Barnyard Olympics at Eckert's in Belleville

Join us this weekend, August 4th and 5th from 10 am to 3 pm for Eckert's first ever Barnyard Olympics. Activities include Greased Pig Contests, Chicken Plop Bingo, Pig Races, Kids Tractor Pulls, and a Goat Scramble. Fifteen tickets can be purchased for $5. Each event requires one ticket. Festival foods, face painting, live entertainment, petting farm, and pony rides will also be available. We look forward to seeing you!

Beware of rootkits.

I think Rootkit will affect mostly Linux based system.
A rootkit is a set of software tools intended to conceal running processes, files or system data from the operating system.

Rootkits have their origin in benign applications, but in recent years have been used increasingly by malware to help intruders maintain access to systems while avoiding detection. Rootkits exist for a variety of operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh, Linux and Solaris. Rootkits often modify parts of the operating system or install themselves as drivers or kernel modules.

When I detected some problem with my PC, I called my system engineer. He ran scan but could find anything. So, together we searched for some indication to identify the cause and learnt about rootkits. A rootkit is often used to hide utilities.

Which is the most romantic wine?

Romantic wine? This may be a poetic expression to describe the taste of a wine but the point is Pinot Noir is attributed to that expression.

See how Joel Fleischman of Vanity Fair describes Pinot Noir:

“The most romantic of wines, with so voluptuous a perfume, so sweet an edge, and so powerful a punch that, like falling in love, they make the blood run hot and the soul wax embarrassingly poetic”.

Hmm.. But, I did not feel romantic when I tasted it recently in a beach resort in Goa. On our arrival at the resort, we found a couple of wine gift baskets that was not meant to be complimentary. But I could understand the fine gesture behind it.

There was a note attached to one of the gift baskets that contained Pinot Noir. In it was written that Pinot Noir is a red wine grape variety of the species Vitis vinifera. The name may also refer to wines produced predominantly from Pinot Noir grapes. The name is derived from the French words for "pine" and "black" alluding to the varietals' tightly clustered dark purple pine cone shaped bunches of fruit.

The first sip delivered all the freshness and forcefulness so typical of Yellow Label with a symphony of fruit tastes following on.

I learnt that the resort got those wine gift baskets delivered from gourmetgiftbaskets.com.

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Source: Mashable

St Peters, workshop

This curiously shaped building on the Princes Highway at St Peters was once a garage and is currently used by an auto electrician.

St Peters recycle centre

These olympic rings are displayed outside the entrance of a recycling centre in the inner west suburb of St Peters, just off Princes Highway. It's appropriate that they were relocated to a recycling centre because they were salvaged after the Sydney Olympic Games, when a number of these were illuminated and displayed around the city.

St Peters pub

The Town and Country Hotel is a pub at St Peters that has been immortalised in the Slim Dusty song Duncan.

St Peters Anglican Church

The inner west suburb of St Peters was named by its association with St Peters Anglican Church, which was consecrated in 1838.

Located on the Princes Highway, it is the third oldest Anglican church in Sydney.

Reliance on a massive recruitment drive.

The Indian giant Reliance Communications is on a massive recruitment drive as can be seen on advertisements on local news papers and magazines.

They are looking for smart executives, telemarketers and field sales personnel. They sell mobile phones, wireless internet connections, landline telephone connections, broadband internet connections and a load of other products and services.

The job market in India looks very rosy and remunerative too thanks to various Government policies.

On a selfish note, I am glad the share price of Reliance Petroleums has gone up more than 40%. I bought 100 shares at the rate of Rs.72.00 Today it is traded at Rs.114.00

This blog post is for chess players.

With Chesspark, you can play games of chess, save your games, track your scores and your progress as well.

I belong to era of chess players when it was a rage among all age. Every street in our area will have a community hall like structure where people crowd around chess tables watching others play, offering a move they thought was brilliant and waiting for players to vacate their chairs.

With Chesspark you can play against the computer or other users. There are also tools for promoting yourself on Chesspark, such as badges and widgets.

Chesspark was created by chess lovers to bring chess to a wide audience of casual, club, and professional players.

From beginners to experts, take advantage of free lessons from their International Master.

Rockdale Bicentennial Park

A little blue bridge provides a walkway over the pond in Rockdale Bicentennial Park, which attracts many ducks. This recreation area was renamed in 1988 to celebrate Australia's bicentennial of European settlement.

Location based email list.

