The kid told me this week that she has landed a part in her school’s Chanukah play. They have already started rehearsing after school and from what the kid tells me, it’s a decent sized part. I’ve got to say that I’m proud of her and I think that she’ll do good. It also got me thinking about her first acting role back when she was in Pre 1A. Luckily I happen to have it to share:

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I was talking with my mother this morning getting the latest news on how her husband is doing in the hospital. He’s been there for a while and doesn’t look like he is going to be getting out, while alive at any rate.

While talking to her she told me a story that I knew part of but didn’t know the rest. It’s pretty wild so I wanted to share it with everyone.

The story begins on Shabbos where a 12 year old boy went missing in Montecello, NY. There was a search that happened and the boy was finally found and he was unharmed. It was a very happy reunion. Now here is the rest of the story.

It turns out that it was my step-brother was the one who found the boy. Do you know where he was found? In my mother’s house across the street after he broke in and was living there for a day a half. He was using my mother’s computer and it looks like he even may have stolen some of my mother’s jewelry so that he can buy additional food and do who knows what else. It seems that the boy who’s family lives across from my mother had been unhappy at home and decided to use my mom’s place as a refuge since my mother has been at the hospital from over a month straight.

As the late great Paul Harvey used to say, now you know the rest of the story.

Like every father, I’ve been worried about having the kid surfing the interwebs. There are a lot of sites out there that shouldn’t be viewed by children, not to mention any malware that may be lurking around. For a while I have been using a combination of Mac OSX’s parental controls and a plug-in for Firefox called Foxfilter to manage what content she’s able to visit. I’m still using the parental controls but I’ve stopped using Foxfilter for something that is a lot more centralized and feature rich, Kerio Control. (Disclaimer: I work for Kerio, and I’m in sales – you’ve been warned)

Although Kerio Control is mainly for the SMB market, it can make for a really nice firewall for a family too. The set up was very easy as was the configuration. The whole thing took about 45 from putting the CD in the drive to having it ready to go. What I really like about Control is the granularity that you have with granting access to sites. You can select sites with Kerio Web Filter and you can manually add sites to block, with the latter also being able to be done at the user level.You are also able to white list sites as well and again this can be done either globally or on the user level.

Where Control really shines is the reporting capabilities. You are able to see exactly what is being done over the web and by which user and in an easy to understand graphical format. Here is an example where you can see who is visiting a specific site:

Pretty cool, huh? There is even more that you can do with the reporting but I won’t bore you with the details.

Anyway, if you have a small or medium and want to keep you computers safe, I think you need to give a look at Kerio Control.

I’m looking for some good books for “the kid”. She’s 10 and she likes the fantasy genre. So far she has read all of the books from Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson universe and the first Kane Chronicles book). She’s also gone through the Alcatraz books from Brandon Sanderson, which she loved. I’ve tried getting her to read the Narnia series but she didn’t like it, the same for the Susan Cooper’s “The Dark is Rising” series.

So if you have any suggestions about books that you think that “the kid” would like, let me know by leaving a comment.

Shabbos is the day of rest. It’s a very laid back day where you spend time with family, reading and doing things. It’s an interesting transition going from such a restful day to today where I’m running a lot of errands. Here is a sample of what I’m doing today (in no particular order):

• laundry
• wash dishes
• oil change for my car
• cook dinner
• car wash for my car
• take the kid to Kohl’s for new swimming goggles
• get some things for me at Kohl’s
• take the kid out for a celebratory lunch (she passed a swimming test and was camper of the week and won a talent show this past week)
• return a pair of bicycle shorts
• fold laundry
• try to get a bike ride in (not likely with the weather threatening rain)

I think I can use another day of rest after today.

Here is a video that the kid did back in the winter, which I am just getting around to uploading. It’s a video of her interviewing her foot.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBgLXZFpSog

Well, 10 years ago today the Kid was born. She’s a wonderful daughter and a true miracle. I’m very happy she’s in my life.

Several years ago the kid was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease. The GI specialist said that it was was fairly mild case but it’s something that needed to be watched. They gave her some medication and she’s been on it ever since. Thankfully the medication has done it’s work and she’s been growing and developing right on schedule.

Today we had our usual follow up visit with the specialist and I heard words that I never thought that I would hear. Depending on the blood work results the kid may be able to go off of her meds. I’m very happy about this new.

Last year I posted about my mother and how I decided for her new computer that she should buy a Mac Mini. This was mainly a selfish decision on my part since it would allow me to use iChat to share her screen whenever she has a problem she wants me to look at. Such was the case on Saturday night when she called me and wanted to know how to do a few basic things.

As is my wont, I was complaining to a friend of mine about being tech support for a family member when he shared his tale  of family tech support from Saturday. It seems that his father bought an Acer computer and was having some problems. My friend was on the phone with him and was trying to help him download the updated driver and whatnot. As you can imagine, helping a family member (a non computer savvy one at that) to download and install new drivers is not for the faint of heart. In the end it turned out that it wasn’t a driver issue at all.

This is why I decided that my mother get a MacMini instead of a Windows box. I’d much rather be dealing with questions of how to print or email something instead of having to lead her through downloading the latest drivers only to find that they aren’t needed.

Well, the eastern seaboard got hit pretty badly with snow yesterday. Here is Brooklyn it wasn’t as bad as in other places like the Washington, DC area. According to one of my resellers and someone I follow on Twitter they got about 21 inches. From the look of things on my porch I’d say that we got about a foot but we may get more as it has started to snow again.

With the first snowfall of the year, Rivky is very excited and already went out on the porch several times to play in the snow. I have always liked watching the snow fall. It’s just the driving and getting around once the snow has fallen is a pain. With the way people drive during the snow you would think that they have forgotten how to drive. I also have two cars to clean off and that is a pain but at least I don’t have to shovel a walk or driveway since that gets handled by building management.