Mike is making me jealous- his fancy Nikon takes much, much better macro pictures than my Kodak- one of the reasons I was interested in a digital camera in the first place.
I helped my neighbor Matt troubleshoot his network connections last night. The network people wired the wallplate connectors correct to the T568b standard, but then flipped all the wires at the box. Good to see I wasn’t the only one to make this mistake (although I didn’t do it on all of my wires.)
Damn the torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead Dept.: Even though this Thursday will make five paychecks promised but not delivered, I found a Scout in Annapolis this morning that sounds like it’s in good shape. I put an email in to the seller and I’m going to follow up with a phonecall in an hour or so. What the hell am I doing?
Update: She wants $2700 for it. With engine issues. Erick says the body is rough, and would need to have all fenders and quarters pulled. Hmmph.
Well, the teaching gig I was looking into did not work out. There just wasn’t enough time to absorb the curriculum before start of classes, and the schedule could have been tricky as well. I’m disappointed but hopeful that something will come of it in the future.
Stumbling around today, I found this link back to the Cluetrain Manifesto, something I had looked at a while back but forgot about, from Doc Searls’ site. Which leads me to Corante, an interesting newsfeed for tech info.
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I got the pictures back from the Scout guy, and they are not as good as I had hoped. There is some bubbling and rust over the passenger rear fender; the tailcap on that side is bashed pretty good, and there are dents over other parts of the body. I have some thinking to do about it this next week, while I’m off.
I also have a few ideas for an illustrated story that I want to attempt to begin; I’ve been waiting for a simple way to get some reference material, and now that I have a digital camera I want to start exploring the visual style.
More thoughts on the Bank Of America online billpay system:
- Setting up recurring payments is a three, possibly four-step process; first, entering the payee information, then entering the payment information, and finally entering the recurring payment information. There is an entry page, a confirmation page, and a review page. This could be shortened into two steps and handled in fewer screens—the importance of warning screens are not to be taken lightly, but there’s room for simplifying here.
- The review screens are split apart into several different ares. This makes sense on one hand, but not having all the information in one area, preferably in a calendar format, is confusing and possibly misleading.
- I would also like to see the payment information come with a ‘hold’ button, so that when people like me, with an intermmittent paycheck, have cash flow issues, we can hold a payment up to avoid overdraft fees.
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My alma mater, while being one of the top-rated Visual Communications schools in the country, suffers from having one of the worst college websites ever. They had built a cutting edge site in 1998 and did nothing to it but tack on extra sections and pages, none of which look alike. Right now the alumni pages are down and I can’t look at the drawing schedule.
Another late half paycheck. This is so damned annoying…
10:05 PM On the way home tonight, with two large crepe myrtles stuffed into the back of the Scout, I crawled down I-83 waiting for a blinding summer thunderstorm to slacken off. She was running smoothly, NPR was murmuring about the Enron scandal, just barely audible above the engine rumble and slick sweeesh of wet car tires on pavement. I merged south into clearer lanes and at the bottom of the hill I noticed a red truck off in the distance with a distinctly old profile. I sped up just a bit, and his slow pace made the distance narrow quickly. His truck was another International, a mid-60’s pickup, with the name ‘ESTHER’ written in broad brushstrokes on the left of the stamped metal tailgate. I pulled up behind him, craned my neck over the swirling branches clogging up my rearview, and pulled out to the middle lane. ESTHER motored along in the slow lane, carrying a big canoe on work racks. I pulled up alongside and waved to the guy driving, a heavily tattooed man who waved back to me, smiling. We drove like that for a little bit, and I overtook him doing 50, grinning widely. He got off somewhere between the two ends, and I was sad not to be able to talk with him about ESTHER. I’ve seen her around town over the years, usually when I’m driving the other vehicle, and I haven’t seen the driver.
It’s rare, and sometimes it doesn’t happen for a long time, but when I get an occurrence like that happening, it makes me feel better about a lot of things, and like I belong to a secret community. Sometimes that’s all I need to feel better about life.
Unfortunately, my digital camera was under the seat, so I couldn’t get a picture of ESTHER. Maybe next time….
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Well, I cleaned up a lot of loose ends yesterday; one of the major things is that I called the guy about the Wyoming Scout and let him know I have the cash ready; I was thinking about taking a week or so after the game is done and driving out to see the truck, but he mentioned that he’s heading out there in two weeks. What I think I’m going to do is send him out there with a handful of disposable cameras to take pictures of all the areas I want.
I also have a pretty good idea of how I’m going to work out the deck in the backyard; instead of just nailing a sill to the back of the house and attaching stairs, I’m going to build a platform off the sill about 3′ deep, and then attach the stairs to that. I think I have the other sections figured out too; there were some questions about how to anchor the supports to the ground, but there are some very simple galvanized steel standoffs made for 4’x4’s. I also know how I’m going to set up the stair down to the brick (when the deck is made level to account for the slope, the top of the support at the brick will be one foot off the ground.)
They started leveling the Superfresh by my house yesterday- it’s totally demolished and now they’re in the process of hauling the debris away.
I’ve been reading Don’t Make Me Think and getting a lot of very useful information out of it, along with some other links to places I’ve found in the last two weeks. I’m thinking that I’m going to test my family on the 10-20 system and see how they react to it, take notes, and write up a report for John when I get back. I know there are a number of improvements I already want to make on the interface and in the writing; going to Jakob Nielsen’s site and reading through the writing sections has me thinking. I also need to dig out my copy of The Elements of Style from the basement boxes.
