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Daynotes on a budgetThe weekly Diary of a PC GeekUpdated: Sunday, December 31, 2000 03:47 PM -0600 |
Monday, December 25, 2000
It's Christmas. Children around the world open presents. Some to celebrate the Christian custom of the Birth of Christ. Others, to celebrate the commercial Xmas season with an orgy of spending, giving, and receiving.
Somewhere in the world today, a child will starve to death. In another place, an old woman will die from the lack of a few dollars worth of medication, available over the counter here and elsewhere. In still another, two men will argue about something that they think makes them feel good, get mad at one another, and one will shoot or stab the other.
In many buildings around our country alone, there will be hundreds or thousands of people who've raised families and are now to old, ill, or weak to care for themselves, are warehoused. Their Christmas will consist of a phone call or two, some brief time where they can talk to those they've raised, and then, they'll sit and stare at another television, for another day.
We'll mark the season with merriment. Some will drink, drink to excess, and leave the party. Some will get home just fine. Others will have a harrowing trip, and say "That's the last time I do that, and THIS TIME I MEAN IT" and they really don't. Still others will use automobiles to kill, maim, or harm themselves, or innocent bystanders.
In hundreds of homes, after the orgy of ripping and tearing is complete, many children will ask "is that all?" In others, the children will weep and wail because the present isn't the right one, right color, or not what they wanted. In other lands, there will be children looking at an empty plate, asking the same questions, crying themselves to sleep, because there isn't enough food for them to have a full belly.
In millions of homes, later in the afternoon, fights will break out between children who do not wish to share. People will yell at one another for no good reason other than lack of sleep and frustration over the "end of a season." In other lands, people will load, aim, and fire weapons at one another because the other person's skin is the wrong color, they believe in the wrong religion, they've occupied for fifty years lands that the other person has an ancestral claim going back for more than a thousand. People will die for ideas, for
We'll throw away more food today than some families see in a year. We'll throw out paper that wrapped our gifts; the cost of that paper alone could feed a family in a developing country for a year. We'll flop into chairs, and say "Thank God that's over." Some will even have the tree down and stored by this afternoon, marking the end of the season, for them. They don't know that the original twelve days of Christmas came AFTER, and not before, the holiday. They're just glad to put all of this stuff away and mark the end of the season. Some never even notice it passed.
We shouldn't let Christmas end, not in our hearts.
It's Christmas. Enjoy the season, enjoy the feelings, but remember that, for many others, this is a day much like any other. They will continue to live, struggle, fight, and die. Let's see what we can do to make their lives better. We'll all benefit.
Well, let's see what we can come up with technically today... Looks like we've got all of the toys requiring assembly assembled, with the possible exception of Jack's Deathstar (there's something truly pathological about selling kids toys with parts that are less than an inch tall, then requiring the parents, who quite often have problems identifying anything that's .75 inch by .25 inch by .125 inch (call it 1.5 cm by 4 mm by 2mm) and THEN assembling it. Sheesh.
Other than that, I did some research last night, and reached a couple of conclusions on the whole server-rebuild issue at work. Here's the story;
We've got a Dell desktop/server machine (Desktop, as that's what it was purchased for, Server in that it's Dual Pentium II/450s running the show). Someone of great wisdom and superior intellect (</Sarcasm>) ordered such a machine with one ten gig IDE drive in it.
This machine has become a development server which needs to boot into Windows NT running SQL Server 7.0, Windows 2000 running SQL Server 7.0, and Windows 2000 running SQL 2000. Three different types of boots, three different and unique configurations.
This machine also serves two other functions - it's our "dump tank" for the MSDN subscription information we get, and it's where the final builds are put together to test before being repackaged with the installers to send to our customers. So it needs to be basic, stable, and not much goofy with it.
The problem we wanted to solve was to get more space. Ten gig is pretty poor space for any one of those functions above. Put all five in the same basket, and you're talking blivet, big-time (ten pounds of excrement in a bag rated for five pounds - something like you or I in our clothes after the Christmas dinner).
I'd contemplated dual-booting the box, but after compelling cases for and against, the bottom line became "Keep It Simple, Shithead." Being an expert in over-complicating solutions, I figured I'd best call for help.
I realize that I'm not the one with all of the answers. I went over to the Hardware Guys message board and posted a general "Mayday, help me" question, and within an hour, Mr. Thompson (who will make another sale to me as I'll be getting his book after Christmas, since I've got enough B&N Gift certs to pick it up - now, to get it autographed ;-) responded with a device which does what we need it to do.
I also did a walkabout in the office, and encountered no less than five computers which are under or un-used completely. So here's the plan;
We're going to take one of the unused computers, load it up with 1-2 big IDE drives. Nothing fancy; we're going to turn this into the MSDN tank. That will be the place we'll move the MSDN information. As they don't access it a whole lot of the time and it's more of a reference book, it doesn't need to be a screaming fact machine; just something on the network they can access.
