“Bring Mr. Allen the pen !”, booms Burt Rutan across the hangar floor. The builders of Space Ship One have all signed the rocket motor fairing and Paul Allen has expressed desire to add HIS autograph. By all means! Step and fetch it. Writing checks for 20 to 30 million in private funding extends license for such a request. We’re watching Discovery Channel’s Black Sky – Race for Space and B.O.U.R.Girl observes, as the video sweeps Rutan’s busy office, an APPLE, Yep. There, spied on the designer engineer’s cluttered desktop, is an iMac. 20″ flat screen – Sweet! I guess Mr. Allen’s sway is finite.

Other than the lives ended and physical peril, what is the distinction between a Muslim fanatic — and a cyber terrorist who targets Microsoft? Both have the objective to influence those to adopt certain beliefs (as they understand them). The former, among other things, wants you to eschew Hollywood’s values and other cultural comforts intrinsic to the American Way. The latter, using tools of the hacker snipe Microsoft’s Outlook Express, Internet Explorer, and the Windows OS. One fights in the name of Allah and the other promotes the religion of Linux, Sun Micro or Open Source. Both would like to re-invent the system with the thinking that THEY know which values are best for you or I. The truth is neither computing platform is or deserves to be better or worse than the other and each is just as vulnerable. Microsoft gets targeted and we pay a defensive price for this. Next time you hear an expert recommend dumping your IE Browser for Mozilla FireFox because you’re weary from the virus and spam just realize that in so doing the bad guys score.

Frank Sinatra Parody – You Are Either With Frank Or You Are With The Terrorists!

When you search Yahoo or MSN or _________ (insert your favorite here) your search terms are passed on to the next website that you visit. These can be retrieved from Referer Logs. Follows are some of the more interesting ones that have landed people on Strombotne.com

“attacked by birds” pictures
waiter Lorenzo
“i airlines” DullesGerman Shepards/diseases
tippy hedron cats
SILVERWEAR PAINTING
fortuna jewelry newyork
mossimo trees
pictures of windows with flower boxes
blond girls +ragazze
gay bars lido di jesolo
silverwear LEONARD dinner
norwegian women shave legs
silverwear pocket restaurants
Pics of attractive beautiful dressed women in there twenties + thirties
baby pepe la pue pictures
italian fruit vender pictures
women flyfishers pics

I hope I haven’t screwed up by listing these with this post. The search engine crawler bots are liable to index them and the next time some poor sod looks for Norwegian Flyfishers they’re sure to get a good solid hit and end up here 😉

I try to teach explain basic tasks (copy|paste , resize forms, URLs for web addresses) which never registers or sinks-in beyond our local session. I now understand the meaning of exasperation. I’m on the other side of the fence now but I can reflect on my own mental block(s) — spelling words like haveing, how to insert the bridle, saddle the horse… I just couldn’t/wouldn’t grasp. Now it’s pay-back time. Arrrghhhh!

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy online via the BBC Listen to the audio with WMP

An old page from the 1927 El Paso City Directory…