We have all head for years now the concerns with electronic voting machines.  As a software engineer, I always thought that a voting machine should be one of the simplest machines on the planet to design.  I mean really… how badly can you screw up:

Candidate += 1;

Well, now comes word from the Washington Post that Premier Election Systems, formerly Diebold, announced their voting tabulation software, GEMS, has a flaw that causes it to incorrectly count votes.  Diebold systems are used in elections all across the country.  In local, state and federal elections.  So your county may have a pretender to the throne elected as the new dog catcher and perhaps maybe the vote counts are incorrect for  higher offices.

Here is CNN’s coverage of the story:

Hacking Democracy is an HBO documentary about the lack of security in electronic voting machines.

Yahya and Ghazala plus Ten

A woman in Egypt today has given birth to septuplets after eight months of gestation.  The babies weighed between 3.2 and 6.2 pounds.  Both of those facts are remarkable.  High order multiple pregnancies are often very premature.  The more babies, the earlier the usually come.  It appears the babies are all relatively healthy.

She had more in one shot than we had all together (and we have a lot!).

Looks like Jon & Kate have some competition now.

Jackson, Andrew, Sophie & Christian head off to school

The rest of our crew headed off to their first day of school today .  They will be attending a preschool right down the road from us.

Andrew has been going there since we moved here last year and he really likes it.  He was genuinely excited about going today and was really proud of his brand new sneakers… Sketchers.  Andrew is 4^1/2 and a really sweet boy.  I’ve said it before, but he has a tough job being sandwiched between two pretty big shadows… Noah and the triplets.

Andrew loves Noah to death, but I think he enjoys being a big brother more than a little brother.

Andrew tried soccer last year and depending on the day he either really liked or really didn’t like it.  When he did like it, he played really well.  He’ll start again in a few weeks. He has expressed an interest in playing hockey.  Perhaps he can try that after he learns how to skate.

Andrew knows more about the Star Wars saga than most malodorous comic book geeks.

The triplets are now 2^1/2.  Keeping up with three  2^1/2 year olds keeps us BUSY!

Christian is the clown of the bunch.  He is always doing something that makes us laugh.  He is the biggest triplet and the biggest of all of our children at this age.   He loves to sing and dance.   Like his older brothers, Christian really likes the Wiggles.

When groups of kids are around, Christian gravitates towards the bigger, older ones in the group.  He hangs right in there and keeps up with their play.  It is not uncommon to see Christian chasing Noah around the house and tackling him L.T. style.

Sophie, what can I say, just look at her.  She is a sweet little girl and quite a little athlete.  She loves to play soccer and do all kinds of acrobatics.  We’ll be putting her in to dance classes and gymnastics very soon.

Sophie loves her big brothers and they love her too.  She enjoys being a girl a doing girlie things.  You will also find her out in the yard playing in the dirt and leave with Christian and Jack.

Jackson is the smallest of the bunch.  Jack is very smart.  He speaks the best of the three, knows all of his colors and shapes, and can count to twenty (give or take).  He too has an affinity for soccer and hockey and is a bit of a natural athlete like Noah was at that age.

As mentioned in the title, Shelly also went back to school today… as a techer at the kid’s preschool.  She is teaching a 4 year old class three days a week.  It brings a little extra income in and gets us a much needed discount on the tuition.

Enough said.

Noah's First Day of School 2008 - 1st Grade

Noah starts first grade today.  He is really excited to go.  Noah is really smart and loves to learn.  I hope that lasts forever.

As another school year starts, I can’t help but think about what a great kid Noah is.  Yes, I sound like one of THOSE parents, but he really is a joy to be around.  He is kind and caring and is a great big brother.

He still loves his hockey and is excited to start up again in a few weeks.

He’s going to give cub scouts a shot this year too.

Well, here’s to the start of another school year.

R.I.P. - Isaac Hayes

Shut your mouth!!!

I’m just talkin’ ’bout Shaft!

Can you dig it?

Well, about a month ago I finally got around to upgrading my server from an old 1GHz P3 system to an old 2.4GHz P4 with a bunch more disk space and memory.  I haven’t been able to get around to getting the website and photo album back up since then.  I decided that I wanted to replace the drab main page with a blog to post updates to the photo_album as well as giving me a place to opine and share about things I find interesting.

Well here it is.  There is still lots of work to do to getting it looking a little nicer.

Until then… Welcome to the late 20th century!

The photo album is back up.