The information will be moved off the dual Pentium box and onto the new MSDNTank.
Then we'll pick up an external dual-drive enclosure from the folks Mr. Thompson recommended, Storcase. That device will be attached to the Dual Pentium box, and we'll get three drives - one to boot Win NT, and two to boot Win2K. We'll install the appropriate information, and away we'll go.
This should alleviate most of our concerns in the short term until we get the bigger servers we'll need next time around.
And that should be about the end of the technical stuff. I'm going to go see what's going on out on the net, then check out my big box of Legos. Jack and I got the same thing - 1200-piece buckets of Legos. Great - he probably won't share.... ;-)
Though I see Mr. Thompson has forgotten the basics - I don't remember who started it, but it goes something like -
1) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic
2) Any technology distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.
Though I note his luminaries use paper bags - up here, we rely more on gallon milk jugs with about a half-quart of water in the bottom, and Christmas lights strung through the neck. That's the way we do it. Of course, we're cold enough up here to freeze Rudolph and Co. if they tend to stand still in one place too long, let alone attempt to create icicles... ;-)
So ---
-<[ Graphic removed to here ]>-
And happy holidays of all sorts...
Later:
Well, that pretty much conclusively proves it. After a
near-perfect duck production by my lovely wife, I've reached the inescapable
conclusion that I am a white-meat man through and through. Yes, it's
true.
The Duck recipe we used was "Duck with Guinness and Honey" - via the good offices of Mr. Ricketson, aka JHR.
The recipe, for those that wish to repeat her attempts, is;
Duck in Guinness and Honey
2 kg duck/4 1/2 lb, trussed
2 Tbs./30 ml/ 1 fl oz oil
2 Tbs./30 ml/1 fl oz honey
1 Tbs/15 g/1/2 oz brown sugar
1 cup/250 ml/8 fl oz Guinness
pinch each nutmeg and cinnamon
1 1/4 cups/300 ml/1/2 pint demiglaze or duck stock
pinch each salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 475 F/250 C/ Gas Mark 9.
Wash and truss the duck. Brush with oil and seal in a hot oven until browned (about 10 to 12 minutes). Meanwhile, in a heavy saucepan mix together the honey, sugar, Guinness and spices and simmer for 10 minutes. Add demiglaze or stock and continue cooking for another 15 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Reduce heat to 300F/150 C/Gas mark 2, cover the duck with the sauce and roast for 60 to 75 minutes. Baste occasionally. Test with a fork. If the sauce tastes too bitter at the end of cooking time, add a little more honey. Remove from the oven and allow to rest for a few minutes before carving.
Serves 4
I'll tell you this much - that duck you see above was NOT an adherent of any sort of school which advocates clean living and lots of vegetables. I removed about a cup and a quarter of grease from this fellow's pan while we attempted to recover the duck sauce. I'm of the opinion that this fellow suffered a heart attack and died from blocked arteries. Sheesh, all over again.
The duck WAS good, just not to my taste. I'm thinking we're going to try the Mahogany Duck recipe we also found... I've collected a number of suggestions here... if you've got one you prefer, let me know...
And now, we watch Apollo 13. It'll be a new perspective for me after reading and re-reading Kranz's book repeatedly over the last month. Just one last bit of trivia for you folks - the man that Tom Hanks salutes at the end of the movie, the Naval officer, is the REAL Jim Lovell. Nice touch, that.
And I found two things today that made me smile -- The first are the lyrics to one of my favorite Christmas songs... I Believe in Father Christmas, from Greg Lake...
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They said there'll be snow at Christmas They sold me a dream of Christmas I wish you a hopeful Christmas
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And then there's this one, from a friend of Al Hawkins. While it sounds like this fellow ran into a completely rotten example of good Catholic cleric, I've got to admit that the fellow's just a wee bit off in his interpretations. I'm not looking down my nose at people who do not believe in God, or anything of the sort. What the writer seems to indicate is, much as Dr. Pournelle has said, is that many people these days expect "it" to be given to them on a platter.
Sorry, folks, belief in anything, be it a scientific theory, religion, or Santa Claus, requires work. Hard work. Belief isn't a case of stating "you know what? I believe." Not really. And I'm not talking about "Born Again" or "charismatic" or any of those particular slices of life. I'm talking about knowing, in your heart, that the choice you have made is right for you; now, and in the future. You can't just say "hey, I believe." You've got to satisfy yourself as to the contradictions you'll face. For example, my religion teaches that the God I believe in is both Omnipotent and All Good. So, if I believe that he is all powerful, why is there evil? If he is all good, why is there evil if he's got the power to stop it?
