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Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message.. |
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October 07, 2002 - Updates at 0700 EDT
Good morning. Happy Monday. Plumbing problems seem to follow us about, you know. Yesterday afternoon, after some food waste went down through the sink disposal, water wouldn't go through anymore. Sigh. So after some preliminary exploratory dismantling yesterday, we called in the pros to come have a look. Unfortunately, they don't work long hours out here, so scheduled us for today. The good news is that neither showers nor commodes are inconvenienced by this - just the kitchen and washing machine. So, while I'm committed to being onsite today, Marcia is going to stay in for the morning and supervise.
I've been fighting with backup tools. I found what looks to be a really good one: rdiff-backup. It's at home on http://rdiff-backup.stanford.edu/. It combines the efficiency and tunnelling-over-ssh capabilities of rsync with the ability to do full and incremental backups to diff files. But because I have a fairly selective set of directories that I want to backup, I haven't yet got the hang of how to order the include and exclude lines so that I get a backup set composed of exactly what I want, and nothing else. More practice later today, when I'm not worried about plumbing and whatnot.
We had a nice weekend, heading out to the Renaissance Festival on Saturday. Yesterday, I posted a few pictures of the joust that you might enjoy. Now I'd best get the trash out, then get to work. Have fun out there.
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October 08, 2002 - Updates at 0700
Good morning. Thanks for all of the notes of concern that we've received over the last few hours. It's certainly not fun being in the neighborhood with a nutcase who has a long gun and is now also targetting kids. Yep, as Bob noted yesterday, the school where that shooting happened yesterday is just a short way down the road from us. I'm a bit more of a fatalist about such things than Marcia is, and also firmly believe that if I change my behaviour to suit nuts and assholes (this shooter for one, Hussein and Ashcroft to name two more), then they win. So life goes on for the living, a little sadder here and there. Eventually they'll nail this guy, and I can only hope that he resists arrest in no uncertain terms.
I've got to go. See you around.
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October 09, 2002 - Updates at 0700
Even shorter... Good morning. The only good news at the moment is that you can see this, which means that I was able to post it. Comcast lost our whole city for a while last night. I had work to do, carefully saved in my IMAP folders, where I couldn't get to them. Sigh. The lines lit up again at about 2300 or so last night. So I did an afternoon and evening's worth of email, but no work, as the pathetic results wouldn't have been worth the sleep lost.
In other bad news, Sally ripped up her ACL and other bits of her knee joint while running in the backyard yesterday morning. Marcia got her X-rayed and confirmed yesterday. Sally's scheduled for surgery this morning, we'll get her back tomorrow sometime. She'll have a hard cast for 3 weeks after, followed by a soft cast, ditto, then an Elizabethan collar for a short while after that. Yes, we'll have plenty of funny pictures to share from her recovery, I'm sure. But this can't be fun for a little doggy that doesn't understand anything but that it hurts and her people are going to leave her with strangers. Yes, yes. I know that I'm strange too, but she's used to that now.
I'm going to work for a while this morning, then be around here if Marcia needs me to go do something. Then tomorrow, I'll be off so that I can hare off to the hospital and pick up Sally when we find out we're allowed. Updates as time and events warrant. See you later!
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October 10, 2002 - Updates at 0600 &
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Good morning. You may note that time above, and wonder WTF??? I know that I am. What I forgot yesterday in laying out my schedule is a couple of early hours in the dentist's chair. Well, actually, an hour with the hygiene tech, doing a cleaning, then another hour with the doc, cleaning up a tooth that broke. That happened back in August when I was doing the run back to Nebraska to pick up the former Lemon. Once I'm done with the dentist, I'll zip down to the dealership and pick up new temporary plates for the Santa Fe, as our permanent set isn't in yet.
Then I can come home and be ready to go get our poor little Sally. According to reports from the veterinary surgeon during the afternoon, then from the hospital staff in the evening, Sally's doing just fine. The cutter found what he expected when he went in, and fixed things up right nice. Then he casted her. I'll bet she'll be glad to see me... Here's the thoughts that I'm going to see in her eyes:
"Mommy left me here with these strange people, and LOOK WHAT THEY DID TO ME!!! Thank you thank you thank you for coming and rescuing me. What's this hard thing on me? Can you take it off? These people keep ignoring me when I ask them."
