sunset beach vacation

Photos from our yearly family vacation to the beach:

Sunset Beach

high school graduation

Probably the only public high school graduation we will ever witness happened last weekend. Our oldest son quit school and eventually got his GED. Our next to oldest son graduated high school by finishing his last two years using an internet high school called CompuHigh. We received our youngest son's diploma from PennFoster yesterday in the mail. So our middle son will definitely be the only son to graduate from public high school. Today we finalized his community college registration by paying for his first semester this fall at WakeTech, which is a local community college. His older brother also attended that same college for one year and that was also how I started my university career. We tried to enjoy every moment of the graduation realizing it may be our last. There are rumblings around the house that our daughter may try finishing high school on line as well.

The graduation was held in the new Raleigh Convention Center as there was over 400 students graduating, so with parents and family the ceremonies were too large for the high school auditorium. The whole process took almost three hours as we had to arrive early and then getting out was not the easiest thing once we got everyone to the car. The man in the front left hand side of the stage is the mayor of the town where we live in this photo:

customizing Mac login screen

I found the following web site has hints on how to customize all kinds of things on my Mac:

# http://www.macyourself.com/2009/03/11/mac-login-window-tricks-part-4-change-default-background-image/
# DEFAULT - sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture /Users/javaswinger/nepal.jpg

# http://www.macyourself.com/2009/03/06/mac-login-window-tricks-part-2-add-a-custom-welcome-message/
# DEFAULT - sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowText
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowText "Welcome to Dharma & MacBook world"

# http://www.macyourself.com/2009/03/05/mac-login-window-tricks-part-1-unleash-hidden-system-information/
# use any of the following:
# HostName, SystemVersion, SystemBuild, SerialNumber, IPAddress, DSStatus, Time
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow AdminHostInfo Time