Teleidoscope

Fri, Jul 03, 2009

Republican Governors

Posted at 5:48 pm MDT to Current Events

Damn.

I wonder if there was something in the water at the last Republican Governors Conference meeting.

Neither Sarah Palin nor Mark Sanford seems able to hold a coherent press conference.

Sanford is not resigning yet, despite dereliction of duty and profound public stupidity.

I wonder what the investigators were about to dig up that led Palin to resign so that the state need not spend lots of money investigating her?

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Ai Sushi

Posted at 1:16 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

Nanette took me out to dinner for my birthday yesterday, to a restaurant called Ai Sushi and Steak.

The food was excellent, and reasonably priced for the portions, which were huge.

I had a tempura, udon and California roll combo. The miso soup at the beginning of the meal was smooth and flavorful. The flavors of the green onions, seaweed and tofu were not buried under the miso itself.

The tempura (shrimp and vegetables) was light and not greasy, and the dipping sauce had a nice tang in addition to the soy sauce in it.

The eight small pieces of California roll were well made and had a nice balance of ingredients and a complex flavor -- the crab part seemed to be a crab salad, and I'm not sure what all of the ingredients were.

The bowl of udon soup was huge (this meal failed the 'don't eat anything bigger than your head' rule) with very good noodles, an excellent broth, and plenty of cabbage, carrots and broccoli.

I brought most of the meal home in boxes. I had half the cali rolls and tempura pieces for breakfast, and I'm working on the soup for lunch.

And I think I need to plan on a very small supper tonight.

Our favorite Japanese restaurant in Denver, Mori, closed a while back, but I really think Ai is nearly as good, though their menu is less extensive. (I miss kitsune udon, which I used to get at Mori. And the Japanese pickles that used to accompany every meal.)

And I need to find a source of the thick udon noodles you get in restaurants. The ones I can find locally for home cooking are all skinny. The good Japanese grocery that probably carries them, Pacific Mercantile is still in existence a couple of blocks from the site of Mori, but Denver is a long way to go for noodles and pickles and a few other items. Maybe I'll go down to the art museum one weekend this summer (which is at the other end of the downtown shuttle route) and stop by the market while I am there.

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Wed, Jul 01, 2009

Double Nickel

Posted at 11:38 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

Tomorrow, July 2, is my birthday.

I have baked a cake in my fancy bundt pan for the first time since my allergies were diagnosed.

I started with Alton Brown's pound cake recipe (from I'm Just Here for More Food , with goat milk with lemon juice instead of buttermilk, and goat butter, and added orange peel and orange extract to the pound cake to stand up to the goat taste.

The cake came out of the pan beautifully and is cooling now. (I won't taste it until it is completely cool. Cutting it before it is stable would be a bad idea.) I have sprinkled it with some powdered sugar now, while it is still steaming, and I'll add more when it is cool.

One of the nice features of my fancy stove is the timer. It rings several chiming tones, pauses, then rings some more. The groups get farther apart, but they don't stop until you do something about them. The timer on my microwave just beeps once, and I often miss it if I am in the other room and the radio or TV is playing.

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Mon, Jun 29, 2009

Grinder

Posted at 8:59 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

In Connecticut, where I grew up, the kind of sandwich they sell at Subway and Quizno's was not a sub or a hoagie, it was a grinder. Don't ask me why they were called that: I don't think anyone really knows.

Today we bought lunch at Quizno's. I ordered a small Classic Italian on wheat, no cheese (God, I miss mozzarella) and more or less kept my fingers crossed for the next few hours. I wouldn't have dared try this 10 days ago when I was having major coughing and swallowing problems because of allergies, but I've been doing pretty well for the past few days.

The verdict, after about 8 hours, is that Quizno's does not seem to use stuff I'm allergic to in their wheat bread.

My throat was a little scratchy for a while, but I think that was the lettuce (which I am not officially allergic to, but sometimes react badly to. I wonder if that's partly agricultural chemicals rather than just the actual lettuce).

