After just over a week of web site downtime, my site is at last back up, all data restored! All this due to some corruption of the RAID-5 array when I moved the four drives from the Athlon 700MHz machine to a new Athlon 2600+ machine. For a bit, I was worried that I'd lost some of my data, including some of these web site postings. Fortune has smiled on me, and so far, all my data appears intact, though it has been a rough week trying to figure out ways to recover it.

Next, I need to get my mail server running again. Once that's done, I then need to figure out where I'm gonna stash the new server box. Right now it's sitting out in the middle of my living room amidst the clutter of torn-apart-computers (yes, I've had several open, guts strewn across the room) and shipping packaging. I wish I had a good server closet.

After my previous rant about the goings on with regard to SCO, and after reading SCO's Darl McBride's Open Letter to the Open Source Community, in which Darl ...

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Ok, this just bugs me. In this modern day of the Internet, I really, REALLY would like to be able to buy and download an audiobook, then be able to enjoy it. While browsing Amazon.com's web site, I notice that they offer audiobooks for download from Audible.com. Sweet, I think and so I swing over to that site.

Now I'm intimately familiar with the very negative problems DRM (Digital Rights Management) can cause. If you don't know what DRM is, it's a means whereby copyright holders release digital products (audio files, movie files, documents, pictures, books, etc. -- anything in digital format) only in an encrypted format that can ONLY be decrypted and displayed or used with a special computer program or item of computer hardware. The idea is that this protects the copyright owner from having their work distributed or copied without authorization. It sounds like a good idea at first, but it turns out to be very rotten.

Recently I signed up for an account at buymusic.com, to try out their music service.

I ran into the first problem just going to their web site.

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White standstone lit by the setting sun in Snow Canyon State Park - the perfect setting for an evening hikeThroughout this week, and especially today (Saturday), I've been chomping at the bit to get outside and go for a hike. As the day wore on, and evening neared, I worried that this week would end without my ever getting away from St. George into the outdoors. As a last resort, shortly after 5:00 PM, I messaged my brother (you know, using one of those online instant messaging systems, Jabber in this case) asking him if he wanted to go for a hike in nearby Zion National Park. He was game.

By 6:00 PM, I had not yet departed for Hurricane to pick my brother up. I'd been searching and searching for my glasses, without which I am too blind to drive, to no avail. I couldn't remember where I'd put them, and they weren't in the usual places. So I called Kendall back, and proposed another solution. He could drive to St. George and pick me up, and we'd go hiking somewhere around here. We settled on the very close Snow Canyon State Park.

The evening sky was streaked with clouds, the tattered edges of summer storms to the east, and the air was much cooler as the sun sank toward the painted stone cliffs to the west. It was the perfect setting for an evening hike. From the parking lot, we descended toward the west across sandy soil and black lava rocks.

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Sad news reached the ears of my family yesterday. My cousin, John, who lives in Las Vegas, lost his adopted 19-year-old daughter. My heart goes out to him, and to everyone who will miss her, and her kind spirit. I didn't know her, but I've heard wonderful things about her. She will be missed.

My new favorite breakfast cerealI have a new favorite breakfast cereal. In the past I've been a Wheaties, corn flakes, Chex kind of cold cereal eater when I wanted cereal for breakfast. Sure, hot oat meal or craked wheat was fine, but it just wasn't tempting enough to spend the few extra minutes cooking it when I could have cold cereal instead.

That has changed. I've found a hot cereal that changed my mind. It's one of Bob's Red Mill cereals (and I like several of Bob's Red Mill cereals), in particular, Museli Old-Country Style. A cup of cereal in a large bowl, a cup of water, a dash of salt, perhaps a bit of honey, 4-5 minutes in the microwave, add a bit of milk, and... Mmmmmm... Delicious!

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This one's a quickie... Er, at least it was originally intended to be.

I just read Eric S. Raymond's Open Letter to Darl McBride. Mr. McBride is the CEO of SCO, a public company that has been attacking Open Source as being tainted by intellectual property belonging to SCO.

But SCO is being nasty. Rather than behaving in a civilized manner and explaining to the open source community exactly which parts of the publically available source code infringe their copyright and explaining how those parts infringe, SCO instead is keeping quiet. How is this bad? Let me give...

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My new 2003 Hyundai Sonata GLX in Zion National Park, UtahIt's Monday again. This evening, I joined my parents, youngest brother, and two of my sisters for a Family Home Evening activity—going to see a movie, Disney's Freaky Friday, the new 2003 remake of the classic Jody Foster movie. Wow! Disney managed to do it right, just like they did with the remake of The Parent Trap. This newest remake was well written, and the parts were marvelously portrayed by Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan. I had a blast! I wish all Disney remakes were this good. They really have a mixed track record. This one's going on my "must buy" list of DVDs once it is released.

Did I mention I have a new set of wheels? A week ago Saturday, before I went to Texas, I bought a new car, a 2003 white, four-door, automatic transmission Hyundai Sonata GLS. There's a bit of a story behind the acquisition...

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Here it is 9:17 PM (actually 10:17 here in Texas) on Tuesday, and I sit in a chair by the window on the 12th floor of the Dallas Texas DoubleTree Hotel as outside a huge thunderstorm winds down after pelting the area with water, hail, and lightning. At the nearby freeway exchange northwest of the hotel, emergency vehicles' flashing lights grab the eye, and sirens blare as others come to join. I have no idea what happened, but assume that the bad weather resulted in a severe multi-car accident with perhaps many injured. I hope this is not the case, but I can't imagine why so many sirens and flashing lights keep approaching, one after another. From the elevators, we (my coworker, Randy, who is here too -- we're attending a two-day training work-related seminar) can look west and see the flashing lights, and other cars off the side of the road with their emergency flashers on. My curiosity is driving me crazy.

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Smoke rises from the remnant
of the Timber Top Mountain fireRewind to Thursday, the 31st of July. Early that evening, while at my folks' home in Hurricane, I was going stir-crazy, having been indoors all day in front of a computer. So I badgered my little brother until he admitted a desire to get outside, and we hopped in his car and took off. When he asked where I thought we should go, I told him, "Wherever the car takes us." It took us to Zion National Park, in particular, the Kolob Fingers area of the park, just off of Interstate 15, near New Harmony, Utah.

Not long ago, on a trip to Minersville, Utah, my brother and I had noticed a pillar of smoke climbing into the sky from atop one of the towering sandstone mountains of the Kolob Fingers area, Timber Top Mountain, that just peeks over the hills and is briefly visible from the freeway. We both surmised it was from a recent lightning-started blaze. Well sure enough, as the scenic drive rounded the hills to climb southward toward the view point, we had a clear view of smoke rising from a nook, a saddle of sandstone well below the 8,055 ft. elevation summit of Timber Top Mountain.

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