Nonsensical Ramblings of Mark

Greece #2 had a tough soccer game last night. The boys did not play well at all and, aside from a few good shots and nice passes, there wasn't a whole lot for me to get excited about. That was until I was loading some lawn chairs into the back of the minivan. That's when the night took on a whole new meaning for me and my wife. "I just love your son," she said. I had no idea who she was, but Nan seemed to so I just went with it. The lady then relayed that she was absolutely thrilled to see the big thumbs up that Will flashed towards us when he got his first assist a couple of games ago. He was so happy and the thrill and love of the game that he has looks like it rubbed off on more than a couple of people. My wife thanked her so much for the encouragement (I think I did too but I am not sure) and we went on our way. That little interaction we had last night with (at least to me anyway) a total stranger helped me put something else into perspective that I saw the previ...

Recently I blogged about my tendency to think about God rather than express myself to Him . One of the fears I had was that if I didn't think about a certain aspect of God I would miss out on an opportunity to meditate on it or even blog about it later. Well, as a church we were singing Revelation Song to God last Sunday when a thought about something or other entered my mind. I tried my best to refuse it and, after a little bit, it left. I was concerned about it not returning with sufficient enough clarity for me to think about it later or write about it some time this week. Sure enough that thought I had is gone. It is kind of a strange feeling knowing I had something right there in the front of my mind and that I just went and got rid of it. I am not sure I have ever had this happen before. In the not-too-distant past I would have even bent down, gotten the program out, and written it down so that I would not lose it. I wasn't tempted to do that this time at all as the battl...

If you are just reading this post there is some good (OK, acceptable) background information on this in part one , two , and three . Here is a list of equipment/software/services I use to access and filter the internet at home: Component Name Purpose Modem/Router Netgear 7550 To connect to the internet over a phone line and provide a wifi signal for our internet-ready devices to connect to the internet Service OpenDNS A free service that allows for filtering at the router level. Without this service we would have to filter internet connections on every device that connects to it. A real pain for sure. Software/Service Net Nanny To provide finer-grained filtering for every web browser on our sole computer that has internet access. It allows for the application of different filter settings per user account on the PC. Software/Service Avast Antivirus Antivirus and antimalware service that is applied to all incoming traffic and content. Browser plugin Adblock Plus Filters out ads on websit...

The other night at my son's last baseball game he hit a triple. He hadn't been able to hit that well in some of the preceding games, for a variety of reasons, so this was a really big deal for him. And for me. When he got to third and was told to hold up he gave the coach five and jawed a bit with the third baseman... but he didn't even look at me. He was poised on third ready to steal home when the opportunity presented itself. His teammate Jason (#10) strode to the plate and took a few pitches. Sure enough the ball got by the catcher and the third base coach sent him running home. It was going to be close (too close for my comfort) so we urged him on as time seemed to slow down. Determined he fixed his eyes on the goal and slid beating the throw from the catcher to the pitcher who was covering the plate. He jumped up, pants and shirt full of dirt, and gave a single, dust-laden clap as he jogged towards the jubilant bench. He high-fived the coaches managing the dugout and ...

Parts one and two on this topic have already been posted. So, after making sure that the wifi capabilities of all of the devices that can connect to the internet are password protected, and making sure that any device that uses the connection the router provides is subject to some sort of filtering, I now turn to the web browser itself. There are tons of applications that provide some sort of filtering for the browser. Some are free and some I had to pay for. I tried and tried to make the free options work, but it was either way too much of a hassle for me to get it the way I wanted or they did not offer the level of filtering I was interested in. I ended up biting the bullet and installing Net Nanny  on the only computer in our home with internet capability. Here is why I chose Net Nanny: It was the highest-rated product out there for internet filtering It has the option to apply a black-list approach or a white-list approach to internet filtering (more on that later) It has pro...

Part one of this series is here . I am not sure if this is going to be a three or four part series. I just thought of a few more things that I would like to post on (including an equipment/software list) so it may stretch farther than the initial three posts I thought it was going to be. This post gets a touch technical, but I tried to explain it the best I could. If there are any questions please feel free to comment with a question and I will do my best to get back to you. When we signed up for Frontier high-speed internet (which I can recommend by the way) we received a device that is a combination of a modem and router. Simply put the modem portion makes it possible for computer data to be transmitted across our phone line and the router takes the data from the modem and transmits it (over a wireless connection in our case) to the computer or other device that wants to connect to the internet. Some people have these devices separated out into two physical boxes, but we happen to ha...

This is the first post in a multi-part series on how we have decided to lock down and filter access to the internet in our home. This is, by no means, the only way to do things and it probably isn't even the best way, but I hope that this information is useful to someone who is trying to do the same thing. With the invitation of high(er) speed internet into our home, and because I have two sons, we have decided on a multi-layer approach to internet filtering that seems to be doing its job. My family is doing more and more online these days and we have numerous devices (computer, Kindle Fire, Wii, phone) that can connect to the internet via the wifi signal we have broadcast through our router. We needed some way to lock those devices down from accessing the internet and, when they do, to make sure that the internet was being used for the purposes we have determined that it be used for. Of course our wireless signal is encrypted and secured with a lengthy password that must be entere...