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GRAFFITI -- June 19, 2006 thru June 25, 2006 >> Link to the Current Week << Last Week << Mon   Tues   Wed   Thu   Fri   Sat   Sun >> Next Week Search this site : Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable.     About 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.

MONDAY    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
June 19, 2006

0821 - Good morning. The work day progresses. I slept away much of the balance of yesterday, and I'm pretty shagged out today. I sure don't know what brought that on, but I would happily leave it well behind me. Nothing much to add at this time. Happy Monday.

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June 20, 2006

0831 - Good morning, more or less. Instead of dropping off to sleep last night, I started thinking about taxidermy. Really. But don't ask, because I don't have a freaking clue. When I finally wiped that out of my brain, Lucy started scratching her ear like mad. So I got up, wandered around the house for a bit, and finally had to partially wake Marcia to find out where the dog-ear-cleaning kit had got to. It didn't have a home in the new living room layout. That done, it was well past one, and I'm pretty sure it was two before I dropped off. When that's the case, 0530 comes awfully damned quick.

Girl child behaves like a moron, goes out with a doofus, and ends up being "sexually assaulted". MySpace gets sued. Yeah. I've got an idea: How about parents teaching children responsibility? How about a 14 year old girl who should know better NOT FUCKING AROUND WITH SOME SCHMOO SHE MET ONLINE!?!? Oh, and while we're at it, let's kill all the lawyers. Okay, it may be a bad thing that happened, if the date went down as claimed. OTOH, she went to a movie, dinner, and back to his place. Sure sounds like she was down with the action... Or is that Statuary Rape? Grrr. I'm a huge fan of drawing and quartering sexual predators when there's no consent. But a 14 year old girl is often old enough and big enough to know what she's consenting to, then that's not rape. Nor between a hot teacher and a 14 year old boy... that may be bad judgement (on her part), but really, folks.

Anyway, a day full of meetings ahead, and plenty of other tasks to fill the between times. Have a great last day of Spring.

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June 21, 2006

1923 - Good evening. Some progress is evident. The garden output yesteday was a one-third serving of broccoli, a single nice zucchini, and four salsa peppers. I put them all to use last night, making more salsa, and had the veg for supper, along with turkey burgers wrapped in bacon and grilled. No pink on the tomatoes, though.

Want to laugh? I did, at this announcement from the SCO Group: SCO Plans Multi-Million Dollar Investment Into Mobile Application Development, but when you read it, see this: SCO hopes developers forget what asshats they are, suing customers over baseless accusations. To help developers forget, we'll bribe you to come to training, and give one bastard who sells his soul a car in trade. It is, of course, my opinion that SCO management are asshats, and that their lawsuits are baseless. If you share my opinion, you'll laugh at that PR, too.

Please note that I started this post when it said "Good morning" up there. I edited it to say "afternoon" later, and here we are now. The good news is that we also got in our new strawberry plants in from Nourse Small Fruit Nursery (thanks for the quick shipment and helpful folks, Nourse!). So those are in the re-prepared beds. While it's late to start, careful watering and attention should see us with a decent crop next year. Now, on with the evening. Ciao!

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June 22, 2006

No Post....

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June 23, 2006

1147 - Good morning. Argh! I've no excuse except being too busy to say hello! Last night I mucked about with Xandros 4 for a while. So far it's batting 50/50. Installed fine on the laptop, but didn't even recognize the software RAID partitions on my workstation. Grrrr. Without that, I dared not let it take over the boot partition (because there's much more stuff I'd back up if I fear losing the whole thing). If time permits I'll update my workstation here at work (which is currently at Xandros version 3.0.1). But no promises - the day is as busy as the rest of the week has been. Some zucchini and peppers out of the garden last night, nothing else really to report. More later or tomorrow, when I have no plans, so might be able to eke out a decent post. Happy Friday!

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June 24, 2006

1728 - Good afternoon. A slow day. I sweated through the morning as I repotted several of our herbs, harvested all of the cilantro, and reseeded a pot for more of that. I pulled out some squash, and a cucumber from the garden today. I also noticed that there's a tinge of pink on one of the cherry tomatoes. It won't be long, now.

News flash from Canada: Tom and Leah Syroid dropped us an announcement celebrating the birth of their third child, Mathew Quinn Syroid. It's a nice picture of the smallest Syroid on the scale, but there's no numbers to read there, and it's clear that Tom ordered and sent these. Why? There's no date given, no weight, length, nada. Just the name. Grin. He'll pay for that later...

I have been having trouble reading some media in my NEC 3550A drive. I recalled that a couple of weeks back, Bob had trouble with his 3550A, as well. I gave him a call, I told him the news about the new Syroid, and we chatted about a bunch of things, including my fun with the NEC DVD drive. After a while, the conversation rolled back around to that, and he said, "I think the answer to your implied question is ..."

"PX... what?" I interrupted.

"What?"

"The implied question is which replacement DVD drive do I want," I continued. "I assume the answer is Plextor, and the model number is PX-... what?"

