Author: Gerry

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.

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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.

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Categories
Misc

Things That Make You Go !@#$%^&

How about replacing the disc brake pads on your vehicle?  Actually, I never even got to replace the pads, because in the process of trying to loosen the lug nuts, I sheared the head of the special lug nut so that I now have no way of gripping it to loosen it. 

But wait!  There’s more!

I also broke the special pattern in the key, so that now I can’t remove ANY of the special lug nuts.

I’ll only add, remarkably, I did not scream obscenities (though I thought them),  I did not throw anything (though the tire iron came close), I did not strike anything (just myself… gently on the leg), and I did not take my frustrations out on anyone else.  I must be mellowing in my old age…

Categories
Computers

Network Nuttiness

I have Charter Internet service and I had some strange things going on from late last night until about noon or so today. 

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Categories
Family

Wow!

Things have been a little slow this morning.  The Wife is knitting and I’m tooling around on the web trying to find reliable estimates for the DC Tea Party.  On the one side, the claims are for 30,000 or so.  On the other, 1.5 to 2 million.  I’ve seen quite a few claiming easy 6 digit numbers as well.  It’d be nice if a number could be settled on.

Anyway, since the Wife and I are taking our time, the kids decided to take matters into their own hands.  They fixed breakfast for everyone!

They came up and asked us what we wanted, to which we both replied “muffins.” (The kids and the Wife did some baking yesterday.) The boy managed to get the plates out of the cabinets without breaking them and also pulled out the strawberries from the fridge.  The lass handled the muffins which were on the counter.  They plated everything and served us where we sat.

I just finished my strawberry and muffin breakfast.  I politely asked and the lass came and served me seconds, after which she proudly declared to the Wife how she had given me seconds.

Not a bad way to start the morning.  But then, this happened after a battle royale over which cartoons to watch.  Maybe the morning is more of a push…

Nah.

Categories
Football

College Football- Here we go again

Looks like USC pulled out a tight one against Ohio St, and Michigan squeaked by against ND.  Reading the artical about he Michigan win, apparently Weis made “questionable” calls for passes late in the game that fell incomplete and allowed Michigan to preserve time and TO’s.  Weis says they were trying to win the game and that an injury and Michigan stacking the line dictated that he throw the ball.  I’m not particularly a fan of this sort of flame-fanning by the press- so put me in Weis’s corner on this one.  I didn’t see the game, so I can’t say if ND was running rough-shod over Michigan or not.  My guess is not, or he would have continued running.  Weis isn’t a fool about this sort of thing.

As for the USC thing, all I can say is “great.”  Now we get to listen and read about how USC should be the #1 team in the country for the rest of the year.  Sombody please step up and beat these guys and put an end to this stuff now.  Plus, now we’ll have to hear about how great the “young Trojan QB” is and how he’s going to make “everyone foget about Mark Sanchez.”  Joy.

Looks like Washington is up next.  I can hope, but I doubt they’ll be the ones to stick a fork in this one.

Categories
Computers

Vive La EEE!

It LIVES!!!

Well, I suppose it was more like a bad black eye than being dead.  As it turned out, shortly after posting that the display wasn’t supposed to arrive until Monday, FedEx showed up with the display.  I had some trouble getting the brackets off of the old display and onto the new one, but managed it eventually.  The other trick was putting the bezel back on because it covers part of the hinges as well.  Once I managed those two tasks, I was able to test fire it and complete the reassembly.  This post was written and posted from the EEE.

If you’re wondering what’s involved in the process, I have some details after the jump

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Categories
Computers

Debian ext4 Upgrade

UPDATE:  I’ve completely rewritten this post.  Previously, it was written in such a way as to convey myself as an expert or authority (at least I thought it did).  This is most decidedly not the case.  The new version below is a writeup of how I went about the upgrade.  The main info is identical to the previous post but readers should get a better sense about how knowledgeable (or not) I am.

I wanted to correct my statements from a previous post regarding upgrading to the ext4 file system.  In that post I commented that I had problems running fsck.ext3 on certain partitions.  This was incorrect.  In fact, my problem was with unmounting certain partitions.  When I put my desktop system together, I created partitions for a number of different main mount points such as /usr, /var, and /home.  The process that I was following from a Debian Admin article went as follows- unmount, fask.ext3, tune2fs and fsck.ext4. 

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Categories
Misc

Minutae

The lack of substantial posts does not represent a lack of goings on.  With 2 kids, 2 dogs, 2 birds, a cat and a wife there is plenty to keep me occupied.  Throw on top of this all the projects that are being juggled or are in the planning stages and there is plenty of potentially interesting topics to come.  For the moment, however, there are just a lot of little things that kind of add up to a decent mish-mash of stuff that I suppose is worthy of posting in one spot.  I’m still feeling this whole thing out and I’m trying to prevent myself from falling into the “I’ve got to post something” trap.  Then again, perhaps this post is evidence that I went in to the trap head first…

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Categories
Misc

In Memoriam

File:WTC memorial lights.jpg – Wikimedia Commons