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Our wiener dog, Lima, takes a break from the surprisingly hot local weather for a quick dip in the pool.

For users of the popular blogging back-end software , you should note that there is a v1.5.1.3 security update available for download here. The upgrade process is pretty painless, consisting of three steps outlined in the readme.html file included with the download.

Additionally, if you use Dr. Dave’s excellent Spam Karma plugin to control the number of comments submitted by automated spam bots, note that version 2 is available for download, as well as version 1.7 of Referrer Karma, which helps protect your server logs from being overrun by referrer spam.

Coding Horror posted a great little entry yesterday about the infamous Comic Sans MS font.

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If you’re a fan of Battlefield 2, but not of the in-game server browser, consider downloading the free server monitor utility Qtracker. This little application can ping all the available internet servers for a number of online games, such as Battlefield 2, and provide you with a wealth of information about the current status of any particular server, including ping, number of players, current map and so forth.

Qtracker also has the ability to alert you to the presence on any scanned server of any friends you’ve added to the included buddy list. Since this tool has the ability to search based on partial matches in a name, this makes finding everyone with a particular gamer clan tag very easy.

Looking to purchase a new or used car anytime soon? If so, the online car sales website edmunds.com has the perfect article for you to read, in which their writer goes undercover as a car salesman and learns some very interesting things about what goes on inside car dealerships across America.

Learn about the tricks and techniques used, and you’ll be better prepared to deal with the advantages car salesmen use against you the next time you step through their doors.

Now that broadband internet connections are becoming far more common in the average home, so is the idea of setting up an in-home network to support multiple computers. Families, in particular, are showing an increased interest in the subject as they often will have separate computers for the kids.

If you know someone who’s interested in setting up their own in-home network who’d rather set it up themselves, yet doesn’t already have a working knowledge of local area network, consider the book Home Networking Simplified.

The book itself comes from Cisco Press, the print arm of Cisco System, commonly known for their networking expertise in the corporate world. Now that Cisco has become an owner of the residential networking product manufacturer Linksys, the company has started to look toward being able to support the average home computer user newly introduced to the idea of networking.

Home Networking Simplified is written for the computer novice, but without the stigma often associated with a “… for dummies” style book. Hundreds of screen shots of actual Windows XP dialog and configuration boxes will make setting up a network for file, print and connection sharing easy and understandable for anyone you know.