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GRAFFITI -- April 06, 2009 thru April 12, 2009>> Link to the Current Week <<Last Week << Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun >> Next Week 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. |
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April 6, 2009
2202 - I'm having a set of moments best described by the noise the little monster makes as he's blipvertising Joss Whedon's production company. I decided to do a bit of arranging, and get Harmony connected to the screen, keyboard, and monitor over here on the main desk. That meant some cable rearranging. Errr, Argh! Moved cables without powerdown. Did that cause my ensuing video problems on Slartibartfast? I don't know, but using the motherboard video appears to be pretty deeply horked, now. Good for me, I've got plenty of video cards laying around, but still. Sheesh.
In other news, I just broke down and went for the MacHeist bundle. They use a pretty effective word-of-mouth system to get the news out about their gig. In this case, I scored fourteen apps, worth over $900 retail, for $39 bucks, and $10 of that is said to go to charity. I'll let you know about the apps as I go, but that's a heck of a price for a bunch of stuff. If but three of them turn out to be useful or fun, I will have made a very good deal indeed.
Here's a fun link from @mkapor to wrap up the day — Nine Words You Might Think Came from Science but Which Are Really from Science Fiction — you might wait a little while until the mad rush dies down. Ciao!
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April 7, 2009
1940 - This post opens before the Feeding of the Mutts (usually 1800). Cthulhu knows when I'll get around to posting it. There's a CMR column to format and get onto the wire for Jerry. I've got reading to do for my midterm. And the DVD drive in Slartibartfast is making funny noises. That can't be good, can it?
Okay, the dogs have eaten. Or in Lucy's case, thrown up, then eaten. Sigh. Now, a pet peeve. You're running Ubuntu, no? Click on Places in the upper panel. Click on Home Folder. There, in the left hand pane, is an optical drive object of some kind (unless you're on a netbook or similarly disabled piece of hardware). There's an eject button, clearly (if iconically) marked. Click on that. What do you expect to happen? I expect the drive to eject its tray. Not give me an error dialog that says "Unable to mount media. There is probably no media in the drive." Um, yeah, I know that. Eject the freaking tray already. Hmmm. The icon must mean something different than I expect, like "Only eject if there's media in the drive." I note that the eject button, and the corresponding text entry in the context menu do both eject *if* there's media in the drive. Sigh. Software should do what's obvious, first. I wonder if there's a bug reported for this?
>Break<
Okay. Jerry's April Column is online. I've plenty else to work on, so I'll get to that, right after my supper. Ciao!
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April 8, 2009
2009 - Argh! Why wasn't I here: http://screenrant.com/star-trek-reviews-premiere-vic-6583/ ??? Wrong place, wrong time. KAAAAAHHHHHHHNNNNNN!
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April 9, 2009
2134 - I used to be a daredevil, at least in my own mind, and certainly much more once than I am now. Today, when I got home, I popped upstairs, changed, went down, hauled out the ladder, went up on the garage, hauled the ladder up after me, and went up on the roof. Then I went out on the much steeper pitch of the decorative front peak (seen here), leaned over the edge, and threw a couple of screws into the facing to hold it together and keep the birds out of the eaves. That's the plan, anyway. Once upon a day, that would have been duck soup, instead of an unpleasant bit of nervous time. I'm still happy I didn't pay someone a hundred bucks to go up and do it for me, but I'm not so thrilled that I'm not so thrilled.
If I were to pick one pet peeve about the DC area, one thing that stands out much more than in California, it's self-centeredness and greed. Mostly in driving, but in many other "group" behaviours, as well. 20 cars moving down an onramp, picking up speed to merge with traffic. The right lane folks speed up to be ahead of (or block the) mergees. Others swoop into the right lane in the spaces left by the speeding-up bastards, and there's nowhere to go. You're only safe if you're up to speed (70-75, at that onramp) by the time the solid line ends. Most people can't bring themselves to do that, then they try to merge, swerve back, and maybe don't get into an accident. Then today, across from the house, two women walking a dog. Bloke driving down the street stops to talk with them. In the traffic lane, with his back end blocking half an intersection. For five minutes. Yeah, there's not so much traffic that people can't go around, but still, what an asshole. He ranks up with the guy at the Home Depot who wheeled his cart halfway out of the store, grabbed his bag and abandoned it ... six inches in front of the guy with a lumber cart full. Thoughtless people suck. Yeah, that's a value judgement.
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April 10, 2009
2038 - A busy day patching during a special maintenance window, then I did my midterm, which is now submitted. Friday nights sure are a hoot! Ciao!
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April 11, 2009
No Post.
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April 12, 2009
 Tulips coming into full bloom |
1432 - Yesterday, I stayed busy. Most of the day I was in the woodshop. First I modified my jointing table so that I could have the jointer at one end, and the router table at the other. With that configuration, I needed wheels. However, for both routing and jointing, wheels are bad. Even locking swivel casters shift enough that I didn't want to do that. So I built some support crossmembers, and installed 2" swivel casters. Then I put some 2x2 hardwood pieces on hinges, and bolted those to the sides of the table legs, at the bottom. Now I can roll the table out from the wall for working, then lift and flip the 2x2s down into the bottom position. All of the casters are off the ground and it's a nice solid platform for doing both activities.
That was preparatory to working on making Marcia's sewing platform. I once made her another one of these, for a sewing machine she doesn't have anymore. So this is a new platform, designed to make a flat place level with the sewing machines upper deck - very handy for doing those projects where you want the material to be really flat while you work it. The alternative here was to put a hole into the table for the machine, rather like an old Singer treadle table. But these Designer 1 machines are tapered, getting narrower with height above table. So I'd have had to either have an oversized hole (and maybe an insert), or bring the sewing machine up from underneath. Neither pleased me - too many holes in a pretty table bother me. So this sewing platform project is a fine alternative. There'll be a picture of that when the finish is on and done.
Today started with yardwork. You can see from the picture above left, that spring (at least early spring) has finally arrived. The tulips and other blooming stuff appear to be about meshed with last year's blooming times, about a week later than 2006 and 2005. Interesting, that. I thought that we could expect earlier blooms if the AGW consensus wonks were right. Anyway, today I mowed, shorter again, trying to get it down to the point where regular maintenance mowing/mulching won't be painful (it is right now, because I let it get too long, to start). No shopping today, that was last night since our major supply run store is closed today. This afternoon, another pass through my midterm, since I have the leisure to do so. Then down to the shop to clean up a little bit, and start applying finish to Marcia's sewing platform.
Two last week. Twelve casualties reported this week. Yeah, we should finish what we started, or the folks who are counting on us will have short, brutally unpleasant lives after we're gone. But the sacrifices our armed services make on behalf of our policies make me both sad and proud. Our condolences to the families and units of the fallen.
1713 - Say, have you heard about the refined definition of Amazon Rank? Yeah, I think it sucks, too. This link, among many others, will help assorted search engines place the correct definition at the top of the search return pages. Go, Amazon. Oh, hey, I bought my last three O'Reilly books ... from O'Reilly. Bummer, dudes.
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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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