First if you don’t know what a hipster is, you’ve been living under a rock. They seem to be a counter-culture, alternative music listening, big glasses wearing, shaggy looking, and quirky group. I think they are ok and don’t harm anybody. They try to look cool, while trying not to look like they are trying to look cool. ;)

My oldest kind of fits into the above description, but I think her look and her ways have happened naturally. She is witty and clever. She marches to the beat of her own drum. The toon is based on a real conversation. I was trying to make a point. She stopped me mid-point when it sounded like I called her a dork. I was saying she doesn’t try to be cool or hip, she just is. I do not think she is a dork. I would know because it takes one to know one.

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I got my wife a wireless 500G drive. It allows up to 3 users to stream music or movies from it via wifi. It has a 5 hour battery life. Being a real geek wife she was very thrilled with it. It’ll be great for long trips. So we’ve been ripping DVD backups this weekend.

On Cathy’s health news…. On Monday she got the last of her drains removed from the surgery 3 weeks ago. She is now more mobile and can drive any time she is ready. She still needs to take it easy for another 3 weeks, she cannot lift anything more than 10 lbs. She is still tired but getting stronger every day. Best of all she is cancer free.

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I am amazed at the amount of information people will share on Facebook. I can’t say much because I share a lot myself. The things I won’t share is my full political opinions, believe it or not. I will not share details of vacations or trips, while I am on them. Facebook is fun but can be very dangerous if you share the wrong info.

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We have a 14 year old and a 10 year old. Our 10 year old loves to tell on her sister. Usually I just say “I don’t want to hear tattling”. Monday night just before I got home from work. It was a text telling me what crime against humanity her sister had commited against her today. It was a new approach at least.

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I totally came up with this idea all by myself…..when my buddy Sam told me the story exactly like the toon. If it isn’t funny then it was his idea solely.

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This has been in the back of my mind for years. It’s actually sort of how I came up with the name of the site. The server room was not properly cooled, actually it was more of a closet than a room. We had added several servers which made the heat worse. As a temporary measure facilities removed the door and added a locking cage door. We used fans to push the air. The staff member that runs housekeeping joked that she was going to add a sign that said “don’t feed the geeks”. On a side note she used to be married to a famous NFL player and coach. She is as tough as he ever was.

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Again, a not funny ha ha toon, but rather a slice of life. I had several ideas but could not brink myself to do them. Since I was already late and I’m sitting in the hospital with my wife, I decided to make it a single panel. We are hoping she can come home today, but we have not seen the doctor yet. It’s been a long week and an even longer year. We are one step closer though. So we have chemo and the double mastectomy out of the way and we have radiation and reconstruction to go. It looks like we may be all done by the end of the year. The whole process from discovery to finish will be right around a year.

They were not kidding in the vows about ”in sickness and health”. When you are young you hear the words at a level far from what really could be. Giving yourself heart and soul comes at a price. The triumphs are yours and their stumbles are yours. You must choose carefully who you share these things with. If you are not a good team, you cannot survive. I’m lucky to have a great partner. She and I can do anything together we are discovering.

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This may be too techy for the average reader, but this is one of my pet peaves over the last few years. WEP was an early encryption standard on wireless routers. It was not very long before it was discovered that WEP could be hacked. Since that time it has been a very frequent that you hear “WEP is easy to hack”. I’ve heard it many times over the years and heard it once again last week. Yes, WEP can be hacked. However, these people who say it is easy are not telling the whole story. It takes a lot of prep work and I have never seen it done. One of the bigger issues is the time it would take to crack the encryption. I’ve seen estimates that it would take 60 minutes  to sample enough traffic to crack the code. Again, this is if you are running a Linux PC with some sniffer program like Airsnort and others. So the person would have to have the right software and hardware. They would also need at least an hour running the software within proximity on the wifi signal. All of this would be dependant on the home router being used at the time to add to the complexity. By the way if the router had it’s SSID hidden the job of the sniffer would be much harder.

So yes it can be done, is it simple. Not so much. The people I’ve heard repeat that WEP is easily hacked have never demonstrated their claim. Every time I hear it I want to challenge them. There are always crazy claims on hacking. Don’t even get me started on tv shows and movies showing phone calls getting traced.

All of this said, WEP is becoming less and less common. Encryption schemes like WPA and WPA2 are much more common.

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I’m really not trying to pick a fight. In some ways I think the Obama care goes too far and in some ways it does not go far enough. I’m not smart enough to debate the ins and outs of the whole plan. What I like is the end of pre-existing conditions being a factor in getting new insurance and the end of the lifetime cap. I felt this way before, but my wife’s breast cancer had sealed it for me. The treatment she has received is top-notch but very expensive. Thankfully our insurance is good. Before we could have been in trouble in the future if not for these changes. Regardless of the rest of the plan or how anyone feels, something had to be done because of the rising health care costs. I know many people who had to file bankrupcy because of the catastrophic costs of major illnesses. In some case these folks had insurance. You should not be ruined because someone in your family gets ill.

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This was an idea from my oldest brother. I had to think for a few days on it to get it arranged out in panels in my mind. I think it came out ok. I could have spent more time on the shows using reference photos, but I’m far to lazy to research a toon.

I like snakes. I’ve had a few as pets over the years. My wife actually had more than I did for a while. It has been funny in the past, when someone finds a snake outside the crowd runs away. My wife on the other hand runs towards the snakes. The toon above reflects how the folks I work with would react. I would never bring a snake in to work. The panic would be irreversable.

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