Tuesday – 15 January 2008
Although it won’t be observed for another six days, today is the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.

This morning, I managed to sleep through my alarm. Fortunately, my internal clock tends to awaken me around 8:00 AM. I got up, ready and out the door in fairly short order.

It was snowing earlier. Fairly heavily, in fact. But, you wouldn’t know it to look outside now: Blue skies with a few high clouds. “Welcome to Utah: If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.”

MacWorld was held this morning. Among the announcements came news of the newest Mac hotness: MacBook Air. It looks like a rather slick machine. The other announcements included:

  • Updates to the iPhone software and a software developer’s kit
  • Updates to the iPod Touch software
  • iTunes movie rentals
  • Updates to AppleTV

So, it would seem as though yesterday’s “leaked” list for the keynote address was bogus… although it did hit on a couple of items. Imagine that.

City of Heroes
Last night, after I settled in – and had a bite to eat – I paid a visit to Paragon City with the Hand of Nefer-Tem. I ran a couple of in-game errands and was soon invited to join a team for some mid-40s missions. I wasn’t about to turn down higher-level missions, so I joined the team. We fought The Council, which on the whole isn’t a “bad” thing… but The Council also tends to have Void Stalkers and Quantums hanging out with them. Voids and Quants tend to have weapons that are anathema to Kheldians – on the order of one- or two-shot kills. Fortunately, we had some heavy-hitters and good healers on the team. By the time we were done, I had earned over 500,000 XP and was only 300K away from Security Level 38. Not bad for roughly an hour’s work.

Stray Toasters

  • I just had a craving for Dunkin’ Donuts. Too bad there aren’t any behind the Zion Curtain.
  • Stay the Night, by Chicago
    • Bonus Question: Without looking it up, what was the band’s first/full name.
  • LEGO geodesic dome
  • LEGOland… this weekend… *genuflect*
  • A fella really got to eat
    And a fella should eat right.
    Five will get you ten
    I’m gonna feed myself right tonight.
    I don’t want fish cakes and rye bread,
    You heard what I said.
    Waiter, please serve mine fried
    I want the frim fram sauce with the ausen fay
    With chafafa on the side.
  • Most users of Microsoft Windows-based systems are probably familiar with Remote Desktop and/or Remote Assistance. For those of you who aren’t, it basically allows users to “share” a computer’s desktop – with one user remotely accessing the desktop from another computer. (Mac OS offers the same thing, as do any number of VNC clients, but I digress…)As I’ve noted before, I’m studying Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Environment, for Exam 70-290. I’ve been going back over some things I read before Christmas and just got back to the Remote Assistance section. I came across the following passages:

    Remote Assistance provides a way for users to get the help they need and makes it easier and less costly for corporate help desks to assist their users.With Remote Assistance… an administrator or support representative can connect remotely to a user’s computer, chat with the user, and either view all the user’s activities or take control of the keyboard and mouse.

    It goes on to say…

    To receive remote assistance, a client must issue an invitation and send it to a particular expert. The client can send the invitation to the expert using Microsoft Windows Messenger or email, or he or she can send it as a file.

    Now, we get to the heart of the matter…

    To use the Windows Messenger service for your Remote Assistance connection, you must have the expert’s Windows Messenger user name in your contact list.

    For a successful request through email, both computers must be using a Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI)-compliant email client.

    As a third option, you can save the invitation as a file and transfer that file to the expert through removable storage media or as an email attachment.

    That’s right. “Removable storage media,” like a flash drive or disc. Now, correct me if I’m wrong (which, in this case, I don’t think I am) but if you’re putting on media like that, is it just going to magically “appear” at the tech’s desk? No, I think not. What does that mean?! You – or a lackey unwitting dupe coworker – have to take it to the tech.

    Granted, the expert can still use Remote Assistance to access the client machine, but doesn’t using Sneakernet to deliver the invitation kind of defeat the purpose?

  • I heard a cool version of On the Good Ship Lollipop, by The Persuasions, this weekend in St. George. I think I’ll have to track down the CD it’s on.

And now it’s time to save the world. Again.

Namaste.