  For those of you who don’t know, the website was down this past week because some icky person in the Ukraine decided to attack it. Nearly 800,000 hits overwhelmed the server and ‘kablam’ – it crashed. Thankfully, a very kind and humorous man at Fatcow.com, the company that hosts this site, spend hours on the phone with me and determined that we had experienced a DOS hit – that’s Denial Of Service for those of you who are computer illiterate. I can say that with a straight face because I’d never heard of it either!!! This man, Chris from Tempe, AZ, took me through a not-so-fascinating, and totally more than I ever wanted to know, trail of logs, files, websites and computerese to discover the IP address that was creating havoc. He was very excited when he found it. He admitted that it does not take much to thrill him. But he then mumbled to himself and me, over the phone, that he was going to look up his favorite website to see if he could trace the addess. While listening to him mumble, I could hear computer keys typing an then Chris said, “Oh no!! My favorite website is down.” “It must be catching,” I said. But Chris replied, “Not to worry! Every good nerd has a backup site!” This man is comfortable in his own skin! He took me to this backup site and, ‘voila’, we could see where the IP address had been given out – from a company in the Netherlands. I typed the address into their search engine and bingo!! The address had been given to somebody in the Ukraine. So, somebody in this far off country is not a nice person!  Be that as it may, I am getting on with normal and moving on to appreciate the more simple things in life, like my strawberries. What a bumper crop we are having! Not one, single deformed berry has appeared. No bug bites, no slug bites and no bird bites. This spring has been so awesome that the strawberries have really flourished. I love picking strawberries. They are so friendly! No stickers and no spines, they are just fun to pick. And as I pick, I am constantly thanking God for these amazing, beautiful little jewels. They are so red that it just amazes my artist eye. And as that artist, I realize that it is obvious that God knew what He was doing because he nestled these pretty ruby gems beneath deep, green leaves, knowing that these complimentary colors just bounce off of each other. As you can tell, I love my strawberries. Strawberry Jam will be in the works this afternoon!  By the way, does anybody know what kind of plant this is? It is in my flower bed and I love it. I would like to see if I can find some more, but have no clue what it is!! UPDATE: Thanks to reader, Cindy, for helping me identify this beautiful flower. It is a broadleaf Penstemon – Penstemon ovatus. The Penstemon is native to Oklahoma. Pretty neat. Thanks, Cindy!!  |
|
|
Oklahoma Pastry Cloth™ Company on Facebook
|
|
 |
|
|
Homestead Revival
Paratus Familia
Rural Revolution