It's nice to know that I can probably count Quizno's as an allergy-safe, inexpensive place to eat.

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Sun, Jun 28, 2009

Water Softener

Posted at 3:59 pm MDT to Technology

I have a new water softener. Not an expense I really needed right after I contracted for the retaining wall work, but the old unit lasted nearly 24 years, so it's hard to complain. This new one should last the next 20 years.

The new water softener has some nice features.

The new controller has valves made from modern composites (fancy plastics) instead of brass, so it should be corrosion-proof.

The new salt tank has a float valve shutoff instead of an overflow hose, so I won't need to worry about tripping over it when carrying baskets of laundry.

And the control mechanism is smarter than the old one, which cycled automatically ervery 3 days regardless of how much water was being processed. The new unit tracks the water flow and should cycle only on the first night after 800 gallons have been processed since the last cycle. This means that it should use less salt, and it will not cycle (and use up its salt) when I am out of town and not using water. This will also decrease the salt that ends up in my septic system -- also a good idea.

The new installation has a more sensible plumbing layout in the basement, too, and is more compact and tucked into a corner than the old water softener was.

On the whole, I am very pleased with the new system.

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Cell-Less Gig

Posted at 3:59 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

This has been a hectic week.

Monday morning I verified the landscaping contract.

Late Monday afternoon I learned that I was starting a new gig on Wednesday, at a work site where cell phones are forbidden.

Tuesday I had a plumber check my water softener, which had been misbehaving, and learned that 24 years of my horrible well water had actually corroded the brass valves. The plumber went away to investigate options.

Also on Tuesday, I had lunch with my business partners and a real estate agent: our office lease is up in October and we need to decide what to do about it.

Wednesday I started the new gig. In the secure building with no cell phones allowed. I contacted the plumber and landscape guy, since the numbers I had given them would no longer work during working hours.

Thursday evening we had a meeting of CRUG, the Colorado Rational Users' Group, which our company sponsors.

Friday, the plumber came back and installed a new water softener. I also got in touch with the landscaper: his projects are running behind -- probably due to the violent weather we have had amost every day lately -- and the work on my retaining walls is now tentatively scheduled to start on Monday July 6.

Saturday I worked the farmers' market, and the weather, for a change, was beautiful.

Today I'm cleaning everything in the utensil drawers that the mice invaded while I was in Mobile: I need to use enough hot water to clear the untreated water out of the hot water heater before I try to do any laundry. There is so much iron in the untreated water that my clothes will be ruined if I use it to wash them.

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Sat, Jun 20, 2009

Retaining Wall

Posted at 8:21 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

Starting to track the latest phase of home improvement/repairs. I have hired New Creation Hardscapes to fix the stairwell to the basement door, where the dirt-slide happened last week.

Their bid was reasonable, and their design proposal showed that their rep had been listening to me. Unlike the other bid I got from a landscape architect who did not pay attention to the preferences I expressed during our conversation.

It remains to be seen how long this project will take to get started and to be finished, of course. I just faxed over a copy of the proposal with my signature Friday afternoon.

I don't know whether to hope they will be able to do the work immediately (which might suggest they are desperate for work) or that they are busy (which would probably be a good sign for the economy).

When they are finished, I should have usable steps down to the basement entrance and a paved walk from the front porch out to my driveway, which will be nice when the weather is wet and makes the clay in the soil all sticky.

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Thu, Jun 18, 2009

Allergies

Posted at 9:13 am MDT to Miscellaneous

I have been having a miserable time all week. My old coughing and swallowing problems seem to be back, full force. It is really annoying (and a little scary) to have problems swallowing chicken noodle soup.

Taking my morning meds, with water, set off serious coughing that seems to be a reaction to the physical act of swallowing. My fingers seem to be swollen, too, so my whole system is reacting, badly, to whatever is going on.

