UltraVNC allows you to operate another computer on your network or over the internet as if you were sitting right in front of it.

UltraVNC is an easy to use, fast and free software that can display the screen of another computer (via internet or network) on your own screen. The program allows you to use your mouse and keyboard to control the other PC remotely. It means that you can work on a remote computer, as if you were sitting in front of it, right from your current location.

When someone in our office has a question about either an error message that has popped up on their screen or how to do something on their computer I can ‘pop-in’ and walk them through it without having to kick them out of their seat or away from their customer. If they have instant-messaged me I can ‘pop in’ to their computer and help them without the person across from them even knowing that they are receiving help.

When I am at home I can ‘log in’ to my computer at the office and run any of the software there or even help with any questions others have while I am out.

UltraVNC key features include FileTransfer, Video Driver, Encryption Plugins, MS Logon, high performances over all kinds of connections, Viewer Toolbar, JavaViewer with FileTransfer, autoscaling and serverside scaling, Multiple Monitors support, Repeater/proxy support, good Security and Text Chat.

Instead of using Microsoft Office in our office we are using Open Office. We do not need a full office suite of software like M$ Office provides — so why spend the money for 8 to 10 desktops? And best of all - Open Office does everything we could want to do with M$ Office!

We use a couple of spreadsheets is all - for daily balancing and time sheets. So we are definitely not pushing the software to its limits. But the great thing is you can set Open Office up to default to reading and writing M$ Office files - so our accountant who uses Excel can read our files just fine!

If you’re used to using other office suites - such as Microsoft Office - you’ll be completely at home with OpenOffice.org. However, as you become used to OpenOffice.org, you’ll start to appreciate the extras that make your life easier. You can of course continue to use your old Microsoft Office files without any problems - and if you need to exchange files with people still using Microsoft Office, that’s no problem either.

OpenOffice.org is an open, feature-rich multi-platform office productivity suite. The user interface and the functionality is very similar to other products in the market like Microsoft Office or Lotus SmartSuite, but in contrast to these commercial products OpenOffice.org is absolutely free.

OpenOffice.org gives you everything you’d expect in office software. You can create dynamic documents, analyse data, design eye-catching presentations, produce dramatic illustrations, and open up your databases. You can publish your work in Portable Document Format (.pdf), and release your graphics in Flash (.swf) format - without needing any additional software. OpenOffice.org 1.1 is now available for more users than ever, with support for complex text layout (CTL) languages (such as Thai, Hindi, Arabic, and Hebrew) and vertical writing languages.

What’s in the suite?

• WRITER Is a powerful tool for creating professional documents, reports, newsletters, and brochures. You can easily integrate images and charts in documents, create everything from business letters to complete books with professional layouts, as well as create and publish Web content.

• CALC is a feature-packed spreadsheet which can turn boring numbers into eye-catching information. Calculate, analyse, and visually communicate your data quickly and easily. Use advanced spreadsheet functions and decision-making tools to perform sophisticated data analysis. Use built-in charting tools to generate impressive 2D and 3D charts.

• IMPRESS is the fastest, most powerful way to create effective multimedia presentations. Your presentations will truly stand out with special effects, animation and high-impact drawing tools.

• DRAW will produce everything from simple diagrams to dynamic 3D illustrations and special effects.

• The Database User Tools give you all the tools you need for day to day database work in a simple spreadsheet-like form. They support dBASE databases for simple applications, or any ODBC or JDBC compliant database for industrial strength database work.

Today’s Dilbert cartoon is about blogging - and getting fired for it. I don’t have to worry about that since my boss (me) doesn’t care. But there are others who are affected by our posts as well - what are your ‘personal guidelines’ for your blog? Do you post about your job? your spouse? your kids? your family? your friends?

What is acceptable and what would you consider unacceptable invasions of others privacy?

Am listening to this talk by Jeremy Zawodny on how they use Open Source software and why at Yahoo! He makes some good arguments why it makes sense for them to use Open Source.

Listen to it at ITConversations.com

For over ten years, Yahoo! has been building some of the Internet’s most popular content and services on an Open Source platform. Yahoo! uses a lot of Open Source Software (OSS) internally including Linux, FreeBSD, Apache, Perl, PHP and MySQL. Jeremy Zawodny says that OSS helps them to “remix” and configure the software to their needs.

Just saw these cute little leak detectors on Gizmodo and it along with another recent incident brought back some memories that I am sure my dear wife would rather forget.