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Thinking about a bunch of things today; first and foremost I found this article online and I want to take care of this immediately because my shower is looking NASTY.
I was considering the financial situation I’m in as well, and I’ve begun to prioritize for my later financial goals. I’m going to attack the VISA bill first when I get the Greycube payout, and use the remainder (with some savings kicked in) to kill the second mortgage on the house. With the $50-$250/mo. recouped from that, I can start chipping at the third, as well as put more cash away into the IRA. Meanwhile, put cash into savings for the down payment on house#2.
I just took delivery of the Zip100 removable drive for the Powerbook, and it works very well. For $45 new in the box, I’m very, very happy- Jen will be able to send out files at will from the house when we really get into the print end of freelance work.
Called my contact about the Wyoming Scout and found out where it lives; tomorrow I’m going to search for some online auto transport companies to see how much it’ll cost to get her shipped out here. I hope she’s in good shape. Mikey says I can trust this guy, and this guy says it’s rust-free. I figure anything has to be better than Chewbacca at this point…
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Whew. I’m back in the office after *cough* a rough patch of *cough* sickness. *ahem*.
I spent all weekend down in lovely Laurel doing work for John, and I’m really thrilled with the results so far. I think he’s really happy with it too. It felt great to be immersed in a site and working with Nick (the programmer) to build out a new site. I wish I could do that every day again- it makes my heart ache sometimes, because I’m good at it, and I love the challenge. There’s still another good day’s work to do on the front-end and probably a week’s worth of after-hours cleanup, so we’re looking very good there.
Went up to BelAir to see Laura about taxes, and the results are very good. I’ll be able to buy the Wisconsin Scout, after waiting to earn the money for almost a year. Hopefully Bill still has it, and hopefully it’s still in great shape.
I’m looking forward to being back at my house for an evening. I haven’t spent any time other than sleeping there in the last couple of days, and I’m anxious to do some cleaning and laundry for a little peace-of-mind. I also have work coming from Katie and the logo to finish up for Kevin.
Loaded up Mozilla today on both machines, and I have to say, damn. What a great-looking browser so far. I’m gonna use it for a week or so and see if it blows up at all, but my first impressions are very positive.
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OK, as far as the backup efforts went, I got the beta stuff off SLANN and burned to a disk; unfortunately the UDF format isn’t working on my Mac, so it can’t read the disk. All the S/N’s are updated and on the USB drive, and all the installers/updaters are backed up there too. It holds all my fonts and pretty much everything I can’t burn to CD on SLANN, so we’re looking good there. I was also able to get the last backed up System Folder from Massachusetts (ex-Supon laptop) onto the USB drive and off SLANN, so that freed up about 500MB of space.
Next I have to compare copies of Beta and the Clients backups and figure out if I’m missing anything, then bless the latest and greatest and hide the others downstairs (when I clean up the CD racks.) Overall we’re looking pretty good.
This truck went up for sale in North Carolina for somewhere around $7K. It’s the same color as Chewbacca and has all the tricks. *sigh*.
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So I’m thinking about my truck, and it just hits me how good a purchase she was. For the kingly sum of $2800, I bought a (then) 20-year-old truck with cash, trusting it would get me home to Baltimore from Lancaster, PA (it did), pass Maryland inspection (it did), and run reliably for the untold future (it has). I went out yesterday to start her up after sitting miserably under a cover for the past three weeks in the shivering cold, and when I sat in the seat, her smell hit me-old vinyl, rubber, motor oil, and dirt-and it was perfume. I pumped the gas once, turned the ignition, and cranked her for about three beats. “Come on, baby,” I asked quietly. Another turn of the key (no gas), about two grinds, and she fired to life, rumbling choppily. I smiled and patted her dashboard, sat the action figure of Chewbacca up in front of the wheel, and straightened her up while the idle evened out. Few things are as reliable, bring me more simple joy, bring me to the edge of depression quicker, or remind me of my humanity as well as the Scout. I miss her, and it can’t be spring soon enough.
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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)
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Didn’t write yesterday- life was moving too quickly. But the carpet is now in the basement, and it looks fantastic. I spent a few nights organizing stuff down there, and hopefully with another few nights I can get everything from the dining room down there and put away in some fashion. The only stuff that’s left upstairs are the two bikes, the cooler and some miscellaneous items.
Next up is to cut and install the shelf by the window; I got paid yesterday so when I get back I can get food and after Turkey Week is over, finish off the front of the house. I also have to have Jeff Curley over for beers when I get the wiring sorted out and roughed in (and the phone lines run) so that he can help me sort out the network questions I have. I also have to run the phone and network cabling up to the back bedroom, which entails cutting into the box in the back of the kitchen to start the line.
I think, after this project has wound down, I’m going to put up the plant hooks I was thinking about in the front room, replace the ugly track lighting in the living room with a longer, better positioned white track, and then *gulp* look at moving the light in the kitchen to the center of the room and replacing it with a ceiling fan.
Seen on a highway overpass on I-83 leaving Baltimore this morning: “We Arm The World” written on an American flag.
Interesting info from Super Scout Specialists as to the highest sale figures for Light Line trucks in America, from highest to lowest:
- Pennsylvania
- California
- Colorado
- Illinois
- Texas
- Ohio
- New York
- Indiana
- Wisconsin
- Virginia
Maryland is number 38.
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