Last night our drywall guy laid down the final skim coat in the den, which means that if he actually intends to be on time, the room will be sanded this evening. If that comes to pass, I could be priming the walls and/or sanding the floor this weekend, depending on how much childcare Jen needs me to take on. I pulled some of the plastic off the windows this morning because I couldn’t help myself, and the difference in the amount of light getting in there is amazing.
I’m planning on a dump run tomorrow morning to get rid of construction debris and free up two of our three garbage cans, which is also the perfect opportunity to get the Scout on the road in time for 70° weather. Finn and Mama are going with the co-op to the Science Center, so I will hustle to meet them downtown for a snack at the Harborplace, which will be awesome.
I took some time last night to add August of 2003 from the old log into WordPress. At this rate, I won’t have it all integrated for the 10th anniversary, but over time I’ll get it all in once and for all.
There’s some talk of colder temperatures, rain and snow next week, but I’m going to avoid thinking about that and soak up as much sun as I can. I think a trip to the playground across the street will definitely be in order this weekend.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
So I think that this year I’m going to get serious about finding a viable steel hardtop for Peer Pressure. I’ve seen them on Craigslist for as much as $500 and as little as $200, but money and time have been short lately. The softtop I have is good but not great; the rear flap doesn’t seal, so riding inside is sort of like sitting in a moving wind tunnel. The top I have might have been viable had I not accidentally run over the corner one distracted afternoon—and it still might be, but the liftgate hinges are toast and the liftgate I have is toastier.
So, add that to the list.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
As the former owner of a ’73 VW camper van, I have a particular interest in this story: An original 21-window ’66 Kombi was abandoned in the desert and used as target practice for years. An enterprising VW fanatic towed it home, installed a pile of donated parts, and got it running. Here’s a link to the whole story on The Samba: Seems They Can Shoot Purdy Good In Nevada Too….
I got Peer Pressure out of the garage, down to the gas station and around the ‘Ville this Saturday while the weather was somewhat warm. The motor ran smoothly and everything felt just as loose and wobbly as it had when I parked her in November. The forecast is for low 60′s this coming week, which means I may try to do an early-morning dump run before work.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
I read on Fucked Company that Cidera, a former employer of mine, shut down its service for good yesterday. Godspeed, and god bless. And quiet props go to Doug Humphrey, who was Doug enough to add a goofy farewell haiku in the announcement instead of some bullshit NewEconomySpeak excuse/diatribe.
(Jen just reminded me via email of one of the design ideas she had for a streaming media brochure featuring a test pattern. )
I also read today that Mr. Rogers passed away this morning. Bye, Fred.
Now that I have a wireless network set up at the house, I’m paranoid that it’s insecure. In reading some basic online articles about the 802.11b protocol, I have cause to be concerned. The Wi-Fi Alliance has this basic information to offer, and there’s a good book written on the subject ($20). The ever-timely Airportblog leads me to believe that there’s no really good way to lock a wireless network down other than implementing a bunch of technical third-party fixes, which is discouraging. WEP is a jacket made of holes, which is disturbing, and simply denying MAC addresses is useless as well. Still, something is better than nothing, and it would be nice for Apple to implement something. We can hold out for Leap or some other encryption standard, but the long and short of it is that it’s going to take time to sort this all out.
Found via Wired: Musicbrainz.org, a service that automatically tags and catalogs your existing MP3’s based on metadata and ID tags submitted by you and other folks. It’s a great idea, along the lines of the CDDB, but there’s one drawback: The client is only available for Windows.
Yesterday, I found a sad-looking Thinkpad laying in our driveway. No explanation, no clues as to origin, wearing a tire track over the front of the casing. All the keys are gone, the screen is obviously cracked, and the port side is busted open, but overall it withstood a serious beating.
It dates to 2006, so it would still be a useful laptop if it worked, but it won’t boot up (not surprising). I’m going to crack the case and pull the hard drive to see if there’s anything on it that’s worthwhile.
Update: The entire hard drive was filled with homemade latino rap tracks, each named something unique like “Slow Shit”, “Gangsta Shit”, “Smooth Shit”, and “Playa Shit”. I erased it and now it’s a 60GB backup drive. The rest of the laptop will get recycled at Best Buy.
Hey, this looks cool! the USA Spec iPod® Interface is designed to add a dock plug to the OEM radio in our CR-V, and you can control the iPod with the controls on the steering wheel. I’d rather buy this than an entirely new head unit.
