Happy Friday The 13th!

I don’t get home from work until midnight on Saturday nights and my wife usually goes to bed before I get home. I try to be quiet when I come in but as one might expect of a mother of 9 children, she’s a very light sleeper. Often when she awakes, she’s not really coherent. She’ll almost always ask me “who is that?” Since we go through this routine mostly every week, I’m of the mindset that she should know who would be coming into her room on Saturday night at midnight. I don’t know why she wants to wake herself up to have a conversation with me so I'd try to give a concise answer, “me” so that she can go back to sleep. But that's never enough, she then wants to probe further, as if asking incoherent questions will lead me to believe that she’s perfectly aware of what is going on around her.

So, one such night a few years ago when asked, “who is that?” I came up with a random answer that I was sure would boggle her mind. “It’s me, Uncle Steve”. Now, she doesn’t have an Uncle Steve and she doesn’t really know my Uncle Steve very well, so it was fun to listen to her struggle with the computation of this response. Of course she got annoyed, the very response I was looking for and so “Uncle Steve” is now my automatic "without a thought" answer to her when she’s talking in her sleep.

This past Saturday was funny though, my son is home from college for Spring break and he is one of these night owl people that stays up all night and sleeps in the day. So upon my arrival home, he and I exchanged some words downstairs in the entry way and she could obviously hear our voices in her dreams. Realizing that she may be upset our voices awakened her, I decided not to mess with her for our routine exchange and replied to the "Who is that?" question simply, “Me”. Then she asked, “who’s with you?”, I couldn’t resist, “Uncle Steve”. Her next few responses were fun and worth blogging about:

Cat:“What are you wearing, are you dressed like a wolf?”
Me: “Yes Bella, I’m a werewolf!”
Cat: Mumbling unintelligible voice as I retreat to the bathroom...

And then upon my return to the room, hoping she'd be back asleep...
Cat: “Come on, I’m serious”
Me: “What are you talking about?”
Cat: “Do you have a tail?”
Me: “Yes, all wolves have tails, good night!”
Cat: in frustration, “Whatever”

She did remember the conversation somewhat the next morning as we ate Sunday breakfast, I had the kids in tears (and her too) as I recounted the dialog. I said, “this is good stuff, I’m putting this on my blog!” Since I don’t like to post without a picture, I googled “wolfboy” and this is what I came up with. An interesting story of a very unique special little boy. Why does God do this??? Maybe for the very purpose of getting us to ponder that very question!

I realized that it was Friday the 13th only after I had put all of this together, and it dawned on me, the perfect title for this post!

Cursed Viruses, They're Of The Devil!

So yes, I’m a little more vulnerable than most because I have 11 computers connected to the Internet from my home, 7 of which are being used by non-technical children/wife. I’m pretty tenacious and usually try for hours to hack into the registry and rid the virus manually myself. This is dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing (and it’s dangerous even if you do). It’s somewhat easy to mess things up with your system if you’re not careful in the registry, which will require a reformat and complete reinstall. OK, I admit it, the dark side wins, they successfully have driven me to madness!

Usually, the most effective thing to do is to just reformat the hard drive and reinstall everything. This takes a great deal of time but at least once you’ve been through the exercise a few times you get pretty efficient at it. I have two hard drives on all of my PCs, the 2^nd drive should be used for data that you don’t want to lose. That should never really get infected. The primary drive is for the operating system and all of the applications. That way I can reformat (losing everything) at will.

Then you start thinking about the value of utilities like “Drive Image”, “ True Image” or “Ghost”. The beauty of these tools is that you can create an image of your computer after all of your software is installed. Just try to limit using the Internet to updating your Windows, Antivirus maintenance, and things that you know are legit until you get a good copy of the image. I get all of the most current and proven drivers loaded, my windows maintenance, MQ Office, Paintshop Pro and other tools that I use as a standard took kit (winzip or winRAR, codecs, VLC, Mozilla, Macromedia Flash and shockwave players, etc.) Just get the thing loaded up as much as you can but avoiding stuff that you’re unsure of. Then take your image and next time you get a virus, you can just reformat your drive and then restore the image and you’ll be way ahead of the game.

