Quick Post Holiday Post...and who sent us THAT gift?

Just a quick post for now. I just converted my Blogger page the other day to the new Updated Version (finally) and want to make sure it is working ok.

It took about an hour to complete the conversion, and only a few template "tweaks" seemed to have been required to put it back in order again.

However...the new Blogger system now doesn't seem to let me post to it from Windows Live Writer anymore. I keep getting a strange error...even after updating WLW. More on that later...I guess...

We survived the holidays...barely.

Got a nasty present during the past week.

I came down with a horrendous bout of the flu. Lavie hauled me in last Friday to the doctor's office half-dead. I don't remember the rest of that day or the following Saturday at all. No memory. It's a void. Sunday I came 'round again.

Then this past Wednesday, Lavie came down with it.

We think Alvis actually had a very mild form of it the weekend two weeks earlier.

Both Lavie and Alvis had their flu shots in November so they weathered it none too badly.

He-man Claus refused (again) to have his flu shot and got the worst end. I generally avoid the flu shot, figuring I'm in prime health and would rather have the full-on flu so my body's immune system can be better prepared...so I have no-one to blame but myself.

Lavie was so sweet...she didn't fuss at me once about it.

Anyway....looks to be a wet weekend and I think we will be nesting in this extended weekend. Expect a bit more posting!

--Claus

Firefox Minefield 3.0a2pre ?

I just got my nightly Minefield (Firefox 3.0 development version) build update. Build version now is reporting as 2006121904.

It shows as version Minefield 3.0a2pre.

The default page it is attempting to render after the upgrade is at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/3.0a2pre/whatsnew/

and was currently displaying a Mozilla 404: File Not Found page.

Does this mean that Firefox 3.0 Alpha 2 is just around the corner?

Hmmmmm.

See the previous post about updates coming out today to versions Firefox 2.0.0.1, Firefox 1.5.0.9 and Thunderbird 1.5.0.9

--Claus

(Imminent?) Firefox Updates and Opera Boosted

Just a quick post. I'm "making" sugar-cookies tonight for Alvis to take to school tomorrow.

Mozilla is likely getting ready for an imminent update release for Firefox 1.5.0.9 and Firefox 2.0.0.1. --via Ryan over at CyberNet News.

Firefox 2.0.0.1 looks to fix 183 bugs alone.

Currently Mozilla now is dishing up a FTP download of 2.0.0.1 RC3, so if you are brave, go for it and fill up your plate.

These should be considered major updates. I expect that they will be offered via the Firefox Automatic Update check (if you have it enabled). If not, you can always go to your toolbar in Firefox and check "Help," then "Check for updates..."

While unlikely that these will seriously break any of your favorite extensions, there is always that risk.

Meanwhile, that other well known and loved browser alternative, Opera, has now just been released at version 9.10.

Of note: it now incorporates built-in fraud protection. Opera does a quick "whitelist" check to GeoTrust and a "blacklist" check to the Phishtank. --via download squad

I haven't used Opera for a very long time, but it remains a polished browser with a large fan-base.

So, IE 7, Firefox 2.0, or Opera 9.10 -- developers are working hard to make sure you stay safe and protected this holiday season!

ph334 t3h ch33r, indeed!

--Claus

Firefox and fixing PDF madness, + Bonus Firefox Links

As I surf the web, I'm finding more and more links that are not HTML pages, but actually PDF files.

For anyone who doesn't know what a PDF is, it is a "Portable Document Format" file that is able to be exchanged and opened/viewed by users of different office productivity software and or operating systems. It's a very easy and handy way to exchange reports, memos, brochures, whatever without worrying too much if your end-user has the right office software to view them with.

Anyway, all too often I will click an unmarked link in Firefox and my browser will seem to lock up. Eventually I will discover this is because the link was actually to a PDF file.

The apparent lock-up is caused by two primary, sequential activities: first, Firefox must download the PDF file to the local machine cache. Depending on the connection speed and file size, this can take a second or minutes. Second, it must launch the appropriate software application to view the PDF file. And finally, it usually will end up opening the file in the PDF reader Plugin in a tab in your browser window.

In most cases, this means the ubiquitous "Adobe Reader" application. It remains a big mean dog in the middle of the yard. It is free, it is supported by a large number of operating system platforms, and it works.

