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I’ve been having problems lately on my laptop with it freezing up while I am surfing. Usually if I wait a long time, it will return to normal, but it can take a few minutes. Usually when it is stalled the status bar in Firefox will say waiting on some other website, typically with cdn in the name. I don’t know if it is hanging on that particular site or a different one, but I have thought about blocking all of these third-party websites that aren’t related to the page I’m actually visiting. For instance, if you visit CNN, you might spend a while downloading stuff from akamai.net. I’m thinking usually it is ads because content should be on the web sites own server and is pretty basic.

Sometimes I think the problem is with different scipts that are loading from those sites (often it is just a video ad that is taking forever to download, but Firefox is a zombie until the thing finishes). I disabled javascript in my browser, which seemed to really help, but it caused problems on a lot of sites that I go to, including my bank and AdSense, which wouldn’t work at all without javascript.

Next I found an extension called YesScript which would disable javascript except for a few websites that you identify as being okay. This was kind of the opposite of another extension it mentioned called NoScript which would let you disable scripts of your choosing. YesScript didn’t do what I want, so I wound up trying out NoScript. It brings up a little toolbar that lets you control the scripts you want to see. For instance, I went to FlashlightWiki and there were 4 scripts, all blocked by default. I enabled flashlightwiki scripts which are served up by the wiki itself (I think for the search box). But I also have a Google Translator tool, so I enabled Google and Google Syndication (third party scripts, but useful ones) and the AdSense ads were being blocked as well, so I enabled googleapis. I did not enable doubleclick.net which just tracks your surfing across a lot of different websites that all use doubleclick.

I went to ajc.com to read up on the news and there were 71 different scripts, and as far as I could tell, I didn’t need any of them. And now the site downloads a lot faster too.

It is much more flexible than just enabling or disabling javascript. Even on Bank of America’s site, I enabled Bank of America scripts so I could log in, but was able to disable doubleclick.

So it’s kind of a pain to use, but a lot of my surfing is to the same sites, so I can customize all of those the way I want. And for the rest of the internet, I just block most of the scripts. It isn’t my intention to block ads, at least unobtrusive ones, but most of the ads are getting blocked. Oh well.

Yesterday I was in Athens for Easter. I brought my rocket and pen cam in case we had time to shoot it off. Michael brought his rocket over to Gramalie’s as well, so we got his put together and ready to launch. After lunch we all went over to the school nearby to launch. We had done this before and made 3 successful launches of my rocket. But it was a little windy. Michael had some C rocket engines, but I thought it would be better to try a B engine which goes about half as high until we could figure out the wind direction. The rocket, an Estes “Flash,” shot up really high even with the smaller engine. It went straight up and the parachute ejected perfectly, but then it started drifting with the wind on the way down. Grant started running to recover it, worried that it was headed for the street. He kept running but the rocket came down in some tree branches right above the street and got stuck about 30 feet up. There was no way we were going to get it down, but Grant talked to the owner of a store nearby and they said they would keep an eye out for it.

Today Fiona was sick and had to miss school, so she wasn’t in the car when Grant took Michael to school. When he got home he told her that there was a lot of traffic at the school because a couple of cars had an accident. When they worked their way past the accident site, they noticed the policeman was holding Michael’s rocket. Michael said out the window “That’s my rocket!” The policeman walked over and said to him “This rocket came down out of the tree this morning and caused this accident!” Grant told the police officer that Michael was mistaken and he actually lost a different rocket. Then he told Fiona: April Fools.

A couple of years ago my Peace Corps group was going to have a reunion, possibly at Yellowstone National Park. However we waited too long and wound up canceling the idea. It turns out you have to reserve lodging well in advance. So last September I placed a reservation and put down a refundable deposit for the historic Old Faithful Inn this coming May (they charge your credit card, but you can cancel for a full refund up to the day before you are supposed to be there). Even then it wasn’t easy finding places, but I reserved for 3 nights during the week of Memorial Day. The plan was to try to do the nearby Grand Teton National Park that week as well.

A couple of weeks ago I made firm plans by booking a flight to Salt Lake City and from there will drive up to the park, about 5 hours away. I had hoped to use my frequent flyer miles and get a free ticket, but Delta’s program requires different numbers of miles depending on whether they consider a ticket price to be low, medium, or high. I had enough points for a low price ticket, but not a medium price ticket, which is what they usually assign to Atlanta to Salt Lake City (though sometimes during the week it is considered low; nothing remotely close to when I wanted to go).

Then I realized I had myself flying home the same day I was checking out of Yellowstone, which would mean leaving the park at 4 AM to get back to Salt Lake in time for my flight. Ugh. All the lodging in Grand Teton seemed to be full at this point, but I found some cabins available in Yellowstone and booked those for the two preceding nights, for a total of five nights, all in Yellowstone. However, it turned out that it might be just as good or better to get a place in Jackson, Wyoming, which is in the area called Jackson Hole, not actually a hole, but a valley, just outside of Grand Teton NP. Jackson seems to have some things to do as well, including whitewater rafting down the Snake River. However, while in Georgia May is practically Summer, in the mountains it is early Spring and some of the roads are just opening from the winter snows. In fact the northeast Yellowstone entrance along Beartooth Highway is only cleared of snow the week before Memorial Day and has 15-foot snow drifts on the side of the road through June. For rafting the water could be ice cold (they do have wetsuits available which should provide some warmth). In the end, I wound up canceling the cabins, getting two nights in Jackson, and then canceling the third night in Yellowstone for a total of 4 nights. While I did that, I also made dinner reservations for both nights at the Old Faithful Inn, which was already filling up 2 months ahead of time!
Continue reading “Getting Ready for Yellowstone”

Katie has definitely been showing signs of age. I got her in 2000 when she was about 6 months old, so she is over 13. She has had a tough time walking for over a year, but has learned to adapt to it, and still looks forward to walks around the block (and other places; last night she led us up to the shopping center nearby). She is on her third set of shoes and needs a fourth, even though I re-sole them as many times as I can using Shoe Goo. Two weeks ago Austin was staying at Jenny’s, so Katie was home with me. I was saying something to her like asking if she wanted to go outside and she wasn’t reacting. She’s old, so she could have just been ignoring me (she’s always had an independent streak), but it didn’t seem like it. The next day when I came in, I decided on a real test: I rang the doorbell. That usually sets her off howling and barking immediately, even when she hears one on TV. No reaction. She seemed to be completely deaf. I think a lot of times she relies on Austin hearing something and following his lead, so I’m not sure how long she has been this way. If a noise is loud enough, she will hear it, though it could also be she is feeling it.

I took her to the vet this week to get her checked out and see if there was anything to do. Basically, there isn’t. They said the only way to tell if she is really deaf is to take her to a neurologist for a diagnosis and that it would be unlikely they could actually do anything about it. That’s what I suspected, but I wanted to rule out something simple like wax buildup or an ear infection (the vet said dogs don’t get wax buildup).
Continue reading “Katie’s Hearing Loss”

Usually at work, I don’t have a product at the end of the day to say: here is what I did today. In the last year or two I have been learning to draw because all of our drafters are retiring and we can’t get replacements. For the first 15 years of my career, I never drew anything (well, a little when I was in training) because we had drafters to do that. One nice thing about drafting for myself is I don’t have to sketch things out and explain the idea to someone else, I can just go. The bad thing is that it takes more of my time. Anyway, I made this drawing today. Normally I wouldn’t post what I drew, but I drew this from scratch (based on a hard copy of an existing drawing), and the bad thing is that it may not actually be used due to circumstances beyond my control.