~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
October 3rd, 2013

★~ Today’s Quote:  “A farmer once told me one of the greatest luxuries of his life was to wake up early only to go back to sleep again.”  ― James Herriot

★~ Tech Appreciation Day:

If you have a special techie or IT person that helps you through your computer glitches, today is the day to say “thank you, thank you, thank you!”

★~ Caramel Custard Day: 

Sugar, milk and vanilla make up this creamy dessert. The folks of Spain and Latin America know it better as flan, while most Europeans call it creme caramel. I call it yummy!

Carmel Custard

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1893 – The gasoline-powered vacuum cleaner was patented by John S. Thurman of St. Louis, MO. He called it the “the pneumatic carpet renovator.” His advertising slogan, “You can be sure if it’s Thurman!”

♥~ 1955 – LIFE magazine’s cover displayed Hollywood’s most handsome bachelor, Rock Hudson.

♥~ 1955 – A mouse and a “kangaroo” both began long-running children’s shows on TV.   The mouse was Mickey Mouse, cartoon star of the original “Mickey Mouse Club” on ABC, featuring the Mouseketeers, talented kids wearing sweaters and mouse ears.  Same day, different network: “Captain Kangaroo” made his debut on CBS. Bob Keeshan played the Captain as a grandfatherly host with a big mustache and deep-pocketed jackets.  He had a number of “animal” co-stars, including Dancing Bear and the puppets Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose.

♥~ 1960 – The Andy Griffith show premiered.

♥~ 1964 –  Buffalo Wings were invented.   That is, a special recipe for chicken wings coated with cayenne pepper sauce, created at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, N.Y.

♥~ 2003 – The popular “Siegfried and Roy” magic act at the Mirage in Las Vegas was disrupted when one of the duo’s famous tigers bit Roy Horn in the neck.  The attack effectively brought an end to the long-running act, although Siegfried and Roy did comeback performances a few years later.

★~Famous Birthdays:

♥~ 1916 – James Herriot,  was the pen name of James Alfred Wight, OBE, FRCVS also known as Alf Wight), an English veterinary surgeon and writer, who used his many years of experiences as a veterinarian to write a series of stories about animals and their owners. He is best known

♥~ 1947 – Lindsey Buckingham, guitar, vocals, Fleetwood Mac, (1987 UK No.5 single ‘Little Lies’ and 1977 US No.1 single ‘Dreams’ from world wide No.1 album ‘Rumours’).

♥~ 1969 – Gwen Stefani, vocalist with No Doubt, (1997 UK No.1 single with ‘Don’t Speak’ and a 1997 No.1 US album ‘Tragic Kingdom’).

★~ Good to Know:  Hackers 

♥~ Hacker originally meant “one who makes furniture with an ax.” Perhaps because of the blunt nature of that approach, the word came to mean someone who takes pleasure in an unconventional solution to a technical obstacle.

♥~ Computer hacking was born in the late 1950s, when members of MIT’s Tech Model Railroad Club, obsessed with electric switching, began preparing punch cards to control an IBM 704 mainframe.

♥~ One of the club’s early programs: code that illuminated lights on the mainframe’s console, making it look like a ball was zipping from left to right, then right to left with the flip of a switch. Voilà: computer Ping-Pong!

♥~ By the early 1970s, hacker “Cap’n Crunch” (a.k.a. John Draper) had used a toy whistle to match the 2,600-hertz tone used by AT&T’s long-distance switching system. This gave him access to call routing , unlimited long distance, and a brief stint in  jail.

♥~ Before they struck it rich, Apple founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs made and sold “blue boxes,” electronic versions of Draper’s whistle.

♥~ Using a blue box, Wozniak crank-called the Pope’s residence in Vatican City and pretended to be Henry Kissinger.

♥~ Hacking went Hollywood in the 1983 movie WarGames, about a whiz kid who breaks into a Defense Department computer and, at one point, hijack a pay phone by hot-wiring it with a soda can pull-ring.

♥~ That same year, six Milwaukee teens hacked into Los Alamos National Lab, which develops nuclear weapons.

♥~ In 1988 Robert T. Morris created a worm, or self-replicating program, purportedly to evaluate Internet security.

♥~ The worm reproduced too well, however. The multi­million-dollar havoc that ensued led to Morris’s felony conviction, one of the first under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (PDF).

♥~They all come home eventually. Morris now researches computer science at…MIT.

♥~ British hacker Gary McKinnon broke into 97 U.S. Navy, Army, Pentagon, and NASA computers in 2001 and 2002.

♥~ McKinnon’s defense: He wasn’t hunting military secrets; he was only seeking suppressed government files about space aliens.

♥~ According to rumor, agents of China’s People’s Liberation Army attempted to hack the U.S. power grid, triggering the great North American blackout of 2003.

♥~ It took IBM researcher Scott Lunsford just one day to penetrate the network of a nuclear power station: “I thought, ‘Gosh, this is a big problem.’”

♥~ Unclear on the concept: When West Point holds its annual cyberwar games, the troops wear full fatigues while fighting an enemy online.

♥~ Think your Mac is hackproof? At the CanSecWest conference, security researcher Charlie Miller used a flaw in Safari to break into a MacBook in under 10 seconds.

♥~ Cyborgs beware: Tadayoshi Kohno at the University of Washington recently hacked into a wireless defibrillator, causing it to deliver fatal-strength jolts of electricity.

♥~ This does not bode well for patients receiving wireless deep-brain stimulators.

♥~ The greatest kludge of all? Roger Angel of the University of Arizona has proposed building a giant sunscreen in space to hack the planet’s climate.

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Speaking of hacks….

Our El Morno Aussie friend is touring the United States and guess where her last stop was…? Washington, D.C. I suggested it might be a good time to steal one of our national monuments as a souvenir. She will be in Chicago in a little over a week and as far as we know Michigan Ave will be open.

My favorite quote so far….

“Did you see the Giants game on Sunday?” he asked. “They lost 31-7. Do you know what the Giants didn’t say after that game? ‘If you don’t give us 25 more points by midnight on Monday, we will shut down the f**king NFL.'” ~ Jon Stewart.

Interested in fiscal news? I learned that the government shutdown could cost us as much as $300 million per day, according the economic consulting firm IHS Global Insight. The figure translates to about $12.5 million an hour, or roughly $1.6 billion a week, while the government is closed, according to ABC’s DEVIN DWYER.

And finally fact check explains: Congress and an Exemption from ‘Obamacare’?

I think it’s a shame that when our Aussie friend visited American  the light was turn off. She doesn’t really get it, I told her that was okay – neither do I.

Wishing everyone a tremendous Thursday,

Odd Loves Company!