It’s risky to keep taking image snapshots because you most likely will not know when exactly you picked up the virus. So I just try to get a standard image and keep it around for when I need to rebuild the machine. Gwen’s PC was the latest victim, infected with a nasty Trojan Horse called av360 (Antivirus 360). What it does is act like a free legitimate antivirus program and detects like 30-50 fake viruses on your PC and then tries to get you to buy a utility that will go and clean up the hoax viruses. The fact is, av360 is the virus, and it goes undetected right on by Norton and McAfee (way to go Norton and McAfee).

I found out that if you don’t have Norton Antivirus on your PC and then try to install it after the PC is infected with av360, it will cause Norton to not be able to download updates. At this point you’re toast, the only way to get rid of it is to reformat. I also just found out, because this time I did have Norton installed already, that even with the latest updates, Norton doesn’t detect this thing.

There are dozens of write-ups and alleged free utilities for removing this virus if you google av360. I avoided the free utilities because I can’t be sure that they are legit. I did go in and hack the registry and searched the files out and removed them. I’m certain that the offending program that brought the Trojan in in the first place is still out there dormant on her PC, so I may still have a problem in the future. But at least for now the phony virus pop-up that was coming up every time Gwen did anything on the Internet, is now gone. As it was in this case, not having to reformat means I am victorious (this go around)!

I have some PC issue to deal with at home usually every 1-2 weeks, it’s always something fun…

Snopes - The Truth Will Set You Free!

I got a few emails recently, this was one of them:

Check out what some of our boys overseas did to their helicopter.
This very special Mi-24 helicopter is presently flying in Afghanistan ,
where it is no doubt causing quite a stir. God Bless the U.S.A.

Snopes says "Real Photos, Inaccurate Description"

Origins: Common as it may be to assume that any neat-o piece of military hardware must be American (especially when it's painted to look like the same type of bird that serves as the U.S. national symbol), the helicopter shown here is not American, nor has it been used by U.S. forces in Afghanistan or Iraq.

The type of helicopter shown in these images is the Mi-24 Hind; the unusually-decorated version pictured here originated with the Hungarian Air Force and was evidently painted with the eagle design by one of its crew members. The craft was not intended to be used in military operations and carried no armaments; it is strictly a display vehicle exhibited at air shows and the like.



Before propagating this type of urban legend and propaganda further, I recommend at least trying a quick Snopes search first.

Best Quote Of 2008

Snopes says, "TRUE"


POLK COUNTY FLORIDA SHERIFF GRADY JUDD

Some 'dirtbag' in Polk County Florida who got pulled over in a routine
traffic stop ended up 'executing' the deputy who stopped him. The deputy
was shot eight times, including once behind his right ear at close range.
Another deputy was wounded and a police dog killed. A state wide manhunt
ensued.

The low-life was found hiding in a wooded area with his gun. SWAT team
officers open fired and hit the guy 68 times.

Naturally, the media went nuts and asked why they shot him 68 times...
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, told the Orlando Sentinel: "Because that's
all the ammunition we had or we would have shot him more!!!"

For the full story go to the snopes link.

Livin' On The Edge

Snopes says "TRUE"



Look at the first picture above. This guy went left to center. You can see where he broke through the guard rail on the right side of the picture where the people are standing on the road. His truck left the road, traveling from right to left, he flipped this truck end-over-end, went across the culvert outlet and landed on the side of the road where you see it now.



Origins: The above-displayed photographs depict a December 2006 accident in which the driver of a 1991 GMS pickup slid off the road onto the right shoulder, overcorrected when he turned back to the left, and crossed over the opposite lane of the highway before crashing through a cement barrier, skirting a railing above the drainage culvert, and coming to rest facing opposite his direction of travel - barely missing a plunge over a 200-foot precipice by about twelve inches.


The roadway in these pictures is verified to be Highway 59 (i.e. State Route 59) near Hurricane City, Utah.

The Hurricane City Police department also confirmed that these images "are consistent with a single vehicle traffic accident that occurred on State Route 59 in Hurricane City" on 30 December 006, and that "Hurricane City Fire Rescue responded to the scene". The driver told police he was traveling at 55 mph when he left the road, but the police report of the incident notes that the truck left a 92-foot-long skid mark, indicating a much higher speed (perhaps 75 to 80 mph).



