Pure Water Hollow Homestead

Country Boy

A Semi-Private Blog

I have made some changes to this blog that probably will not affect many folks here.  I plan to continue posting the same type of entries I always have, with the same types of pictures.  The people who will be able to see them is the only thing that will be different.

After much prayer and consideration, I have decided to make this blog much more secure and private.

If you are not logged in to the homesteadblogger website, you will only be able to see a few of my posts, even though I am continuing to post new ones.  So if this is one of the first things you see on my blog it is because you are not logged in. 

I have had zero problems with any kooks looking at this blog, and according to my counter, every visitor has come through the homesteadblogger website.

The recent blog safety post got me thinking, however, and I have decided it would be wise to change some of the things I am doing.  Actually it was the link to the post on "Rocks In My Dryer" that really got me concerned.

As most of you know, I am fond of posting many pictures on this blog.  I enjoy sharing these pictures with my family and friends, but I do not like the idea of an evil-hearted individual being able to access them.  This whole project has always been mainly just a personal log for our memories and posterity, anyway.

So, I have decided to go back through each entry and make most of them accessible to only registered users of homesteadblogger.  The entries where I had included pictures of a slightly more personal nature, I decided to make accessible to only those registered users on my friend list.  Out of 58 entries I think I only came up with about a dozen or so with pictures that I don't want in the hands of someone with evil intentions, so by and large, this blog won't be noticeably different to the average registered user who occasionally looks in on this blog. 

I do still want to share my blog with our family members and friends who are not registered with homesteadblogger, I just want to make it difficult for a stranger to get in.

I have come up with a plan for those of you who are our family members and friends if you still want to look at the blog.  Just call or email us and I will tell you what to do.

Again, I want everyone to know that as far as I can tell, this is a safe environment to blog in and I have not had a single issue, not even with anonymous commenter's.  Everyone who has viewed my blog has always come in through the hsb website and not from any questionable, seedy websites.  I have not seen one visitor that came in from a search engine, either.  We probably have little to worry about, but I have decided that if I err, I want it to be on the side of caution.

Thanks for understanding.

Montana Cowboy

We received this in our email from a friend and I immediately thought about all of my friends out here on homesteadblogger. If you have not seen this before, I think you will really enjoy it.

A Montana cowboy was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban Sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"

The cowboy looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, Connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA Page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation System to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel Spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says the Cowboy. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk! of his car.

Then the cowboy says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?"

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government", says the cowboy.

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing was required." answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows...this is a herd of sheep. Now give me back my dog."