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Recently there have been comments from a visitor to my blog regarding videos for the IHSA girls state gymnastics meet held at PHS this year. I thought this strange because I haven’t received a request for such videos through phswebmaster.NOSPAM@d211.org <remove .NOSPAM> for a couple of months now. I did a quick Googling of ihsa girls state gymnastics and found my previous blog entries about the event on the first page of results returned by Google, above even the Chicago Tribune’s page.

So, yesterday a web page was deleted at work. I’m probably a bad webmaster for not knowing where my backups are being done or are being stored, so I couldn’t restore the page from a backup. I searched through the web in which the page was stored, only to find a couple of really old versions of the page. One of them was recent enough to be setup for the night.

This morning, I had a "Eureka" moment and pulled up the Google cached version of the page. Copying the HTML into FrontPage, I was able to remove the Google-izing stuff (i.e. search highlights, Google info box, etc.). Yay for Google!

On Friday, ABC Plumbing came by and installed a new sump pump after informing me that our sump pump had, in fact, died. Within an hour after installing the sump pump, the majority of the water had been pumped out of the downstairs. The only water that was left were two puddles in the two areas where the water first entered the family room and my office. It took about a half hour or so to vacuum up the remaining water.

People who have stopped by the house know, but for those of you who haven’t, the house is smelling quite funky right now. As you walk into the door, you’re hit with a strong smell of mold. I tried airing out the house for two days, but the smell just hasn’t left yet. For the next week we’ll be mopping to clean up the floor and hopefully get rid of most of the smell. I fear, however, that the big source of the smell is the crawl space. If it is, all the garbage in there has to get tossed, and soon.

Last night Grant and Chris (the other Chris) came over. We had some Lou Malnati’s and talked a little, then Chris (my Chris) looked through Grant’s many photos that he took while he was in Europe. I was busy grading again, so I did not have a chance to look at quite as many as Chris did.

Grant and Chris both left sometime during the night, and so Chris (my Chris) fell asleep on the couch in the living room. I continued to grade, entering the latest grades into MicroGrade. Upon finishing that, I headed to my office to put my stuff away.

As I step into my office, which was dark because the light switch still does not work very well, I hear a sloshing sound and feel cold water seep into my socks. That’s when I realized that the rain had somehow found itself seeping into my office! I looked around for a flashlight, and when I turned it on to investigate the extent of the flood, I discovered that the water was about a quarter to a half inch deep, and that it was slowly immersing the surge protector for my desktop!

A coworker sent me this link, which he received from another coworker. This guy sold his ex-wife’s wedding dress for almost as much as the engagement ring she took when she left! It’s unbelievable how many hits he got since first opening the auction on April 23^rd. I read through the auction, saw the counter was around 15,115,500. When I reloaded it to see just how popular this auction is, the counter jumped to more than 15,118,900! In a matter of minutes he got more than 3000 hits! I could only hope for such popularity. Absolutely amazing.

So, Thursday I compose a message reminding someone to follow secure computing practices at work. I sign it as my department, thinking we share the same concerns. Friday morning I am surprised to find that we do not, in fact, share the same concerns. I have seen more e-mail this weekend from my department than I have ever seen on any weekend since I started in August 2002.

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