Month: September 2009

Categories
Family

They Grow Up So Fast…

Louie went home today. Back to school that is.

The boy and I brought him back for his afternoon class. The boy had another surprise for me. Once he saw his friends he didn’t want anything to do with me, barely acknowledging my goodbye.

I knew that this behavior was coming, I just didn’t think it would be here so fast! I laughed and mentioned it to his teacher on the way out. I also said maybe I should do something to embarrass him. She laughed as well and told me there would be plenty of opportunities for me to do just that.

Fair enough. I can wait.

Categories
Computers

BloGTK2

I’ve been searching for a decent blog client for Linux. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a go to client that everyone is fired up about. Scribefire seems to be the closest, but I don’t like Firefox on my system- it’s sluggish compared to Opera. From my poking around, it looks like Linux people tend to role their own in many cases which obviously reduces the demand. That said, I’ve downloaded and run QTM but it’s too temperamental. It gives me a lot of trouble posting and I haven’t taken the time to figure out why. I saw that BloGTK2 was available now, so I downloaded BloGTK2 last night and decided to try it.

First impression- holy crap there are TON of dependencies. I put it on my EEE and it seemed like I was installing Gnome in order to get it to run. But now that it’s up and running I’d say it has a lot going for it. The interface is intuitive enough that I didn’t have to refer to documentation. I did run into a bug using the account “auto-detect settings.” After I had setup my first account, the app crashed when I tried to use it to setup the second account. The feature worked when setting up my first account. I just manually setup the second account and I was able to post and refresh both accounts without issue. Which was good- I was expecting it to give me fits posting after the setup problems.

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Categories
Armoire Woodworking

The Armoire Begins

wood

Believe it or not, that pile of wood is going to be an armoire. Well, that’s not completely correct- I actually need to get more before all is said and done. Mainly the cherry. Hopefully I won’t need anymore maple. I’ll need some plywood as well so I can close up the back.

But still, can you see it? Those pieces of cherry on the left are the 3 drawer fronts. The wider maple boards on the right are the drawer boxes. The 8/4 maple will be the posts. The 12″ wide pieces of cherry will be the panels for the sides of the armoire. The narrower pieces of maple are the stretchers between the drawers and rails on the sides.

The details are what always get me in these projects. The bigger the project, the more important the details. Typically I draw complete plans prior to buying the wood. That way I have an idea of what width boards I need as well as what lengths I can cut them to so that I can get them into a vehicle. (Most boards that are roughcut are 10’+ in length. They’ll let you cut them, but you have to buy the whole board.) I’ve already been bitten by details in this project. Since I didn’t know the details regarding lengths, some of the boards that are cut are an inch or two short.

Of course, I had my reasons for doing it this way. Having plans is no guarantee against mistakes either. At least, not for me. Many of my plans that I’ve done have had flaws in them for one reason or another. Those flaws don’t become apparent until I get to a point in the project where they do become apparent.

In this particular case, I saw the cherry board and new it was the drawer fronts for the armoire. I wanted to maximize the usage of the boards but I couldn’t tell for sure what the dimensions would end up being. Thus, I had to guess at lengths for the maple, but I was a little off. In particular, I didn’t allow extra length for the tenons on the ends of the wood that is to become the stretcher. Bummer. Still, I should be able to make it work.

At this point, I’ve got the drawer fronts sized and I’ve cut the four posts for the lower portion of the armoire. I’m making it as an upper cabinet portion and a lower dresser. The top of the dresser will serve as the bottom for the cabinet. I’ll pin the front posts of the cabinet into the top of the dresser for alignment, but this will allow the dresser top to move without stressing the cabinet. I don’t have all the details figured out For instance, I’m still trying to decide if the door frames will be maple or cherry. I’m leaning towards cherry, thus making them all cherry doors, but I’m not completely decided. Also, the top of the cabinet is a bit murky. Will I mill some cornice? or put some kind of crown up there? The biggest question mark is the interior of the cabinet. I want to put more than just some shelves in there. But I’m not sure of anything beyond that.

There’s plenty more to come on this project. I’m looking forward to it.

Categories
Family

Louie the Rabbit

I picked up the boy and Louie yesterday after school.  Ever since, every third word out of the kids’ mouths is “Louie.”  The lass walks around chanting “Louie the rabbit, Louie the rabbit.”  The boy wants to feed Louie, and pet Louie, and hold Louie, and brush Louie, and… I’m sure you’ve got the idea.