I don't think I have been eating anything I shouldn't -- though just to be on the safe side I am going to try taking eggs and goat's milk back out of my diet for a few days. I think the problem is actually the wet, rainy weather we've been having, which has caused an outpouring of pollen and mold in the environment.

I would prefer normal hayfever symptoms, though I have some of those too: puffy, watery eyes and occasional sneezing.

I'm going to take some Advil to try to knock down the inflamation so I can actually eat some breakfast. I should probably try taking an antihistamine, too, though I'll need to buy some.

At least I'm better off than I was last spring in that I know these are allergy symptoms.

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Wed, Jun 17, 2009

Charity of the Month -- Planned Parenthood

Posted at 3:31 pm MDT to Technology

Planned Parenthood is having a funds-matching drive this month, which I agreed to take part in even before Dr. George Tiller was murdered.

Their website is here. Clicking Donate takes you to a secure site.

They would probably have become this month's donation after the murder even if I hadn't already scheduled this payment. I'd consider making a specific donation to the Boulder Abortion Clinic (Dr. Hern is apparently just below Tiller on the wingnut hit list) but it looks like they don't take direct donations.

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Wed, Jun 10, 2009

Cashew Chicken Salad

Posted at 12:31 pm MDT to Technology

It just recently occurred to me that I can have this again because I can have mayo now that I no longer react to eggs. When I regularly took lunches to work I ate this a couple of times a week, carrying it in small thermos containers. At least it adds some protein to my diet, which is way too carb-heavy, especially now that I can't live on cheese the way I used to.

One batch makes about two lunches. The second day tastes even better because the flavors have had time to meld.

Dinah likes to drink the broth from the chicken can.

1 12 ounce can of chicken, drained and the chunks broken up

1 11 ounce can of mandarin orange slices, drained

a few ounces of salted cashews, broken up

soy sauce

mayonnaise

This is a Costco meal: most of the ingredients are cheap, by the case, from there. It would work with leftover roasted chicken that wasn't cooked with herbs that conflict, of course.

My other lunches were a modified Waldorf salad made with yogurt, apples, grapes and celery (I could probably make that with goat yogurt) and a salmon salad with ranch dressing that will take more modification: ranch dressing has buttermilk in it, so it is out of my diet.

I wonder if I can find a recipe for ranch dressing that I could modify to use things I can eat...

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Forever Stamps

Posted at 11:21 am MDT to Miscellaneous

I need to run some errands later, including mailing the few monthly bills I still pay with paper checks.
I don't need to buy stamps to mail them.

I won't need to buy stamps for a long time. Even allowing for special events like sending Christmas cards, at my current rate of stamp use, I won't need to buy stamps again for at least a couple of years.

A few months ago (before the postage increase) I picked up 100 forever stamps at Costco, where they were even discounted from the official price. Since they are now worth 44 dollars instead of their 42 dollar original value or the 41.50 I paid for them, I have made over 5 per cent on the transaction already.

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Tue, Jun 09, 2009

Noisy

Posted at 4:45 pm MDT to Weather

It's been cool and cloudy -- almost misty -- most of the day, but things got
noisy a little while ago.

Lots of thunder, some very close, and pings and clunks when little hailstones
hit the stovepipe and vent covers. When I looked out, I saw one of the bunnies
taking shelter under the truck.

Now the sun is trying to come out for the first time today.

The lights blinked once as the cell passed by. I'll need to reset the microwave
clock, but the stove clock is OK. The computers and AV stack are fine.

I wonder why they make the clocks in microwaves so sensitive? It seems like
they start flashing 8s or hyphens (depending on the clock) at the slightest
excuse.

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Mon, Jun 08, 2009

Basement Door

Posted at 6:56 am MDT to Miscellaneous

Dinah Kitty is freaked out. Her pupils are very dilated and she sort of prowls around lashing her tail.