But it is a big application (download file for Version 8 is 27.5 MB) and can take forever to load up, even on pretty beefy systems. And maybe you just don't like having to depend on a big mean dog in your yard.

As for the download time, we can't really fix that. But we can quickly and easily fix the rest!

First Step,

Instead of the big mean dog, lets find a better PDF reader pet: the free Foxit Reader 2.0.

It is very small (a 1.5 M download) and consists of a single exe file at 3.5 M. It launches blazingly fast and is able to handle annotations, conversion to a text file, and supports form filling.

Download the file, and unpack it somewhere handy.

Second Step,

Adjust Firefox to use Foxit Reader to open PDF associated files. (Note this is written for Firefox 2.0 but you should be able to get the gist to adjust earlier versions in a similar manner.)

In Firefox, click on the "Tools" then "Options" menus.

Next click on the "Content" tab.

Now click on the "Manage" button under "File Types" section on that tab. You will get the "Download Actions" window.

Carefully look through the list and locate all the extension file types that are currently associated with Adobe Acrobat Document and are opened with "Adobe Reader".

One at a time, select each of these specific items. Click on the item to highlight it, then click the "Change Action" button.

In the "Change Action" dialog box, under Use this Plugin, it should be listing "Adobe Acrobat". Lets change that!

Click the radio button "Open them with this application" then click the "Browse" button and browse to where you saved the FoxitReader.exe file you unpacked. Select it, and click the "Open" button to save the change.

Click "OK" to make the association to Foxit Reader stick.

Now repeat on the next extension file type for PDF's in the list. In my Firefox, I had to do that association change for the following extensions: PDF, FDF, XFDF, XDP, and XFD. You may have more or fewer than these.

When you are all done, click the "Close" button and then the "OK" button to close out the Options window.

Done!

NOTE: This is very different from changing the PDF default file associations on your Windows system. You can do that as well if you really like Foxit Reader (either from within Foxit Reader or in Windows), but I don't mind Adobe Reader when I'm doing "office" document work, it just irritates me when I am surfing the web. These changes will only set Foxit Reader to open PDF's from within Firefox.

This helps in two ways.

First, when you click a PDF link in Firefox now, the browser will download the PDF in the background, but not take focus away from the tab you are already on. Your browser will remain light and free to continue surfing at will.

Second, when it had completed downloading, it will almost instantly open the PDF in the Foxit Reader application, outside of the browser window. I like that a lot.

Taming PDF madness on the Web

It also helps to know ahead of time that the link you are about to click is a PDF file. Maybe you don't want to bother with PDF links.

Firefox has two handy Add-ons that can give you a heads-up while you are surfing:

Link Alert - This Firefox Add-on will change your cursor to an appropriate file-type icon when you over over a link. It can identify links that will result in, new window spawn, secure site, email link, JavaScript, Word, Excel and PDF file document, zip files, applications, text files, images, RSS feeds, and lots more. Really helpful tool for safe and informed web-browsing.

TargetAlert - I prefer this one myself. (Go to the developer's website to get the version for Firefox 2.0 versions.) In contrast to Link Alert, it places a small, icon next to web-links on the pages if they will take you to a PDF document, leaving a secure site, opening a new window, or other actions. I like this one because it has the option to load them statically next to the links as the page loads or (the default setting) change your icon when you hover like Link Alert.

Either way, you have some nice options now to be informed about what will happen when you click that link.

A Final PDF tip

Lavie recently called me up at work and asked me if I knew of a way to convert a PDF document to EMF format instead. I don't know why someone would find EMF more beneficial than PDF already, but whatever. I pointed her to the freeware application: Cool PDF Reader.

While not quite as nice as Foxit Reader for PDF viewing in my opinion, its real power and value is in its ability to easily convert PDF files to BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, WMF, EMF, and EPS formats. This alone in a tiny and free application makes it worth the time to download and keep handy. No installation required. It's a single EXE file. That's it!

Check it out.

Bonus Firefox Linkage!

Full Map Firefox Add-on - One of my pet peeves with Google Maps is that it is never big enough! That side area of text always cramps my style when I am doing some virtual sight-seeing. With this Wicked Cool extension, you can expand the Google map view to cover your entire browser window. I don't know how I lived without it! Did I mention how Wicked Cool this is?