I can't tell you the right answer for you. You've got to find it. I found, after much thought and prayer, that I believe that God has allowed evil to exist so that we are tested. It's like tools. You don't rely on something you haven't tested, if you're smart. You test it - you make sure you know the limits, and then you make absolutely CERTAIN you know the limits. Then check again just to be sure. THEN you put it into limited production, to make sure it survives. Once you're satisfied it works there, you keep checking it. After a few months, or years, you rely on it.
Belief is work. Belief is hard work. It's much easier to say "you know what, I don't believe that" or "I sort of believe." It's easy to sit back and Monday-morning quarterback. Most of us do it to the beliefs we're given as children. We question them, we wonder about them, we poke holes in them. And that's what we do. As I said, I haven't got the answers for you. No one but you can have the answers for you. If you prefer to believe that mating rhinos in snow banks is the ultimate expression of The Greater Good of Ganja, or whatever, good on you, cobber, good on you.
Whatever you believe, whatever you think you believe, whatever you wish to believe, you have got to work at it. Belief, like life, is work. It's very easy to sit back and say "nyah nyah nyah, you're a boob." If you prefer to do that, fine; I'm not going to argue with you. Heck, I'm not going to argue with anyone. This planet might be small in comparison to the rest of the universe, but it's big enough for you and I to believe in different things. It's big enough for you and I to sit across the table from one another and discuss the merits of Independence Day versus Men in Black, or Peanut Butter versus Peanut Butter and Jelly - it's big enough for us to discuss religion, if you want to, as well. But I'm not going to try to convince you that I have the answers for you. I've got no answers for you; that's your job, to find the answers.
It's when you get older, and gain maturity, and realize that science can explain much of what we know, but not all of it. I claim no scientific proof of God, any more than I claim absolute rock-solid proof of evolution. I believe in evolution, as much as I believe in God. And you know what? Those two aren't mutually exclusive, as some might wish you to think. I believe that the evolution of man from single-celled organism to his present appearance is the result of evolution. I believe that the evolution that occurred was begun by God - sort of like the cue ball breaking a fresh rack of balls on a pool table. I believe that God planned it so well that he sunk all fifteen balls with one shot - we've seen balls one through four, or so - those to come will see the results that are coming along.
But that's my belief system. I'm not telling you this to impress you with what I believe any more than I'm trying to get you to believe what I do. Belief is an act, not in result of persuasion from someone else, but in the acceptance and integration of the information you've been given. Some believe in God, others in other religions, and that's fine. If you believe in nothing, that's fine too. It's your life; as long as you're comfortable, that's your choice. And it's not right or wrong. It's simply your choice. And if you do believe, in anything, you know what I'm talking about. If not, I wish you good luck, fortitude, and the intelligence to sort it all out.
Tuesday, December 26, 2000
Happy Boxing Day
All right - apparently I'm in a most-twisted mood. Put it down to defrosting mode. We were at 13 degrees this morning when I got up at 5:15 am - that's 30 degrees warmer than yesterday, and the first time we've been in double-digits above zero since December 8th. I nearly broke out the shorts and tee-shirts.
Let's see, here. As a Roman Catholic, I'm pretty sure we just celebrated a birthday party for Jesus. I'm not sure what you folks did, but I hope yours went well. However, the whole birthday motif caused me to wonder just what it's like to have a birthday when one is up nearing two thousand, give or take a fiver... Can you imagine the party?
Jesus: "Ma! Where's My presents?"
Mary: "What? Like You haven't gotten everything a thousand
times over?"
Jesus: "Dad? Did You get Me any presents?"
God: "Two thousand years, and
you don't call, you don't write, you never stop for a visit just to visit.
Oy, what a schmuck!"
Jesus: "Fine. Mom, if I am two thousand and four this year,
how old are you?"
Mary: "Twenty-nine. Now be quiet so your Father can watch the
game."
God: "Go Saints!"
Okay, so if I'm going to hell for that one, I've already got a corner suite staked out in the Pope Pius XII wing.
I'm not quite sure where the term "Boxing Day" came from. Near as I can figure, this probably came from somewhere in the middle ages, where two old (at thirty) women got into a fight over the last Peat-Moss set of Nativity figures in the local market, and began to clout one another about the head and torso with their walking sticks. I'm quite sure a fracas ensued, most probably due to the fact that these peat-moss figures were 50% off the normal "healthy-chicken" price they'd been during the prime "Thanksgiving-to-Christmas" sales period.
Of course, the day could have less savory connotations, which I will not speculate upon. Of course, the bottom line could be after all that good-will-towards-men and God-rest-ye-merry-gentles crap, we're just about to the point where pounding the living daylights out of another individual holds some basic animal attraction.
However, pulling out automatic weapons and shooting up the workplace isn't my idea of a good time.
I keep thinking on the one hand that having a loaded small-bore howitzer to hand at all times might well cut down on this sort of thing - schmuck 1 attempts to gun down the office, and you remove your weapon from a desk drawer and succeed in ventilating him to the point where he'll never have to worry about a chest cold. On the other hand, if schmuck 1 never wandered around with an AK-47 in the first place, would we be all better off?
