Falling off the face of the earth
Nov 3rd, 2005 by Sandra
I’m baaaaack!
What an incredibly hellacious and busy couple of weeks! Lessee….I finished Intended Victim, created a cover contest web site for my local Houston Bay Area chapter, got a new kitten, cut a new piece for an area of Dorothea’s coaming that had rotted out, varnished the hand rails, and read two Bombshells.
The funnest, but most difficult part, was creating the contest web site. It involved writing PHP code to access a mysql database for storing and retrieving contest entry information (including images), writing tools the Contest Coordinator could use to manage the contest (e.g., send reminder e-mails to folks who haven’t uploaded their covers yet, verifying the entries against the payments, seeing how many entries we have in each category, etc.), and then setting up a Mickey Mouse version of the tools so the chapter’s general members could see how the contest is doing. Whew!
The new kitten is a blast, too. Her name right now is “Dot” because she’s a calico with little spots on her toes and face. She’s a real doll. The existing cat, Joe Muggins, isn’t so sure about her sometimes, but they’ve settled more or less into a state of general tolerance. I think he gets a kick out of her chasing his tail.
The thing that’s got me amazed right now is Sony’s DRM scandal. You can read about it just about anywhere if you browse to Google News and look in the Technology section, but the bottom line is, If you install on your PC a Sony copyright-protected music CD, Sony will install software on your PC that looks, smells, sounds, and acts like one of the worst kinds of malware out there. It’s cloaked, so you can’t find it, but if you do know how to find it and decloak it, then remove it, it renders your CD drive inoperable.
Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen, doesn’t it?
The kicker is that it doesn’t seem to be an anti-theft/piracy measure at all, but a tactic to prevent consumers from loading Sony music into an iPod.
Hello?
Anyway, great fodder for The Odyssey Virus, the hacker Bombshell I hope Silhouette will buy from me….
Keep reading and writing!
Welcome back Sandra. Missed seeing your posts. :o)
Congrats on finishing Intended Victim. Can’t wait ot read it.
Thanks, y’all. I’m glad just to be out from under some pressure. Now I have several Emily contest entries to judge, edits to make to Dead Reckoning, and my proposals to finish. Yikes!