Hope everyone reading this is doing well. Here in lovely Grand Cayman, all kinds of stuff happening!

First, this week was great for me professionally. I developed a presentation at work called “Your children and the Internet” ; its about the dangers kids face on the Internet. I gave the presentation twice in the office and at a local school to a group of about 60 parents.

Well, it made for good news. In fact I made the 1st page of the business section of one newspaper (Cayman Netnews) and also made the business section of the Caymanian Compass. Needless to say I am quite pleased. I am also very pleased that people are obviously concerned with their children’s Internet use : they should be!

Here are the links to the newspaper articles:

http://www.caycompass.com/cgi-bin/CFPnews.cgi?ID=1030962

http://www.caymannetnews.com/news-7576–5-5—.html

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In 2 days … June 1st, the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season officially starts 🙁

To prepare for an eventual hurricane, we have been working on new hurricane shutters for our house in the last few weeks. Its a long project, so we have been working on the the last 3-4 week-ends. This week-end, all of them should be ready to go if a hurricane comes to Cayman. Lets hope we dont need them!

Hurricane shutters come in 2 main types. The first type (and most expensive) are “metal curtains” that you simply pull across (or down for some models) the window. The second (and most popular type) are to simply put plywood panels. Thats the option we took. In any case, our landlady would probably not have been interested in spending 20,000$ or so for metal shutters.

So she supplied the plywood & other hardware, we supplied the labor. One of the best ways to install plywood shutters is to use “barrel bolts” (like those that are used for yard doors). You install them on the shutter and make a hole in the concrete to hold the shutter in place. We also painted them for durability and so that the house does not look like an abandoned house with non-painted plywood all around.

Here is the garage window before installation of the shutter.

Here I am making the hole in the concrete with the drill.

Here is the shutter installed. Since its already very hot here, we have installed about 1/2 of them to keep the sun out of the garage and rooms we use less frequently ; the house will be cooler during the steamy summer days. With all the holes pre-made for the remaining shutters, the rest of the shutters will take 30 minutes or so to install. Not a bad job would you say?