’m hungry. I’m gonna eat it.

So, um, yea.

Original Story just in case you don’t believe me…

ACK! I know! I completely forgot about World Alzheimer’s Day last Friday (September 21st!). I’ve written before about how personally Alzheimer’s has affected my family and unlike most issues out there this one will affect almost everyone in some way (I bet you, yea you, know someone affected by Alzheimer’s). I was supposed to remind everyone to have a Purple Party in order to raise awareness and donations for Alzheimer’s research. Well, I want you to know its not too late!

Make plans this weekend for a purple party. Ask your friends, co-workers and family to donate to the Alzheimer’s Fund. If you throw a party, register it on actionalz.org. You’ll be able to create a page for your party, your friends can donate directly on the site and if you agree to raise at least $150 you get a free party kit (which rocks!). Also, the The Harrah’s Foundation is matching EVERY contribution made in the month of September, so you better hurry, September ends on Sunday!!

Throw a party, get the word out! DON’T FORGET!!

At work we have a fairly robust backup system that first backups to disc and then it copies it to tape. Its also set to go through every month and archive stuff that has not been accessed in over 6 months and the remove it from the filesystem to clean up space (we’re a printing company, so the files are sometimes fairly large and my 2tb storage lasts about 6 months). It has not been working properly since, well, ever and I have been working constantly to get it right. Just when I think I have it, something else pops up and proves me wrong.

This past week has been no exception.

The server says that certain files are there. The backup system says that certain files are there. However, when I try to restore them or access them, I am unable to pull them up (even though it appears they are there and taking up space!). I know its not a permissions issue, the permissions are set wide open on the directory in question. I think it has to do with another aspect of the restore process, but I don’t know for certain. Sometimes, I think it would be easier if we did not have computers at all. AT ALL!