TIP: Once you have downloaded and installed the extension, restart Firefox, then customize your toolbar to find and place the Full Map icon on your toolbar. It doesn't appear by default.

X-Mas (Light) Firefox Theme - A pleasant and well done theme to add some Christmas cheer to your Firefox browser. Nice and subdued, not over the top at all. Spread the holiday cheer for a few weeks in Firefox.

Firefox 1.5.0.0/2.0.0.1 Update releases delayed: New release date for bug fixing looks to be Thursday, December 19th.

The Burning Edge - If you have been playing with Mozilla's "Minefield" nightly trunk build version (on it's way to being spun off into Firefox 3.0) you may be curious as to what's happening in all those nightly fixes. In most cases, it is not obvious at all on the user interface surface. But be assured, big changes are going on under the hood. The Burning Edge is a blog that documents developments in nightly builds of Mozilla's Firefox development trunk version. Not for everyone, but I find it interesting to read.

Firefox (Gran Paradiso) Safe Mode - Many Windows users become quickly aware of having to execute the "Safe Mode" feature of Windows when Something Evil happens with Windows from time to time. Mash that F8 key kids! Firefox also has a handy way to deal with problems. Flux Amm recently posted in the TechBlog comments about how he ran into trouble using a non-default theme in a test-build release version of Firefox. I hadn't been having any problems until the other day using the Orbit Blue theme in the alpha versions. But then disaster struck. What to do? I couldn't load Firefox Minefield at all! I was trapped?

What? Me Panic? Nope.

I launched up my custom Minefield profile in safe mode using the following command in a command-prompt box: C:\Program Files\Minefield\firefox.exe -p Minefield -safe-mode and flipped the theme back to the default version. I then restarted Minefield and was back to normal browsing.

Your command line path may vary depending on where you installed the firefox.exe executable. Also note the "-p Minefield" switch...I use a different profile for each of the three versions of Firefox I run, this is instructing Firefox/Minefield to use my profile for Minefield.

Mischief managed. Nice "hack" to know.

See you in the skies,
--Claus

Microsoft Patching - On the Grand Scale!

Most all (home) tech support geeks are faced with confronting the problem of handing Microsoft's Windows Updates.

(Did you get today's offered updates?)

In the enterprise environment I'm sure we are all using Group Policy, Windows Server Update Services, or even manually configuring Windows Automatic Updates to download and apply patches to the systems, right?

Then again, there is the old standby...going to Microsoft Windows Updates website, running a manual check. Then you can pick and choose, download and install. This generally isn't too painful a process...providing you've got a broadband connection and have been keeping up with the Update Joneses.

You can also manually download the updates yourself, if you know where to look and which ones to get.

But what to do when Uncle Albert calls you to come over to his house in the boonies to help set up his "brand-new" XP system? You show up, and Uncle Albert's pc has a bare hard-drive, he has a XP setup disk, and a dial-up modem. Well, up until recently you have had very few choices. Chances are you are looking at a very large group of updates. Load the system, slap on a firewall, break out the brewskies and sit back and wait for the updates to trickle down the dialup pipe.

Sure, you can download the biggest ones and keep them handy on a USB stick or CD, but it can still be a lot of work collecting all of them

Until now!

SANS-ISC points us to a new utility offered by heise Security: Offline Update 3.0

It's very clever.

Read the accompanying article carefully. Then download and unzip the file. Then run the application. You can pick from updates for XP / 2000 / Server 2003. You also need to specify if you want to download the English or German version of the patches. You can download all three sets or just two or even one. Depending on your choice you must then decide to have the patches bundled in a CD or DVD ISO for burning. A script will open up a WGET session which will download all the critical security patches for the selected OS(s). What is really cool is that the downloads occur directly from the Microsoft download servers, so you know you are getting valid update files. Once the downloads are completed (not too long assuming you are using your broadband connection) the program rolls them up into a handy ISO file. Then use your favorite ISO burning application to burn them to your CD/DVD media.

Place the burned CD/DVD in Uncle Albert's pc and an autorun file will kick it off. Give it an affirmative, and it will begin to apply all the patches to the system. No downloads to wait for! Sweet!

