Author Archives: Peter

My Royal Diadem

My middle name, Ryan, means ‘little king’. It is appropriate, therefore, that I just received a ‘little crown.’ The dentist attached the final part of my root canal work, a dental crown for my top left back molar. This process actually only took about five minutes and wasn’t painful at all. He just had to pull off the temporary crown, put in some cement, and stick in the real crown. It is custom molded for my tooth, so it fit perfectly. In the same appointment, he also filled in one last cavity. And that’s it… no more scheduled dentist appointments until this summer, when I go back for my six month checkup.

So, kids, if you would like to avoid all of this, brush at least twice a day, and floss at least once a day, and get in to see your dentist for a checkup every six months. It’s cheap insurance for what is a very pricey bit of work. Thank you for your attention. This has been a public service announcement from World Wide Wood.

Things I Love About My Wife

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She has a smile that can make me happy under any circumstances.
She packs lunches for me in the morning, whether she feels like it or not.
She is fair and considerate and listens to all sides of a discussion, rarely taking a side herself.
(She is always on my side, though…)
She knows a million and one ways to cheer me up and make me smile.
She uses the word ‘w00t’ both in writing and in verbal communication.
She likes ***Taco Bell|http://www.tacobell.com/*** as much as I do.
She is always on the same wavelength with me humor-wise, which is a pretty rare feat.
She can cook, knit, sew, quilt, and write HTML code when the need arises.
She has such a broad base of knowledge that she can start or participate in a conversation on pretty much anything.
The things she doesn’t know, she admits, and is genuinely interested in learning about them.
She has taught me the importance of saving money, spending less, being frugal, and shopping for bargains. Through this she has also helped reshape our family finances, moving us towards a debt-free existence by using a service that offer guaranteed approval everytime, so we could get money to pay all debts.
She has opened my mind to the world of musicals. I’ve seen/heard/enjoyed more in the past few years than I ever did in my the years before. And I tell you, it gives me a lot of fun songs to sing along to.
She remembers pretty much everything. I’ve been trying to pick up some of this ability from her… but though I am improving, I daresay I’m quite glad she has the kind of memory that she does.
She made me a ‘Vote For Pedro’ T-shirt (some of you will get to see this very soon…)
She made me an ***iPod cozy|http://gallery.prwdot.org/ipod_cozy***. How flippin’ sweet is that?

Becky is just plain awesome in every single way. I don’t think I could possibly tell her that enough.

Happy Valentine’s Day, my love.

Site Redesigns

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***Will|http://pulchersentio.prwdot.org/*** has just redesigned his site. He’s also done a lot of work to categorize his entries, and has moved his links list to a separate page.

***Corey|http://corey.prwdot.org/*** has also recently redesigned his site. Look at that photo. You so bad, Corey!

blacklist_to_modsec 1.1

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blacklist_to_modsec 1.1 has a few useful changes:

* When updating from the ‘Latest Changes’ URL, the script now checks each change against the existing blacklist to see if it would have any effect. Only those changes which would cause a net difference in the existing blacklist are applied.
* The script now logs each change that is made to the existing blacklist when it is running an update.

As before, please share any questions, comments, or suggestions.

***Download and documentation here|http://prwdot.org/docs/blacklisttomodsec.html***

Category Enhancements

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In an ongoing effort to make our site more useful, and to expose more of Movable Type’s built-in power, I have added a few enhancements to our blog categories. Each category now has its own Trackback URL, which means that you can have your blog software send it a ping, if you have some reason to do so. Also, each category now has its own RSS feed. So if you are only interested in updates to one specific category, you can subscribe just to that category’s feed, rather than our full site feeds. Both of these enhancements can be found at the top of each category archive page, for example, on the recently-created ***Blacklist to Modsec|http://prwdot.org/archives/cat_blacklist_to_modsec.html*** category page.

blacklist_to_modsec 1.0

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I’ve made a pretty big overhaul to ***blacklist_to_modsec|http://prwdot.org/docs/blacklisttomodsec.html***, my script for converting ***Jay Allen|http://www.jayallen.org/***’s master blacklist into ***mod_security|http://www.modsecurity.org/*** rules. Using blacklist_to_modsec with mod_security can help protect your blog from comment or trackback spam, whether you’re using WordPress, Movable Type, or something else. If you’re interested, read on.
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Learning To Ski

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My very first day on skis at ***Sunday River|http://www.sundayriver.com/*** was actually not that bad. Considering that many people have been trying for so very long to get me to learn how to ski, and that this was such a momentous occasion for me, I am giving it its due weight. Read on for all of the details…
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Super Bowl Sunday

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Becky and I are half-watching the Super Bowl. We’re trying to see as many of the commercials as we can, and picking up on some of the plays of the game. Neither of us are football fans… but unless you are comfortable being a pariah here in New England, you have to at least catch some of the game. There have been some good commercials so far… including another Apple iTunes + Pepsi promotion.

In the meantime, we’re getting ready for our trip tomorrow to ***Sunday River|http://www.sundayriver.com/*** in Bethel, Maine. Yes, after 26 years, I’m finally going to (try to) learn how to ski. ***Corey|http://corey.prwdot.org/*** got us some gift certificates for Christmas, so the three of us are going to head out tomorrow morning at 5 a.m. to try and get the most out of the day. I’m signed up to take a beginner’s ski lesson at 10 a.m., from a real live professional instructor, and hopefully I’ll at least be able to handle some bunny slopes. I will be sure to take some photos (maybe even a video!), so that I can share the experience with the rest of you. Wish me luck!

Under The Hood

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I’ve recently been doing some ‘under the hood’ tweaking to prwdot.org, to make things run smoother, easier, faster, etc. If you are interested in technical stuff, and the mere mention of ‘code samples’ makes your ears perk up, then you might enjoy reading on to see what I’ve done and to offer comments, suggestions, or questions…
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Those Crazy Celts

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Last night, Becky and I watched the Boston Celtics cream the New Jersey Nets at the ***FleetCenter|http://www.fleetcenter.com/***. Becky’s dad got some cheap tickets at work, so we sat up in Balcony section 327 with a number of, shall we say, colorful fans. Honestly, neither Becky or I are basketball fans, but we don’t pass up an opportunity to hang out with family, or to go somewhere fun, or to laugh at drunk morons. So a good time was had by all, and once again, we had free parking downtown thanks to the ***Otis House|http://www.historicnewengland.org/visit/homes/otis.htm***.

I’ve put some ***photos|http://gallery.prwdot.org/celtics_20050202*** online for anyone who is interested.

Good Grief
There’s been a bad link in this entry for over 48 hours… but nobody has mentioned it, and I didn’t even realize it until I was checking my web server logs just now. So either nobody cared enough to (read the entry|click on the link), or everyone thought that I was aware of it. Heh. Silly me!