In the not so distant past, before we were hooked up to city sewer, we had to worry about our septic tank backing up. A 30-year-old septic tank in bad soil and 7 kids (and their laundry) do not make for a happy ending. It was usually due to too many loads of laundry and/or a toilet flap not closing, pouring water into the tank till it could take no more. We would end up with an inch of water in the laundry room and bathroom and everything that happened to be on the floor getting soaked. (To this day our computers are up on bricks - just in case). You never knew when the flood waters would strike again and usually would go long enough between floods that you would grow complacent. But if you were a betting person you would lay money on the fact it would happen 20 minutes before we were ready to leave town.

I ended up buying a very simple device at the Home Depot that gave an alarm anytime it sensed water. They are designed to go next to your hot water tank, under the sink, or anywhere else you fear a leak. I took one and added 12 inches of wire to each lead then dropped the wire down the drain in the laundry room where the water backed up from. This would give us a pretty good heads up as the water started backing up. The kids were trained that when they heard it the alarm they were to turn the valve in the laundry room that shut the water off to the house and then go get dad.

Praise God!, those days are behind us. We even threw out the old wet/dry vac (it was pretty worn and was missing one of the four casters making it pretty difficult to roll around). We are slowly breaking the kids of the bathroom habits we instilled in them for so long: If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down (I know, you don’t want to go there but this strategy is supposed to be able to reduce total household water usage by 20 - 25%.) And my dear dear wife can now do laundry on any day she wants and all of it in one day if she wants without fear.

Well. Back to the leak detectors. I think I will order a couple of the zircon detectors behind each toilet in the house and next to the water heater as a safety precaution. Hopefully they will never go off - but if they do a small leak can be fixed before big damage is done.

I just bumped into a program called “Synergy” while listening to episode 16 of Command-N.

Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It’s intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s).

Redirecting the mouse and keyboard is as simple as moving the mouse off the edge of your screen. Synergy also merges the clipboards of all the systems into one, allowing cut-and-paste between systems. Furthermore, it synchronizes screen savers so they all start and stop together and, if screen locking is enabled, only one screen requires a password to unlock them all. Learn more about how it works.

I want to give it a spin. I would be able to set my laptop up next to my desk and use my regular keyboard and mouse to operate it just by moving the mouse over to that screen. Seems like it would be similar to UltraVNC that I use to control remote desktops in the offices but without having to put my laptop’s screen on my regular screen.

Will give a report when I have tested it out.

Doug Wilson in his Blog and Mablog really hits the nail on the head in a number of areas. He discusses, “one of” (cough, cough) “N.T. Wright’s more important points”:

… justification by faith is not accomplished by affirming or believing in justification by faith. Believing the doctrine of justification by faith alone as a way of being justified is a fine way of actually denying the doctrine of justification by faith alone. We are not saved by works — ethical or theological. We are not saved because we got better than a ninety on the ethics quiz, or over a ninety-five on the justification section of the theology exam.

Believing is a gift of God - how we articulate that belief is easy to mess up. Is the semi-Pelagianism of evangelical Arminians and Roman Catholics wrong? Of course it is.

And this means I think that if God were to give us all a theology exam, that I would do better on that imputed righteous section than they would. I believe that solus Christus is the right answer, and not my own autonomous faith in cooperation with solus Christus. My answer is right, darn it.

Exactly. And because it is right, it is possible to receive as fellow believers people who get some things wrong. I get some things wrong too, and if I knew what they were I would change them. But I haven’t changed them yet, and can I be saved in the meantime? Sure, because we are saved through the perfections of Jesus Christ. Plus nothing.

Praise God, my salvation is based on the finished work of Christ, not my score on a theology exam. But that also means that such a test is not an entrance exam to heaven banning others who I feel would not do as well as I would or who might even flunk it!

But Arminians can deny sola fide in their creed (their theology exam) and affirm it with their lives, in just the same way that Calvinists can affirm sola gratia in their creed, and deny it through the pride they take for having gotten the correct answer. I was an Arminian Christian for many years, and involved in the ministry as an Arminian pastor for about eleven of those years. I was saved throughout that time for the same reason I am saved now — through the blood of Jesus Christ plus nothing, all in spite of my sins, failings, faults, and screwed up theology. I was saved by grace through faith plus nothing, despite the fact that if you had asked me about it I would hauled out some crap about free will.

Where does this leave us?

Are they perfect? Of course not, and neither are we. Fortunately, our perfection, together or apart, is not the ground of our fellowship. And I need to more concerned over my possible denial of sola fide than theirs.

Just saw this t-shirt and Melanie thought it was great. I am sure if she could find it for $3 at Value Village she would buy it. If you want to pay retail you can find it at Jinx.com.

Hat-Tip to Command-N Video Blog Episode #17 for this t-shirt.

Phillip Johnson shows that every niche market needs it’s own ‘zine. I really like the life verse: James 4:9 “Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.”