Sometime back, a member in my blogging community sent me a private message.

“I am looking for a reliable list broker who can help me with a list of students residing in North Carolina. Since you are in the online teaching field also, I thought you would know where I can purchase a responsive list”

Obviously, he over estimated my credentials. I didn’t have a clue about his request.

Suddenly I remembered; I did a website research a few months back on direct marketing based on a web release by Martinworldwide.net. So, again I looked up on them, browsed a bit to refresh my knowledge on e-mail marketing and Responsecom, a potent, proprietary blend of U.S. Response and U.S Consumer databases.

Since Martinworldwide deals in lists for every type of business enterprises that includes gardening enthusiasts, timeshare owners etc, I encouraged my friend to contact Chip Matthews, Client Relations Manager at chip@martinworldwide.net and inquire about his requirements.

No, my friend did not fill me in about further developments. I guess he must be very busy with the list. It is said to be very responsive.

Want to know about text emoctions.

In several WP themes, I have used excellent editors in which I can insert loads of smileys and emoctions. It made my blog post livelier and I can express several things ina single emoction.

It is too bad that blogger editor doesn't come with smileys. I happened to read an interesting article on text emoctions:

Cknow.com says, "Emoticons are ASCII glyphs originally designed to show an emotional state in plain text messages. Over time they have turned into an art form as well. In most cases, emoticons are constructed to be viewed by tilting your head left so the right side of the emoticon is at the bottom of the 'picture.'"

This impressive list of hundreds of text emoticons places the most commonly used "smilies" at the top of the page with the often humorous ones to follow. Here are a few examples.... :-)

!-( Black eye

%-() Monkey face

:-+ Too much lipstick

:-3 Eaten a lemon; Handlebar mustache

:-(>~ "I just washed my goatee, and I can't do nuthin' with it."

Please visit this link: Computer Knowledge Emoticons

How to minimise internal risks?

Before starting to blame external threats for breach of security, business houses and major hosts are asked to plug the leak that is most certainly would happen due to inside jobs.

Thouigh I would not foresee this hacking in India, western countries repeatedly report such crimes.

So what are you doing to prevent an inside job?

According to a March 2006 Enterprise Strategy Group survey of 227 IT professionals, “employees and on-site contractors were cited as the most likely threat to confidential data security.”

The first step is to create a company-wide policy. Ideally, this policy should include “physical, technical, and human factor elements,” says Mitnick. For example, terminated employees should immediately lose access to not only the physical office, but to the computer network as well.

Keep your OS up to date
New password policies
Monitor employee computer use

If your business, or simply your IT department, is too small to handle this type of project, consider hiring a consultant or VAR to help put a system in place, says Mitnick. With luck, taking these steps will help you to protect your computer networks inside and out.

Thank you technology.inc.com

Advance reservation required for Blue Man.

I am a fan of a leading writer in Tamil named ‘Andavan’. I especially like his travelogues because he writes about many interesting tit bits and trivia.

Other travel writers will only write in general but such articles are useless for a traveler.

In his article on his experience in Disney World, he mentioned a show called Blue Man.

The word Blue Man itself is provoking interest and curiosity.

Lights, action, wires, tubes, floating heads, phosphorescent eyes, blue hands, beautiful and continuous music and a stream of non-stop excitement that not even the roller coasters can compare to!

But this writer warns about advance reservation to enjoy this show. The Walt Disney World Ticket's main advantages are many but the most important of them all is you save a lot of time to buy tickets at the entrance gates. There will be long queues and you might lose valuable time.

Blue Man Group tickets are the most talked-about tickets in Orlando so make sure you make plans to see this amazing performance during your next Orlando vacation by buying in advance at orlandofuntickets.com

Advanced reservations are required by calling 407-597-3561 to select specific date and show time.

Don't leave your mobile screen naked.

Everything looks flashy alright when just bought but soon will lose its sheen. We also tend to take proper care when we buy a mobile phone that is new brand new.

In less than two weeks, we neglect our daily cleaning process and the glittering screen accumulates grime and dust.

Protect your mobile phone screen with Vikuiti Anti-Reflection Matte Removable (ARMR) Film that is designed for residue-free removal and replacement in the field. Like other 3M anti-reflective films, ARMR provides display protection, reflection and glare reduction, and offers the easy-to-clean top surface so fingerprints and even permanent marker simply wipe away. ARMR is available in a variety of sizes including master sheets and it can be trimmed with a rotary cutter, or very sharp blade/scissors.