The dogs are FASCINATED with Louie.  For his part, Louie seems to have taken them in stride.  The boy’s teacher has a Shepherd as well so Louie is used to the attention.  The birds weren’t too impressed with Louie- though he was quite curious about them.

I’ll post picks when I can.

UPDATE:  Everyone, Louie.

Louie,  Everyone.

Louie

Did I mention that he poops constantly?

Categories
Computers

Denyhosts

I finally got fed up with the attempts to crack my ssh server.  I’ve taken the usual precautions with its configuration- I just don’t like the idea of unimpeded attempts at cracking it.

I looked at a bunch of different ways to deal with it but most seemed too complicated for my purposes.  All I really wanted was something that would shut down an attacker after some number of consecutive failed attempts.  I found Denyhosts today and liked what I saw, particularly its simplicity.  So I decided to give it a go.

It didn’t disappoint, shuting off a new attacker this evening.  When it started for the first time, it also scans the logs for previous attempts and shuts them down as well.  If I had more complicated access needs it might not be quite the thing.  But given my fairly straight forward needs, it looks like it’ll be just fine.

Categories
Family

Who Says You Can’t Go Back…

On the BUS that is!

The Wife got applause from all the other kids on the bus today for her heroic efforts in awaking the boy, who was out once again. He was extremely groggy and dazed when she finally did manage it, sort of a “the lights are on but no one’s home” moment.

His fellow travelers will doubtless be disappointed tomorrow since he won’t be on the bus for the ride home. I’ll be going to pick him up along with Louie.

Who’s Louie? You’ll have to wait ’til tomorrow to find out.

Categories
Bread

Honey in Bread

If you get bored making bread recipes with cane sugar or prefer a healthier alternative, honey can be substituted with a couple of minor alterations to the recipe. Essentially, think of honey as 3/4 sugar and 1/4 water. So if a recipe requires 1 cup of sugar, then you’ll use 1 1/3 cups of honey (1/ (3/4) = 1 1/3) and reduce the liquid by 1/3 cup. Please note that I’m only talking with regards to yeast bread baking. Honey is acidic, which might cause issues with quick bread recipes (those leavened using baking powder), so this substitution could cause problems in those recipes.

For the recipes I’ve posted here, the amount of sugar is small. Therefore, the amount of extra water added is negligible. For instance, a recipe that calls for 1/4 cup of sugar would use 1/3 cup of honey. The extra water there is 1/12 of a cup- that’s a little over a tablespoon of water. If using a high-gluten flour like KA, clearly substituting honey in these amounts is not a problem.

As to why bother substituting? Well, honey is a natural sugar versus the highly processed white stuff that comes in a bag. There are all sorts of health benefits that come along with that difference. There’s a nice (long) article about the benefits of honey over sugar here. Personally, I can’t taste a difference when using honey but my taste buds aren’t the most discerning out there. I switch them up just for a change of pace in how I make the bread, simple as that. Although after reading that article, I may use honey more often.

UPDATE: Well, that article I linked is pretty screechy. I guess that’ll learn me for linking before reading the whole thing. At least the first half isn’t bad. At any rate, I don’t think I’ll get too much argument about the notion that honey is healthier than cane sugar, which was my main point.

Categories
Misc

Fall Premieres

Well, Bones, NCIS, Criminal Minds and CSI: NY were all pretty good for their season openers.

If you haven’t seen them yet, then stop reading, NOW.

Continue reading “Fall Premieres”
Categories
Admin

House Keeping Notes

I added a blogroll over there on the right side and moved the WordPress stuff to it’s own set of links. Those are the main blogs I read. All of them are established bloggers who’ve been around a long while, so they hardly need additional links from myself. That being said, I figured I’d put the links there for any curious enough.

They all comment on politics a fair amount, a subject I will continue to avoid for the time being. Megan McArdle provides a lot of economic commentary, while Instapundit links to all sorts of material. Kevin Drum and Mickey Kaus provide political commentary from the left. Eric Raymond is a hacker (meant in the original sense as a good programmer) who offers a lot of interesting commentary on a range of topics. Tony Woodlief is a writer/ author who has a knack for writing pithily about family life.

Check them out… or don’t. The choice is yours.

Categories
Family

Caterpillars?

The boy found a caterpillar with basically a white fuzzy coat and a few long, darker lashes coming out of it. After poking around on the web, it looks to be an American Dagger Moth.