The discussion on whether we are confronting culture with the Gospel or with a (aberrant) culture was also good.

In fact, here’s the kind of “Christian culture” he (Michael Spenser, the Internet Monk) rightly execrates:

“Visit TBN and look at the hairstyles on everyone from Benny Hinn to Laverne Tripp to Jan Crouch. How is this different from the hair styles you would see on kids with piercings and tattoos? (It’s, frankly, considerably weirder.)”

Yeah, I’ve often wondered if Laverne Tripp really goes to Costco with his hair like that. He must get stared at and pointed at a lot, even by people who haven’t a clue who he is. The rest of Michael’s article is worthy of sober consideration, too.

When I logged in to the Mid-Columbia Library Catalog the other day I saw these little orange XML links. Sure enough they have now added RSS feeds for the new titles. I immediately added the feeds to my NewsGator account and today the first 2 new titles showed up!

They are showing links for the following:

• New Books
• New Videos
• New Sound Recordings
• New Large Print

Of course the great thing about being able to get this info is that you can be one of the first to listen to a Book on CD without any scratches! Most popular titles have a reserve long before they are received at the library. I think I was #38 in line for one of the Harry Potter Audio Books before it was released.

Found: Oct 1, 2005

We had some free time after visiting the library and the 3 kids I had with me, Kevin, Kyle, & Kirsten all wanted to do some geocaching so off we went. Island View, the 4th in the 5Tucks’ Micro-Madness series, was the closest cache we had not done yet so off we went.

I had not been to this new interpretive area. It is very nicely done. The kids immediately started looking everywhere possible for the cache. Kevin was the first one to realize where the best possible place was to hide a cache and he was right! The kids all posed for this picture after conquering the cache.

The view of Bateman Island was gorgeous from here. It is amazing to think that Lewis and Clark were here 200 years ago.

I just finished listening to George Orwell’s classic, 1984. I never have read the book before, or ’seen the movie’, so as I listened and pondered the story line I was left with uneasy feelings.

The government depicted in the book sees itself as omnipotent, as god. It will not tolerate unorthodoxy. It is omnipotent in that, “he who controls the past controls the future: he who controls the present controls the past”. It is even omniscient with the use of the telescreens, thought police, and junior spies.

You can tell from his writing that Orwell is clearly anti-communist but he clearly puts the blame for the rise of the totalitarian government on the capitalists who had exploited the people. Big Brother had come in to ‘liberate’ the people and when the party had power they were more ruthless in their subjection of the people.

When reading about the book I found that Orwell was “just as anti-capitalist as he is anti-communist, anti-fascist, anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist and anti-any political system.” This may be why the book has such a pessimistic tone. The egalitarian society that it appears he wants is not possible in a fallen world of sinful men. Would that we could live in a world where everyone looked out not just for their own best interest but also that of their neighbor. Until then I will be content to live in a society where there are checks and balances to power - and hopefully lots of checks!

I found the following reading interesting:

• Wikipedia: Nineteen Eighty-Four
• Orwell Today

My dear wife (dw) has wanted to have a nice flower garden on the side of the house. Problem is our house was built on a pile of fill dirt that was so full of rocks and roots and the dirt so poor that nothing wanted to grow. Well, dw decided that it was time to fix that problem.

First we dug a hole almost 2 feet deep. Then started filling it back up. Without the rocks. With a lot of sheep doo.

A neighbor of a friend of mine raises sheep. Another friend owns a pickup. It has taken 4 trips to his place to load up on sheep doo but we finally have enough. I am amazed how many rocks have come out of the hole. I am also amazed that it has taken over 3 pickup loads of sheep doo mixed 50/50 with dirt to refill the hole.

The boys were glad to unload the last load from the pickup. They were not too happy about shoveling when they found out what it was they were shoveling. But, mean dad that I am, I left them alone and they got the job done. We washed out the pickup and returned it.

I just finished listening to the audio book of Michael Crichton’s Prey. This is definitely one of those books I would not have finished had I needed to find time to sit and read it.

The premise of the book was good. It was the writing that really seemed stilted. The dialogue between characters just seemed too fabricated. The worst part was that the last part of the book was a monologue by the main character explaining all the loose ends that were left.

This book gets a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10.

While placing a new geocache (Kirstens Kache) I noticed this nest on the top of a tall pole. After taking the picture I realized I did not know what feathery friend lives in the nest. Not sure that I would be able to find the answer from home, I turned to the source of all knowledge, Google. A search turned up this article from the Tri-City Herald which helped me identify it as a sea osprey nest.

Next time I am out to this area I will have to see if the information board would have told me the information if I had bothered to look at it closer.