Drawbacks...well, since the program doesn't check the system update catalog, it doesn't know which updates are already on the system---so it puts them all on, even if they are already present. Not a big deal, but good to be aware of. The program actually uses some text files in the structure to decide which patches to download and install. So with some fairly easy tweaking you can add more or remove the ones you don't want. Also, it does create a temporary updating user profile on the system with Administrator rights to allow the updates to be installed. It is deleted at the end of the update process. Depending on how you feel this is either a great thing or a deal-breaker. Finally, you will still need to run one final manual Windows Updates session to verify that you catch and apply any additional updates that the script doesn't get.

Benefits...a very automated update process, almost all updates on a removable media disk, limited time lost waiting for updates to download and apply. Not a bad deal. Oh yeah, did I mention that it is free?

Read the whole 4-page article from the publisher to get an good idea of what is going on.

Another alternative is Autopatcher.

This gem has been out for some time. It is highly polished and packed with goodies.

Like Offline Update 3.0 it supports XP / 2000 / 2003 Microsoft systems. Unlike Offline Update 3.0, each OS can be selected in Full, Lite, and Update versions.

The Full versions come with all the usual updates, and then the developers toss in a ton of "extras" like desktops, system tweaks, Windows Power Toys, additional application updates, the whole kitchen sink. You appear to be able to decide at installation which ones you want to add and which ones you don't, so you still have some installation control. The Lite version strips out many of the additional items and tweaks. Finally, use the Update version to patch a system you have already run either the Full or Lite version on, as it will just include the latest updates.

Drawbacks...you get some extra download items that you may not want. Like before, there doesn't seem to be a check for the existence of pre-installed patches already on the system, so you will get overwriting again. Also, the developers have already downloaded and packaged the updates already, so unlike Offline Update 3.0 which downloads directly from the Microsoft servers, you will have to trust the developers as your source. You decide.

Benefits...you just need to make a single package. That's it. Burn it to a CD/DVD or it looks like you can even copy the downloaded file to flash media if it is large enough to hold it. The installation options looks a bit more selective as well.

Nice work!

Two other slipstreaming alternatives:

RyanVM's Windows XP Post-SP2 Update Pack - Quoting from the developer's site "This pack is designed to bring a Windows XP CD with SP2 integrated fully up to date with all of the latest hotfixes released by Microsoft since SP2's release. It accomplishes this task via direct integration, where files on the CD are directly overwritten by the updated files."

I haven't played with this one yet, but it appears to be a slipstreaming process. You can also add in additional features via modules.

Another very slick tool is nLite. Quoting the developer's site again, " nLite is a tool for permanent Windows components removal and pre-installation Windows setup. After removal there is an option to make bootable image ready for burning on cd or testing in virtual machines. With nLite you will be able to have Windows installation which on install doesn't include, or even contain on cd, unwanted components."

nLite Features

- Service Pack Integration
- Component Removal
- Unattended Setup
- Driver Integration *
- Hotfixes Integration **
- Tweaks
- Services Configuration
- Patches ***
- Bootable ISO creation

* - Textmode (CD Boot) and normal PnP
** - hotfixes with white icons, *KB*.exe, including update packs and Internet Explorer 7
***- supports generic SFC, Uxtheme, TcpIp and Usb Polling patching.

Also in works from the same group...vLite. For Vista deployments

So, now you know of quite a few solutions for bulk-patching systems.

These also might be dead useful for you corporate/enterprise sysadmins as well. Instead of constantly updating images with current patches or slipstreaming, just keep a Offline Update 3.0 or Autopatcher disk handy and bring the deployed image up to date, without the download delay times. Sweet!

These solutions aren't for everyone. These can help manage the bulk patch updating process when you have a very "young" system. By being able to apply these critical service patches before you even need to put the pc on the Net, you can help improve the system security and cut down on the chance of it being open to a vulnerability. And save a fair amount of your time in the process. Besides...it looks pretty cool and can impress Uncle Albert (and save his beer).

Not a bad deal!

See you in the skies.

--Claus

Mostly Mozilla Madness...

It's no secret I really like using Mozilla's Firefox web-browser.

I also use Mozilla's Thunderbird email client.

They are really great and fit the way I use the web.

On my system, I currently have Firefox version 2.0 as my daily browser.

I also have installed Mozilla's "Minefield" next-generation nightly trunk-build.

Now comes word that Mozilla has released Firefox 3.0a1 (Alpha). Unlike "Minefield" this one is named Grand Paradiso.

