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Somebody needs to tell the foley artists on TV these days that Glocks don’t have a hammer that can be pulled back.  The ones working on tonight’s episode of Law & Order added the sound of a hammer being drawn back when one of the detectives drew his Glock.

Of course it could be worse—like those old westerns where every single shot had a ricochet sound.

My sister and her girls will be coming to visit on the 21st and we’ll be going to my mother’s house for Christmas.  But the day after we’ll all come back here to my house along with one of my aunts who wants to see the house.  This means that there will be seven people and one dog in this house for a few days starting on the 26th.  This leaves me 17 days to get everything ready.  I’ve ordered china and silverware from Ace Mart in preparation for being able to feed everyone (I have barely enough stuff to handle four people for one meal, provided we don’t have a lot of items on the menu ).

I’m also trying to decide whether to do any Christmas decorations.  The 32-inch miniature fiber-optic tree that looked OK in my old place looks pretty puny in here.  I just don’t think I want a full sized tree, though.  As for lights on the outside of the house and stuff in the yard, I’m not sure I have the energy to mess with it.  If I get a burst of energy this weekend I might consider it (although replacing the gate on the fence may take precedence).

I thought I was being good by buying Pedigree dog food.  I noticed that while she would eat it, she’d only do so in a desultory manner after exhausting all appeals to me while I was eating (she’s definitely a master at begging, although I’m slowly teaching her to stay back from the table).  I bought a small bag of Kibbles and Bits this evening to see if she would like it better.  She definitely liked it a lot more.

I guess I have a lowbrow dog. 

I put the dog outside when I left this morning.  She had food, water, a bed, and a large enclosed patio and the yard to play in.  When I returned this evening she was sitting on the bed watching the door.  I let her in and took her for a walk.  When we returned my neighbor across the street was waiting at the door.  He told me that the dog had gotten out twice during the day, and had been found near the highway.  Fortunately a woman found her, called the vet listed on her tag and got my address.  She, along with my neighbor, put the dog back in the yard and moved a big planter in front of the gate so she couldn’t get out (she’d dug a small hole under the gate where there was a small gap).  I’d leaned an extra section of wood fencing in front of the gate, but she’d managed to worm her way behind it.

I guess we’re just very lucky that she made it back.  She could have easily gotten killed on 377, which is a very busy four-lane road.  For the time being I’m going to leave her inside (she’s hasn’t had any accidents so far, so she should be OK).  Later, I’m going to replace the gate and put down a layer of bricks under it to prevent any digging.

If you’re running a wireless network at home it’s always a good idea to enable WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy).  If not enabled, of if enabled with an easily guessable password, anyone who can get within range of your access point will be able to access your network.  This could allow them the ability to access network shares on your PCs (if you have any enabled) or even for them to use your broadband connection. 

While it’s tempting to think that having someone “borrow” your broadband connection is relatively harmless, consider this.

Wireless security for home networks is in the spotlight following an unusual arrest in Canada, where a man stands accused of downloading child pornography over a hijacked Wi-Fi connection.

Toronto police said they stopped a car last week for a traffic infraction when they found the driver naked from the waist down with a laptop computer on the front seat, playing a pornographic video that had apparently been streamed over a residential wireless hot spot. The driver was charged with possession, distribution and creation of child pornography, as well as theft of telecommunications—a first in Canada, according to local authorities.

If the “authorities” decided to trace your broadband usage, it would be difficult for you to prove that you didn’t access the child porn site (although forensic analysis of your computer would not show any evidence that you accessed it, that wouldn’t necessarily exonorate you, since they’d have evidence to show that the stream came through your router).

While it wouldn’t land you in jail and get you listed as a sex offender, another possible problem would be if a wardriver used your connection to send spam.  Since almost every ISP outlaws spam as part of their AUP (Acceptable Use Policy), and the spam would have your IP address on it, they’d just assume that you sent it and cancel your account.  You would have a difficult time proving otherwise, unless the spammer was caught in the act (and they’re a lot less likely to be sitting outside your house with their pants down ).