Since his school class has been watching catepillars turn into butterflies, he decided to take the initiative. “Dad, can I have a jar to put this caterpillar in so I can watch it turn into a chrysallis?” It’s amusing too listen to him stumble over a “big” word like “chrysallis.” Are they supposed to know that sort of thing already?

So I dutifully went and grabbed a canning jar and poked some holes in the lid. Then I brought it over to him and he started filling it with grass. I figured the caterpillar might like something else so I grabbed an oak leaf and a maple leaf and added them to the jar.

He has barely set the jar down since. We went out and he wanted to bring the jar along because he didn’t want to miss the caterpillar turning into a chrysallis. When we picked up the lass from school, he told her about the “surprise” he had waiting at home. When they went to bed I was instructed to check on the caterpillar to make sure it was OK. He could barely wait to show the Wife when she came down this morning.

Simple things that get taken for granted when you grow up. I guess that’s a fringe benefit of being a parent. We get reminders about those simple things if we’re willing to stop and listen.

Categories
Misc

Tired

Ugh. Well, by my score keeping, the tires on the Highlander are up on me 3-to-zip.

I purchased a tool for removing stripped lug nuts to try and get them to come off. The tool has a reversed thread so that turning it in the direction that would loosen the lug nut actually should pull the tool further onto the lug nut itself. In theory that is. In reality, I think the tool needs something reasonably flat to fall against. The keyed lugnuts are perfectly round so there’s nothing to bite into, therefore no leverage to turn the nut.

Since that keyed lug nut had sheared, I figured perhaps I could cause it to break by whacking it with a cold chisel. No go. The chisel edge is blunted and the lug nut remains.

I was hoping to avoid the trip to the garage, but it’s starting to look unavoidable.

Categories
Computers

Syndaemon with EEE

During my quest to get HAL working to configure the touchpad on my EEE, I also discovered that I don’t need Touchfreeze to disable unwanted touches on my touchpad.  All I need is syndaemon.  Of course, in order to use syndaemon you need the synaptics driver running, so my efforts were not wasted.

The command I settled on for syndaemon was as follows:

syndaemon -i 1.5 -t

That’s the command line version.  Of course, what’s more useful is having it taken care of automatically.  I placed it in my .xsession file with the -d option added to make sure it ran as a daemon.  Now it fires up whenever I startup X.

Also, either SHMConfig is enabled by default in the newer version of the synaptics driver, or it is no longer necessary.   I removed the option from my fdi file and syndaemon works just fine.  No more touches while typing.

Categories
Computers

HAL and Synaptics

I’ve had Touchfreeze working on my EEE for a little while, but lately I noticed it had stopped working. I never really figured out why it stopped working, but it did prompt me to make some config changes and learn some new stuff Linux related. For instance, did you know that you don’t even need your xorg.conf (well, almost)?

Yep. Apparently HAL is what takes care of a lot of that stuff. From my reading, it seems to be the direction things are headed. There’s an excellent primer article here on it. There’s also a bunch of links at the bottom that are informative. I point them out because they led me to resolving my touchpad problems on my EEE.

Continue reading “HAL and Synaptics”
Categories
Misc

How to Fix a Rear Car Window- Revisited

Not too long ago, I described how I went about fixing the rear window of our Highlander. Well, in retrospect it turned out to be a textbook case of shooting off one’s mouth. Since that initial time, I’ve “fixed” that very same window 3 more times. So either I’ve got to engage in redefining the word “fixed” or own up to the fact that I never really fixed anything.

So this time when I opened the door up, I was determined to deduce the real problem. After reengaging the pivot in the track, I lowered the window while gently pressing on it as it came down. The pivot pulled out of the track again. Now I understood why it kept pulling out- when the panel is placed back on the door there is a gasket that presses against it preventing the window from easily sliding down. So I opened up the other non-broken door to see if there were any obvious differences.

There was.

Continue reading “How to Fix a Rear Car Window- Revisited”
Categories
Football

CF Starts to Get Interesting

I didn’t get a chance to see any games yesterday due to familial obligations long in the works. In a nutshell, the kids spent a good part of the afternoon climbing on trucks and honking horns. Along with several hundred other kids. It was loud. I’m not sure if I actually got used to the horns, if all the compressed air got used up or if I lost most of my hearing by the end of the visit. The most impressive truck was the $780,000 wrecker. Yes, that’s right, $780,000. It was about 40 feet long and had a crane on it that could lift 60 tons. Basically, it could lift a semi out of a ditch without any trouble. Don’t think they’re with AAA. Nice piece of machinery.