My guess, the high speed probably caused the momentum for him to get across that culvert successfully. Horse Power Saves! And that's why I'm a huge fan of the BMW M3...

If this guy didn't believe in God before, I'd bet money that he does now!

Ricks College 1980-1982

I've been wanting to do a post of Ricks College, and now that ,y daughter Tory has been accepted into BYU-I, well it has been making me more nostalgic than ever. My days at Ricks were very special to me because it was a pivotal time in my life where I started to make important decisions that would impact my life forever more.

1) Returning for my 2nd year Fall 1981, here visiting Yellowstone national park (Dad, me, Mom, Sandra Joyce) 2) Me and proof that I did once have nice hair (and no gut)

I started in the Fall of 1980, I was assigned to a 6 man (3 bedroom) apartment at Targhee Chalet with only 4 other room mates: Cal Collins and Jess Kohlert (returned missionaries from Lake Oswego, OR) and Larry Soderquist (a local from Rexburg, ID who was not attending Ricks), and his cousin Joel (last name slips my memory). Joel was a cowboy from Nevada, he was in the Agriculture major, a rodeo boy of sorts. He often kept his gear (saddle, boots, etc.) in the front room though he was rarely ever home in the apartment. My good friend and neighbor from Southern CA would join me a week later to be my room mate, Craig Bingham.


Rocky "Rock" Babcock standing in front of the Rock Lobster mural that I drew and a few of us colored, readying for some "dancing this mess around" at the Star Palace.

Craig and I were a little culture shocked in our "own Private Idaho" and we set out to bring a bit of CA to Idaho with us. At that time, punk rock was big in Southern CA so we decided to introduce the small town of Rexburg to the "new wave" culture. We tried to stick to the more reserved punk/new-wave bands like B-52's, DEVO, Adam and The Ants and spare them the likes of the hard core: Dickies, Sex Pistols and Dead Kennedys. We met some other Californians that joined in on the "party gone out of bounds" fun, namely Rocky Babcock and Barron Smith.

Pictured below: 1) Larry Soderquist, Craig Bingham (and his girl friend) and me 2) Craig ready to hit the Star Palace disco for some "bikini whaling", posed against our wacky wallpaper


3) Craig and me at a Stake activity back home in CA, summer 1981 4) Craig Bingham would later marry my little sister Debbie while I was serving my mission, this is them in VA Summer 2008 here in VA.

I recently hooked up with Jess Kohlert's younger brother Doug on Facebook (seems he may have been a Tau Sigger at BYU, as was I). I never knew him at BYU (and I don't really know him now), but I knew he was Jess's brother just from his picture, his last name, and Oregon residence. Through him I was able to reconnect after way too many years (25+) with Jess. Jess is now a Professor at Kings college in PA, he's married and has 5 kids. I was also able to reconnect with Tom Knudsen as well, through Jess. I guess now I just need to find Cal.

1) Cal and Jess 2) Lisa and Jess at the end of the school year


3) Jess and his family a few years ago 4) Jess and Tom a few years back

I can't remember why, but Cal Collins left us at the end of the Semester and Tom Knudsen, another Lake Oswego pal became Jess' immediate room mate. Jess and Tom would eventually turn out to be major factors in my transition to a better me. Larry and I reconnected several years back but didn't exchange any photos. I need to reconnect with him too.

1) Tom and Larry (no they weren't gay, we wrestled around a lot in those days) 2) Me and Tom last day of school before I would go back to CA.


3) Tom's beautiful family 4) Tom's oldest is now married, and also pictured his lovely wife LaNae (whom he met in Rexburg, she was a local)

With Craig Bingham in the family now (by the way he and my sister had 5 boys, awesome kids) it was only fair that we get another Ricks College buddy in the family. My wife and I would eventually hook Barron Smith up with my wife's younger sister Irene on a blind date, and they got married shortly thereafter in 2001.

1) Rocky, Barron and me 2) Barron


3) Rocky, Barron and me reuniting in CA 1984 4) Barron and Irene

It has been great hooking up with my long lost Ricks College Oregon pals. It has also been great to have some of my Ricks pals become brothers. Life is good!

Amazing Photos

Zoomed in on the photog section - Inauguration Day 2009!

I guess this is an appropriate President's day Post.