As the release notes page linked above clearly states: "Gran Paradiso Alpha 1 is being made available for testing purposes only, and is intended for web application developers and our testing community. Current users of Mozilla Firefox should not use Gran Paradiso Alpha 1."

Yeah. I had to get that one installed as well.

So, what do I think? I'm looking forward to the final release version of Firefox 3.0, hoping it is trimmer, lighter, faster and will include the "Places" bookmarking reorganization that got stripped out of version 2.0.

"Minefield" build is very stable and I haven't had very many problems with it at all. "Gran Paradiso Alpha1" is working nicely also. But neither seems remarkably different, or faster, or better at the user experience level to make me recommend them yet and switch from primarily using Firefox 2.0. That said, I'm sure the developers are working hard under the hood and am eagerly awaiting the final versions.

Some Of The Features Planned For Firefox 3 via CyberNet News.

Latest Firefox 3 Nightly Passes The Acid 2 Test via CyberNet News.

Download The Newly Released Firefox 3 Alpha 1 via CyberNet News.

Mozilla also has Firefox 2.0.0.1 RC1 now available for download via FTP. This is a release candidate, so don't download and install it over you current Firefox 2.0 version unless you are really brave. It is a good sign that some current bugs may get squashed soon.

One of the handy things Firefox does is offer to retain web-site login user-id's and passwords. This is handy, but as this Slashdot article points out---contains a bug that cause it to use the same credentials within the same domain. The post links to some of the issues related to this. So use those password enhancements of Firefox with caution!

Thunderbird 2.0 Beta appears to still be on track for a mid-December release. It also has release candidate 2.0b1 available right now for FTP download. My current version of Thunderbird is at 1.5.0.8 (build 20061025). According to this post over on CyberNet News, Thunderbird 2.0 will contain new tools for organizing and viewing e-mail such as tabbed messages, custom folder pane views, and improved junk mail filtering.

Speaking of Junk Mail...

I really love my GMail account. It does a magnum job of filtering out the span. I did some tweaks to cut-out the image spam and now only once a month or so do I find a spam message that has gotten into my inbox. That is truly awesome.

We also have a Time-Warner broadband e-mail account and that account gets no spam at all. Zero. In many ways I am a little disappointed, as I'm not able to test the Thunderbird spam filters!

Two weeks ago I remembered that I still had my MSN email account from when we were MSN dialup account users (ahh the good old days!). I dipped in there to see what was going on.

Now I know why I was so happy to leave MSN as my ISP provider.

My inbox had over 1400 messages. I hadn't checked it for at least 6 months. Maybe longer. It was filled with phishing attempts, Nigerian bank fraud offers, "medications", prescription deals, etc. Packed full! That was my inbox. MSN email does seem to claim to have a spam filter, but only 5 messages were in it. Granted, those get deleted automatically on an ongoing basis, nevertheless, it was overwhelming to see that many messages. While we were MSN users, we got so much spam in our account I had to set a filter to send everything but names in our address book directly into a "holding" folder to keep our inbox free. Because of the nice interface, it took me almost a half-hour to delete all those messages.

Did you notice...

Originally, the application elements we added to Firefox were called "extensions". Somewhere along the way to Firefox 2.0 they began being referred to as "add-ons." I still generally call them extensions, but am finding it hard to keep from going over to the dark side and change to "add-ons."

Firefox Add-ons page.

Internet Explorer 7 Add-ons page.

I've looked around the IE7 Add-ons and am generally unimpressed. Their collection doesn't seem to offer me anything really that helpful, and there are more than a few Add-ons that are actually "to purchase" kinds. Ick. Granted, besides the fact that I'm pro-Firefox, I have a strong aversion against IE add-ons due to the many hours and machines I've spent time with at work cleaning malicious Browser Helper Objects (BHO's) out of IE. Now I'm not saying any of these listed on the IE page fit that bill, but I'm not at all sold on them for IE.

But, if you must: Must Have Add-Ons for IE7 via IEBlog. and IE7 Tweaks.

Then again, I'm not mad-crazy enough to go and install 200 Firefox extensions like Ryan did: CyberNotes: 200 Firefox Extensions Installed At One Time!

A Suite Set of USB housed applications

The PortableApps folks have released their "PortableApps Suite". This is really cool.

