I’m mucking about further with the HTML behind this page; it’s slowly crawling towards 100% XHTML compliance (don’t even bother trying to validate this page- it’ll explode.) bits and pieces here and there are getting rewritten, then rewritten again—the calendar over there on the left is a good example, and it’s still not done. Originally I had intended to build around a new redesign, but I’m going to stick with the layout I have for the time being and get it to where I want it to be.
Cash. My mother gave me a subscription to Vanity Fair a few Christmases ago, because she’d see me bogarting her copies when Jen and I were heading down on to the dock to swim. Truthfully, I was looking for reading material besides Better Homes, which I’d never read, and The New Yorker, which I already get, because I never bring reading material when I visit. I find the magazine a strange hybrid of fawning starlust and lurid true-crime stories of the Rich and Famous (seriously, how many people have been murdered suspiciously in the Hamptons? And do I really care? I’ll never vacation there, and sure wouldn’t consider it now, given the apparent homicide rate.) Still, between the profiles of über-rich asshole society figures and glossy Bruce Weber photos of young rich Hollywood stars, there’s the occasional nugget of goodness. This month, there’s a profile of the strange, fruitful collaboration between Johnny Cash and Rick Rubin, which is worth the price of the magazine—I was a latecomer to the music of the Man in Black, but have grown to enjoy his early work, which makes the last five albums of his career stand out in greater relief, and highlight the genius of the work they did together. I’d link you to the article, but Condé Nast has a dumbheaded anti-Web policy where they don’t post anything online that I can find.
Wax On, Wax Off. Today we have a fellow meeting us at the house; he’s going to give us an estimate for sanding and finishing the first floor and stairwell. We decided, because it’s mainly oak with a decorative inlay, that having a pro do the first floor was the best course of action—that, and the fact that it’ll be done in a weekend as opposed to a month. Hopefully the quote will be low, the timeframe will be soon, and the job will get done quickly.
Huh. International has gotten back into the business of building pickup trucks… sort of.
Today I hijacked Nate and drove down to Timonium to look at a 19″ LCD monitor being sold off Craigslist. I should back up and describe our current office setup: We have a four-year-old G4 Mac tower and a 9-year-old Apple 17″ display as our main design system at the house. The monitor is so old that fuses blow when I power it up. It’s bigger than the Jeep and its highest resolution is 1024×768—big stuff for 1995 but unacceptable for today’s work. Plus, the refresh rate is about 4mhz, so it sends Jen into fits of seizure when she has to look at it for more than five minutes. I know I’ve been bellyaching for months about money, but this seemed like a no-brainer for $450. I have it plugged in to the Powerbook, and it’s absolutely beautiful.
Everybody welcome Stellan Heazlett online when you get a chance.
Eulogy. I drove out north yesterday to pick up Jen at Henry’s funeral yesterday, and was able to pay my graveside respects. He was, we agreed, a ‘peculiar’ fellow (I won’t go into the hotpants thing right now) but someone with a huge heart. During his eulogy, the rabbi mentioned that when Henry knew you had a problem, he offered his help without fail, and I’d have to agree with that. While talking about it last night, Jen and I realized that it’s been over a year since we saw him last: moving Jen out of her apartment, we had no way to get two old easy chairs and a couch to the dump. Henry drove up in his pickup and within five minutes had helped us wrestle two of the chairs on his truck, and by the next day had made all three disappear. Shalom, and thanks for the vanishing of the furniture, Hotpants Henry.
Clearing Out the Link Cache. Canon PowerShot strobe information. E-TTL info, or: does my frickin’ flash work? | Digital camera primer. SLR vs. point and shoot. | Replacement APC battery. My APC is dead as a doornail. | IHC lineset ticket codes. Deciphering my Scout’s lineset ticket, made easy. | Single-axle and enclosed trailers. Unfortunately, they are very expensive. | Card sorting for application/site design. Handy, but impractical for my 9-5 gig. | Upgrading an eMac. I have a freelance tech job this weekend. | Cheap iPod replacement battery. Jen’s iPod is still busted. | Finally, an interesting book on productivity, as well as a productivity application. I need all the help I can get.
After an abortive final attempt to set up my own WebDAV server at the house for publishing calendars from iCal, I broke down and gave up. Instead, I’m using iCal Exchange, a free WebDAV service set up to help normal folks like me. Sweet.
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
—Benjamin Franklin
Do we really need to hear any more bullshit? Kerry’s people had better wake up and start hitting back, or this election is already over. (fake Onion humor via metafilter) And I’m embarrassed to say that this dude is from Maryland. I hope Obama stomps him.
After an abortive final attempt to set up my own WebDAV server at the house for publishing calendars from iCal, I broke down and gave up. Instead, I’m using iCal Exchange, a free WebDAV service set up to help normal folks like me. Sweet.
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
—Benjamin Franklin
Do we really need to hear any more bullshit? Kerry’s people had better wake up and start hitting back, or this election is already over. (fake Onion humor via metafilter) And I’m embarrassed to say that this dude is from Maryland. I hope Obama stomps him.
I woke up this morning with Teller the cat anxiously pawing my face for food and a splitting headache. I dozed through Jen’s shower and rose a half-hour late to make coffee, only to find she’d already done it. Two ibuprofen later, I was in a better state and paused to look at the week’s progress: one coat of primer in the linen closet, a working light, and the pipe access door mudded for sanding. The front windows are on their second coat of paint and looking for a final touch-up before I put the storm windows back and move on. Not bad for a week’s work.
