Personal stuff seems to be so unimportant and insignificant when big tragedies occur like the recent Tsunami in Southeast Asia.

It is good that so many of us are making donations and doing what we can, although there is no magic nor effort nor strength that can bring back lost life.

The big happy news is the birth of Symantha Rose Sachs, 11:42am Saturday, December 18th, 2004.  Yes, I promise I'll get the photo up within the next week.  I'll have to fire up my old Mac to do the chart.  This week.

This is embarrassing....  I've finally updated my configuration scripts to properly display Firefox browsers visiting alwanza.  I've been updating some links, but that is a slow process.  I have some new ideas for the site, but they will need to wait until I finish some other more pressing projects.

I dressed up my How To contents page.

I'm configuring a new server at work.  I've been doing it slowly for the last year, but now I need to speed things up and get it ready to work at an office in Alaska.

At home, I reinstalled Linux on my (new, hand-me-down) developer machine and so I finally have a reliable Linux dev machine again.  I also installed enough memory to total to 1 gig on my Windows box.

I updated the SeattleLinuxChix site.  I made new navigation and added an articles page.

I still need to work on BFreeBelize.  And I haven't started coding my XML Cookbook project yet.  My first attempt to turn my Java application into an applet wasn't successful, but then my first attempts rarely are.  Fortunately, I don't stop there.

Tom is supposed to start his new job next Monday.  His parents were here over the Christmas weekend.  It was good to see them.

We've been riding the bike trails to the Brewery and to Redmond Town Center mall.  Both Tom and I are trying to get in better physical shape, and bicycling is fun.  I've also been walking and using my power-rider for the last few weeks.  I'm doing half my set on the easy setting and half on the medium setting (increased from all on the easy setting originally).  None of this seems to lead to weight loss, but my strength and stamina have improved.

Tom tells me that there were two hummingbirds at our backyard shade garden feeder.  The hummingbird feeder sometimes ices over during the winter and that can be deadly for hummingbirds.  I've done my best to protect them this year by planting winter-flowering camellias right under their feeder.

I've been feeling either hormonal or seasonal depression (it has a definite physical feel to it because I can talk myself into a good emotion temporarily and I don't see any reason for emotional depression and I haven't been trying to give myself any warning messages through my dreams) so I'm looking to find a local tanning booth.

If it is hormonal, my cherry swish breakfast drink should take care of it.  I'll try that tomorrow.  There's another recipe I need to add to this site.

Of course, it might be my upcoming birthday....