Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

After upgrading the network card driver and turning off Norton Firewall on orac, I'm able to ping orac from both orac and tardis without the packets vanishing in to the ether. I still can't view files across my network, though, when I open My Network Places.

Which leads to another question: I currently have Norton Internet Security 2004, and only using its firewall capability. I use AVG for my antivirus protection. Do I still need Norton Internet Security? Or should I rely on Microsoft's built-in firewall? In other words, would it be safe for me to uninstall Norton Internet Security?

[Updated 22:00] I still can't see \\orac\SharedDocs on orac when I open up My Network Places. Nor can I see any systems when I try to view the computers in my workgroup. I tried making a new network place, but when I browse, I don't see "Microsoft Windows Network" under "Entire Network". I did some searching on techrepublic.com and it seems that others have had the same problem.

Tonight's project: Set up a peer-to-peer network between my desktop (orac) and my laptop (tardis) so I can share and copy files between them.

Both systems are running XP; tardis runs XP Pro and orac runs XP Home. Both have been upgraded to SP 3. Instead of a hub or router, I have a crossover cable connecting the two computers. The workgroup is named the same on both computers, and the IP addresses are set accordingly. tardis can see orac, but can't go to any of orac's shared directories. orac can't see itself or tardis when I look at my network places on orac. I've tried running the network setup wizard on orac, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything to fix the problem.

Would any of you out there have a solution? (Besides ditching Windows and switching to Linux. :-) )

"Oh drat these computers. They're so naughty, I could pinch them. --Marvin the Martian

I'll try to keep things short. I no longer have gobs of time to do rambling posts, and many of you don't have time to read such posts. So I'll whittle it down to several bullet points.

Happy memories:
* Bringing athenawindsong to her first filk con and first OVFF
* Seeing lots of my LJ-friends in person
* The foresight of one of the attendees -- I heard it was akawil -- who brought green LJ ribbons to affix to our badges
* Giving a clarinet lesson to daisy_knotwise, which got interesting when Katie tried to climb over Mommy
* Chamberfilk, which I thought came together nicely despite the limited number of instrumentalists
* Meeting (and later LJ-friending) beige_alert, hms42, and GoHs micktim and stevieannie
* The concerts I attended
* The conversations and the food in the con suite -- thank you Nick!
* The Interfilk auction -- always a fun time, especially when the Wenches are... um... deployed ;-)

Not-so-happy memories:
* Not spending enough face-time chatting with the LJ-friends I have
* Not meeting more people (and potential LJ-friends) -- despite the LJ ribbons, people didn't come up to me and introduce themselves*
* Having to miss all of Sunday at the con (because I was on daddy duty that day)

*This has historically been a sore point of mine. When people don't say hello to me, I take it as a sign of rejection. But after talking it over with athenawindsong, it seems that that's my projection. Maybe people aren't as extroverted as myself. Or they're too busy with their own lives and agendas. Or they simply don't remember me from year to year. What does this mirror for me? That I am still shy and introverted, that I often don't say hello to people. So if you're an LJ-friend of mine, and I didn't say hi to you at the con, I apologize.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, a group of protestors came to our local Pagan Pride Day. Yesterday, zorya_thinks posted an entry entitled "Such hate" which included links to two clips on YouTube featuring these protestors. (They also protested in front of a Catholic church the same day, claiming Catholicism is a false religion.) Apparently they had their own video cameras and posted their efforts on YouTube for all to see.

I simply cannot understand the mindset of these people. These are the ones I call "Xians".

( What causes people to go out and spread their version of the Gospel in this manner? Certainly not love. )

This morning and afternoon, I manned a table for the Dayton Pagan Alliance at the local Pagan Pride Day event, which was held at the Founders' Quadrangle of Wright State University.

Attendance was decent; I'd say about half were WSU students. I estimate we had somewhere between 75 and 100 people.

The highlight of the day: At noon, we had about a dozen protestors assemble at one end of the quad exercising their First Amendment rights and preaching their message of intolerance and hatred in the name of Jesus. We ignored them while Campus Police kept watch over them in case anyone stepped over the line. The protestors left around 1:00, which was when our open ritual was scheduled to begin.

"If they will not listen, shake the dust from your shoes and move on." Matthew 10:10, I believe.

One of the local TV news stations was there covering the protests. As of now, their version of the events has not been posted to their website.

When I got to my car at the end of the event, I noticed that someone left a Chick tract on my windshield. How special.

Well, sort of. I had it on and listened while I cleaned my kitchen floor. (It was quite dirty and needed at least an hour to clean, even with a steam cleaner.) Sen. McCain had the gloves off and he was no-holds-barred that night. Sen. Obama just took it all in stride.

Some of the things I heard -- or heard about -- that still bother me, three days after the debate:
1) At no time during the debate did McCain discuss the middle class, or even say the words "middle class". I know, that's not the GOP constituency. But it's a significant part of the country.
2) When referring to people who supported abortion rights, McCain used the label "pro-abortion". Excuse me? The accepted label is "pro-choice". Ask any card-carrying member of NARAL if they are pro-abortion, and I'd wager that most will vehemently tell you they're not.

As for the GOP commercials that have been airing recently -- the ones that don't feature McCain saying "I approved this message" -- I think they should change their tagline to "The Republican National Committee is responsible for the flinging of this piece of elephant dung." I remember one senator from Illinois who had no executive experience. His name was Abraham Lincoln.

This meme came from daisy_knotwise. I've done this one before. Time to do it again.

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, (evenif we don't speak often or ever) please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory of you and me.

It can be anything you want - good or bad - BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE.

When you're finished, post this little paragraph in your LJ and see what your friends come up with.

Apparently the problem is bigger than I originally thought. The parent company of WDTN -- LIN TV -- pulled their station's signals from Time Warner Cable systems in 11 different markets. Not just Dayton. Not just Buffalo. If your station is listed on LIN TV's page on Wikipedia, you're probably affected.

Here's MediaWeek's take on the story.

And here's LIN TV's version.

Time to get those rabbit ears.

Shout-outs: Happy birthday dragonfeydaile!

Last Friday, Time Warner cable dropped the signal for my local NBC affiliate (WDTN-TV, Channel 2) after they couldn't come to terms. In the interim, they've replaced the empty channel with HBO Family.

I'm not too happy about this. 2News is my favorite local news. NewsCenter7 is too white-bread-and-mayonnaise for me, and Dayton's News Source (on ABC22 and Fox45) are a bunch of amateurs.

I don't know what to do except wait. I'd rather not drop the cable; I'm locked into a 2-year plan.

Was trying to check email with the desktop, but it's running a virus scan right now, and Thunderbird crashed before I could read any mail.

The laptop keyboard lost the 8ik, "column" of keys. They're kaput. So I'm having to make do with an external keyboard, one I've had since 1990. The F7 key has broken off. I tried to glue it back on with Gorilla Glue, but it didn't take. I thought about chucking the external keyboard in the trash. Right now, I'm glad I didn't.

In the meantime, I got kitties. Marcus was sleeping with me again. I love when he does that. It's too cute!

Shout-outs: Happy birthday jodimuse!