Speaking of wreckers, looks like I got my wish from Washington. Of course, its not completely over for USC. If they win out we’ll be subjected to a steady drumbeat of scenarios that might make them the best team in the country. Ugh. Hopefully Oregon St. can step up when the time comes. Or maybe Arizona St. Or maybe they’ll lose a bowl game. Either way, 1 more loss will be a stake in the heart. If it comes sooner, that’s better in my book.

Florida is looking good. Tebow might not be a natural thrower, but he’s a winner in college football. I’m impressed that he’s chosen to stick around instead of going pro. Then again, maybe that just means he knows that he’s not really pro-material at QB. Yet.

Nothing else that’s really all that note worthy. Lots of teams that are starting as expected. Give it a couple more weeks. The season is still young.

Categories
Family

Useful Little Engines

The kids were in a helpful mood yesterday. They are very excited about the pile of logs now sitting in our driveway and I decided to start hacking away at it yesterday. Without any prompting on my part they came outside with me, put on their ear protection and started “helping” to stack the pieces that I cut off the logs. I was impressed.

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Categories
Football

Here Come the ‘Canes

Well, Miami smokes G.Tech last night 33-17. I didn’t watch the game but talking with Dad, who was watching, it sounds like the game was more lopsided than the score indicates. Great. Like we haven’t been here before. Miami playing the “We just want respect” card and blowing away treams that probably aren’t anywhere near as good as everyone thinks along the way.

The weekend is going to offer some bigtime entertainment potential: Florida vs. Tennessee, Texas vs Texas Tech, USC vs Washingon, Penn State vs Temple… oops. Might have to tune in for one of those. Assuming we get some reasonable coverage up this way.

Categories
Misc

A Glimpse of Fall

Highs in the mid 60’s today. Trees just starting to shut it down for the year. Fall isn’t too far away. Being my favorite time of year, I’m not complaining.

After yesterday, today was pretty pedestrian. No ‘Y’. No problems coordinating picking up and dropping off. Spent the day doing stuff around the house. I’ve done some grass seeding and watering, drained the kid’s pool and am starting to dry and clean it. I also started tuning up the chainsaw for its recently arrived workload. I’ve had a chainsaw chain sharpener that I hadn’t setup so I took the time to do that as well. Setup was easy and figuring out how to use it wasn’t much more difficult. I ran it through a couple of blades and tested them out with decent results. We’ll see how long they hold their new edge.

The kids are excited for Mom returning. She won’t be back until after they’re asleep though. It will be a happy morning for them.

School well underway, the Wife’s travel schedule picking up, firewood prep and a cool day. Before long, I’ll be in jeans and boots, playing racquetball, and tending to a fire.

But not yet.

Categories
Bread

Non-Starter

Alright, my sourdough starter problems are officially ridiculous.  I had to throw away the original batch because it couldn’t raise the dough.  I decided to try again, but this time with a fresh batch of rye flour.  That was really the only thing I could think that might have caused problems.

No go.  I even gave it an extra day.  I went through the whole refresh process and it didn’t raise the dough after 4 hours.  Something is definitely amiss.  Another waste of flour and time.

One characteristic I have noticed about the two failed batches of starter is that they never congealed like the previous batches.  In other words(for bread people)- no gluten formation.  Now lack of gluten in the starter sort of indicates to me that there is too much acid in the starter.  If the problem is too much acid, then I’m thinking perhaps shortening the refresh periods might inhibit the acid production.  On the flip side, the starter didn’t taste too sour which would tend to indicate the acid levels were not the problem.

At this point, all I can do is experiment and see what works.  Still, having made this exact sort of starter a number of times previous, this episode is very curious.  Clearly, something has changed. I’m just at a loss as to what.

Categories
Family

A Day

The Wife left on Monday and she ain’t comin’ back… ’til Friday.  Business travel.

I’m reasonably practiced at flying solo with the kids.  The wrinkle nowadays is the schedule- which makes things interesting around lunch.  But hey, we adapt and make things work.  I’m sure others have worse to deal with.  Plus, I figure trading off between mornings and afternoons is good for the kids because they have to figure out how to get along without one another.  Definitely a change of pace considering how they bounced off one another all summer.  For now, they both seem to be adjusting just fine.

Continue reading “A Day”