ChetOS.net

We are at the hospital.  Amanda is being induced because her amniotic fluid level was low.  She is 41 week anyway (past due) so that is what the doctor wanted.

It isn't what we wanted, so much for a "birth plan".  Oh well.

Please pray that the weaker drugs do the trick.  If not, she will go on Pitocin tomorrow morning, and that will really get her contractions going.

We are updating Facebook primarily for status updates.

Since my son might be born in the range of possible Thankgiving Days (that is, Thanksgiving might fall on his birthday).  I decided to look at the rate which Thanksgiving falls on a particular day.

I am having a hard time describing this so here is a chart.

Day     # of Times in 100 Years
21      0
22      15
23      13
24      15
25      15
26      15
27      14
28      14
29      0

So, according to this, if his birthday falls between 22 and 28, then he will definitely have his birthday on a Thanksgiving day. If he is born on the 26th, he will share Thankgiving every five years (or so).  If he is born on the 27th, then he will have a ten year gap between 2014 and 2025.

If he is born on the 28th, then his birthday will be on Thanksgiving in 2013, and then every six years (or so).  There will be a ten year gap between 2030 and 2041.

So, if he waits until Sunday, he will never share a birthday with Thanksgiving.  However, it will still be close.  Personally, I rather he wait until the 1st of December at this point.  Nobody likes having their birthday close to a holiday.

On a related note.  It feels to me that Thanksgiving usually comes on the 27th (at least, in my conscious lifetime).  Turns out that it isn't true.  In the last 26 years it has fallen on each possible day 4 times.  However in my defense, 27, 25, and 23 have been more concentrated in my adolescent and adult life.

I have posted the Excel Spreadsheet.

The first Thankgiving was not the Pilgrims giving thanks to the Indians for helping them through the winter.  It was the Pilgrims giving thanks to God for helping them though the winter and giving them a plentiful bounty that year.  The Indians helped them definitely, but the thanks was to God.

The former was taught to me in school.

Amanda was using our computer today and discovered that she could not log into any site that uses SSL.  Internet Explorer just kept saying that there was a certificate error (you know, when the red shield comes up and asks if you really want to enter the site).

Turns out, the computer's date was wrong, set to 11/19/2068.  This meant that all of the publisher's certificates had expired.  Therefore, the site's certificates could not be verified.

Moral: If you get repeated certificate warnings/errors, make sure your date is set correctly.

As for how this happened in the first place, I do not know.  This was on Vista, and it might affect Windows 7 as well.

I finished War of the Worlds this weekend.  Excellent book, it is amazing that it was written in 1898.

It is set in southern England, so the place names are real, but since I didn't have a map, it was somewhat confusing.  I just went to Google Maps and found several of the locations, so I now have a better understanding of how things went.

One thing that I particularly liked was its use of then-cutting-edge science.  It gives a glimps of what was thought about Mars and human evolution and military tactices back then.  H.G. Wells essentially described the concept of "total war" decades before we saw it during World War 2.

I recommend this book.  I didn't read it, I listened to it, as I have been doing a lot lately.  I got it from http://www.librivox.org/.  The reader was good, I'd give him a 7.

I have been using Windows 7 for over a week now.  It is ok, mostly visual upgrades.  I think they polished the interface since Vista, keeping a lot, but just making it easier to use.  Since I have two monitors (hopefully three soon), the new keyboard shortcuts are nice (for example: Shift+Windows+Arrow will move the window to the next monitor).

I also like that it comes with IIS7, which I have had very little experience administrating.

I completely disabled User Account Controls.  I do not appreciate being asked if I really want to preform the action that I just requested.  For example, if I open the Registry Editor, that should be confirmation enough that I want to use the Registry Editor!  I hear that there are fewer notifications than Vista, but since I haven't spent much time on Vista I wouldn't know.