8:40 - Barbara came home yesterday afternoon feeling ill. She went to bed complaining of nausea and stomach pain. It is so unusual for Barbara to be ill that I was very concerned. In the 19 years we've been married, I remember her being sick enough to stay in bed only a couple of times. In the 20 years she worked for the library system, I think she took fewer than half a dozen sick days total. I was very concerned, particularly about the stomach pain. I asked her if she needed to go to the emergency room, and she refused. She was concerned about appendicitis, but the pain wasn't in the lower right quadrant. I thought she should go to the emergency room anyway, but she didn't think that was necessary.

She wasn't able to face eating, so I gave her soup and tea and Coke. I tried blocking the dogs from the bedroom, but they simply lay outside the door and whined, so I ended up letting them into the bedroom. Barbara slept fitfully much of yesterday afternoon, evening, and last night. This morning she woke up early and went out to get the paper. I woke up shortly thereafter, hearing her and the dogs moving around. Barbara said she was feeling a lot better this morning, although not 100%, and she insisted on going to work. I thought that was a bad idea, but Barbara hates being in bed sick so much that perhaps getting out will actually be better for her.

We missed the astronomy club meeting last night, but it was just the Christmas party so missing it was no big deal. I also decided to stay with Barbara instead of going over to visit my mother, so mom got only one visit yesterday. Speaking of which, I'd better head over there now.

9:18 - I just sent the following warning to subscribers.

Microsoft has announced yet another critical vulnerability. This one affects only Windows XP (all versions). Anyone who is running XP needs to be aware of this problem and apply the patch as soon as possible.

Microsoft says:

"An attacker could seek to exploit this vulnerability by creating an .MP3 or .WMA file that contained a corrupt custom attribute and then host it on a website, on a network share, or send it via an HTML email. If a user were to hover his or her mouse pointer over the icon for the file (either on a web page or on the local disk), or open the shared folder where the file was stored, the vulnerable code would be invoked. An HTML email could cause the vulnerable code to be invoked when a user opened or previewed the email. A successful attack could have the effect of either causing the Windows Shell to fail, or causing an attacker's code to run on the user's computer in the security context of the user."

More information is available at <http://www.microsoft.com/security/security_bulletins/ms02-072.asp>

I'm getting bounces for Mike Eckenwiler at amigo.net because the account name is unknown.

8:21 - I've been exchanging email with Tim O'Reilly concerning his announcement last spring that O'Reilly & Associates would support the Founders' Copyright. The Founders' Copyright is a return to what the Founding Fathers intended for copyright protection, a 14-year term renewable for another 14 years. The Founders' Copyright is a response to the ridiculous extension of copyright terms foisted upon all of us by the movie and music industries. An author who agrees to have his work published under the Founders' Copyright signs an irrevocable agreement that that work will be put into the public domain after the period intended by the Founding Fathers. I've told Tim to sign me up. You can read more about the Founders' Copyright at  creativecommons.org.

11:55 - I found my pocket knife. It's a Victorinox Soldier Swiss Army Knife, which is to say it's the actual model of knife carried by Swiss soldiers. I missed it yesterday, and found it this morning in the bedroom, where it had fallen out of the pocket of my jeans.

I've carried a knife every day without exception for the last 26 years. Sometimes it was a folding knife, sometimes a Swiss Army Knife, and sometimes a Bowen Belt Knife. But I always had a knife handy, although I'm not obsessive about it. For example, it didn't bother me that I didn't have it with me yesterday. But with such minor exceptions, I do have a knife with me all the time. I guess that means I can't fly aboard a commercial airliner now, because they wouldn't let me keep it.

It all started in the summer of 1976. Karen Taylor, the girl I was living with at the time, enjoyed sailing. She borrowed a 14-foot Sunfish from a friend, and we took it to the lake one weekend. I'd never done anything more than ride on a sailboat before, but Karen assured me that she was an experienced skipper and needed me to crew for her. I told her I had no idea what to do, but she said not to worry about it. I soon learned that I was expected to use my weight by leaning to one side, out over the side of the boat, as Karen turned. Doing that, I had to hold on to keep from falling overboard.

To make a long story short, Karen capsized the boat in shallow water and stuck the mast into the lake bed. (She later told me that it had been her fault, and not caused by anything I'd done wrong.) I found myself underwater and tangled in the rigging. Fortunately, I'd taken a deep breath before I went under. When I first went under, I wasn't too worried. I'm a strong swimmer and figured I'd just surface and make sure Karen was okay. But during the capsize, I ended up with the rigging twisted around me pretty badly in several places.

A patrol boat saw the accident, and the officers immediately headed for us at high speed. Unfortunately, they were not close when it happened, so it took them a while to get there. In the meantime, I was under water, struggling to get free of the rigging. I finally did so, and came to the surface just as the patrol boat arrived. They pulled me out first, although I was more concerned about Karen, who was screaming the whole time. They got her aboard the patrol boat soon after, and she kept apologizing over and over, saying she thought she'd killed me. One of the officers told me later that they'd seen me go under and that I'd been under for almost two minutes. I never realized I could hold my breath for that long.