First we had a guest in the house -- my brother Larry arrived midday Friday and I drove him into Denver Saturday evening for a professional conference he's attending. Then some time yesterday the French doors to my basement were forced open by a combination of wind and a minor avalanche of the dirt that was loosened by the powerline excavations last year.

I didn't notice the door being open until this morning. Dinah had not slept on my bed last night at all, which is very unusual, so when it got light I went looking for her.

When I found the open door I was very worried that she had gone outside and gotten lost or been eaten by a coyote or something: she is an indoor
cat who does not know how to handle herself outdoors. Fortunately, she was hiding in the basement. I'm not sure why she was hiding in the basement when it was something in the basement that was upsetting her, but that's OK. At least she is safe.

I used a spade to clear enough dirt to mostly close the door. It doesn't latch properly (I need to do some more digging to get the second door to close all the way) but the biggest gap is at the top. I have the spade braced under the doorknob to keep the door from swinging open before I have time to work on it some more.

Dinah ate a little of her breakfast and then went downstairs again. Maybe she thinks she is guarding her territory, but I'm not sure how she thinks she can do that from her hiding place in the far end of the basement.

I think the urgency of getting those retaining walls replaced has just increased considerably. I wish I believed there was such a thing as a reliable contractor. Neither my experience nor Nanette's is very encouraging.

They say that there were severe storms in the area yesterday afternoon, including some tornadoes. I don't remember hearing anything here, but I suppose a gust of wind might have helped push the door open. There are more storms forecast for today. I'll have to pay attention to things.

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Mon, Jun 01, 2009

VMWare and Ubuntu 9.04

Posted at 9:27 pm MDT to Technology

VMWare is being flakey. I'm not sure whether the problem is actually the interaction of VMWare with the new version of Ubuntu, or whether my problem is internal to one of the Windows images.

In either case, one I bring up the virtual machines on the laptop something hammers the drive and sucks up a lot of processor time.

I need to recheck some DNS settings that got muched during the Ubuntu upgrade, and tweak some network settings that can be different now that I'm back on my home network (I had to adjust a few things when I was in Mobile connecting through Comcast). But I don't think either of those is related to the resource hogging.

I'm going to try some troubleshooting tomorrow.

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Sat, May 30, 2009

Broiler and Wok Burner

Posted at 8:24 pm MDT to Technology

Yesterday I used the wok burner of my fancy stove for the first time in wok mode. I need to find a 12 or 14 inch round-bottom wok without a heavy handle to really use it properly.

I used my rice cooker, which has fuzzy-logic that can handle the altitude without burning the rice. It's way bigger than I need for just me, but it was cheap at Costco and it is very useful. One thing I will miss from sealevel (like Mobile) is being able to get rice and pasta to cook in reasonable amounts of time. The rice cooker knows when the rice is done and automatically switches to warmer mode.

Today I worked at the farmers' market for the first time this year (last week, Memorial Day weekend, the Boulder Creek Fest tookover the market space and parking). The weather was beautiful (unusually, for weekends this spring) and I stocked up on lots of goodies.

Apple cider. Dried apples. Rhubarb. Fresh mushrooms. Swiss chard. Green garlic. My favorite goat cheese for grating over pasta now that I can't have parmesan (Whole Foods doesn't carry it for some reason, though they carry other cheeses from the same dairy). And chicken: both bone-in breasts and the giblets and livers for making dirty rice, now that I know how to do that.

I had Sister's Pantry checken dumplings for breakfast, and vegan papusas for lunch.

I made a chard frittata for supper, with some goat cheddar on top. I think when I put it under the broiler to set the top of the eggs and melt the cheese, it was the first time I have used the broiler in the new gas stove. It is very powerful compared to the broiler in the old electric stove, and I love the way it heats up instantly. It actually has a lower setting, too, which I will have to try using some time.