Alien Pod. Since I brought my busted Airport Base Station back into work, I’ve had three different people enter the ubercle and say, “Whoa! What is that?!?” After I explain it to them, they nod approvingly and we continue our work-related issues. Single men, take note: walk your Base Station at the park this week; the chicks will stop and ask what it is, at which time you can strike up conversation and get a phone number. It’s as good as a puppy or a baby. Anyway, I decided not to order the repair kit from this “company”, as their “home page” is all broke-down and I get a suspicious vibe. I’m just going to hit Baynesville Electronics and pick up the capacitors I need on my own to repair it.
I said before that I’d like a lampshade-style iMac, but Apple just announced the new iMac G5, which is not much bigger than a standard flat-panel monitor. I think Mrs. Lockard would find working on this machine a lot easier than her current laptop. And for $1,300, the baseline 17″ model is not a bad deal at all.
Also: Skype (VoIP software for computers) is now available, in beta, for OSX. I’ve used the alternative, a SIP-based phone made by Cisco, and while it was very cool (think of this idea: carry a phone with you wherever you go. Find an outlet and an RJ45 jack, plug it in, and call England for nothing more than the monthly fee—in my case, something like $10) it wasn’t as simple as being able to do it from my laptop, which would be sweet. If you can get past the cellphone-like lag time, it’s *almost* as good as the real deal.
Dumb House News. There is now a working light in our linen closet. I have still to do the finish sanding, but it should be ready for shelving in the next few weeks, after the bathtub access hatch is finished off. Rejoice!
I’m bored, bummed, and in a bad mood. Happy monday. In happier news, the hospital is kicking Mrs. Lockard to the curb today or tomorrow, which is a step in the right direction. She looks a million times better than last week (I spent saturday night with her.)
My Airport Extreme Base Station showed up on Saturday when nobody was at work. Thanks, guys. No word on when it will make a return appearance.
The two second-floor bedroom windows are scraped, glazed, primed and painted with gloss white. I’m going to have to hit them a second time before replacing the storm windows, but the house is looking less and less like it’s abandoned. I would have worked more yesterday but between the lack of sleep and high humidity, I made like a potato and sat on the couch for most of the evening.
I took the Base Station back apart yesterday when I had a minute to spare, and got it down to its base guts: screws, motherboard, WaveLan card, wiring, case. I put it all back together and plugged it in for one final try, and seemed to work fine. Later, when I got it home and ran it for more than a half hour, it died, leading me to believe that the capacitors are, in fact, toast. (I was attempting to prove the Second Dugan Law Of Fixing Stuff, which goes like this: If you can take it apart and put it back together, there’s about a 60% chance it’ll work again, because something came loose. This is highly unscientific, of course.) I’m going to order the capacitor fix kit online and attempt to get it running again.
Phase Two. This afternoon I’m going to begin the next part of the housepainting project, which involves lots of ladderwork, removal of storm windows, hours of fun with window glazing, cursing, beer, primer and paint, more beer, and replacement of the storm windows. Today I’m going to pull as many of the storms off the front of the house as possible, mark them, and get ready for Saturday. I can’t say that I’m looking forward to this job (this involves something like 25 full-size windows, not counting the atrium) but I’ll be very happy when it’s done.
We here on the East coast are a bit behind the times where some things are concerned. Five years ago, when I used to hear about newfangled technologies and web services, I thought “Gee, that’s a swell idea, but it’ll take fifteen years to reach us here in Baltimore.” Webvan, Pets.com—great ideas, but not available in this backwater city.
So imagine my surprise when I found out that Peapod, which is owned by the Giant grocery chain, is now offering online shopping and delivery service in the Baltimore area. That’s right, for a minimum order of $50, you can have somebody drop off the milk, eggs, bread, and TP to your house when you’re there, or even when you’re not. I’d like to test it out sometime soon to see how well it works. Then maybe we might set up a bimonthly dropoff of the staples just so we can save the time and hassle of picking them up.
In other consumer news, I broke down today and bought a refurbished Airport Extreme Base Station to replace the first unit that died with the liquor return money we got from our wedding supplier. (Gotta love wholesalers, baby!) After doing a pile of research on the other alternatives out there, I decided to give the big A another shot.
I took Jen out to dinner on Wednesday not only because we had nothing to eat in the house, but because we needed to debrief over alcoholic beverages after a week of absurdity featuring various family members. Last night the hilarity continued, to the point where my blood pressure rose above stroke level. Suffice it to say that some people need to work on their own responsibility, accountability, and consistency issues before they start lecturing other people. Got that, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman?
Airport Update. Because I like to tinker with stuff and take it apart, I cracked the case on my Base Station this morning to troubleshoot the problem. Apparently there are three main causes for failure: blown capacitors in the power supply (by most accounts the most prevalent), corrupted firmware, or a bad WaveLan Card. (Essentially the Base Station is a tiny computer motherboard with a PCMCIA wireless card soldered on.) From what the troubleshooting information says, I don’t have blown capacitors, and the reset should have taken care of bad firmware, so my thinking is that it’s the card. I’m going to ask a coworker with a laptop to help me run a diagnostic on the card (Lucent never made a diagnostic for OSX and their support is spotty) this afternoon, and we’ll see if we can figure out what the story is.