Monthly Archives: April 2016

Right Story, Wrong Company . . .

Well, it looks like that even when I’m wrong, sometimes I’m right.

After the recent hoax about the guy who supposedly erased over 1500 of his client’s websites, this past Friday it came true for real.

A London, England webhosting company, 123-reg.com was running a maintenance script that went rogue, (sound familiar?) and managed to delete (123 says hundreds, other sources say thousands, or tens of thousands) of customer’s websites. They actually host over 800,000 sites, so it’s hard to tell.

You can read about it here – 123-reg.com problems and check out the 123-req Twitter feed about it here.

As far as the original story, it turned out to be viral marketing hoax by someone who posted the story online to get publicity.

Well, the rains finally showed up – with a vengeance. The Houston area got over 17 inches of rain in the past 24 hours, with 6 people confirmed dead,  mostly it seems, from driving into high water in underpasses and never coming back out.

Here’s a few online shots.

Houston Flooding 1_thumb[1]

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  Houston Flooding 2_thumb[1]

Houston Flooding 3_thumb[1]

In the above photo, those couple of dark lumps in the center left of the photo are car roofs.

Of course the Houston area is no stranger to heavy rains. In July 1979, Alvin, TX, about 30 miles south of Houston, received over 43 inches of rain in a 24 hour period. And 37 years later, it still holds the record as the most 24 hour rainfall in US history. And with Alvin only about 9 miles away, we saw our share of rain in Friendswood.

We had just moved to Houston from Montgomery, AL the previous December so I could go to work at Johnson Space Center on the Space Shuttle project. Our kids, Chris, 12, and Brandi, almost 6, were spending the summer with Jan’s parents down in Titusville, FL, while Jan and I had just moved into our brand-new house a week or so earlier.

I was working the night shift at JSC, but found I could not leave the subdivision to get to work. And when I called to tell them that I wouldn’t be coming in, they said no problem, cause they couldn’t leave.

So Jan and I spent the night watching the water flood the street in front of the house, come up over the curb, and then creep up the yard, finally stopping only about 5 feet from the house, and only about 6 inches below floor level.

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Locally here at the Lake Conroe Thousand Trails, I don’t think there were any flooding problems, except to the dock area. But at our other home, the Colorado River Thousand Trails, it was a whole ‘nuther story.

I talked to Marty, the head guy there, this afternoon, and he said they had closed down and turned off power in the ‘C’ & ‘D’ sections near the Colorado river. But that wasn’t all.

Here’s what the bridge looked like back in December 2015, when we were there during the last heavy rains.

Colorado River Flooded Crossing 1_thumb[1]

But today, Marty said the water was over 4 feet deep here this time, and the railings had been severely damaged, and even ripped away in places.

Glad we weren’t there, but then we don’t know if we’ll be able to get in there this coming Sunday when we’re supposed to head that way. Marty said to call Saturday to check things out.

I posted the first pages of Greg’s Favorite Apps today, Auto Utilities, Commercial Utilities, and Games.

Here’s the Categories that I’ve come up with so far:

Auto Utilities
Commercial Utilities
Games
General Utilities
Internet Utilities
Map Utilities
Reading Utilities
RV & Travel
System Utilities
Take Credit Cards
Weather Utilities
Widgets

I’ll be adding more apps over the next few days.

And after you check out our list, we hope you’ll let us know your favorites too.

For dinner tonight, we scratched our Whataburger itch, with double-meat Whataburger Jr’s. Then it was on to the Krogers right next door for a few things, and then home.

Unfortunately, the weather people are saying we’re going to get more rain tomorrow, but supposedly, and hopefully, not as much as today.


Thought for the Day:

Follow Your Heart. But Take Your Brain With You.

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Mea Culpa . . .

First up, blog reader Mike Rado alerted me to the fact that the story I related, about the guy destroying his company with one line of bad code, was a hoax.

When I looked at the story a few days ago when it first appeared, everyone assumed it was true. And I was in good company getting fooled, with company like Kim Komando, Popular Mechanics, and several other tech sites

And for what it’s worth, in the same circumstances, the ‘rm –rf’ command will work exactly as described.

Mea Culpa.

The promised oncoming bad weather keeps dodging all around us, with only the windy part showing up. But they’ve issued flood warnings for the Conroe area, so maybe it’s still in the works. We’ll see.

Sometime later tonight or tomorrow, I’ll start posting Greg”s Favorite Apps to the blog. I’ve already created the pages for the 12  different categories I’ve come up with. and around 80 different apps.

Greg’s Favorite App Categories
Auto Utilities
Commercial Utilities
Games
General Utilities
Internet Utilities
Map Utilities
Reading Utilities
RV & Travel
System Utilities
Take Credit Cards
Weather Utilities
Widgets

Eventually for each app, I’ll have a link to the Play Store, a graphic, and a description of what it does.

I’d also like to hear from our reader’s recommending any that you don’t see on my list.

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In the past I’ve mentioned 3D printers and all the amazing things they’re doing with them,  from printing working guns, to prosthetic limbs for injured soldiers, to replacement duck feet, and even printing food.

But now here’s a 3D printer that will print a house in just a day or so. Check it out.

And even more wonderful things are on the horizon, including the 3D printing of human organs. So no more transplants with all the inherent rejection problems. Instead they’ll just print you up a new heart, lung, liver, or kidney, from your own cells. So no more rejection problems. And no more people dying while waiting on the transplant list for a matching organ.

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Thought for the Day:

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

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