Click on the link image immediately below (or on the link) to open the picture. The control for the picture is in the upper left. Press the + sign to zoom in, or the arrows to move right, left, up or down. If the picture looks fuzzy give it a second to clarify.

This is a remarkable panorama of the inauguration. It might not work well with a dial-up modem, but you can actually focus in on faces near the back of the crowd- nearly 1/2 mile away!

http://gigapan.org/viewGigapanFullscreen.php?auth=033ef14483ee899496648c2b4b06233c

This is the MOST AMAZING picture

Focus on Obama (center stage) and then look behind him. There's Clarence Thomas, Dick Cheney in his wheelchair, Clinton, Gore, Bush 41 and even Dan Quayle and Justice Scalia. The clarity is amazing!

I found The Smithsonian "Castle", the Washington Monument and armed guards atop the Rayburn House Office Building.

The technology is truly amazing- and it's un-classified! Imagine what our spy agencies can see with classified technology!!!


Update 2/21/09

OK, so while still impressive, I'm a little disappointed. A coworker said this was actually a doctored panoramic photo made up of many smaller photos. As I was browsing around in the upper deck behind Obama, I discovered evidence within big-head guy (left above, just left of center in upper deck behind Obama) and a few headless people (far right in same upper deck up behind Obama). See if you can find any other anomalies! See if you can find Waldo :)
-------

If incredible photography is your thing, check these amazing photos out (I did not take them, got them in an email attachment, don't know who the author(s) is/are to give proper credit)!




http://bakerfam.org/stuff/eye-catching-photos.pps

Happy Valentine's Day to My Sweetheart!

Valentine's day fell on a Saturday this year and I work double shifts every Saturday so this was going to be tough. On top of that, I had been filling in during the week (yes, Friday too) for a co-worker who is on vacation, who works 2nd shift (3pm-11pm). So, my plan was to run over to Costco before they close and buy some roses for my sweetheart. But I got busy with a project and didn't remember until 8:50pm, 20 minutes too late. And I planned ahead for this, brought a pitcher to keep the flowers in until my shift ended.

I had to resort to Giant (the grocery store) and no doubt I paid more but at this point it didn't matter. I picked the two best dozen I could find, red and pink. I had given Cathleen a beautiful Lenox vase for Christmas that has been sitting unopened in its box in our dining room ever since. It was all part of the plan. Normally she is already in bed and asleep when I get home at midnight but not this Friday. She has been watching all of the back episodes of LOST, trying to get caught up on a few seasons, so that she can watch the current ones with me and Christopher. Several of the kids have been watching too. So when I came in, they were all engrossed in an episode and I carried out my plan in the dining room, trying to be very quiet. I turned the lights off in the dining room and had hoped that she would come down Saturday morning and discover them. I went on up to bed since I had to get up early for my double the next day.

When she came to bed, she gave me a hug and thanked me for the flowers. It didn't matter, it was still Valentine's day, and I was happy because she seemed happy. And she didn't even yell at me for spending the money :)



So, what to say to your best friend and romantic partner, sealed to you for all eternities??? I Love You! I could write or say volumes of wonderful things and not get the exact sentiment across. It is a feeling that I can not express in any way except maybe through the Spirit. I can offer my enduring gratitude and express my eternal love verbally, but it doesn't say what a hug, an expression and a sincere heart will say in person.

When we were engaged, she was in New York and I was in Utah at school. I had her framed picture and very expensive long phone calls almost every night to look forward to. In the present day, on my long Saturdays at work, we talk quite a bit, but we are apart. But I am grateful for the short moments of time when we are together, that I can truly express my feelings without even saying any words. A hug, a kiss, a smile from across the room. Those feelings can't be conveyed over the phone or through pictures. I am so grateful to share mortality with her, to share in the parenting responsibility that we have undertaken, to grow and progress together on our journey to eternal life. She is my best friend and companion and I love her. Happy Valentine's Day Cathleen!

New Rigs

Christopher and I finally got new PCs.


