License to Surf

It took a day, but my virus-laden system has been restored (Windows XP instead of 2000) and the surf is up! I'll probably augment the default XP firewall with ZoneAlarm but other than that it seems to be doing fine. It's quite amazing how much faster the system is, considering that the hardware and processor predate XP by several years. It's also quite amazing just how much time I can waste online now that I have broadband in the house.

One of my grand-aunts has just turned ninety and we (that is - my parents, my sister + her SO + their adopted child, and my two lovely daughters) are headed to Marshall, Texas tomorrow morning for a weekend of celebration with her and much of the clan. I haven't seen my girls in what seems like forever and I cannot wait to wrap my arms around my baby again. As mentioned earlier my son bailed out of the trip, so there won't be any chance to work on my relationship with him for a while. There's no Internet in the piney woods of East Texas so the next blog update won't be until next week unless I get surprised and find that one of my relatives actually has a 'net connection at home.