Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

Starting July 1st, Google is going to "punish" companies/web sites that aren't using SSL for traffic. So, even though I have a site (www.breakingpar.com) that simply gives information and doesn't ask for any log in or anything, I'm somewhat required to start using SSL. Luckily, there are nice people on the internet that allow you to get SSL certificates for free instead of paying the huge fees for something I really don't need. It's a little bit of a pain to set up and maintain (they expire every 60 days), but that's way better than paying a bunch of money every couple of years. Hopefully those certificates remain free in the future. After a couple of pain points, including realizing that I actually have 2 firewalls (I opened up port 443 on my router, but Windows Firewall was blocking it), I have now set up SSL on my web site. And I configured reminders for every 7 weeks (49 days) to renew those certificates. I have redirected all traffic on my web...

Tiger Woods missed the cut at the US Open this past weekend. It was his 72nd major as a professional. In the past there was the foregone conclusion that Tiger would break Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 professional major victories, so I started keeping track of where each player was at the same number of majors played. Here's the comparison through 72 majors: Tiger: 14 wins, 6 2nd places, 24 total top 3's (14+6+4 others), 31 total top 5's, and 38 total top 10's. Jack: 15 wins, 15 2nd places, 39 total top 3's, 46 total top 5's, and 55 total top 10's. That's the thing that always amazed me about Jack - even when he didn't win, he was up there. He had as many top 3 finishes in majors as Tiger has top 10 finishes (1 more, in fact) through the same number of events. Although Tiger is only 1 behind the pace on wins, he's going to have some catching up to do. In majors 73 through 83 for Jack (1980 Masters through 1982 British Open), Jack had two...

For Memorial Day weekend, we took the camper out for a couple nights to Double J campground in Springfield, IL. The campground was pretty decent. The sites were somewhat close together, although from what I know it wasn't as close as other places. There was a swimming pool, a mini golf course (that was all asphalt - not all that impressive), a playground, an area that had foosball, air hockey, and ping pong, and other kids activities. Overall, it was a pretty nice place. A little higher price than other places I've looked at ($50 per night). Our daughter did discover one of the joys of camping - she made a friend. The friend was a couple years older than our daughter, but they really hit it off and did a ton of stuff together - playing at the playground, swimming, and so on.