My Dad is in surgery today for his prostate. Hopefully it will go smoothly and quickly, and he will fly through it with no problems. Good luck Dad. I love you.
Jen and I had a good weekend planting and working. We found a pair of boxwoods, a butterfly plant and bought a bunch of dirt at Lowe’s, and planted it all, as well as repotting the crepe myrtles. Unfortunately I think we’re going to lose one of them—it fell over on its side and cooked for a while before I got home and righted it, so all the leaves are shriveled and unhappy.
Through my buddy Tim, I found this site, which has a really interesting primer on relational databases.
Update: Dad is out of surgery, doing well.
Canton, Sunday June 30
I found a few interesting articles on web usability through Boxes and Arrows today; this is an interesting take on user expectations, done in 2000 (so it’s out of date for 2002) but still interesting.
Dad’s surgery is scheduled for the 22nd; I’m planning on heading up there for an extended visit the weekend afterwards to be by the family. I also made plans with my Scout guy to take some pics with a disposable camera when he’s out there, and he actually offered to call me from the field where it sits so that he can describe its condition to me. I just have to get him the cameras now. What a nice guy.
Dad made it through his pre-stress test with flying colors, so he will be making his appointment to have the surgery next month sometime. whew.
I found a couple of interesting articles from a variety of different sources;
this one Meg Hourihan, about what we do when we blog, and why. Dave over at UserLand has a handy little primer on news aggregators with RSS, something I’ve been thinking about hooking up for some time now (as my links page is hopelessly outdated and useless.)
I’m here in Aurora writing this on my Mom’s iMac, after loading up Fetch and BBEdit and getting it organized. I have to admit, I’m impressed by how zippy this 3-year-old machine really is. If I was to find one at home used for less than $400, I’d probably buy it so that I could give Renie her beige G3 back.
Christmas was fantastic up here; everybody had a great time and enjoyed their gifts. Renie, as usual, knocked herself out and gave me a beautiful progressive-scan DVD player which also plays MP3’s on CD-ROM discs- wow! I’m going to have to rethink the whole musical situation at home and really figure out a way to wire the house so that the TV/DVD player is hooked into a receiver that reaches upstairs. Mom and Dad gave me a beautiful used flash unit for my Minolta, which is fantastic- I can’t wait to get the roll I shot up here developed to see how the flash syncs up with the shutter. But I’m thrilled- finally I can use it in low-light situations, like the basement…oh, yeah…that’s done already.
Jen was wonderful and gave me a beautiful silver ring, the first piece of jewelry I’ve ever owned (and worn) and it looks like it belongs on my finger. She was nervous and worried that I wouldn’t like it, bless her heart, but once I put it on my finger it hasn’t come off. I’m still holding it up in front of mirrors and looking at it as if aliens stole in the bedroom at night and put it on my hand- it’s shocking, but very comforting, to see something that beautiful but masculine on my finger. Also, my obsessive-compulsive tendecies have kicked into high gear, and I find myself playing with it when I’m nervous or bored.
…
Just realizing how badly over to the PC side I’ve gone…this page looks like crap on a Mac running IE 5. I just spent about 10 minutes cleaning up bad HTML. Makes me wonder if the other pages look the same (I’m too scared to look and too tired to clean them up.) My skillz are nowhere right now. I need me a Mac bad.
Back from NY state this weekend; Jen and I drove up to put the top on the Scout and see the folks. New York State, and especially Aurora, is beautiful this time of year. The town is filled with colorful leaves that actually haven’t fallen yet (up on the hill, they’re all gone, but down in town they were still up.) We got to see a lot of the family too; after getting everything done on Saturday we ordered pizza, drank PBR in cans (Consumer Reports listed it as the best domestic canned beer, and damn if it wasn’t too bad!)
The Scout top went on without a hitch; it was actually easier this year than last year, funny enough. Jen, Renie and I put it on ourselves with judicious use of the sawhorses and some ingenuity, and all the screws went it smoothly. We even got the dome light hooked up again.
At 3am on Sunday morning, my mother woke us quietly, and we wrapped ourselves in warm clothes. We met in the kitchen, where she was brewing hot tea, and waited for my sister. We piled in her car and drove up Sherwood Road to a laneway above Brick Church Lane and parked; then we looked up and took in the incredible sight of the Leonid Meteor Shower. For about 15 minutes we watched outside until it got too cold, then jumped in the car and watched for another 45 minutes or so. Returning at 4:30, we crawled back into bed and slept until 10:30.
My Palm Pilot went down this weekend. I hard-reset it and it seems to have come back up (at least it’s working.) But I have to re-sync it with the NT box tonight; I lost everything on it.
Great story about how a well-used symbol was developed. | Ha-ha, dummy. Your picture’s all over the internet now. (via metafilter)
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
I got some more sanding done in the basement last night, and was able to run the feed from the new computer circuit into a junction box mounted on the wall and up to the second floor office. I’m going to leave the circuit turned off until I can install a new box behind the drywall in there and add a plug. I got some more drywall installed and used the last 4’x4′ sheet, so tonight I’ll buy 3 more sheets, the junction box inserts for the new wiring, another tub of mud, several more 2×4’s, and three large lighted rocker switches for the lighting down there. I’ll probably try to focus on the front window tonight and build the box setup for the enclosure (that should take a while) and maybe get some drywall installed.
I talked to my Mom last night; she was mainly trying to get her iMac online and get the e-mail set up so she could send/receive again (Dad, who is frightened like a little German schoolgirl at all things Mac, got on there the other night and futzed the whole thing up) so I stepped her through the process and got her back online again. After 6 months of her paying for Earthlink modem access while Dad paid for a cable modem sitting in the next room, they finally ditched Earthlink, got her back up on his network after I suggested they buy a DSL/cable modem router like the one I have. Sometimes they drive me nuts.
