I know that this is a very sad time for many people throughout the world, and my heart goes out to them. If you have the desire and the means, but you need help finding a way to help, Google has a page with links to various sites focused on the recent Tsunami tragedy. If you do not want to limit your focus to only this recent event, many of the links can be used to identify oportunities for more general charitable contributions.

But, this is also a time of new beginnings and new hope.

I wish you a very happy new year, and hope that it is filled with joy and good fortune.

Upon her return, her father cussed her; " Where have you been all this time, you ingrate! Why didn't you write us, not even a line to let us know how you were doing? Why didn't you call? You little tramp! Don't you know what you put your Mum through??!!"

The girl, crying, replied, "Sniff, sniff... Dad... I became a prostitute..."

"WHAT!!? Out of here, you shameless harlot! Sinner! You're a disgrace to this family - I don't ever want to see you again!"

"OK, Dad - as you wish. I just came back to give Mom this luxury fur coat, title deeds to a ten bed-roomed mansion, plus a savings account certificate for £5 million. For my little brother, this gold Rolex, and for you Daddy the spanking new Mercedes limited edition convertible that's parked outside plus a lifetime membership to the Country Club..(takes a breath)...an invitation for you all to spend New Years' Eve on board my new yacht in the Riviera, and...."

"Now what was it you said you had become?"

The girl, crying again, "Sniff, sniff... A prostitute Dad! ... Sniff, sniff"

"Oh! Be Jesus! - you scared me half to death, girl! I thought you said "a Protestant". Come here and give your old man a hug!"

When I encounter a problem and then solve it, I try to post the problem and its solution on the blog.

One reason is so that I can document it for myself, given that I suffer from CRS (Can't Remember Sh*t).

The other reason is in the hopes that other folks out in the Ether might be helped.

It is so nice when someone finds a solution to a problem that is vexing them on this blog, and takes a moment to enter a comment to let me know I helped in some small way.

I've been busy. Work, mostly. This job is a cruel mistress.

But, that's no excuse. It's not like I have been working twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for the last month. No, I've just been slack.

So, what's new?

Not much really.

We (well, Jeanie 99%, me 1%) moved Mom to a new place in Florida. If we can ever sell our house, we will move to Florida too. Since Mom needs full time care, we put her name on a waiting list at a "place," expecting that we would move before a space opened up. Not to be too morbid, but usually someone has to die for a space to open up. Well, as luck would have it, a place opened up, and we didn't want to take the chance of not having another one open for a long time, so, Mom is now a resident of the Sunshine State.

After the holidays, Jeanie will once again put the coals on the fire to get this place, and the farm, sold.

In the mean time, I am still waiting to hear back from the FAA regarding my medical. It looks like it could be at least another month before I hear anything, and then, it might just be a letter telling me what hoops of fire I have to jump through to prove that I am fit to fly. Then it could be weeks of hoop jumping, followed by months of FAA considering. I am still studying - mostly while I sit on airplanes flying for business. No, the irony is not lost on me. Every now and then, I do a few touch and goes on MS Flight Simulator. I haven't lost all hope of ever flying again, but some days, it is a struggle...

All things considered though, life is good. Kids are well, Jeanie is well, dogs are well, Peanut is well. I still have a job, we have food on the table (well, on the floor in the case of the dogs), clothes on our backs (at least those of us with only two legs) and a roof over our heads. All in all, we are truly blessed.

I hope you find yourself blessed as well.

Wow, it took some effort to get this image as-is.

It had originally been sent to me in an e-mail, as an in-line, or embedded image, rather than as an attachment. Even though it is obviously a GIF file, in Outlook, when I right clicked on it and selected "save picture as," the only option available was to save it as a bitmap (BMP) which of course, would cause the animation to be lost.

Hunt and hunt did I on Google, to no avail.

Not one to give up, I marched on...

I tried selecting "save attachments" from the file menu with the message on the screen, but, no luck - nothing happened.

On a whim, I tried going back to the in-box, highlighting the message, and selecting "save attachments" from the file menu there. When I selected the option, an additional dialog displayed showing "none." Imagine my surprise when I selected it, and then was presented with a file save dialog complete with a file name of ATT00010.gif! After saving it, I opened the saved GIF file, and much to my delight, there was in fact an image. Unfortunately, not the image I wanted...

Turns out that there was three embedded images in the message.

What to do, what to do?

I went back to the message and I right clicked on a blank area, then selected "edit." I then deleted the first inline image, then hit escape and answered "yes" when asked if I wished to save.

I then went back to the inbox and tried the "save attachment" option from the file menu again. Guess what? I got a different file name, and the "next" embedded picture from the message!

One more round of edit, save, etc. and I had grabbed the last of the images!