Ibibo's poll.

One of the wonders in blogosphere is the survival of Ibibo.com and their continued expenditure on Google adwords.

Is so and so a sex bomb?
When should Indian cricketers retire?
Is Rajnikant a good actor?
Is Ganguly fit?

Such are the polls that are going on Ibibo.com since their announcement of Ipods, Xbox and mobile phones for the winners.

"If your poll is one of the top 3 with the most votes at the end of the week, you win!"
Most of the polls as of now are on cinema stars and cricket, the world's most futile discussion on blogs.

Oh, those telemarketers!

Aren’t they a big nuisance? Those unsolicited calls on your mobile phones can be really annoying.

In spite of a possible legal action on the erring telemarketers, still some seem very bold and keep calling. 99% of these calls pertain to Credit Card Balance Transfer that we are least interested in.

Previously, the credit card issuing banks will only send us balance transfer options through snail mail. But they are now catching with market trend and engage telemarketers to pester us.

Probably they are not aware of the specialty website CreditCardSearchEngine.com that is one of the Internet’s longest running sites for online credit card comparison. I would rate it as one of the best and most user friendly concept.

It allows consumers, business and students alike to search, compare, and apply for all types of credit card offers, everything from low interest and reward card to cards (balance transfers) for people with bad to average credit.

So, thank you anonymous callers, we will take care of ourselves.

My password strategy.

Forget about blog posts and articles on how to create your crack proof passwords. No need to install any password remembering software even.

Here is my method:
I think my password in my local language only.
My base words will be the eatables that are exclusive to my home.
Such words cannot be found in any dictionary.
Wikipedia won't help you.
I will not use any other special characters in my password.
No numbers too.
Offline storing only.
Sometimes I name the password after the day of the week but with certain numbers.
Finally, I will not bother to remember it.

Simple but safe-right?

Nano based iPhones from Apple.

I am sorry, no photographs yet on this futuristic iPhone from Apple.

Only two weeks before, on June 29th, the world witnessed the highest number of iPhones sold in day. Long queues and instant auctions of the iPhone were the order of that day.

Now, more good news from Apple:
The enthusiasm of die-hard Apple fans can gear up for the next product release -- a less expensive version of iPhone based on the iPod Nano music player later this year, said a JP Morgan report Tuesday.

Apple Inc. plans to introduce the new type of iPhone, which is described as a handheld device with a circular touch pad displaying illuminated symbols that could change depending on the mode in use.

Hmm.... How long we have to wait for it to launch in India, Apple only knows.

Source: People's Daily Online

Say out your ambition aloud.

If you say out your ambitions and desires loud, it will manifest in reality. When you have decided on something, you act upon it to make it a reality. This is how our mind works.

I am sure Dr. Carla Thomas is fully aware of this natural law when she declared that her ambition is to become U.S. surgeon general one day.

Who is Dr. Carla Thomas?
Dr. Carla Thomas is a family physician in Anniston, Alabama, who is pursuing a PhD in healthcare administration at capella university, an accredited online university with more than 17,900 students.

I presume many dedicated students from across the world would have listened to Dr. Carla Thomas in Capella’s latest ‘Inside Online Education’ podcast. As a teacher, I have requested the principal of my old school, to subscribe to this podcast feed of capella.edu and play it for the benefit of her students and academic staff.

These regular podcasts of only 15 minutes duration feature interviews with Capella students, faculty and staff who share the experience of online education from a first-person point of view.

Let me tell you one thing firmly out of my experience; Dr. Carla Thomas will become the U.S. surgeon general one day definitely and there is no doubt about it. She has set in motion the law of universe and it will do the rest.

Oh, what a shame!

I never anticipated the bloggerparty.com will become the hunting ground of Indian bloggers that posts only celebrities, nude and sex.

I happen to spend some time there looking for some good articles but I am quite shocked to find blog posts on Vidya Balan and some dude, Miss Universe and Salman, Mona Chopra poses... and Mallika Sheravat's kissing experiences.

How can someone spend all his precious time reading about such things, find time to write about what they read and publish it too.

Oh, what a waste of time. Well, well....
I think bloggerparty's webamster is also enjoying those posts-Hmmm... for a change yeah?

The most profitable domains.

I completely agree with Marcin-we rarely get the domain we want for our niche blog or website. We use all our creativity(?) to come up with a short and sweet domain that is very apt to the niche.