Specifically, I’m referring to the K9 spam filter.  One of my missions when I went home for Thanksgiving was to quench the flow of spam into my mother’s inbox.  She had been complaining about hundreds of messages showing up whenever she would check her email.  At first I thought it was just that she was only checking it every few weeks.  When I got home I found out that this is the daily spam count.  Because she’s had that email address for over 5 years, and it’s simple and easy to guess, she gets over 100 spam emails per day. 

Since she’s not very computer literate I had to come up with some system where she could keep her email address and not have to do a lot of configuration or other work to filter out the spam.  I installed K9 and trained the filters (there was certainly an abundance of spam to train it on) and set up whitelists for people she commonly receives email from so their emails won’t chance getting accidentally classified as spam.  I also set up a filter in her email program that moves the email marked by K9 as spam into a spam folder.  I told her to check that folder every so often to make sure nothing good was in there and then delete it all.  I also showed her how to train the filter if it accidentally classified a good email as spam.  I hope that she will remember how all this stuff works.  It’s mostly transparent, but there is the possibility that it will mark good mail as spam and she’ll have to mark it as good in K9’s interface.

There’s an Energizer battery commercial that shows what appears to be a junior-high marching band on a bus.  As the batteries in one young girl’s CD player quit a boy takes advantage of the situation to take the seat next to her to share his CD player.  If that’s all there was to it, it’d be a cute commercial.  It was their musical choice of “Let’s Get It On” by Marvin Gaye that disturbed me.  It seems just a tad suggestive given the age of the subjects.

When I took the dog to the vet on Friday, he found that she had some worms, which is common with a stray dog.  He gave me a small bottle of Panacur and a syringe with instructions to give it to her once a day for three days.  They did the first dose right there in the office, leaving me to do them yesterday and today.  The vet assistant made it look easy—he just grabbed her mouth, forced it open, and squirted the medicine in.  I, on the other hand, made a total mess of it yesterday.  More of it ended up on the floor and on me than in her mouth.  I’m just glad that today was the last dose I had to give her (it took four attempts this time, although most of it got in her mouth rather than on the floor).

My poor dog did not react well to riding in the truck yesterday.  As long as we were moving on the highway she would lie down in the seat and sleep.  But when we got into town and encountered traffic she’d get sick.  She hurled three times during the trip, turning what is normally a three hour drive into a four-and-a-half hour one.  Fortunately, she seemed to understand not to hurl on the seats, and managed to hit a couple of towels and her dog bed (although I’m going to have to get some stain remover to get the drool stains off the seats).  I wouldn’t have thought that such a small dog could hold that much until it all came back out…

There’s a section of road near my mother’s house that is kind of secluded and it’s near a highway.  Because of this people frequently drop off dogs over there and they soon show up at my mother’s house or one of the neighbors.  A little while back one of these donor dogs showed up here.  My mother would feed her whenever she’d show up, but mostly she seemed to drift around the neighborhood. 

I’d been thinking of getting a dog for a while now, but I suppose this is one of those cases where the dog more or less found me.  I’m going to take her home with me and keep her at my house when I leave.  I’ve got a good sized back yard and a 20ftx22ft enclosed patio as well as a dog house, so there will be room for her to run around while I’m away at work. 

She seems to be a friendly dog and she acts like she’s been someone’s pet.  I put a collar on her and when I put the leash on she stayed right by my side as I walked.  She didn’t try to pull me down or get away.  She acts like she’s been on a leash before.  According to my mother she will also try to get into the car with you.  Everything points to her being a good pet, which is why I have such a hard time with why someone would just leave her out here in the country.

I gave her a bath with some flea soap (although I think she managed to get more water on me that I did on her) to try to get the worst of the ticks and fleas off of her.  If I can get some time with a local vet tomorrow I’m going to take her in for shots and an exam. 

I decided to name her “Boots” because of the white markings on her front paws.  It looks like she’s wearing little white boots.