See, the idea is you can carry a suite of must-have Windows applications around on your USB stick so they can follow you from pc to pc. Before, they offered the portable applications, but only on an individually packaged basis.

It comes in Standard, Lite, and Base versions. The main difference is the number of applications "pre-loaded" in the suite.

The Standard Edition comes with:

...the integrated PortableApps Menu and the PortableApps Backup utility along with a set of custom icons, an autoplay configuration, folders and a quick start shortcut.

In addition, the packages include:PortableApps Suite (Standard Edition): ClamWin Portable (antivirus), Firefox Portable (web browser), Gaim Portable (instant messaging), OpenOffice.org Portable (office suite), Sudoku Portable (puzzle game), Sunbird Portable (calendar/task manager) and Thunderbird Portable (email client) and runs comfortably from a 512MB drive.

Not bad! Sure, you can roll your own, but for someone just getting their feet wet in this portable app way of life, this is a great way to go!

PC Repair Seeker--Beware!

Reason #1 why as a desktop and network support technician I am grateful to work in a "corporate" environment, and not in a storefront pc-repair shop. (This is also probably the reason why I get so many calls from family and friends to help out on pc repairs.) Sure, these are just probably a few bad-examples in an otherwise hard-working and industrious selection of pc-repair technicians....probably.

Fixing Dad's XP Windows Updates Problem

While I was up in Tyler visiting my Dad's family over Thanksgiving, I had another chance to take a crack at his XP Windows Updates problem.

I finally got it resolved.

Here is what I did:

1) Manually downloaded the Windows Installer 3.1 Redistributable (v2) and installed it.

2) Manually downloaded the Update for Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) 2.0 and WinHTTP 5.1 (KB842773) and installed it.

3) Rebooted the system.

4) Dumped the contents of the local Automatic Updates DataStore and Download folders,

5) Reregisterd the DLL files that are associated with Cryptographic Services (Method 4).

6) Rebooted the system.

7) Ran a check for Windows Updates. Found them, downloaded them, installed them.

8) Rebooted and checked again. They were all applied and none were now found needing installation.

Perfect!

Of course, Dad was still a little gun-shy to turn Automatic Updates back on, so we still left that off and he just manually checks monthly.

Not bad repair work! Even with turkey and dressing on the stomach and tryptophan on the brain.

See you in the skies,

--Claus

Christmas Tree Hunting...

What a whirlwind of activity around the Valca home, these past many weeks.

Lavie noticed I hadn't been on any of our home pc's for some time and asked when I posted last. When I looked, I couldn't believe it had been that long!

Thanksgiving passed us like a roaring locomotive. Lavie and I have been swamped at work with special projects and technology challenges. Alvis dropped one long-distance boyfriend, then asked another longtime boy-friend at her school to be her boyfriend, was on top of the world, then got dumped three days later.

It is really Christmas time?

I saw indications that it was indeed that time a few weeks before Thanksgiving this year. It never fails to amaze me as the commercial ramp-up to Christmas continually progresses further before Thanksgiving each year. Before long we will be seeing holiday decorations during the summer.

But for this post, let's talk trees.

Last year, I promised Lavie we would get a new Christmas tree. Although we have been "real" tree folks when we were newlyweds, a few years after we got married, Lavie's parents handed down one of their artificial trees to us.

It was from Houston's "Christmas Tree" store. That store has long since closed down, but as a kid growing up, it was magical. Giant rooms filled year-round with Christmas trees, holiday decorations, and the like. It was almost like going to Santa's Texas hideaway. Amazing. I recall they first bought it when Lavie's niece was born. That would make it around 18 years old.

It was a beautiful tree. Dark needles, dense branches. One year it struck me as being kinda hour-glass shaped in the branches. So I took all the branch-rings off the center poles and laid them all over the living-room floor. I then carefully re-ordered them on the pole to give it a "traditional" cone shape. It was amazing we put up with the mis-match for so long. Lavie's dad would also tell the story how the top section was actually from a different tree than the bottom. Something about this "Franken-tree" was very endearing to us. After many years, Lavie's dad treated us by having it permanently strung with lights. That was a wonderful gift as well. I hate stringing lights on a tree.

I'm not sure what happened, but last year came and went without it being replaced. We actually picked one out that we liked but never went back to buy it. Our cherished tree was shedding its artificial needles worse than a real tree starved for water. It was time to go.