I remember thinking as I struggled to get free of the rigging that I was pissed at myself for not having a knife. Even before then I'd usually had a knife handy, but that day I didn't. Nowadays I always do.

9:04 - From what I'm reading, it appears that Linux Mandrake is likely to fold soon. Mandrake posted an appeal for donations on their site yesterday, citing "a big short-term cash issue." It seems that Mandrake needs $4 million to dig their way out of a hole that is largely of their own making. A couple of years ago, Mandrake made a business decision to shift away from their Linux roots in favor of becoming an "e-learning company", whatever that is. In doing that they dug themselves a hole, and now they're hoping that their loyal users will bail them out.

I don't see that happening. I think this is a case of Mandrake going to the well once too often, and it appears to me that many of their loyal supporters are no longer as loyal as they once were. Their "Club call" last March generated some cash flow, but it also turned into a PR nightmare, as many Club members subsequently felt cheated when Mandrake announced that StarOffice would be available only to some Club members. That left a bad taste in many people's mouths, and I think Mandrake is going to be surprised at just how much good will they burned with that fiasco. Reading the feedback on slashdot, it appears that a lot of people are likely to ignore Mandrake's appeal.

Frankly, I'm not sure why anyone would support Mandrake. Originally, Mandrake was generally acknowledged as the best "desktop distribution", but those days are in the past. I've looked at Mandrake 9.0 and Red Hat 8.0, and I can't see any real advantage to Mandrake for mainstream desktop use. If it's a "beginner" Linux desktop you're after, Lycoris and other distributions seem much more focused on that than does Mandrake. In short, I can't see any way that Mandrake differentiates itself from the crowd.

The question then becomes whether supporting Mandrake is a good use of one's funds. I think it is not, and a lot of people appear to agree. Emmett Plant, CEO of the Xiph.org Foundation (the makers of Ogg Vorbis), makes an excellent point about the millions of dollars that Mandrake has burned. He goes on to say:

"Meanwhile, we're a non-profit company that produces the absolute best-of-class general-purpose audio compression codec in the world, proprietary or otherwise. We've been through recessions and poor economic times before; Hopefully we'll live through this one, too. Everybody and their brother has a Linux distribution; Why don't you support the smaller projects that actually make a difference?"

And I think he's right. Sending $4 million to Mandrake is dumping that money down a rathole. That $4 million would be much better spent supporting projects like Ogg Vorbis. If Mandrake goes belly-up, they have only themselves to blame.

More on the Microsoft security hole I mentioned yesterday:

9:05 - Barbara and I thought about heading over to the soccer field near our house to observe last night, but Barbara is not yet fully recovered from the bug she had earlier in the week and I wasn't feeling great myself. We ended up sitting around reading all evening, which was nice.

Today I'm doing some preliminary preparation for the Messier Marathon practice session we have planned for late February. The Messier Marathon is an attempt to view all 110 Messier Objects from dusk one evening until the following dawn. It's only possible to do that during one period a year, near the new moon in March or early April. We're doing a practice session in February to get the bugs worked out before our real Messier Marathon next March. Although all 110 objects won't be possible during our February practice session, it will help us prepare for the real Messier Marathon in March. None of us have ever done a Messier Marathon before, so we hope to use the practice session to get the bugs worked out.

Paul Jones and I are the most experienced observers in the Winston-Salem Astronomical League, so we decided to get together to do some preliminary planning to help things go as smoothly as possible. It's important to develop a schedule and sequence--which objects to observe in what order--to make the most of our observing time. It's very easy to get behind. Some objects set during the evening but rise again later. Other objects once set are gone for good, so it's important to know which objects need to be logged first. Also, we have a problem with the northern horizon at our site, which means we'll have to modify the sequence to take that into account. Once we have a workable sequence/schedule and have a chance to try it in February, we'll be in a much better position to develop a good sequence/schedule for the March Marathon (the best sequence/schedule differs from month to month).

We also have logistics to think about. Preparing for an all-night session in February at high-elevation on the Blue Ridge Parkway is non-trivial. We need to be able to feed people, keep them warm, and so on. We also have equipment issues to worry about, including such things as 2-hour notebook batteries only providing 15 minutes of power at the temperatures we'll be working in and equipment that will literally ice up as we're using it. Fortunately, we'll be working from the cabin, which gives us a warm refuge.

Barbara and I are having dinner with Paul and Mary tomorrow evening. After dinner, Paul and I will sit down at the kitchen table and rough out a schedule and sequence. Once we have that done, checked, and double-checked, we'll start enhancing it with stuff that'll help less-experienced observers, such as recommendations for instrument to use (binoculars, telescope at low power, telescope at high power) and so on. We want to make this session fun for anyone, from novice to expert. Well, as fun as staying up all night outdoors in February at high elevation can be.