But when try to register it, we learn that it is already taken.

Here is a nice tool to search for keyword rich domain that is mentioned in that blog. Using that tool, I got the data below.

Keyword	Price ($)	Wordtracker	Trends
garden fountains	2.03	wordtracker	trends
cement garden fountains	0.88	wordtracker	trends
spanish garden fountains	0.71	wordtracker	trends
garden fountain	1.45	wordtracker	trends
solar garden fountain	1.38	wordtracker	trends

Marcin then gives a nice tutorial on how to proceed further with the results.

This is the second of results when I refreshed that page:

Keyword	Price ($)	Wordtracker	Trends
vtech cordless phones	1.86	wordtracker	trends
vtech cordless phone	1.99	wordtracker	trends
vtech cordless phone headset	2.82	wordtracker	trends
vtech cordless phone batteries	3.27	wordtracker	trends
vtech cordless phone i5871	1.79	wordtracker	trends

Thank you Marcin.

Keyword bookmarking in Firefox.

Good, I like the convenience of accessing my bookmarks with just a couple of letters.

Firefox extensions are increasing loyalty to them everyday. Every add ons and extension of Firefox are great tools.

If you're using Firefox, first things first: You need to install the OpenBook Firefox extension. Yes, you need to - you can add keywords to your bookmarks in Firefox with OpenBook that makes adding keywords to bookmarks trivial, meaning you'll be much more likely to set them up.

Actually I read about this feature in another place also in Navdeep's Blog.
Navdeep blogs many useful information for bloggers. I like all the posts in the Internet category.

Thank you Navdeep and Lifehacker.com

I saved my neighbor Rs.4 lakhs.

Akash, my neighbor’s son was my student last year. He scored good marks overall but not good enough to secure admission in top colleges.

After much pondering, he has decided to join the same college in which my son was studying B.E. Computer Science. But he was asked to pay a huge donation.

His mother told me this last night. I was really sad to hear this. Then she asked me if I know of any distance learning option and get a degree from a recognized university. I said yes but Akash did not favor this. He said he will miss all the thrills and fun of attending regular college.

Then I sat down with him and explained about Capella University, the reputation it has, its excellent faculty members such as Sara Orem who has co-authored a new book titled Appreciative Coaching: A Positive Process for Change etc.

I told him that Capella is offering 82 graduate programs and that about 18000 students from 56 countries are studying in Capella through distance education. More over he can save his parents their hard earned money which should be his prime responsibility.

Finally, I think he made up his mind.

What is a BioAbacus?

Parents' life is not as easy as someone would think. I put up a strong argument whenever someone says that my life is easy and relaxed now that my son is studying in final year and all my worries are over.

Nobody realizes that I have to do plenty of home work on behalf of my son though not in the literal sense. I am sure many parents are sailing with me in the same boat.

I was asked to find some rare information for my son's upcoming seminar on biogenetics (?). I happened to stumble upon a website called BioAbacus which is a searchable database of abbreviations and acronyms in biochemistry, cell biology, computers and internet, biological medical and computer journals, laboratories, molecular biology/genetics, neuroscience etc.

The data provided include the name of the term, its meaning, the category in which it is mostly used and, when available, a link in which additional information for the term can be found.

But do you know what happened? All the search results produced a 404 error. So I was back to square one and start my search again.

What is a Middleware?

Is it a 'go between' between software and hardware?

Yes, you can call it so. It is near enough!

Middleware aka 'buzzword' is computer software that connects software components or applications. In layman terms (why not laywoman?) it describes a piece of software that connects two or more software applications so that they can exchange data.

It includes web servers, application servers, content management systems, and similar tools that support application development and delivery.

I looked up on this word ‘Middleware’ in Wikipedia as I wanted to answer a question raised by my son, an engineering student. After I showed this piece of information, he went too technical for me to write here all that he said.

Eckert's Homegrown Peaches, Blackberries, & Tomatoes

Hurry in to find the season's freshest produce. We currently have an excellent supply of Eckert's homegrown peaches, blackberries and tomatoes at the Belleville Country Store. Pick-Your-Own Blackberries will be open on Saturday July 7th from 8 am to Noon. The cost is $2.49/lb.

As always, we recommend calling Eckert's Harvest Hotline at 618/233-0513 x. 1 the day you are planning to visit Eckert's, so you have the most current crop information.

Rockdale police station

The police station at Rockdale is located in King Street.