Mike’s Family Blog

This website should be a bit faster after today. Upgraded the RAM from 384 to 512MB tonight. The server was using about 410MB of actual memory in the day to day operations which meant it was looking to write to/from the hard drive for the extra little bit. Now it’s got some breathing room.

Was also trying to upgrade my main computer from 512 to 768MB or RAM. I don’t know what this computer’s problem is, but it just doesn’t like RAM filling up all 3 slots. The mainboard is supposed to support a max of 768MB, it’s got the most recent BIOS version and yet it’ll only take 512MB. Anything more and it locks up. More specifically, XP locks up during the boot process. The POST shows 768MB of RAM, so it’s not like the system itself isn’t reading the correct amount, something else in there is buggering it up. (And yes, the RAM is good.)

However, you want to see whacky?? Check this out. I opened Lisa’s computer to upgrade it from 320MB to 512MB. I just couldn’t get it to add the RAM up to 512. Individually, the RAM all works. It’s all PC133. (Aside from the PC100 I tested in the below math.) It just didn’t want to add up. Here’s the math and I tried all possible combinations in each of the slots.

(BTW, ’s/b’ = ’should be’)

256 - 0 - 0 = 256
256 - 128 - 0 = 256 (s/b 384)
256 - 128 - 128 = 384 (s/b 512)
256 - 64 - 128 = 320 (s/b 448)
256 - 64 - 0 = 192 (s/b 320)
256 - 256 - 0 = ? Didn’t have a 256 available at the time to check that one. The way this math was going, I’d guess the 256 sticks would cancel each other out and leave it at 0. LOL

The weirdest one was the 256+64=192. I mean, what type of whacky math is that? So for me to get the most RAM operable, I had to waste a 128MB stick just to get it to come out to 384MB of RAM.

Ah well, soon enough I’ll have to be looking at a new system and then a whole new set of challenges.

WOW! Our Canadian athletes need to pat themselves on the back for one heck of a job well done. On top of the medal haul, we came up with 13 fourth place finishes! Okay, that begs all the ‘what if’ statements, but when you look at the youth that came up with all those fourth place finishes (aside from a couple of them) the future is bright. Four years from now, we’ll get to see just how bright they’ll all shine. Well done!

The following photo is dedicated to my sister who lovingly sent a drum for Jonathan’s first Christmas. Your first thought is… wow, that’s mean! What amount of noise will he make with that thing? On the other hand, knowing what I’ve sent to my nephews puts it in perspective. They’ve received their fair share of noisy toys over the years. (See Cymbals) Was I a mean brother to my sister? Well, again, put in perspective, even had I been nice and sent only quiet toys, or better yet, (better for her, worse for the boys) clothes or something boring like that… That drum would still have arrived all nicely wrapped. So the noisy Christmas gifts that I sent first were, well, pre-emtive strikes.

And then we’ve got Jonathan, who, rather than make noise, has found a different use for the drum.

Also, more photos added to the gallery.

Oh wait… even better, it’s time for bed!

Thought I’d say hi first, though. Just returned home after spending the afternoon and evening at Lisa’s Great Uncle’s place. He’s in the hospital and probably soon to be moved to a long term care facility. His place needed a good cleaning just in case he was to be sent home and after Molly Maid quoted a high price for cleaning, we offered to do it for less. Why not, since we do it as caretakers anyways.

The place wasn’t filthy by any means. Well, the bathroom needed a good scrubbing, but he’s an old guy, what do you expect? (We’ve seen MUCH MUCH worse as it is.) However, the reason for the high quote from Molly Maid was because of an overgrown forest of knick knacks all over the place! It kind of reminds you of a garden that’s been overrun by garden gnomes. Other than the kitchen, every table top is covered with little trinkets and collectibles. You’d have to see it to believe it. But all of it needs to be dusted down or washed. It’s time consuming to say the least. But at least we’re getting paid.

A congrats out to Brad Gushue and his rink for a well earned Gold Medal in men’s curling. The newfies are throwing a party on the rock so I’d expect a fish shortage for the next week or so.

Also, I finally got started on the website for my business. You can check it out here. It’s a start anyways, even though there’s nothing on it. But it’s more than was there for the last 2 years. I finally started hashing together a look and feel for it, so now to finish it up. Though after I published what I had today, I had another thought, so it’ll change again soon.

So the men’s hockey team is out of the Olympics. No surprise, since they played like crap. Now all the second guessing starts and will go all the way until Vancouver 2010. My spit in the bucket as far as that goes… I still think they made a mistake not taking Sydney Crosby. Here’s a young kid who’s proven he can skate with the big boys, knows the big ice surface, didn’t have last season off and has great passion when he plays for Canada.

