** Sorry for the extra-late update.  I messed my site up and couldn’t get it to work.  Had my best technicians on it all day, connectivity was just restored.

Obviously I’ve fallen down once again on my plan to update this on Sunday.  Turns out I didn’t have time to actually work on the “regularly scheduled programming” because the friggin’ message board spammers finally caught up with me.  These scourges of the Web decided that myself and the 3 regular readers that come out here would appreciate some links to such useful content as “bdsm gay fetish male” and “bondage video male gay bondage gay.”  Nice.  Doni thinks they got my site address when I was out signing up at their site.  I assure you this was not the case.  The good part was that all the posts were coming from a single address; All I had to do was block it.  Well, nothing is ever that easy.  Turns out my existing firewalls aren’t flexible enough to block single hosts… Everybody comes in or everybody stays out.  So, I had to break down and read up on how to tighten down the site with the Apache access controls.  My first few attempts failed miserably, but I “think” I finally got it right.  In the process, I started reading my server logs and its actually pretty amazing how many people hit it just to “see what’s there.”  Then you have your “courteous spammers” that follow some kind of protocol, which my server wasn’t set up for, and your “non-courteous spammers” that just pound away on the site.  Geez.  So, when all was said and done, hopefully my site is a bit more secure.  The whole thing kind of twerked me off, because I’m really not interested in the configuration at that level, but I’m not interested in links to teenage boy’s feet either.  I guess you gotta choose your poison.

So… Friday night I went to yet another 40th birthday party.  Man, they’re dropping like flies.  Mark Francisco was the latest to take the plunge into the world of the elderly.  About 30 people showed up for dinner at Buca di Beppo.  They took good care of us for a table that size, and we had an all-around festive time.  After dinner most people went to Frankie’s to do whatever-the-heck you do at Frankie’s; I went home.  I could pretty much tell from the outside that it wasn’t “my kinda place.”  Plus, I didn’t even have enough cash on me to cover my dinner, much less partying afterwards.  Oops.

Saturday I went to the gym to further substantiate my disdain for it and everyone who goes to it.  This was a highly successful endeavor.  I am currently working on a five-step program to better tolerate my fellow gym attendees, since I will grudgingly admit that since they also pay dues I can’t really keep them away.  And, I suppose the gym needs all the dues they can get to buy all the fancy new equipment.  I haven’t fully developed this plan yet, however, so for now everybody just irritates me.  After that, I went out and met my Mom at her farm in Garden City, to show this old camper to some guys who wanted to buy it.  Man, you talk about miserably cold.  I don’t know why these guys couldn’t wait until Sunday or Monday when the weather was a bit more favorable.  Oh well, I wasn’t the one who had to put the wheels on it and get it outta there.  They seemed pretty set on having it that day, so more power to ’em.  In retrospect, I probably should have bought it myself; Kevin could have used the trailer for the smoker project.  But… I didn’t think of it until too late.  Saturday night we went over to Ed and Kim’s for awhile and helped them move a few things into their new apartment.  They’re moving across the hall into a bigger place, so it didn’t take much effort.  We were going to work on Ed’s web server, but after we moved it to the new place and booted it up everything was working fine, so he decided not to mess with it.  I’m more of a “Fix it even if it isn’t broke” kinda guy, but to each his own.

Sunday was typically unproductive, except for a few hours dialed into work and a few hours ciphering on the anti-spam strategy.  Hung out at the Brooksider a while and watched football with Munkirs, then went home and watched TV.  We tried to drag Todd back into the folds of society, but apparently he and Martin spent the weekend up in the Northlands “getting to know each other better.”  I’ll take that as a thinly veiled phrase for “spooning on the couch.”  Whew, there’s a mental image I could do without.  Nobody is really sure of the whole Todd “situation” yet.  The whole thing is very, very troubling.  If anybody gets any cold, hard facts on this, please do share.

Here are some more pictures of the “Great Smoker Project.”  It’s coming along just famously, keep up the good work Brown.