I used to think that banning all of the "excessive weaponry" was a good idea. I'm beginning to think that what we have is a genie that can't be stuffed back into the bottle, regardless of size. Heinlein wrote that when a society becomes impolite, it's time to leave. Lacking the ability to leave (Thanks to the leadership at NASA, the federal government, and various other giant sucking holes that managed to gut the space program), we're left with little choice but to ignore rudeness, or defend against it.
These days, you yell "hey" at someone for not saying "excuse me" and you're likely to catch a fist in the face, or worse. If nearly everyone carried some form of personal weaponry, we'd have a short, rather ugly period where those that are impolite are taken care of. Then, maybe things would be better.
But perhaps not. I haven't got the answers. I don't know if anyone does. But I'm sure there are seven or so families that are very upset about the way this thing played out today. And that's just not right.
But I've got some homework, call it research, to do...
Wednesday, December 27, 2000
I love my job, I love my job, I love my job...
Seriously, I do like it. The problem comes in with the stuff I'm using. One of the wonderful things about working with Microsoft software is that it does do one heck of a lot, and it's very impressive when it works well.
But there are times when I'm tempted to lob the whole lot in a deep dark pit. Like today. I've followed our very complete and very clear instructions for installing our software on a test system. Basically -
Yah, THAT'S why I make the bucks I do... That's ridiculous. And the best part is that we found the other day that there's apparently still some memory leaks in Win2K, which are quite annoying. If you hold the mouse in the left hand, you're OK. Right-handed? You're skrooooed...
<JARRING SEGUE> And today, Mr. Thompson posted a piece about how gun control claimed lives in Massachusetts. Part of me agrees with him. If just one of the people who was shot in that office had been packing, the fellow might have checked out a little earlier. As it is, the taxpayers of Massachusetts are going to be supporting his sorry psychopathic ass for quite a few years to come.
On the other hand, if this fellow hadn't been allowed to purchase an AK-47, a semi-automatic handgun, and a shotgun, I wonder if we'd be hearing about him throwing pencils at the other employees. It's a very ugly question, and I know that we need to do something about it, but I haven't got the answers. I thought I did, but we're never going to agree on this one. I don't think that the founding fathers had the imagination to dream up weapons that fired several hundred rounds a minute. But we're now faced with the problem of what to do...
<JARRING SEGUE>You know, every single time I go to Dr. Keyboard's site, I learn something. Of course, last week's mailing from the Good Doctor taught me that computers are sold through Toys R Us in some areas... Fascinating. Today, we learn that boxing day comes from the habit of English... well, high-born folk (would that be high-borne? Just checking) give boxes of stinky old socks to the hired help. I'm thinking that might be the reason people started leaving England for a completely wild, untamed continent which had pretty good odds of killing them. Yup. Stinky socks. Who knew?
<JARRING SEGUE>I noticed today that Time magazine made the predictable, and weenie-like choice of "dubyah" for the man of the year. Back in the mid-eighties when Time made the gutsy call of "Computer" for man of the year, it meant something. This year, for all of the other things that happened, they ended up naming our next one-term Bush president the man of the year. Oh well.
Other candidates, did I hear you say? How about "The Voter?" Or even "The Florida Voter" or perhaps Steve Case, or The NASDAQ meltdown, or Vladimir Putin, or Barak, or Arafat?
Oh well.
<JARRING SEGUE>And here we go again... Locally, we're at our second-coldest December on record. Our average temperature for the month this morning stood at 6.9 degrees. Of the top four coldest Decembers, we're talking 1983, 2000, 1987, 1985. Global warming, my butt. And we're sitting at our fourth-snowiest December, so far.
The "So Far" part is the one that worries me. This morning the fine weather folk we have here locally (if these guys decided to play darts in a bar, I'd look for another bar, frankly - I'm not too sure they'd hit the correct wall, much less the board) were chatting up our next disaster from above, which consisted of a block of warm, moist Gulf air rising up and over that bloody arctic weather pouring south. And I can't even blame Mr. Syroid for this one, as it's coming from Hudson's bay, and if I can believe the weather maps, Tom was in the upper twenties ABOVE zero this morning. This disaster this morning looked to head south, much like the eclipse did on Monday. They were saying four to six inches, if we're "lucky."
Tonight, I learn from these learned folk that the storm has shifted north - we're no longer on a fringe but right down the barrel, and we're going to be lucky to avoid the ten-to-twelve-inch band, if we're lucky.
Oh well. Check back tomorrow, and I'll tell you all about the rush hour. Personally, I'm going to go read about the fellows Down Under, like Jonathan Sturm and the newest Daynoter, Mike Barkman - fellas, I want to hear more complaining about bugs, humidity, and plain old heat. Please. I'm begging you here... ;-) G'nite.
