Two critters normally not seen around these parts were spotted here at Buckingham Palace. One was a mouse, of the dead variety, who decided to die underneath my car in the garage. The other was a black cat, seen today.

The mouse is the same critter who decided to move in with us a few weeks ago. It made its introduction in the attic above our bedroom around 11 PM at night. After that, it wandered underneath the windowsill in our den. The house cleric put out a fatwa on its life and weapons of mass destruction were then deployed. The mission appears to have been accomplished.

The cat was seen wandering through our backyard this morning. I had recently done battle with our birdseed-eating squirrels and half-expected to see a squirrel sneaking through the yard. The cat didn’t seem to want to stick around to say hello, however. It raced through a hole under the fencegate once I got close to it. A few days earlier and that cat could have feasted on fresh mouse.

Two animals normally not normally seen around here. Wonder what’s going on. Maybe the floodwaters are rising or something.

I just upgraded the spam filter I use, ASSP to its latest version. I love ASSP because it intercepts mail before it gets to my MTA (Postfix in my case. Also works for sendmail, Exchange, etc., etc.).

Just for fun, I had it report its progress. Here are the stats:

As of Sat Dec 27 14:41:31 2003 the mail logfile shows:
32141 proxy / smtp connections
0 were dropped for attempted relays (0.0% of total).

0 hits on the blacklist
0 resulted in spam (0.0% of Bayesian spam, 0.0% of blacklist hits)
0 resulted in non-spam (0.000% of blacklist hits)

It shows that if it weren’t for ASSP, I’d be getting 90 spam messages per day. Thanks, ASSP!

I just got back from the Tiger Direct store on Capital Boulevard. Seems like everywhere I looked there were deals. I picked up a loaded, refurbished eMachines T2615 for $479. Normally I build my machines, but I figured I couldn’t build one for any cheaper than that.

Other deals include $20 wireless cards. I picked up a D-Link DWL-650+ (again, refurbished) for $29.99. After the $10 mail-in rebate, it becomes mine for $20. I almost spent $60 for the same thing at Blue And Yellow Box Store ™ just a week ago. The only quibble with that is that D-Link seems to be the only brand of wireless they carry. All in all, no big deal.

According to the list of Tiger Direct outlet stores, Raleigh is in rare company. The next time I need computer stuff, I’ll check them before going to Blue And Yellow Box Store ™.

Not everyone is having a Merry Christmas today. The European Space Agency‘s mission to Mars is lost in space, as it were.

Mars eats spacecraft like they were Christmas candycanes. Why is it traveling the millions of miles to orbit is easy and the 200 miles from orbit to the ground is hard?

Guess it’s like the old joke: “It’s not the fall that kills you. It’s the sudden stop at the end.”

Well, Santa was good to the Turner household. Highlights include a nice bracelet for Kelly, a basketball goal for Hallie, and a weather station for yours truly. It is a WM918 from Oregon Scientific.

There’s a funny story about how the weather station arrived. Kelly ordered it for me from an online retailer and it was delivered via FedEx in time for Christmas and all was well. Not long after that, the doorbell rang again. A confused UPS man stood on the porch, delivering a FedEx package out of his Ryder truck. Kelly then opened it to find – you guessed it – another weather station! Boy, Kelly really outdid herself this year.

I’m checking into some Linux-based weather software, like WX200, WX200d, or the Star Trek-looking Wx/Net, to help archive the weather data. Before long, I’ll be boring everyone I know with arcane weather statistics! W00t!

There’s nothing mechanically wrong with our refrigerator. It’s working better than ever, actually. The only problem is that it’s too small. There’s not enough room for all the holiday photos we’ve been sent.

There isn’t an inch of room left on our freezer door, the only “Buggle-safe” place to put them. And we’re all out of magnets, too. It stands as a wonderful testament to all of the friends and family we have.

A heartfelt thanks to everyone who has become part of our lives. We are incredibly fortunate to have you all. Santa could never bring anything to equal what our friendships and family mean to us.

Here’s wishing you a wonderful holiday season. May each of your freezers be equally full!

Scroll to the bottom of this page. See that icon for Free World Dialup? It shows when my softphone is connected, meaning you can talk to me over the Internet.

Sign up for free, hook up a microphone to your computer and you can make free long distance calls to anywhere in the US or Canada until the end of the year. The rest of the time, of course, you can talk for free anywhere in the world, to other members of Free World Dialup or anyone with a SIP phone.

Sign up today and send me your FWD number if you want to test drive the way phone calls will be made in the future.

I’m looking through our huge gallery of not-yet-posted photographs, looking for a good shot of Hallie to put on her webpage. The quality of our Canon PowerShot S50 is amazing. Eye-popping detail of very difficult-to-compress scenes – like gravel walkways through leafy woods. Mesmerizing detail, in fact.

Then I compare those shots to similar shots taken indoors with the same camera. Dullsville! The flash provides all of one angle for the light to bathe the scene. Everything looks flat and boring. On the other hand, the indoor shots I took with natural lighting all seem vibrant and alive.

One of my few quibbles with the S50 is that it doesn’t have a hotshoe to use with an external flash. I’d love to be able to do a bounce-flash with it or something – something to add more light angles. When I use that technique with my film camera, the images come out twice as interesting, at the very least.

I love what our new PowerShot does for us now, but I can only imagine what fun I’ll have when I explore some of the manual settings and really get into the creative side of things.

(And on another note, as soon as I find a good gallery script, you can see these pics, too. Hint, hint!)