I ordered Windows Vista Ultimate this evening. I selected the 2 Day delivery option so it should get here soonish (however, keep in mind that we’re under a nasty snow storm which may delay delivery).

Assuming that it works I will take several screen shots of its various features and accompany said screen shots with commentary. I tend to write highly detailed reviews and this shouldn’t be any different – again, if everything works.

Now I need to hit the bed to get up in the morning, though with the weather the way that it is I may very well not be going anywhere. I darn near wrecked a few times today already.

Good night all.
~Steph

I made two attempts to make it to the gym this evening for my 2:00 PM Step class. It’s been snowing since this morning, and my drive to the gym went … well, it went like this:

• Slid beyond the stop sign and had no physical indication that the vehicle was even trying to stop. I thought that the breaks had suddenly died.
Thankfully no one else was at the four way stop and I was able to turn, stopping up the road a bit
• Tried to make a stop at a stop sign and the vehicle made a sudden hard turn to the right without me turning the wheel
Thankfully the only other driver on the road at that point was a good distance behind me, and my car managed to stop about a foot from the stop sign itself
• Darn near ended up into the rear end of some old fellow at the stop lights. I managed to stop in time to prevent this
The car began to pull to the right once again but I was ready for it this time and I managed to prevent the side slide. I also managed to avoid running into the guy’s tail pipe. You’re welcome, guy. Not that you noticed.

All of this, and I drive under the speed limit and begin to break about a block from where I need the car to come to a complete stop. This is standard driving behavior for me when this much snow is coming down.

Slick? Me thinks so.

I’ve parked the car for the rest of this evening and unfortunately will not be making it to Yoga either. EDIT: She canceled the yoga class, which I think was a very smart decision.

~Steph

I keep saying on this tiny blog of mine that encryption is super important. I’ve also previously mentioned one of the biggest downsides of using encryption.

Here is yet another real world example of why it’s so darn important to encrypt our Internet communications:

Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.

Read The Full CNet Article Here.

Doesn’t that concern anyone else? At all?

It’s not that you have anything to hide. Criminally speaking it’s unlikely that there’s anything significant for you to keep swept under the rug. Yet shouldn’t we respect our personal lives enough to actually care about keeping it personal?

Get the free Ciphire Mail (absolutely the easiest email encryption to use) or PGP to protect your email. Get Trillian to protect your ICQ conversations. All of this software is free.

~Steph

Today I hit step aerobics and then a couple of hours later I returned to the gym for Yoga. I’m feeling it too, though it feels good to be honest.

Step went much better today than it did previously. I hit more of the steps – though definitely not all of them – than I did during the previous session. That made it a more enjoyable experience over all; heck, it was almost kind of fun.

It also helped a lot that the gal in front of me tripped a lot but had a great attitude about it. Don’t worry, they were small trips, and we each got more than a few smiles out of it… her’s mostly out of embarrassment, I’m sure.

Anyway, I was ready to catch her if need be. To be fair, my feet slipped a couple of times as well, though I somehow managed to make it far less noticeable (this time).

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I went to the weight room about an hour early today. What was on my mind more than anything else, at least in so far as fitness is concerned, is how sore I am. Both step aerobics and yoga are working my leg muscles in ways that I quite naively did not expect.

So my original plan was to avoid any leg exercises. What good would it do when I have another step aerobics class tomorrow evening?

Of course, I decided to work on them anyway, but I changed my plan to work only certain muscles (aka; the back of the thigh). So I worked my upper body and touched the legs a little before leaving (only to return about a half an hour later to sign into my actual class).

I ran my idea across my instructor and he strongly suggested that avoiding working the legs would be a bad idea, even considering my other athletic classes. After giving it some thought I decided to rewrite my workout plan again, and I now have what I hope is a more reasonable approach.

What I’ll be doing. . . unless I decide to change it again. . . is to work the legs very lightly. I’ve reduced the starting weight and have also reduced the reps to 1×10 followed by 1×5 while reducing the weight by another 10 pounds for the second set. With this approach I will still work the thighs, the back of the thighs, and the calf muscles but I shouldn’t work them to the point of diminishing my performance in my other classes.

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Yoga was interesting but a lot more physical than I was expecting it to be. It seems that both step aerobics and yoga are surprising me with various uses of “horse stance“.

Let’s see… what we done in yoga. That’s a toughie. The positions were. . . well, they were interesting. Here are a couple of the easier-to-describe positions:

“Sit / stand” on all fours and lift the bum high into the air while trying to keep the feet flat on the ground (rather than lifted onto the toes). Then lower your head between your arms and hold that for a couple of minutes.

Think it’s easy? Try it. If so, then either your feet are too far away from your hands or you’re already in pretty good shape.

Another was to go from the “all fours” position to bringing the knee up between the arms, putting the foot out the side, and then more or less laying on top of the knee.

“Horse stance” was used, and then from that position an arm is stretched out to the side while the body leans in that direction. I think. Am I remembering this correctly?

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I’m kind of tired at the moment and I don’t feel like typing a lot… so here’s a simple run down of my classes so far:

English 101: Each day so far I come out of this class feeling like I need a shower, a back rub, and a punching bag. All at once. I highly doubt that this is going to change. I loathe this day’s schedule specifically because of this class. EDIT: The instructor seems to be doing her best, but the material that her department is having us do is rubbish.

Developmental Psych: Seems like it’ll go over well enough. I guess. I don’t know. We’ll see.

Intro To Philosophy: Could possibly be the coolest instructor ever. He seems like the very intelligent, very educated, very reserved & proper gay type, but I think that he mentioned his wife at some point.. or did he? Whatever. The class it self? I’m not yet sure. EDIT: This guy has got pissed off and it was over students talking rather than listening. He didn’t flip out, but he did verbally tell himself to “cool down”.

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So much for that! $74 later and I have new frames for the glasses. Hooray for eyesight!

I’ve written two posts about encrypting email. The problem is that encrypting email has always been a pain in the butt. Who wants to go through the trouble? Yeah, pretty much no one.

Well, I found a very easy solution to the problem. It’s a program called Cipher Mail that was reviewed on Wired News [article here] a couple of years ago that I somehow managed to find only yesterday.

The password annoyance mentioned in that article has long since been addressed.

In short, it’s an install-and-forget approach to encrypting your email. You never have to mess with keys, keyservers, encrypting, decrypting… you don’t have to worry about whether or not the other person supports it, or any of the issues commonly associated with this type of security. Cipher Mail handles everything.

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At least I’ve budgeted for a replacement pair. My glasses are now laying in three pieces.