Month: September 2009

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

Categories
Family

I’d Like a Do Over

Well, I’ve been through the routine enough now to know that I don’t really like it.

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Categories
Computers

EEE RIP

Well, for now anyway.

I left it out yesterday and one of the kids must have dropped it or stepped on it.  I went to power it up last night and the screen has a big spider crack through it.  I can see enough to tell that it boots properly but, alas, it is completely unusable beyond that.

I can’t really blame anyone but myself for this one.  I should have known better than to leave it where I did.  I’ll be ordering a replacement screen today and attempting to fix it.

Add this to the sourdough starter that can’t start and the gardens that the dogs tore up and I’m sincerely hoping we’re done with this sort of disappointment…

UPDATE:  Add 1 trackball to the steadily growing list.

Categories
Misc

Firewood

I’m in the schedule for a new batch of whole log firewood.  At least I’ll having something to do in my spare time…

Categories
Family

The REAL First Day of School

When school started for the Lass last week, things went so smoothly that the moment barely registered on the event scale.  Enter the long holiday weekend and now it’s “School- The Return!”  Upon arrival today, I counted no less than 5 puffy faced urchins pining for the days of old when they didn’t have to deal with the whole “school” thing.  One poor boy was dead set in not letting Mom leave without him.  Also, the air of “smooth-running-machine” was gone.  Instead, you basically had teachers flailing around looking to pull wrenches out of the works.  Suffice to say, a rough morning.

Thankfully, the Lass was a sea of tranquility amongst the chaos.  She even remembered her little kaleidoscope for sharing this morning.   She happily chirped a goodbye as she toddled off into the next room to see what she could get involved in.

At least this part of dealing with her has been easy.  So far…

Categories
Family

A Day at the Beach

It’s funny how life throws curve balls.

We’ve been going to the same beach with the kids for the past couple of years.  Once of the reasons for going to this particular beach is that the surf is pretty gentle.  It’s not my cup of tea- I’d prefer stuff a little more substantial for body surfing and what not.  But if getting the kids to enjoy the ocean is the goal, then smaller surf is the order of the day.

So naturally, on this day, probably our last visit to the beach this year, the surf is rough.  Ironically, the Wife and I were having a conversation on the way down alluding to the possibility of exposing the kids to rougher surf next summer.  At that point, the idea of larger waves intrigued the boy but he was glad he wouldn’t have to deal with them for awhile.

Like I said, life throws curve balls.

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Categories
Computers

Debian and Xserver

Well- I can only surmise that someone “discovered” a bug in the Xserver.  I say this because after updating my desktop the other day, I could not launch my window manager(awesome) using “startx.”  Since updates have crashed it(the WM, that is) before, I started there and after about an hour I concluded that the WM was not the problem.  It seemed that my WM initialization scripts were not getting run and there was a path problem.  Subsequent investigation revealed that an out-of-date script was being used.

Very puzzling, since I hadn’t changed anything.  I continued to poke around and double and triple checked my ~/.xsession file.  Then I discovered that my .xsession file was not being used at all!  It turns out that, way back when I had started using my current WM,  I had setup an ~/.xinitrc file which also launched my WM but used the stock init script.  I recall migrating to the .xsession file shortly thereafter and have had no trouble since.  Well, until last night.

Apparently, the Xserver now checks for a .xinitrc file and runs it if found and does not bother with the .xsession file.  I came to this conclusion because after deleting the .xinitrc file from my home directory, awesome launched without issue.

Ah well- no harm, no foul.

Categories
Bread

Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

img_1707

Possible captions:

  • “I don’t know what happened doc.  I was sitting there eating my oatmeal, then I sneezed…”
  • “This is your brain on flour.”

The sourdough starter.  Yum.

Well, not the starter itself- rather, what you can do with such a starter.  This one is in its third day.  They are usually ready after day 4 and this one looks to be right on schedule.  Including the lovely smell of fermenting apples or fruit.

This one started life as 2 parts water, 1 part rye flour, 1 part white flour.  No yeast.  They just seem to invite themselves after a day or so.  The rye flour is supposed to be good for developing yeast.  After a day, I add 1 part white flour and 1 part water.  Did the same thing tonight. I’ll do it again tomorrow.  And the next day, I’ll bake.

But that will be another post.

Categories
Football

What are the Eagles Thinking?

Back in this post I made what seemed, to me anyway, the fairly obvious point that Michael Vick’s potential future success would not involve play at quarterback.  Well, in checking in at ESPN periodically it appears that the Eagles are bound and determined to make me eat crow.  Apparently, he is practicing as QB and looks to be McNabb’s backup.  My immediate reaction to this was… are they mad?

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Categories
Family

How to Fix a Rear Car Window

I had forgotten that the lass had managed to break the rear window of our Highlander this past Friday.  Now by break I don’t mean threw-a-rock-into-the-window-causing-daddy’s-head-to-explode kind of break.  I mean more in the hey-I’m-pushing-the-button-for-the-window-and-it-nothing-is-happening-BANG!

Ahem- sorry ’bout that.

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Categories
Bread

Bruce Lee Whole Wheat Bread

My intention was to make this bread recipe.  I had everything more or less ready to go and then I realized something crucial- I’d used whole wheat flour instead of white whole wheat flour.  A fairly serious problem for white whole wheat bread. So, I did the logical thing- I improvised.

Here is the resulting recipe:

  • 6 cups whole wheat flour
  • 3 cups water
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
  • 1 tbsp salt
  • 1 tbsp yeast

You should be able to cut the recipe in half across the board for a smaller loaf.

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Categories
Family

The Lass’s First Day

She was so excited, we had to wake her up in order to get her going this morning.

She came down and after the Wife had gotten her dressed I asked her why she was all dressed up.  She replied “‘Cause I’m going to school!  Silly Dad.”  Yep, that’s about the size of it.

We all left- the boy accounted well for himself.  No pushing or shoving or trying to grab the limelight.  As for the Lass, it went about as I figured.  You see- she’s been watching big brother do this for 2 years so she’s got it down COLD.  We brought her up to the classroom where she let Mom take a picture of her next to a little classroom mural thing.  Then she went and deposited her backpack where it was supposed to be.  Finally, she sat down at a table, pulled a piece of paper her way and started coloring.  And that was it.  No worries.

We watched her for a few minutes, during which she invited other kids to come and color with her.  Most of them were not nearly as sure of the whole situation as she was.  We left before circle time because clearly, we didn’t need to be there any longer.  A quick kiss “GoodBye!” and we were off- myself to the Y with the Boy for a little racquetball practice and the  Wife back to the house for work.

When I picked her up just prior to lunch her teacher told me that she did just fine.  She was happy and easy to deal with.  I told her that I figure in about 3 weeks she’ll be bored with the whole thing and the teacher nodded in agreement.  That’s the usual.  As for the Lass, she liked her time there but was disappointed she didn’t get to go play on the playground outside.

I told her not to worry, she had plenty more days to get outside and play.