I haven’t blogged about this yet, but tonight, we leave for South Africa for six weeks. We’re taking the kids with us, and they’re going to miss a few weeks of school in exchange for what will hopefully be an invaluable learning experience.

We will be visiting my spouse’s fairly large family all over the place. There will be places to go and people to see. We’ll be there through the holidays, returning in the new year.

I will be online as much as I can be through various connectivity methods–it’ll be interesting to see where and how I can get connected around the country.

If there are any South Africans reading this blog, feel free to share any tips or suggestions you might have. Thanks.

Tags: family, travel, South Africa

I love problem solving and puzzles. My friend Christina brought me back a fun one from her trip to Mongolia. Here it is, solved:

Apparently this puzzle type is what Stewart Coffin calls “Locked Nest.”

It may not look like much, but the challenge is to assemble it from a completely disassembled state. It’s not only geometrically challenging, having to visualize the pieces in their final states, but physically challenging, having to hold the thing together as you put it together. Several times, while I was working on the puzzle, a pin would slide out or a rod would be out of alignment and the pin would miss it.

This is definitely a puzzle I’ll enjoy solving many times over. It’s quite challenging.

Tags: Mongolian, puzzle, Stewart Coffin

Can you believe this crap? I mean, look:

Prosecutors say Drew, 49, of O’Fallon, Missouri, helped create a false-identity MySpace account and harassed Meier with cruel messages.

Meier, who was being treated for depression, hanged herself after allegedly receiving messages saying the world would be better off without her.

So, some kid becomes an hero and they want to prosecute using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act? That is absurd.

Sure, what Lori Drew did to Megan Meier–sending cruel messages–wasn’t nice. But, “not nice” in this case is in no way criminal! Otherwise, there’s crimes being committed every day in school yards, offices, customer service departments, etc., across the country. Seriously, where do we draw the line?

I’m sure it doesn’t need to be asked, but where were Megan’s parents in all of this?

I hope the trial jurors are smart enough to figure out how ridiculous this whole thing is. Case law really needs to be established here so no one else can get crucified like this.

Before you go flying into a rage in my comments section about how insensitive I am, or how I’ve got it all wrong … listen carefully: the world would be better off without you! Go hang yourself, now.

Tags: legal, MySpace, suicide

In May 2006, Scott Adams described what could be called the “Pragmatic Party” (sadly, his blog archives were nuked, but you can still read my entry). Last Tuesday, Barack Obama was elected President. Two days later, we have this website, change.gov:

Could Obama really be doing what Adams suggested? I was skeptical about Obama’s rallying cry for change, but this is incredibly hopeful looking.

Tags: politics, Barack Obama, Scott Adams, change

By default, Windows Firewall’s setting for File and Printer Sharing is set to “subnet” scope: only allow requests from the same subnet as itself. This is generally a good default security policy that balances safety with convenience, but on my home network, I run several different subnets (wired, wireless, VPN, etc.) and this tends to be an issue.

Here’s a very simple VB script that can be run with Windows Scripting Host to expand the scope from “subnet” to “any”:

I stick that in a file named winfw-smb-scope-any.vbs and run it from a DOS prompt with cscript.exe. Done!

Do you have any other handy scripts you think are really useful? Tell me about them in the comments … thanks!

Tags: Windows Firewall, SMB, file sharing, scripting