I’ve added three (count ‘em, three) new photo albums. Check them out in the Photo Gallery.

Or jump straight to them below:
Xmas 2003
Ice Skating!
New Years 2004 – Montreal, Canada

In response to Shelly’s suggestion (thanks Shelly!), I made a small change to the Photo Gallery.

In the top right corner, I added a link back to this homepage. This link appears on the gallery main page, the album pages and the picture pages, so you can return easily from anywhere inside the gallery.

I should create a section titled HA! for this one….

Check out this article on an IE vulnerability regarding “phishing”. For those of you that might not know, phishing is a spammer technique where you recieve an email which purports to be from a legitimate source you might be doing business with (ie Ebay, Paypal, Your bank!). The email looks very professional but while the link says www.paypal.com (or similar), once you click it, you are actually taken to a *fake* site set up by the spammer, where presumably you would sign in with your *real* credentials, giving them to the spammer in the process. Normally, even though the link looks legit, the address bar of your browser still shows that you are not actually on the website you intended to access. The bad news is that this new vulnerability hides it even there. The end result is the spammer has full access to the account in question. Check your inbox, you probably have a good example in there right now.

I love how an open-source website releases a patch before MS can even *comment* on its progress toward releasing one (last paragraph). It illustrates the whole open source vs closed source security debate very nicely.

Mozilla, my open source browser of choice, is partially vulnerable, but not anywhere close to the level IE is. The address bar is unaffected, but the status bar is. No biggie really, as the address bar is what you should be watching anyway.

UPDATE: Admittedly, the article wasn’t too far off the mark in their criticism that the patch authors do not have access to IE’s source code and could potentially cause more problems. Especially in light of the fact that that’s exactly what happened. Apparently, a second patch has been issued to fix a buffer overflow exploit caused by the first patch.

However, this doesn’t change the fact that there are more fundamental issues with Microsoft’s security practices.
This about sums it up:

Microsoft has still not released a fix for the IE problem or given any indication as to when one might be available. In October, the Redmond, Wash., software maker adopted a policy of releasing only one patch each month, but it has already announced that it will be skipping its December release; IE is expected to remain vulnerable until at least mid-January.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Would you like to significantly improve the security posture of your desktop?

Then don’t use MS Internet Explorer for web browsing or Outlook Express for email.
Alternatives? Mozilla for both. (A full install will also give you Mozilla Mail.)

So far, I really like it. It has less tables, giving a cleaner look, in my opinion.

I do need to change the logo in the upper left corner to something more attractive. I only changed the text to “brand” it to my site.

Let me know what you think by commenting below or emailing me at dave@rodrig.com.

Check it out in the album.

A flashy headline for sure, but very much a valid criticism. Go here for the article.

Interesting quote:

Ironically, Microsoft’s efforts to deny interoperability of Windows with legitimate non-Microsoft applications have created an environment in which Microsoft’s program interoperate efficiently only with Internet viruses.

Obviously, only one of those statements is true.

Months ago, I had transferred Bri’s birthday party pics from my digital camera to my work laptop. Then, I forgot about them! Well, I guess I didn’t really forget, but I never put the effort into getting them off of that laptop (I avoid using it, the battery lasts all of 11 minutes or so). Anyway, that’s the reason for the “Dad of the Year” remark. I feel like a real ass.

Anyway, Bri’s birthday party are here.

Ok kids, it’s time to start acting like big boys and girls.

I’ve noticed several comments in the picture gallery that could easily be construed as offensive, derogatory, or in bad taste. Now, I said construed because I don’t believe they were meant maliciously. But I’m sorry, I won’t have words such as those appearing anywhere on my site, no matter how innocent the author’s intent.

My logs indicate that the comments were posted from a Hartford area financial institution, but I don’t want to lock out the source ip address because that could potentially block others from the same place of employment (and it’s a big company). So, for now, since I’d really rather not disable public posting of comments, I’ve switched to a semi-moderated method. Every new comment will be posted immediately, as usual, but also emailed to myself. This way, rather than finding potentially offensive comments by browsing my own site, I’ll see them soon after they are posted and likely before anyone else stumbles across them. If I object to the comment, I can delete it rather quickly.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to better monitor what appears on rodrig.com using this method. If it isn’t enough, I can certainly block the culprit’s access, or move to full moderation, where I’d approve/disapprove comments before they appear on the site.

So, please, be courteous and respectful, look both ways when you cross the street and make sure you wash your hands after you tinkle.

I’ve added a couple albums and some new pictures of Felipe to his existing album.

Look here for the new pictures of Felipe, from when he was about 4 weeks old, so, yes, they’re a little old. I’ll try and get some newer pictures to add.

Also, I finally uploaded the pics from Elizabeth’s graduation.
And when Laurie was up visiting, we took her to NYC for a couple days, check those out here.

OK, I’ve made a few changes to the site.

First, I embedded the pictures into the main part of the site, Geeklog. And I also added a Random Picture block (eyes right –>).

I really like the Random Picture, it just adds a bit of interest to the far right of the page. I’m not so sure about geeklog being embedded, though. Please let me know what you think! (hmm, maybe I’ll add a poll……done, vote on the right, under the calendar.)

And lastly, as I just mentioned, I added a small calendar block, also on the right. Really, this was just cosmetic, I think it looks good there, plus it does have some function, however little.