Thursday, December 28, 2000
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Ah, winter. I do enjoy living in an area with four distinct, variable seasons. I like having one hundred degrees (F, obviously it's an F*ing temperature) and then, six months later, nearly two hundred degrees different when factoring in the wind chills. I like the Spring, when you first dig under the slightly rotting leaves and dead grass, and hit that wonderful damp dirt smell; the summer, when you get the warm breezes and the hum of the bugs, the fall, when you get the wonderful golds, reds, greens, and the smell of burning leaves (and the faint tinge of something forgotten and rotting in someone's garden), and the winter, when the ground (usually) is covered with a soft, cold, white blanket. Of course, if you look to the left, here, you'll find our radar pictures for the day, spread out over a couple of hours. I've reduced them, if you're using IE and note the time (Zulu, not local time) on the images... And no, it's not a hurricane, it's freaking SNOW. But today's complaint is on the theme of "Expectations." No, not great ones, but just your basics. Our friends in the weather offices of the various television and radio stations do a very very poor job of setting them. I don't need to repeat the story about the little shepherd and the wolves, but some of these people ought to read it. My perception, if you'll forgive me, is that we can relate many of our problems these days to problems with expectations. Proper, reasonable, adequate expectations in various areas. Why do people sue? Because they don't get what they THINK is fair or right. Why do people get upset? Because people do not treat them as expected. Three cases in point from my very own life for a good example - FIRST, the fine folks working at weather prediction. I understand that the job is both difficult and extremely complicated. But for crying out loud, if the storm's going to be four to eight inches of snow, then SAY four to eight inches, DO NOT start out at four to eight and move up to ten to fifteen. Don't tell us "the computers are telling us a warming trend is in the future" when the warming trend has shown up, and disappeared, every week for the last month. Case #2 - my local cable company, scum under the fingernail on the long, useless arm of the great combine that is AT&T, sends me my bill. Short version - we had a coupon and ordered a pay-per-view movie - if I remember right, "Rules of Engagement" with Tommy Lee Jones and Lawrence Fishburne. As the movie was R-rated, we didn't want to watch it with the kids up, so we watched it as it started after 8 pm (the kids go to bed at 8 pm on school nights). I think the showing started between 8:30 and 9 pm. When we ordered the movie, we were told that it was running all day - fine; we just want to make sure we can see the whole movie after 8 pm. We were assured we could. We confirmed, re-confirmed, and re-re-confirmed. Then, we sat down, and watched the movie - until10 pm - about 20 minutes before the end - when the channel we were watching the movie on turned to Adult videos. So they shut off the pay-per-view movie. I called, complained, and was told the movie would be taken off my bill. Sure enough, it wasn't. So here we go again. Case #3 - SWMBO calls Papa John's, the local "we don't give a flying fart what you want on your pizza, you're getting what we got" pizza joynt, for pizza - primarily because we had plans on going grocery shopping tonight, but with eight or more inches of snow in our parking lot, we're not going to risk it. She orders me a works pizza, hold ALL the veggies (though I like onions). They repeat the order back. She repeats to them "All the veggies, right?" and they repeat back "works, no veggies". Fine. Pizza shows up at our door, and it's a works, with mushrooms. Call the manager - after ten minutes on hold (the jerks), they come on - Manager : "Pickup or takeout?" So then the pizza kid shows up with the pizza some 45 minutes later... PK : "Here's your Pizza." Sheesh. Poor communications in the pizza joint, combined with a gradual decrease in quality - I don't think we're going to be ordering from Poo-Poo Johns for some time, if ever. |
Why does this tie in with expectations? Simple - if people had done what was expected, or at least the minimum that one would expect, this world would be a whole lot better off. If people would at least set the proper expectation, I wouldn't even mind that. Like the pizza, above - "hey, we screwed up, we're sorry, and you'll have that pizza in 45 minutes." Instead, I got "yeah, it'll be there. Bye." Am I pissed? Hell yes. Pissed enough to do something about it? Well, I dunno - me not ordering pizza from Papa John's four to six times a year isn't going to disrupt them seriously. Then again, when I finish telling all my friends about this... ;-)
And just for fun, I'm still getting crap from Techies.com. I tried forwarding everything to the webmaster, and that didn't work, so tonight I sent just one of the four I got to dfrawley@techies.com, who, according to the web site, is the founder, CEO, and Chairman of the Board for this bunch. We'll start with one, and start working our way up from there. Next time I get messages from these people, I'm going to start sending them to dfrawley@techies.com, and work my way through the execs. Eventually, I'm going to end up (unless they drop my e-mail) forwarding this stuff to their entire board.
Yeah, I'm annoyed. What can I say.
