Aaron has a caption contest as does Kevin. Both seriously need a prettier model for their contests. Aaron also has, with said overused model, some nice clean Photoshop fun.

Then again, maybe not. However…

He is having a Gmail contest with some rather interesting scoring. He wants to get noticed by the allmighty Glenn. Can’t help him there. He does have other top quality blogrolls he’d love to be on too, all not Glenn. Can’t help him there either.

Added more pics to the cat gallery, still need to customize that some more. Something else to do.

Probably should get up and see what the cats are up to. Nap was a total loss.

Added a plugin, the witty text one. Works great. One great thing about WordPress is the ease with which one can add plugins.

Mind you they don’t always work with the latest nightly but that’s my fault for being cutting edge here.

Yum and yummy, Matt sure knows how to take tantilizing pics, such pretties indeed.

Napping, wouldn’t you know it I have a splitting headache. Makes it hard to sleep. So while I suffer, I’ll share the email I got so you all, well Windows users anyway - Mac users can gloat, can suffer too.

NEW YORK - A mysterious Internet virus being spread Friday by hundreds and possibly thousands of infected Web sites may be aimed at stealing credit card and other valuable information, security experts warned.

The infection appears to take advantage of three separate flaws with Microsoft Corp. products. Microsoft said software updates to fix two of them had been released in April, but the third flaw was newly discovered and had no patch to fix it yet.

Experts said the infection, detected by Microsoft on Thursday, was unusually broad but wasn’t substantially interfering with Internet traffic

Security experts at Microsoft and elsewhere worked Friday to pin down how the infection spreads across Web sites. It appears to target at least one recent version of Microsoft software for operating Web sites — called Internet Information Server. (MSNBC is a Microsoft - NBC joint venture.)

The infection makes subtle changes to the Web site so visitors get a piece of code that’s designed to retrieve from a Russian Web site software that records a person’s keystrokes and can send data back, experts say. Such software “Trojan horses” are routinely used to fish for credit card numbers, bank accounts, passwords and the like.

Now that the code is out, other hackers are likely to adapt it to distribute software for spamming and for launching broad Internet attacks against popular Web sites, said Alfred Huger, senior director of engineering at security company Symantec Corp.

“Users should be aware that any Web site, even those that may be trusted by the user, may be affected by this activity and thus contain potentially malicious code,” the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team warned in an Internet alert. [not mine, runs on Linux]

Stephen Toulouse, a security program manager at Microsoft, recommended that computer owners obtain the latest security updates for Microsoft products and their anti-virus and firewall programs.

Because one flaw has yet to be fixed, he said, users should also turn up security settings on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browsers to the highest levels.

Security experts noted that users can avoid the exploit by using alternative browsers such as Mozilla and Opera [and Safari, don't forget Safari]. Users could also turn off the “Javascript” feature on their Microsoft browsers, though doing so cripple functions on some sites.

The infection does not affect Macintosh versions of Internet Explorer.

Or Macintoshes, I love my iBook, yes I do.

They nap a lot, and it does look so inviting especially since I got the featherbed, I will do the same. Inspiration.

Finally, they did something good for a change. Working on outlawing spyware. According to Wired, they are close to passing a law against spyware.

WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives moved closer on Thursday to passing a law that would ban companies from installing spyware without getting computer users’ permission.

In an often contentious proceeding, the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday approved HR2929, the Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass, or Spy Act, bill by a 45-4 margin.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Mary Bono (R-California), aims to prevent spyware purveyors from hijacking a homepage or tracking users’ keystrokes. It also requires that spyware programs be easily identifiable and removable. The programs would be able to collect personal information only with permission from the user. It also would increase fines against abusers.

Course, with any luck, if it passes, you PC users will get a dialog box that pops up that will confuse you as to what you are installing or, even better, one that doesn’t take no for an answer and blasts you with popups that just won’t close and sticks you in an endless loop for which the only way to escape is ctrl-alt-delete. Coworker got one at work and I had to fix the PC afterwards.

For those with firewalls, there the numerous requests for an outgoing connection for who knows what and one is never sure just what to allow so the choice is to allow all and risk spyware or deny all and risk the PC not working. Stuff, processes, on the PC is named to confuse, convince of that.