Of course, not to knock any of the players that were chosen. Individually, they are among the best players in the world. Canada has so much depth of talent that we could easily have sent two teams and still left great players at home. But that’s the kick, ‘individually’ they are great players. They just didn’t gel as a team unit. What we saw out of the other teams was great ‘team’ play and that’s what beat us in the end. For 2010, you bet they’ll be looking to put great individuals on the ice, but I think we’ll see them look further in depth to find some great team players to glue it all together.

On a very positive note, Winnipegger Cindy Klassen is having one heck of an Olympics! 4 speed skating medals and another event, the 5,000M still to come. It’s one for the history books, that’s for sure. Way to go Cindy!

You can imagine our amusement when we picked the following strawberry from the bucket we purchased. It looked like a frog! However, on further taste testing, it tasted more like strawberry than like chicken.

So a gold medal for the women in hockey. Way to go! The men showed some improvement in their win today over the Czech Republic. Martin Brodeur saved the game for them by having a great performance in the net. The Czechs pressed hard in the 2nd and 3rd period and quite outplayed Canada for most of the two periods. Well, onward to the quarter finals.

By the way everyone, the way this blog style format works is that you can regsiter yourself and then add comments of your own in response to the posts you see here. I’d like to encourage you do do that, it’s much more fun and interactive.

Questions? Please ask!

Here it is, after midnight. First free moment I’ve had on the computer in a week, other than a quick check of email, that is.

It was Lisa’s birthday on Saturday, she wanted to see a movie and then off to dinner. Just the two of us, so Jonathan spend the afternoon with his Oma. (Lisa’s Mom.) The neat thing was, we saw Curious George. So it was like watching our son for the duration of a 90 minute movie. Weird how the animators got all his facial expressions and such just right. I think they were spying on us.

Tomorrow’s the big day for the Canadian Women’s Hockey Team. Going for Gold against Sweden. What a shocker of an upset against the USA for Sweden! The Swedes played a good game against them, though. The US team seemed to take an overconfident approach to the game and weren’t mentally prepared. The Canada vs Sweden game should be a good one. With a win, hopefully it’ll be a shot in the arm for the confidence of our Men’s team who’ve been stunned with a couple of shutout losses. The Swiss game was a shocker, but they played a fantastic game against Canada, plus it doesn’t hurt to have a hot goalie. The game against the Finns was bound to be a tough test as it was. The Finns took Canada to school in that game and showed them how to play very effective trap hockey. Let’s hope the men can pick up, start scoring and get moving!

Go Canada!

Wow, what a busy weekend. First off, it turned out to be a trucking company, Arnold Bros, that had one of their garages burn down on Friday night. That was the info on the picture in the previous post.

Saturday, we were up in Selkirk at Lower Fort Garry for the Special Olympics Provincial Snowshoeing Championships. A good day for it, weather-wise. Lisa’s sister, Leaha, won 3 gold medals in her events, 400, 800 and 1500M.

Today after service, some socializing at one of Lisa’s co-worker’s family’s house. The co-worker passed away on Wednesday evening, so instead of a memorial service, it was a visit with friends and family.

Anyways, enjoy the picture below… I think Jonathan was looking for Elmo on the TV… it wasn’t on.

Still have some configuration and such. Trying to figure out how to link users between the gallery and the blog. As well, trying to embed the gallery within the site. That’ll come as I work more with this.

Anyways, you can link to the gallery in the upper right corner.

In the meantime, here is a picture of the toxic smoke coming from Arnold Bros Transport on Friday, Feb 06, 2006 at 9PM. No idea what happened yet, that’ll be in the papers and news tomorrow.

Dramatic headline eh?

I had to block my email server yesterday after I was sent an email saying my email server was set up as an open relay and propagating spam messages. When I checked things out, I was shocked to find that the system had sent out almost 20,000 unsolicited emails! WOW!

For those who need the plain english description, an open relay means that spammer@domain1.com can send mail to victim@domain3.com by connecting through openrelay@domain2.com. This means that the recipient (victim@domain3.com) will not see that the email is coming from spammer@domain1.com, it’ll actually look like it’s coming from openrelay@domain2.com.

It turned out it was a setting I had overlooked when setting up my email server. Once I fixed that and cleaned out the other 8,000 emails that were waiting to be delivered, I was able to bring it back online. I then filled out the online form at Open Relay Database to retest me. They were the ones who originally sent me the email, so I was glad to have that cleared up.

Turns out, the open relay issue is probably why I haven’t been able to successfully send email to people on several ISPs.

Curious George, the motion picture, is coming out in theatres. After seeing the movie trailer, we saw some similarities between our little monkey and the animated one. Thought we’d share it. One difference… Jonathan’s not too fond of bananas.