Thursday Afternoon Surf Report

No swell yet... The lunch time surf was fairly small and lacking much in the form category. The water seems to have warmed up by a few degrees over the last 24 to 36 hours, so at least we've got that going for us. Forecasts show a nice swell hitting our Southern CA beaches beginning on Monday, so cross your fingers and hope for decent waves next week.

Falling Asleep at the Table

As parents, it is amazing to witness first hand the awesome amount of energy that children have. If we could somehow divert 25% of that energy into our veins, we might be able to keep up with them through all of the day. However, once that energy reserve is drained, kids crash quickly. That is just what happened the other night, as Peter was (trying) to eat his dinner...

Google Calculator

The fine folks at Google have added another neat feature to their search engine. Behold the goodness that is the Google Calculator. Not only does it calculate basic/advanced mathematical functions, but it can also convert units like "100 miles in kilometers" (which produces a result of "100 miles = 160.9344 kilometers"). Pretty slick!

Zombie Infection Simulator

Have you ever thought about how your city would handle a plague of zombies looking for "Braiiiiiinnnnnnssss"? If not, then bugger off. Otherwise, take a look at the Zombie Infection Simulator. Think of it as the game of life, or maybe un-life...

Tuesday Afternoon Surf Report

Still not much in the way of waves out there, with sets coming in at around waist height. The water temperature is right around 66, which is on the cool side. I'm hoping that a bit of SW swell will arrive tomorrow and kick the waves up a bit...

In other news, South of D street was closed off today due to the search for a downed helicopter which is thought to have crashed from one to three miles off of Moonlight Beach. There were lots of search helos, boats, and jet skis jetting around, but not doing too much else while I was there.

A Proper Cup of Tea

Douglas Adams is one of my favorite authors, due to his razor sharp wit and unique perspective on we humans. He passed away a few years ago, but not before leaving us with some wonderful fiction (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Dirk Gently series) and an internet project which continues to this day (h2g2.com).

Browsing through h2g2.com, I stumbled upon directions written by Mr. Adams on the correct method to produce a proper cup of tea. So if you are curious, or are looking for a substitue to replace your normal cup of joe in the AM, give it a read through and then spend some time looking through the site for other interesting nuggets.

Monday Afternoon Surf Report

Last Friday saw the temperature in the water drop dramatically due to a cold water upwelling somewhere off of the coast, and the water is still fairly chilly today. There is very little swell in the water, so the lunch break was spent catching many small little waves and doing what I could with them, which did not amount to much.

Spamassassin Recipe to Help Stop Viruses

Here at work we host our own mail server on a Debian Linux box running qmail as the SMTP server, procmail and spamassassin for email filtering, and the courier IMAP which clients use to access their messages which reside on the server. This combination seems to work very well with the modest hardware on which it all runs - an AMD Athlon 800 with 256 MB RAM, and mirrored IDE hard drives.

However, beginning early yesterday afternoon, a few of the email address which are available for our domain (sales, support, techsupport) started to get bombarded with emails bearing malicious attachments of the .pif, .scr and .bat variety. Another Microsoft sponsored worm was on the loose and making life difficult for network admins everywhere...

Trying to be proactive and neutralize the problem, I whipped up a small spamassassin rule to flag emails with these types of attachments as spam. Spamassassin then "de-fangs" the attachments so that users still don't "accidentally" click on these files and cause more problems for the network. The rule which worked for me is as follows:

# Virus spamtrap
full VIRUS_SUSPICIOUS_ATTACH /.*^Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64.*name=".+\.(bat|scr|pif)"/ism
score VIRUS_SUSPICIOUS_ATTACH 50.0
describe VIRUS_SUSPICIOUS_ATTACH Contains a suspicious attachment - good chance it is a Windows32 virus

After over 24 hours of the rule being tested and applied, it seems to be working well. I hope this helps others out there dealing with the same issues that I am!

Peter's 1 Year Pictures

Our youngest son, Peter, recently received his 1-year photos back from the photo studio. I've scanned them and put them up here for family and friends. Click on the thumbnail images for full-sized pictures, suitable for printing on a nice color printer.

Tuesday / Wednesday Surf Reports

Wow - what a couple of days of surf! My shoulders are aching in a very good, "you've used and abused me" way that I only get from paddling. It's all worth it...