And indeed, the PX-750A is where we ended up. At Newegg, the OEM model is available for $55 bucks (today, at least) plus shipping. Ordered and on the way. Bob and I do enough backups and large data writes that we really, really stress our burners. Marcia has the 3550A in her system, albeit a year or so newer than mine, but on the usage scale, mine was off the charts. We'll see how the PX-750A holds up under the strain.

Time to go make a little more salsa. After that, the mutts will be ready for chow, as will I. Have a lovely evening.

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    SUNDAY  
June 25, 2006

1348 - Good afternoon. Rain. Lightning. Thunder. Much more rain. That's been the last 24 hours. And in the forecast, there's a little lightning icon for the next 6 days. Um, yay? Anyway, the lawns and gardens love the damp, so there's that silver lining at least.

Meanwhile our troops are working hard with their Iraqi and Afghani counterparts to go after their respective insurgent movements. It's not safe work...

• Spc. David J. Babineau, 25, of Springfield, Mass., was killed on June 16, 2006, while manning a checkpoint when he came under enemy small arms fire. [The soldiers with him, Menchaca and Tucker, were kidnapped.]
• 1st Lt. Forrest P. Ewens, 25, of Washington state, died in Pech River Valley, Afghanistan, on June 16, when his all-terrain vehicle struck an improvised explosive device during combat operations.
• Sgt. Ian T. Sanchez, 26, of Staten Island, N.Y., died in Pech River Valley, Afghanistan, on June 16, when his all-terrain vehicle struck an improvised explosive device during combat operations.
• Sgt. Reyes Ramirez, 23, of Willis, Texas, died in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, on June 17, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations.
• Spc. Robert L. Jones, 22, of Milwaukie, Ore., died in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, on June 17, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations.
• Cpl. Christopher D. Leon, 20, of Lancaster, Calif., died June 20 from wounds received while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Lance Cpl. Brandon J. Webb, 20, of Swartz Creek, Mich., died June 20 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Pfc. Christopher N. White, 23, of Southport, N.C., died June 20 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Staff Sgt. Benjamin D. Williams, 30, of Orange, Texas, died June 20 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore., was killed in the vicinity of Baghdad, Iraq, from injuries sustained on or about June 16, after being taken by enemy forces.
• Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of San Marcos, Texas, was killed in the vicinity of Baghdad, Iraq, from injuries sustained on or about June 16, after being taken by enemy forces.
• Sgt. 1st Class Jared C. Monti, 30, of Raynham, Mass., died in Gowardesh, Afghanistan, on June 21, when he encountered enemy forces using small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades during combat operations.
• Staff Sgt. Patrick L. Lybert, 28, of Ladysmith, Wis., died in Gowardesh, Afghanistan, on June 21, when he encountered enemy forces using small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades during combat operations.
• Lance Cpl. Nicholas J. Whyte, 21, of Brooklyn, N.Y., died June 21 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Sgt. Jason J. Buzzard, 31, of Constantinople, Calif., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on June 21 of injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HEMTT cargo truck during combat operations.
• Sgt. Sirlou C. Cuaresma, 25, of Chicago, Ill., died in Baghdad, Iraq on June 21, from a non-combat related cause.
• Pfc. Brian J. Bradbury, 22, of Saint Joseph, Mo., died in the vicinity of Naray, Afghanistan, when he encountered enemy forces using small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades during combat operations.
• Staff Sgt. Heathe N. Craig, 28, of Severn, Md., died when his UH-60 helicopter hoist malfunctioned while attempting to evacuate Pfc. Bradbury during combat operations.
• Cpl. Riley E. Baker, 22, of Pacific, Mo., died June 22 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Staff Sgt. Mario J. Bievre, 34, of Constantinople, Ill., died on June 23 in the vicinity of Baghdad, Iraq, from injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations.
• Pfc. Paul A. Beyer, 21, of Jamestown, N.D., died on June 23 in the vicinity of Baghdad, Iraq, from injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations.

Take a moment from your busy day, as I have, to regard the names of the fallen. See the young faces, the young lives behind those names, fighting and dying on foreign soil on our behalf. Whether or not you agree with their mission, honor their duty and their memory.

Yeah, I deserve a laugh, too.

We received Marcia's new music-playing widget, an iRiver T10. You might note that the 1GB model lists for $199 on the iRiver site. At Newegg, we picked it up for $106 plus shipping. It's tiny, perhaps the size of my thumb. Without the space for the single AA battery and external connectors, it'd be about stick-of-gum scale. Amazing. I went to the iRiver support site, picked up the latest firmware for the T10 and flashed it to current. In the process, I converted it from MTP mode (which is Windows Media Play sync goo) to UMS mode (that's USB Mass Storage, eh?). Now she can just plug in, drag album folders full of her favorites (she currently listens to both kinds of music, Country and Western) - bang, done! The player finds the OGG files and plays them. Easy and reasonably inexpensive, it also does FM and voice recording/playback. The hardest thing about the setup was getting the little earbud condoms on.

Happy Sunday!

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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.

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