So this year I had to fulfil my promise. We set a date two weeks ago to go out and find it.

I did some pre-work before that date. I did some heavy web-searching at the major stores and got some good leads. I was amazed to find so many "upside down" Christmas trees this year. I honestly hadn't even heard of this until I was on-line, but am told that this is a new trend. Umm..yeah.

Being somewhat more conservative, we were sticking with the green-trees, not the all white ones. We also were looking seriously into finding a "slim" tree. That would work much better in our living-room and give much more flexibility to us in placement.

So the date for our family foray in tree-replacement began.

I had gotten up early and sadly but lovingly placed the old tree out on the curb for pickup. I also found my old slalom water-ski in the far back corner of the storage shed and put that out as well. I figured the ski would be gone before the tree was picked up. It was in great shape, but too small now to carry my, um, "adult" weight.

There was no going back. I had committed our family now to finding a new tree in time for Christmas.

Unfortunately Lavie came down with a migraine and couldn't go. Against our protests, Lavie shoved Alvis and I out the door. We told Lavie we would just scout them out, and unless something special was found, wouldn't come back with anything.

We went to a few places that looked good on the web, but in person the trees just didn't work. Finally, a few hours later we found one. The price was right. The height was right. It had dual types of leaves and needles. It wasn't a slim-style, but more in-between that and a really wide-bottomed tree. It was pre-lit with white lights. Alvis was impressed! She was no longer begging me to just go home and take the old tree off the curb and put it up for another year. We matched the stock number showing on the tree and found the box and were on our way home!

Much later that night when Lavie joined the land of the living, she inspected our prize.

"Why did you get the colored lights? They are pretty but don't we usually like white lights?" (She is so tactful.)

"Umm. What dear?"

A close family inspection of the (still unopened) box found it clearly labeled as being "multicolored" lights. Hmmm. That wasn't what was expected.

Upon the objections of both Lavie and Alvis (it was getting pretty late) I loaded up the tree and was back in route to the store.

I explained to the customer service desk what had happened and that I would like to see about exchanging it for a white-lit tree (if possible). I was hopeful I could, but if not, things might be complicated. See, with the purchase of the tree came a free $25 store gift card, which Alvis had already spent on-line. This might get dicey. Would I have to pay for the gift-card if I couldn't exchange them?

I went back to the display area where we got it and there was the display model we had seen and the sign. However now I noticed that while the model tree clearly had white lights, the sign on it (with stock number) was for the multi-colored light model. I didn't see any boxes with the clear lit one. Hmmm. That explains things...time to ask for help.

I found a store elf and after some puzzled looks, got her to understand the issue. She snapped to and quickly sent another helper-elf to the back. Sure enough, they had a clear-lit model. Whew!

So I hauled it back to the customer service desk. Now things got crazy.

See, the white-lit one was something like $4.00 cheaper than the multi-colored lit one. Even though both boxes clearly had the same price marked on them.

Then there was the issue with the free $25 gift card.

See they had to give me another one of those as well. Really. Even for an exchange.

I explained to the clerk that I was just trying to exchange them, and since I had already gotten a $25 gift card, it didn't seem right to give me another one (yeah, I'm kinda honest that way). She checked with a manager and the manager explained that since the computer (register) was recording a new qualifying purchase going out, they had to issue me a new $25 gift card as well.

Reading the incredulous look on my face, the manager shrugged and explained that this was how the computer sale was set up.

Leaving the store, I quickly worked out that under this policy, it would only take a few exchanges to recoup the entire price of the tree. Wow.

Sure the store made a mistake by putting the wrong stock sign on the tree, but I really should have checked the box description before walking out. That was my mistake, but because of it, I ended up coming of out of the store with an additional net gain of $29 on the same box-priced tree. Isn't America great? And that doesn't count the first $25 gift-card we already got and spent. That was like a total of $54 off the original price of the tree.

Oh well.

The tree went up. Lavie and Alvis decorated it the following day and it is looking very warm and cheery.

Thus begins the holiday season here in the Valca home.

I can't wait to see how the rest of the month will go.

Oh, and the old-tree I put on the curb? It was gone by the next morning...hopefully in a new home shedding all over them. Too bad they don't know the story it already has hung on its branches. And the water-ski? That sat for three more days until the garbage truck came by.

See you in the skies,

--Claus