And then, to top it all off, tonight when I came home, there was a parking spot right in front of the door. I pulled up to back in to it, and the SOB in the truck behind me pulled into it. So I and two small kids have to stomp through half a parking lot of six inch snow to get in the front door. At least I've got my car back. No, not a good day at all. Though I think mine tops Tom's by a bit, and then some.
Tell me, is it my imagination, or is O'Reilly in trouble? They've cancelled a book by Thompson and Pournelle that I was absolutely certain to purchase; Now they've cancelled one from Mr. Syroid (FrontPage In A Nutshell) that I really need. Is O'Reilly losing their minds, or their shorts? Just checking.
The good news, though, is that Mr. Barkman's getting into the swing of things - he's been abused enough to ditch the frames on his site in favor of the "KISS" method (in my house, it's called "Keep It Simple, Sushi-for-brains"). Now, to get him complaining about the weather. Oh, to hear someone gripe about heat and humidity.... *<|8-) (that's me in my glasses with a hat - the kind with a pom-pom on top - might be a Canadian Tuk or a "Tossle-cap".
At least there was one good thing - I found my GIF animator I'd been missing for, well, about two years now. It's a little Microsoft gadget, great tool (when they concentrate on small, focused tools, no one can beat them). That means only one thing - you folks is in deep trouble... ;-)
Friday, December 29, 2000
Today is one of those good-day/bad-day types of days that I just shrug and move on with.
When I got up this morning, I called the bank just to check. You see, today is payday - my first since November 17, and the first I've truly EARNED since August 11th. And it was for about a week more than the normal. So it was nice. Of course, you know what that means... The other shoe was hanging around. After getting my car tuned up earlier this week, and getting the title transferred on our new car (damned Minnesota State Excise tax - let's just be honest and call it robbery and be done with it, shall we?), we found ourselves going "oh, ouch." The good news, if one can call it that, is that we are current with nearly all of our bills - only daycare is behind, and not seriously so. Not too bad for being out of work for four months, I guess.
But that's enough about the financial situation. Today, otherwise, was full of rather nice successes. I was finally able to get replication working on a couple of other computers I'd been beating on for a few weeks; I also fell back a little on my "sort-of" QA background, and found what I thought was a bug in our software. Rather than run over to our developers and say "lookee here" I sat down, thought about it, and wrote up a test plan. Very short, just nine tests; make sure I can get data from a server to an off-line machine - then make sure changes move around between the machines. Then make sure that if two computer change the same information, the right one wins. Then, finally, test what I thought was a bug - if I change one field in one record, then a different field in the same record, both fields should update at both computers. And they didn't. Aha!
So then I went to the programmers. And the other two smarter fellers I work with had already found the problem. The only difference was that they explained what they saw - I had my documentation. Oh well.
'Nuff about work. She Who Must Be Obeyed today sent me a link and the subject of the e-mail was "Arthur C. Clarke" - my very first thought was "Oh, no - not this close." I'd heard on the news this morning that there are plans to re-release 2001 on the big screen later this year. You can bet that if that does happen, I will take my son, and my father, and the three of us will go see the movie. Dad and I went to it when I was a kid, probably late 1968 or early 1969 (ah, the good old days, when we had four theaters in St. Cloud, and when a new movie came out, it stuck around for a couple of months. I remember sitting in the old Cinema 70 in St. Cloud - the theater could seat probably close to 2000 people, and the screen itself was something like 50-60 feet across. The last movie I saw there was E.T. - we went just after my high school graduation party. There, now one bunch of you can giggle and say "he's such a pup" and the other bunch of you can go "man, he's so old he remembers intermissions in movies!"). I'll find out if they're going to play 2001 in something like an Omni Theater or an iMax - THAT would be the way to see it. I'll take Grandpa and Jack and we'll have a male bonding moment.
Anyway, Mr. Clarke is doing just fine - he's slowed a little, and is now 83, but he's made it to nearly 2001, and sounds like he'll make 2002 and beyond.
Though Mr. Thompson might regret reading the link - Arthur Clarke agrees with me about NEXT year starting the new millennium.
Doh! Which reminds me. Mr. Hough, who always catches me with my shortcomings exposed, noticed my comments about zooming in and out, above. I suspect that it's not due to the video card, but rather Microsoft PhotoDraw, which allows me to zoom in and out with the images in IE. Although I should confess that with Photoshop, Photodraw, Paint Shop Pro, Graphics Workshop, and who knows what else we've got, I'm not quite sure what's going to come out of my naval most days.
And speaking of navel/naval issues, I was in the grocery store tonight - never ever managed to do all of my grocery shopping in less than an hour before - looks like everyone else was hitting the liquor stores. Ah, to be young, foolish, and... looking for a good time, I guess.
Ah. I wish I had the climate Jonathon has. Being deeply landlocked like we are here in Minnesota (draw a line straight up from the point of Texas, one of the furthest points south in the US, and you'll pass right to the left of us, stuck in the middle of the continent), we get extremes. Boy, do we get extremes. Today, we cracked into the double-digits above zero again, but we also will drop into the doubles-below tomorrow night.
