NASA currently has two rovers wondering around Mars looking at rocks: Spirit and Opportunity. They recharge their batteries with solar panels and have to shut way down during the Martian winter to conserve energy. As they roll around and kick up dust the solar panels become coated and lose some of their ability to recharge their batteries.

This is exactly what has happened to the Spirit, its panels are operating at about 50%, but Opportunity‘s have apparently been cleaned a couple of times and it is operating at 100% efficiency.

Either Opportunity has landed in an area that has beneficial winds, or it has found a full service gas station on Mars.

So I’m sitting here, minding my own business, listening to the radio and the impact of the bombs at the range on the other side of Choctawhatchee Bay and out of nowhere comes this warning box on my screen saying:

Cannot load dialog.

Error 623: The system could not find the phone book entry for this connection.

Since I wasn’t asking for a dialog and was connected via the DSL, I thought that this was rather odd.

I went out and looked for a similar problem and found it on a help site. Same occurrence: just upgraded to a high speed connection and sites kept asking about phone books.

The proposed solution sounded a bit odd: open Internet Explorer, go to “tools/options/connections” and select Never dial a connection.

Since I don’t use Internet Explorer, I thought this was odd, but I did it anyway, because the way Microsoft has messed with Windows who knows what might work.

I re-booted and the problem has gone away. Even though I use Firefox, Bill insists that IE be involved in Internet connections in a background way. This is why, even though you don’t use IE, if you have a Windows box you have to keep downloading and installing the IE patches.

Hey! Enough of the clicking already! People are trying to sleep. Sheesh, humans.

It arrived at 6:42AM this morning, but it has warmed up. That is to fool suckers into uncovering plants and such just before the SNOW arrives on Friday!

You think the people in your area don’t know how to drive in snow, you should see the mayhem that occurs down here on the Redneck Riviera when the roads freeze. The bridges tend to have high humps to allow sailboats passage, so when that high bridge gets wet and freezes people are trying to drive up a sheet of ice. I can tell you that Billy Bob is not going to be gracious pulling your SUV out of the Bayou on Christmas morning.

I blame this on all of those people wishing for a “traditional” Christmas. Been there: Fairbanks and Shemya in Alaska, Omaha in Nebraska, Rochester, Utica, Hamilton in New York, Frankfurt in Germany, London in England. . .and I don’t need to do it again.

I think azaleas in bloom and camellias getting ready to burst are good at Christmas.

Well, I’m now connected via DSL, but I can’t recommend it for people who don’t have some experience with computers and hardware.

I took the free do-it-yourself option and after fighting with the “helpful” set-up wizard for two-hours I uninstalled everything and called to get the modem settings and did it the “old fashioned” manual way in two minutes [after 37 minutes on hold].

The hardware was fine. I ran a new category 5 twisted pair cable from a dedicated outlet to Sprint’s box and avoided all of the filters they wanted to foist upon me. My category 3 telephone wire is fine for voice and if it isn’t broke I’m not going to fix it. I have a straight cable with no connections for data, which should be good for years.

The problem seemed to be the earthlink web site, which uses ActiveX controls that were recording information and then telling you that they were unable to complete the transaction. They require you to use Internet Explorer and to disable your firewall and virus software. Of course, when you try to re-enter the information, they say that your choices were already in use. When you change the choices, they came back and tell you that you are already registered under different choices.

Well, it’s done and the graphics have been moved successfully from my old site to the new one. Yes, things load much more quickly and that’s nice, but it was not something I want to do again anytime soon.