Tuesday AM found Bob and I out at a local reef break, and it was gorgeous out. Paddling out in the pre-dawn darkness, lit only by the full moon overhead, is quite amazing. The swell has held up fairly well, although the extreme tides associated with the full moon made the waves a bit inconsistent. Still, well worth the early wake-up.

Later that day at lunch, we hit D street and the waves were much improved with a bit more water under them. Lots of nice lefts and rights, and the weather was perfect.

Somehow, I convinced myself to wake up early again Wednesday morning to meet a few friends out at the reef break we surfed on Tuesday. The tide was even lower than the previous day, which made things a bit interesting. The conditions were slightly more consistent, although I don't think I had as many good rides as I did the day before. That could be due to the fact that my shoulders were complaining before I even suited up... A great way to start the morning.

I think I will give my shoulders a rest this lunch. They deserve it!

XGameStation Video Game System Development Kit

The XGameStation video game system development kit is "a 16-bit video game console designed specifically for both hardware and software hackers. The system outputs video and audio directly to any TV via composite video, and is compatible with PlayStation DualShock controllers. Games are played off custom cartridges that you burn yourself."

This kit looks to include copious documentation, including an ebook covering the design of the game system and how it was designed from the ground up. Since I have always approached computers from the software side of the equation (disregarding the many PC systems I've pieced together from individual components), I've never really understood the digital logic / computer engineering /circuit board design side.

Furthermore, it appears as if my Apple //e 65c02 knowledge might be somewhat applicable, since the game system is using a souped up version of that processor as the heart of the console. At a targeted price of $99, this baby is pegging my geek-o-meter in a big way! The website mentions a release date of 12/12/2003, so keep your eyes and ears out for news on this as the year progresses.

Monday Lunch Break Surf Report

No golf for me, so I hit the usual spot on my lunch. Man, what a difference a day makes! The lips were pitching and close-out barrels seemed to be the norm.

I became "one with the lip" and got smacked down hard by Poseidon - with my wrist smashing into the board. My whole freakin' had went numb for about a minute, which made the paddle back out very interesting.

Still, it was a blast. I'm shooting for an AM session tomorrow as well. Need to take advantage of these conditions while they last!

Friday Afternoon Humor Quickies

Should you need to hike from the Shire to the cracks of Mount Doom, don't leave your map behind!

Newsflash! Geeks Live Vicariously Through D&D. More on this breaking story at 11.

Finally, I am sure that you all are familiar with enlargement pill "for men". Well, it now appears as if scientists have finally solved this (up until now) failed product. Read here for the full story.

Friday Lunch Break Surf Report

The SW swell has left the building, and all that remains now is a bit of wind swell. Even in such small conditions, I still had nothing else better to do on my lunch than surf, so to the beach we went. The only thing remotely interesting during my time in the water was a close encounter with a couple of dolphins which swam within 8 feet of me, as they played in the shallow water on their way South.

Focus Group Suggests New Endings for Gigli

According to The Onion, a recently conducted focus group which watched a preview of the recently released movie Gigly, has demanded a new ending in which both main characters die "in as brutal a manner as possible". More on this fascinating study can be found here.

Thursday Lunch Break Surf Report

I've been flaking on the surf reports this week because I've been rather busy at work after lunch. That is my excuse, and I'm sticking to it! Anyhow, the surf this week has steadilly dwindled down from some great weekend surf to the smalled/mushier stuff we now have. The water temperature seems to have dropped a good three degrees (F) or so as well! Let's hope for better surf early next week...

Star Wars Episode III - Early Review

While George Lucas insists that Star Wars Episode III has not yet begun to shoot, we all know that the movie is in the can and he's just letting us simmer till 2005. In fact, someone managed to get a sneak preview of Episode III and wrote a review of it. Check it out, it's worth it.

Friday AM Surf Report

Wooo-hooo! What a nice AM surf session today! I met up with a few friends at 5:30 this morning, and we trekked South of our usual spot (which was looking weak and closed out due to low tide) and scored some very nice waves. The size of the waves were mostly waist to head high, with a very occasional overhead set rolling through. I am still feeling the stoke, even here at work.