Sheriff's Run Out Of Town

I spent a good hour today on the phone running the sheriff out of town. That is, the spy sheriff, a nasty little piece of spyware that had taken up residence on my Dad's laptop. It had a few tricks, including stopping the user from being able to open the task manager (so they couldn't force quit any processes).

Handy hint, if this happens to you put this command in your run box and press 'Ok' to re-enable the task manager.

REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableTaskMgr /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Do so at your own risk! You have been legally disclaimed!

Anyway, the corrupted Spy Sheriff has been run out of town, but I'll be heading on down to my parents in that thar Melbourne on the weekend to try an flush out any other nasty critters that might be hanging around, and also making sure that the sheriff never comes back.

Oh and hi to everyone from Trav's blog.

The Missing Video

No, the video isn't missing, but I will be making a video using footage from the camp 'The Missing' that we just had at Odyssey. This is just a quick update to let you know that I won't be blogging until the video is finished, which should be Friday this week.

I should also let you know that although I didn't mention it in my Birthday post, I did get a couple of cards in the mail including a really nice one from my good friends Alice and Erin. Thanks guys!

The Missing

Odyssey, the Youth Group that I help run / attend, had it's yearly camp this last weekend, and of course I was there. It was held out in Mansfield, which is a good 3 hours drive from Bendigo, but it really was a great place to go.

Karen and Steve both did a really good job speaking, and I really enjoyed the opportunity to spend more time with some people I already knew but haven't spent a lot of time with. I spent a bit of time with Tim trying to crack The Missing Code which I really enjoyed, and also a fair bit of time with Zoe working on the sound stuff. I gained a fair bit of respect for her over the camp and hope she's able to join my sound crew at Short Street.

The Missing Code was given to us on the first night, and it was a series of numbers, each number representing a letter. Through doing challenges and activities, the teams were able to earn themselves letters, which would help them to decipher the code. For example, for completing an activity you might learn that F=16 and U=11. The last part of the code was a series of dashes and spaces, which marked out the spacing for the different words. Tim, who I mentioned earlier, as part of his studies at University is studding cryptography, and even with a small mistake in part of the dash sheet, he was able to crack The Code before midnight on the Friday night.

If you read that code (mouse over 'The Code' above) you'll notice that it mentions a double agent. That double agent turned out to be Luke, and while his team had 5 people out of the 10 at the end guess it was him, I was the only person not from his team that guessed him, which netted me a small box of favorites (which I shared with my team).

Some other things I really liked about the camp were the wide open spaces, running to try and pop another team's balloon in a tree before they got there, trying to photograph sheep that ran away from me, and of course using the speakers that were hooked up to each and every room at the campsite, including the dining room, each cabin and even the toilets.

Overall I don't have many regrets about camp, only slept in a cabin with Zeph, Matt, Flyn, Rob and Charles (:-P) and that I didn't take the opportunity to pull any kind of prank, such as announcing something over the sound system at 6am.

Birthday

Today is my Birthday. It's been pretty good so far. I got some clothes as presents which are really nice. I really like it when I get clothes because it takes me a long time to pick clothes and I always feel I get the wrong thing, so by getting me clothes, people give me the gift of the clothes themself and also the gift of me not having to make a hard decision in a shop about what to buy.

All in all, I'm happy with my birthday. I'm now 20, and no longer a teenager so um, look out!

Here is a record of who's wished me a happy birthday, how they did it, and at what times today.

Name	Method	Time
Sammy	SMS	12:11am
Ubuntu Forums	E-mail	9:01am
Tim O'Brien	E-mail	9:04am
Steff	SMS	9:35:08am
Alex	SMS	9:35:20am
Lauren	SMS	10:25am
Mum	Phone	10:41am
Kate	SMS	10:58am
Cara	SMS	10:03am
Dani & Sally	Whiteboard	1:30pm
Dad & Maureen	SMS	2:27pm
Karen	SMS	4:20pm
Steve	SMS	4:35pm
Jenny	Person	5:04pm
Steff's Grandfather	Person	5:28pm
Eva	Person	5:29pm
Barry	Person	5:56pm
Erica	Person	8:28pm
Brooke	MSN	9:12pm
John	Person	10:30pm

Discover The Wonder

Andrew, the pastor at my Church has been doing a series about The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. He's been doing it in the evening for the last few weeks now. Here are my notes from the first week, about discovering the wonder about narnia / Christianity.

Discover The Wonder
Narnia Part 1
Andrew C.

3 Essentials:

1. Awaken
• Christianity is a supernatural faith. There is a lot going on unseen. Ecclesiastes 3:11.
2. Walk into the truth
• Jesus is the doorway to our real home. John 10:9.
3. Embrace
• If you study the Bible and it doesn't lead to awe and wonder, then you haven't studied the bible. Psalm 33:8
  

1400

On Friday (11th August) it was Steff and I's 3 years and 10 months anaversery. Usually you'd think that something like 3 years and 10 months isn't a terribly exciting number, but I was doing some maths and found out that we'd been together exactly 1400 days, or exactly 200 weeks.

I'm really thankful for the big part Steff has played in my life over these past 200 weeks. She's been such an inspiration and great help to me. There are so many things I couldn't have done without her, and I just thank her so much.

Chap Stick, Chapped Lips, and Things Like Dentistry

I went to the dentist today, the second last stage of my root cannel.

Originally she said that this stage of the work wasn't very painful, and that an anesthetic wouldn't be needed, but half way through it was hurting quite considerably at some spots and so she decided to give me an anesthetic.

Other parts of the procedure didn't go as smoothly as they could have either, and so something that she said would take about an hour ended up taking two.

The time doesn't bother me too much though, it's really the cost of it that concerns me. Today's visit was a bit more expensive than some of the previous ones, at $355. I'm just happy that I get paid tomorrow morning.

My next appointment is the 24th of August, which will be my last appointment for the root canal or fillings. However looming on the horizon is the prospect of getting my wisdom teeth removed, something I haven't even begun to contemplate yet.

Hello World!

Greetings!

Apparantly in a lot of books that teach programming one of the first things they teach you is to make a program that displays 'Hello world' on the screen. Look it up if you don't believe me.

So this is my blog. I don't know what you should expect, as this blog is about the past, not the future, and the future hasn't happened yet, so I don't know what will happen and therefore I don't know what to expect.

End communication.