Tom just completed his first "chilly hilly".  Yes, of course I'm envious.... Okay, so I'm happy for him, too.

My Aunt Cooky is a finalist in the Ms Senior America contest in New York State.  Did I mention I have some interesting characters in my family...?

Some of the behind-the-scenes coding has changed (the counter) and I've added a couple more recipes to my "howTo" page.  I'm getting the March colors ready.  Since "Spring has Sprung" (early), I should probably take those snowflakes off.

I successfully set up sendmail for seattlelinuxchix.org.  I'm now serving the list from my server.  All is not perfect, however, I don't seem to have reverse DNS if I go through my DSL ISP (which means some members won't receive their messages because they will be blocked as spam) and the Speakeasy server isn't accepting my authentication.

I'm grateful to Speakeasy for hosting our web site for free for so long, but now that I've had the opportunity to converse with Speakeasy tech support, I don't think they know a hell of a lot more than I do, and I'm wondering how long it is going to take for me to get the help I need inorder to gain access to the services that I am now paying for.
I thought I might take another do-it-yourself path and I purchased another $200 Lindows machine to reformat as RedHat to act as a DNS server.  Trouble is that the hardware on the Lindows machines have all changed since a couple of months ago and the current hardware is unsupported, even by their own software, so it doesn't detect the network.... (unsupported NIC, unsupported chipset:  stupidity at its finest).  I've reinstalled Lindows (Linspire), or rather attempted to, the hardware is SO unsupported that the CD included with the computer won't reinstall Lindows properly.  I'm going to return the damn thing to Fry's.
Speaking of Fry's,
<rant>
I should mention (for those of you who have no clue) that women get treated differently than men by hardware sales people.  And if the woman happens to be short and middle-aged, the difference is exacerbated.  Granted, that SOME (certainly not all) retail sales people belong to a lower form of life....  But still, experience after experience of being being treated as if we can't possibly know anything about what we are doing might predispose us to a complex; maybe similar to a "short man complex".

I went shopping at Fry's with Tom.  I was having a hard time getting a sales person's attention so Tom (6 foot tall, white, male) got his attention and asked him about the specifications of the two Lindows boxes on display.  After answering Tom's questions, the salesman asked Tom what he was planning to do with the machine.  Tom said "Actually, she (pointing to me) is going to be installing Linux on it."  The salesman did not even look at me, he looked at Tom, and repeated the question.  I got a little annoyed and said loudly "I'm doing the work." He refused to acknowledge or look at me.  I've had similar experience buying hardware in other stores, but this was a little worse than usual.
</rant>

Tom and I went to the Bellevue Mall to pick up some olives from the Olive Farm.  We were very disappointed to find that the Olive Farm has closed its retail outlet in the Bellevue Mall.  Now the only retail outlet is in Portland, Oregon.

I notice that I've done a lot of complaining in this blog entry.  Sometimes life runs smoothly and other times it is more of a struggle.  I actually do hope that someone who knows about the Olive Farm sees this post and commiserates with me.  And that someone connected with Fry's reads this and figures out that alienating women customers can be bad for business.

All the cherry blossoms are in full bloom.  The crocuses are about done and the daffodils are in full bloom.  The ground has completely thawed and it looks like Spring has arrived early this year.