Light & Dark

Finally some new snow!

While it's been wonderful having 2 weeks of bluebird skies and moderate temperatures, it sure is great to finally be getting some snow again. Things were really starting to look dirty and bare here in the valley.

Plus snow that old and warm is a total bitch to wax for when cross country skiing. Even klisters are iffy.

The snow's quite heavy blowing past my window at the moment and has been for an hour or so. We'd already had 6 or 7cm when I drove in to work this morning and there's another 10-15 forecast before it peters out tomorrow.

At which time it goes down to -18C, or -28C with windchill.

Oops.

FINALLY an easy way to keep Java up to date on your computer

Java is an application (technically a Virtual Machine) that runs on your computer to enable other little applications to run in your web browser. It needs to be updated regularly to fix significant security vulnerabilities that can leave you open to attack.

Problem is, it's always been very difficult to find out if you need an update (it's a SUN product, so Microsoft Updates won't alert you) and even worse, if you do update, it leaves the old insecure version behind!

The good news is, Sun has finally released an update mechanism that solves both of these problems. Thanks to a Solo Technology post, I can point you to a link which will allow you to automatically check whether your Java is up to date. If it's not, the page will offer you the appropriate download, which will also remove the old version in the process.

Watch out in the installation steps - you'll be offered the Yahoo Toolbar which you'll almost certainly want to decline. It's offered purely as a money-making option for Sun. After completing installation, you'll need to restart your browser to complete the install.

It's now easy to do and well worth the small effort as a way to plug yet another potential hole in many users' security. Go take the test!

Some people you never forget

And  a first girlfriend is certainly one of them. I was fortunate to have the most amazing girl as my first girlfriend - I was in grade 10 and she was a year ahead of me. I was too dumb to know how to make a move, so it was a good thing she invited me to a Sadie Hawkins dance.

What a  night that was. Vividly remember putting my arms around her for the first time, and holding her hand walking her home. Not to mention that timid first kiss at her door. I can still recall trying to run home in the snow in dress shoes because walking her home (in the opposite direction) was going to make me miss my curfew. Lucked out that a teacher I barely knew offered me a ride part way or I'd have been screwed.

She helped me get through my parents' splitting up, and I'd like to think I helped her with some of her family stuff too. Still instantly think of her when I hear Supertramp.

Have tried a few times over the years to find out more about where she is and what she's up to now, but not much beyond a few details, even though I understand she still lives in my old home town - and was married to a childhood buddy for a time.

So what brought this up today? It's her birthday, February 16. Have trouble remembering some of my nieces' & nephews' b'days, but hers I'm never quite able to forget.

Happy birthday Nancy. Thank you for all the magical memories.

How well do you guys remember your first girlfriend/boyfriend?

Microsoft Office for Students - The Ultimate Steal

If you are a Canadian university/college student who needs the cheapest way to buy Microsoft Office, you absolutely can't beat this deal, direct from Microsoft:

Microsoft Office for Students - The Ultimate Steal. Office 2007 Ultimate for $64 CDN!

I came across this while looking for the best Office deal for a client. She is enrolled as a university student for a distance education degree, which definitely counts for the requirements. The cheapest alternative was Office Home and Student 2007, which is $150 and doesn't include Outlook or Access, which she'll eventually need.

And because it's a fully legit retail version, it's legal to put it on the user's workstation at home and another copy on their laptop. $600 worth of Office for $64. If you know any students who need Microsoft Office, make sure they know about this. (The page refers specifically to university/college students, saying you have to have a university-issued email address to qualify. It then goes on to state that, alternatively, you can email a scan of your student card, so I wonder if a high-school student would qualify. Will see if my Microsoft contact can shed any light on this.)

Qualified students can also get an upgrade copy of Windows Vista Ultimate for $70 CDN. Just look under "Additional Products" on the page linked above. The promo is on until Dec 2010!

If you don't want to reward the Evil Empire with even the $64, (or you don't meet the student qualifications) you can always grab the excellent open source OpenOffice.org office suite for nothing but the download bandwidth.

The more things change...

It figures that the first person to comment as I slowly start making time to get back to blogging here would be Mike. He was also one of the first way back nearly 6 years ago when Light & Dark first started. In fact, his first contact was a trackback, not even a comment. That came a couple of posts later when we got talking about Acidman, the burgeoning TypePad beta community (TypePad had just launched in limited release) and the Toledo Mudhens (Klinger's team on MASH).

While I have some cleaning up to do in the old blogroll, I'm quite impressed to see that so many of the stawarts that been over there in the sidebar so long are still blogging actively. Hardy folks with impressive longevity!

Looking forward to getting back in touch with a number of them. (Hi De! Hi Mike W!) I've stayed active in some comment sections, but have missed talking to a few of those folks. As someone who now specialises in Social Media and web marketing, it's pretty cool to see how well my old blogging community has held up over the years.