I was joking around with Marcia, night before last. I asked if she remembered how Sally behaved when Marcia came home from the hospital. She said that she did. I said, "So, to be nice to Sally, you're going to lick her legs too, to help her heal faster?" Had I timed that one better, Marcia with a mouthful of water could have imitated a lawn sprinkler with the water-nose interaction. Unfortunately, my timing was off, so she simply guffawed.
{Insert short break to get some coffee. It wouldn't do to forget that...}
And with that, I'm nearly out of time. I was thinking, though. Would it be a good idea to epoxy a small caster wheel onto the bottom of Sally's cast? Nah, I guess the carpets would make that hard going. And she might, just might, try the stairs. Stairs and wheels definitely don't mix. Shower time for me, then off to the sadist's office. More news on Sally after she's home.
1415 - Sally's home...
I brought the little girl home shortly after noontime. Since then I've been sitting with her, petting and brushing and generally calming her down a bit. She's napping now, and when she wakes up it'll be time for her pain meds. It's not a hard cast after all, but her leg is bandaged, splinted and taped. She'll have a "flexible" bandage put on in about 3 weeks, at the same time as they take out her sutures. No, she's not very happy. At this moment, I think she would have happily limped about in a little pain for the rest of her life, than to be in the space she's in right now. But she'll get over it, and it'll improve her mobility once she heals. But she's in pain, and confused. That'll get better quickly, I imagine.
Now to get on with whatever's next. Oh, Sally says thanks for all the kind thoughts and emails.
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October 11, 2002 - Updates at 0640
Good morning, sorta. I'm much later than I wanted to be, so I'll make this extra brief. Sally's doing well. Page up a little to see pictures of the poor baby and her leg. She is in pain sometimes, dioriented and confused by the pain meds at other times. So, instead of getting up at 5 and heading across county to get to the client site by 0700 as planned, I was up and down (mostly up, it feels like) with Sally when she would do her little howls and cries. I sat or lay down with her and gentled her back to sleep on her blanket, after I would coax her back there from wherever she'd gotten to in the downstairs area. Poor dog. Ah well.
I'd best be going. Three day weekend coming up, so I should be able to put up something more coherent tomorrow. As always, more later though, if events warrant.
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October 12, 2002 - Updates at 1145
Good morning (still, for a little longer). Marcia and I were exhausted by late last night, when Sally got her final medications of the day. Me, I don't remember hitting the pillow last night. If Sally was restless overnight, neither of us heard it until 0615 or so, when Marcia got up and spent some time with her, and gave her more meds at 0700. Then back to bed and we didn't get up again until about an hour ago. I don't normally sleep that long, but I suspect that in addition to a couple of long days, I'm fighting some sort of bug, a light fever or something. All will be well though. Today is the last day of Sally's pain meds - I think those are having a significant effect on her mood and behaviour. We'll see through Sunday and Monday how things progress. She does like the attention, though. She even got an e-Card from Felix and Oscar, a pair of cats belonging to my employers. Heh.
Hmmmm. Slashdot has a bevy of "political" items this morning, from Why Human Rights requires Free Software by Andy Oram on the O'Reilly site to this c|Net article on IBM's elimination of a patent it received for bathroom queueing and reservations. Somehow, that wasn't as vicious a denunciation of the PTO as is often found these days. Finally, there's a new DMCA comment process opening up, and interested parties should be, well ... interested. There's also a link to a Mercury News article about Taiwan rejecting the Disney extensions. These are blended in with the standard fare of talking programming languages, robots, chroot jails and more. I like this admixture of politech and tech. Some days Slashdot just hits the right spot for me.
Well, since my coffee's long gone, that I'd best go have some breakfast, um, lunch. Have a lovely Saturday.
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October 13, 2002 - Updates at 1200
I'm sure the freedom is just wonderful, but wireless setup under Linux sucks. And that's for the record. I'll be back later.
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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.
All Content Copyright © 1999-2002 Brian P. Bilbrey.