And speaking of tomorrow night, many, many moons ago, I had wanted to spend this coming New Year's eve doing something special, as it is, as we all know, the beginning of the third millennium of the Christian era. However, budgets and things have a way of getting in the way. The good news, though, is that we are going to be doing something fun - the whole family is going up to visit one of my oldest friends and his family to celebrate the New Year. Last time he and I were together on a New Years, we ended up watching Van Halen's new video, Jump. There, that should tell you something else about my age and taste.
Though I really have to laugh - what we got hit with yesterday is headed east. There's a storm off the coast heading north, and there's a storm in the southeast heading north... Guess where all three look like they're going to run into eachother? You got it - Times Square, come Sunday. hehehehehehe. Thank goodness I stayed home.
And the good news - we have gained 6 minutes of daylight since the Winter Solstice last week. It's getting warmer, it's getting warmer, it's getting warmer... I can hope, can't I?
And I almost forgot! Our local Big Ten (eleven, really, but hey, it's college sports, they're not supposed to count), the University of Minnesota, participated in their second bowl game in the last two years. And, as occurred last year, they lost. The really sad part is that they went to a bowl, and lost, and now they've got to come back home with a .500% record. Six wins, six losses. Ah, I remember the good old days when going to a bowl meant you'd played pretty well.
Saturday, December 30, 2000
Phew, what a day. I vaguely remember waking up this morning, and then we started running... and finally slowed down now. The good news is we're in the middle of a heat wave around here. I think our low last night was above zero. Looks like someone closed the freezer door.
Actually, one of the local weather folk last night pointed out that most of our cold comes from the communities lining the edge of Hudson's Bay - One of those is Churchill, (Churchhill? I think the former's right) where, yesterday, they topped out at zero. Sure, that's cold, but when you figure that they're perhaps a thousand miles north of us and two weeks ago they were in the thirty-to-forty below range, we're doing much better.
Back
to snow, though - Back on Thursday they let
us all know here in the apartment that they were going to be plowing the lot
this morning. Typically, this happens on weekdays, so having the cars out
of the lot between 9 am and 3 pm isn't that big a deal. However, Saturdays
are a bit different. When I got out there at 8:50 this morning, there were
cars parked all along about a half-mile stretch of Greenhaven drive, but just on
one side. Rather than parking a half-mile away, we ended up taking my car
around town for today's errands.
First the YMCA for classes, etc., then to the library to drop off books and get others, then to the apartments just down the hill, on a "just in case, let's see what they've got" look.
And that's where my son started the long slow slide into trouble today. We walked into an apartment they were in the process of "turning over" - cleaning up, repainting (required by state law here), replacing the carpet (every two to three years, depending on tenant turnover), and general cleanup. The new folks move in next weekend. So we walk up the stairs, check out this place, and the kids start looking in the bedrooms.
Not thirty seconds later, Jack comes out of the back master bedroom, with the usual plaintive "Daddy..." wail which means "man, I'm screwed when you find out about this, but you've got to help me!" The caretaker had gone out for lunch, and left the five gallon pail of white Latex paint in the bedroom. Uncovered. And Jack had shoved his hand into it up to his palm. Lovely move, that. "Hi, we're prospective tenants in a very tight rental marketplace, with two small, but we want you to believe well-behaved children, and we'd like to look at the one unit you're going to have open in a few weeks?" Then Mr. Disaster, King of the Mucus People, shoves his hand into the bucket of white paint.
Oh, we got him cleaned up. Fortunately, the woman showing us around the place was a grandmother herself, and quite used to minor disasters such as the one Jack caused. We managed to wash off most of the paint from the kid, carpet, walls, and other surfaces. She was pretty calm about the whole thing; I was not. But we recovered. Of course, Jack's coat now has some white latex paint stripes on it, as does Ann's (she cleaned him up while I concentrated on the carpet, walls, floor, and other areas). And the lady still gave us applications!
After that, we popped for our New Year's Eve lunch a day early, hit the grocery store, and then came home. And at home, Jack managed to pick up, then drop, the gallon of skim milk we got - it split like a water balloon, and there we go. Back to the store tomorrow for more.
Tonight, or maybe tomorrow, we do laundry, then work on the present for tomorrow - the New Year's Eve party includes a gift exchange - each child brings a gift, as does each couple... Then we exchange. Pretty neat idea. Ours, of course, is a master of ingenuity. More on that tomorrow - or next year.
But before I go, in case JHR stops by - this is what that coat of arms looks like...
Sunday, December 31, 2000
Wow. A whole year gone by.
A year ago today I was watching television, watching New Zealand and Australia take the first tentative steps into "Y2K" - having been aware of the issue for something like seven years, I was more than a bit concerned.