Yesterday I found an archive of old Commodore 64 games, and found a pair that were listed that reminded me of days gone by. One was a game called ‘Impossible Mission‘, and featured a quote of an English guy saying, “Destroy him, my robots…” in a bad Bela Lugosi impersonation. That one took me back. The other one was a game called Mail Order Monsters, where you could build monsters and equip them with different items of varying deadliness, then drop them into an arena and have ’em fight it out Gladiator-style. I also found a copy of Skyfox, which for its day was a pretty cool game and had me entranced for about a month before I mastered it and it got boring. There was a clip of the IM theme music and a ROM download of the game; I also found an emulator for the PC and a great site to download more ROMS. Maybe if I get super-ultra bored I’ll fire it up and play a round or two. Maybe. This all served to remind me that I need to get back with Stas and see how he’s doing.
Found this site on PriceWatch- the Kodak 3400 is $279. A 48 MB compactFlash card is an additional $40 as well. I’m gonna look in the ol’ bank account and see what’s in there right now.
I’m back, and I have the cash, but I’m not buying it. Must focus on the basement. All I’d be buying the stupid camera for is to take pictures of the basement right now anyway.
This still doesn’t change the fact that I want a digital cam very badly.
Found this article on the Kodak website- i love this place, I have always been fascinated by it ever since I saw a GEO Magazine article on it in 1982, and I want to go to Arizona to see it.
11:30PM – Just came back upstairs from the basement- my back is aching, but in a mildly pleasant ‘I just did 4 hours of honest good work’ kind of way. I bought 3 2x4x10’s, 3 sheets of drywall and the adapters for the steel junction box, which got installed; more drywall up on the inside of the closet- there’s just a spot on the inside right wall that needs to be done and then it just needs a finish mud. The plug went in OK and all I need to do now is test it out tomorrow evening. The left wall of the closet is, in hindsight, about 6″ too close to the side of the furnace, preventing easy access to the humidifier unit, but I’m installing an access panel in the corresponding wall that will allow entry and replacement of the filter. The steel edging is up and 1/2 mudded on the left wall, and most of the inside is sanded. All in all, a good night’s work.
Jen and I had a fantastic weekend together- after some serious issues were discussed, and we actually got to the point where we looked at splitting up. We went north to the Chadd’s Ford Winery and did some antiquing on Sunday, and then went to the festival on Sunday. I bought one of those handy picnic-wine carrier deals where it holds a cold bottle of wine and two glasses. Very nice- i always wanted one of those. Jen packed a picnic basket and we tasted wine, then bought a bottle and sat on the grass in the shade with each other. We didn’t want to leave.
Renie has all kinds of good news about Charles, her new flame; apparently they are officially an item. I am very happy for her- she sounds ecstatic about it, and with good reason. This is the best news I’ve heard for her in a long time, excepting the house, which goes to settlement on Thursday.
I read today that HP and Compaq are going to “merge” to form an “87 billion-dollar company”. OK. I owned a Compaq workstation- hell, I don’t even remember what it was now, about 3 years ago. I bought it from my employer at that time for $250, which was pretty steep but still a decent deal for what i got. Not six months later, in attempting to do something as simple as drop a larger hard drive in the thing, I fried the BIOS on the board because, and the exact details are now hazy, the BIOS could only be accessed by a special program inserted on a floppy disk. So I gutted it, bought a case and new motherboard, and salvaged the remaining parts. What a piece of junk. HP makes great printers in my opinion, but their computers suck just as bad. Good luck, guys.
Mr. Rogers is packing up the farm. I wasn’t even aware he was still around and doing new shows. All the cracks about a 50 year old guy playing with puppets and talking about the “Land of Make-Believe” aside, the guy had an impact on my life, in a positive way. Take care, Fred, and thanks for the memories. You, Sesame Street and the Electric Company were my daily education outside of the New Jersey Public School System. Which, I’m proud to say, taught me the difference between Your and You’re; (i.e. one is overused by stupid idiots) and their, they’re and there.
Back at work on Monday. Jen and I did a real nice dinner for her birthday on Friday night; we worked out what was going on with us and really came together for a good weekend. Saturday I cleaned the house and straightened up everything so that Kate and Dan could come into town and have dinner; we took them to Henninger’s and had a real good time. Sunday we drove in the Lockard bus up to Longwood Gardens to meet Rob and his girlfriend, and her whole family; Jen and I had to keep our shit together to survive going into the giant sucking maw of the Pennsylvania Clemson booster family. Both her parents had matching Explorers with Clemson tiger paw stickers on the fenders. Can I vomit here and now? Would you mind?
Today is a bit brighter, even though I’m tired; I’m two days away from being paid, and I can’t wait to be able to pay bills and not get behind, or take money out of the savings account. I looked at the Visa bill this morning- ouch. It’s going to be a while before I do any silly frivolous spending, I guess. I want to get that paid back down and start saving some cash reserves back up, and quick. No computer for me, and probably no Scout unless I find a sweetheart deal somewhere close that I can’t pass up.
OK, this is messed up. If this was one of my daughters, I’d flip out in a major Mike Brady sort of way. Yikes.
Very hard to concentrate on work today. I’m running through all the things I want to do in my head and it seems overwhelming. I really want to start working in Perl again, and I haven’t even started looking at the stuff I need to yet. I’d really like to get this log online as a perl script and pull all of this stuff out of a text file as a script as well; the page format would be an HTML file the script would read, a flow in the template info, and then do a foreach loop through the text file until it reached the end of the content and then write the footer information.
12:29 am – I found a new typeface to use online- Tahoma, which i just set this whole page in, from one of the sites mentioned in the Salon article above. Very nice. We dig.