My case (black), Christopher's case (red) with pull out MB tray

Back in December 2005 (Christmas), I built new PCs for all of the kids. Gregory already had a newer mid range gamer PC (with a robust AGP graphics card), the rest of us had antiquated Dell Pentium IIIs that I bought off of ebay. Despite them being a little bit outdated, the kids were thrilled to each have their very own PC. They were good enough for the times, but eventually the newer games would not play on them. The new 2005 Christmas PCs weren't true gaming PCs (they had integrated lower end graphics cards) but they were the latest technology and would therefore play most everything the kids wanted to play. Though soon enough Tory would need a slightly more capable graphics card for SIMS and also a bigger hard drive to store her audio books, etc. Gregory at that time got the best of the best, a Super Gaming PC with a $300+ graphics card. Christopher got a new red dragon case (pictured on the right above, very cool but very expensive, notice how his motherboard pulls out of the case on a tray so that it is very easy to work on) and then he just inherited all of the guts from Gregory's older gaming system. This would be as capable as the other new PCs (other than Gregory's new one), but the AGP graphics card was more "game" capable. Eventually this would bite us as the AGP architecture fell by the wayside and his motherboard/graphics card would not be scalable for the future leaving his PC stuck in time with regards to upgradability. It was a decent gaming rig but it kept getting too hot as the more demanding games pushed the hardware. This would cause the BIOS to shut the PC down to protect itself from damage (cooking). So Christopher was ready for a more capable machine, and so was I (the max memory my Dell would support was 1GB, not good when you're messing with photos/videos and such).


This Christmas Jonathan and Nathaniel got new graphics cards that would allow them to play some new games that they were also getting. Christopher's computer (with expensive older AGP graphics card) was barely able to play these games, and he tends to play more advanced games than the little guys. So Christopher didn't get anything for Christmas other than just a promise that he'd get a new rig soon. Since I too never got a new system back in 2005, (not entirely true, I got a hand me down Dell from a friend that was slightly better than any of my Pentium IIIs). So, I finally bought Christopher and myself new parts from newegg, mostly the same stuff for both except that Christopher got a beefier "gaming" graphics card.


Great memory $16/GB, a cheapy $40 gaming graphics card for me

The beauty is that these PCs are much cheaper and yet much better systems than the December 2005 ones since the technology has advanced quite a bit since then. We each got dual core CPU processors for a fraction of what I paid for the single cores in 2005 (the new quad cores of today are currently about 5X the price of the dual cores and don't offer all that much bang for the buck for today's software applications so I passed on those). We each got 4GB of memory, lots of disk storage and the mother boards are compatible with quad processors so they are scalable. Christopher's gaming graphics card is middle of the road. It was a $150 board on sale for $100. Considering the good gaming boards go for $300-$400, I considered this pretty cheap. The most demanding game out called Crysis is what everyone uses as a benchmark (we don't have that game). People on the newegg review boards said they can play Crysis with Christopher's grahics card at high resolution with only a little bit of lag (5%), or zero lag at medium resolution. For $200+ more, we could make that 5% little bit of lag go away... I don't think so! The beefier graphics boards get a lot hotter and consume more power so then you have to start thinking about water cooling, more and larger fans and a bigger power supply.


Christopher's Graphics Card, the new rigs are nice and clean (and new and fast)

But it is inevitable that newer more demanding software applications (games) will come out and these PCs will be left in the dark. For now (and probably at least 3-4 more years) even the 2005 computers are still fast enough and able to handle pretty much whatever we throw at them and we feel blessed to have them (and to be off the Pentium IIIs, which were also a great blessing for their time). Computer parts have definitely come down a lot, you can really build a screaming machine for not all that much money. 4GB of memory is only $65, a few years ago it was more than that for 1GB. I have been encouraging friends and family to swap out their motherboard, CPU and memory for about $150 and essentially they'll have a new fast current for the times rig. The power supply, hard drive and case can't be too antiquated though, beyond say 4-5 years and you're probably obsolete for the most part (other than for simple emailing and word processing). I still have a few of my old Pentium IIIs serving as file servers. They're fine for adminstering my little domain but not much else unless you have a lot of time (and patience). YouTubing, video and photo editing, etc are going to really bog you down unless you have something a little more modern. All of our monitors are the old CRT style except Cathleen's. I'd like to replace them with the flat LCDs, but they are doing their job so its hard to dish out the money, especially when the LCDs keep coming down in price. When I can get a 19"-21" for $100 each, I'll be ready to make the jump (they're twice that currently).

Eventually I'd like to have this 52 inch monitor sitting on my desk...