There are a lot of people out there who claimed that Y2K was the biggest boondoggle - my father even doubted the work that was done. I personally know that there were a number of systems in the business I was in that would have failed, completely, come that January 1, unless they'd been corrected.
Of course, now I'm so indoctrinated that I can't even write "00" on a check - I still write 2000. Two-digit year blocks on forms drive me nuts, as well.
But who would have thought that the real Y2K problem wouldn't have been 00, but counting from one to ten, over and over and over and over again? I think the problems in Florida, combined with the whole issue of how we in the United States select our President, shows just exactly how little attention we've paid to the issue in the last forty or fifty years. And in some places, more.
No, I'm not blaming the Retread Republicans - it's not solely their fault. There's a great deal of blame to go around. We could blame the woman (a Democrat) who designed the stupid butterfly ballot. We could blame the "Great State of Florida" that relied on a voting method that required "interpretation". We could blame the Florida State officials of every level who failed to consider such a problem in the state, and provide clear and specific direction for conducting a recount. We could blame the courts at the state level for tying this whole thing up in knots, or we could blame the United States Supreme Court for sticking it's nose in where it most emphatically didn't belong.
I guess I'm not going to blame anyone. My preferred candidate, John McCain, lost in the primaries. My last best choice won the popular vote, and lost the electoral vote.
This has been a long, strange, weird year. I, for one, am thankful for what the year has brought and taught, and yet I'm quite ready for a new year to start. Even if it is 2001, and we have to worry about copy protection on hard drives and big brother, rather than HAL.
Well, I'll tell you this much - if my dreams of next year are as weird as this year's, I need some serious help.
I didn't mention this yesterday, and my faithful readers in Montevideo (you know who you are) will giggle at this one - When I got up yesterday, the kids were watching television. They usually ask to watch Disney, but yesterday had found Sci Fi's Star Trek (Original Series) marathon - fortunately, they'd winnowed out the chaff of the old series (No "Spock's Brain" episodes, thank goodness), and showed just the good ones. Tribbles, for example.
I think one of the things that's often overlooked in that old series, with the then-state-of-the-art-and-now-pathetic efforts in special effects, is that the writing, characterization, and other parts of the show make it easily and readily understandable for even children. Granted, that was a hallmark of every TV series when I was a child - good was good, bad was bad, and there was little grey area in the middle. Most of the shows I liked - Adam-12, Emergency, Star Trek - they all had very clear delineation.
That part will play in later. Anyway, last night I agreed to a "chick flick night" - after the kids were in bed (admittedly, after both Star Wars Episode One and Independence Day, two of my favorites, I had little to gripe about), we watched "Notting Hill".
Since we watched the weather first, we didn't START the film until 10:30 pm - darned late for us flyover folk. I kept nodding on and off in it (and yes, Chris, Julia is something of a wide-mouthed frog, but frankly, I can't see what she sees in Hugh Grant - if the fellow exhibited any sort of assertiveness at all, he'd likely shock his socks back into the drawer. My personal favorite is Spike. Especially his "I'm going to get something to eat, then I'll tell you a story that will make your balls shrivel to the size of raisins." Yeee-ouch. Though I want his tee-shirt collection).
After doing the bobbing and weaving thing with my head (manufacturing "Z's" we call it - you might call it "drowsing"), I saw most of the movie, and went to bed. This morning, I woke up next to Monkey boy, he of the serrated elbows, and shipped him back to his room. Then, I came back to bed.
And then, I had the weirdest dream. I dreamed that, for some reason, we were celebrating Christmas and a couple of days after in California. Just as we were getting ready to check out, I received a call from Dr. Jerry Pournelle, who invited us to crash at his house. We went over there, and this gentleman smiled at my grandchildren, watched them annoy his dog, and in general, just watched with amusement. As my wife assisted in the preparations for New Year's Day dinner (outdoors, this being sunny California), a vehicle pulls up, and William Shatner gets out. I walk into the back yard where everyone is, and I hear myself say "no one's going to believe me when I post this one tomorrow."
I think that either qualifies for a <SEG> or a <WAG>. Or maybe both. Though I'm a bit worried that it might later serve as sufficient evidence when they try to commit me.
And just in case, I should probably apologize for the lack of Buck Hill pictures - the door out onto the balcony's frozen shut, folks - No kidding. I'd shoot through the screen, but the experiments I've done look pretty poor. But I did do a little fiddling with my newly recovered Microsoft GIF Animator - very easy to use program. If you want, you can click here for an animated display (full size, sorry) of the radar above... (Sorry Phil - couldn't see straight to add the tag, apparently - thanks for catching it!)
And I'll probably see you next year. Be careful, be safe, and remember - it's amateur night out there on the roads... Be careful. We're heading to a friend's house for a New Year's party we should enjoy. And if not, well, we'll have a good time anyway.
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P. Dominik. All rights reserved.
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