Chard frittata:

1. bunch chard, rinsed, and leaves stripped from the stems. Salad spin the leaves to drain them. Chop the stems into 3/4 inch pieces, and begin sauteeing the stem pieces in a cast iron skillet, adding a small pinch of salt. Roll 3 or 4 leaves together at a times, loosely, and cut the rolls at one inch intervals. Add the sliced leaves to the stems, sprinkling with a little more salt, and toss to coat with oil, then cover. Stir occasionally until fully wilted.

Remove the chard to a storage bowl and wipe out the skillet. Add more oil and begin heating it.

Whisk eggs with water and add to the heated pan. When the eggs are about half cooked, add a thin layer of the chard and sprinkle with salt and fine-ground black pepper.

Turn on the broiler. Grate cheese on top of the eggs and chard. Place the skillet under the broiler until the cheese is melted and the tops of the eggs are set.

Slide the frittata onto a plate and serve immediately.

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Fri, May 29, 2009

Charity of the Month(s) April/May 2009

Posted at 1:45 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

The Habitat for Humanity folks called because they were having a matching-fund drive, so I made a donation. (I've apparently been donating to them for 10 years.) This is prime building season so the money does more good now than waiting until later inthe year.

I also made a donation to Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres, since there was a recent earthquake and we are coming up on hurricane season. Their donation page doesn't work with the Konqueror browser -- they use one of those CAPTCHA things, which Konqueror blocks (It's picky about Flash apps) -- but I was able to make the donation by switching to Firefox.

This puts me just about exactly on track for my goal of making charitable donations equal to 10% of my net pay for the year. I'm really trying to get out of the bad habit of doing most of my giving in the 4th quarter when Christmas shopping is also happening.

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Fri, May 08, 2009

Non Menopause

Posted at 5:12 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

This week my body informed me in no uncertain terms that I am not finished with menopause. This is very disappointing. After more than a year without needing to deal with cramps and such, I had thought I was done. The total gap was 19 months.

The cramps are really annoying: I don't know whether it is just that I am out of practice dealing with them.

Better this week than next: driving 22 hours with cramps would not be fun.

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Wed, May 06, 2009

Wesleyan University Shooting

Posted at 4:52 pm MDT to Current Events

Whoa.

There was a shoooting at Wesleyan University in Connecticut this afternoon: a junior woman was murdered. It technically took place just off the campus, but the building is the one that serves as the university book store. I spent a lot of time in that bookstore, once upon a time, though in my day it did not include the cafe where the shooting took place.

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Mon, May 04, 2009

Routes

Posted at 8:16 pm MDT to Travel

Today I got a call from the Eldorado Springs Company asking whther I wanted them to resume deliveries of bottled water to my home this week. I said "No, not until the next scheduled delivery on May 20".

While I was thinking about it schedules, I called the trash company and arranged for trash pickups to re-start the week after next.

I've been looking at routes for the trip home.

The default route offered by my TomTom GPS uses interstates as much as possible. The route (going back the way I came) goes through Lafayette and Shreveport Louisiana to Dallas, then heads north on I-35 until it hits I-70 in the middle of Kansas. It has a predicted driving time of 23 hours 50+ minutes.

Rand-McNally offers a route going through Jackson Mississippi to Shreveport, then to Dallas, etc. and taking 23 hours 20 minutes.

Google maps and Mapquest prefer a route through Jackson Mississippi, Little Rock, Arkansas connecting to I-35 in northern Oklahoma that supposedly takes 22 hours 7 minutes.

The AAA triptik calculator offers a route through Memphis and north up the Mississippi to pick up I-70 at St.Louis, then it's all I-70 west to Denver. That route is supposed to take 22 hours 27 minutes. But I'm not sure I want to drive I-70 all the way across Missouri and Kansas.

Fiddling with the online maps, it looks like Mobile to Memphis, to Oklahoma City (by way of Little Rock) then I-35 to I-70 in mid-Kansas won't cost much time (10 minutes out of a 22+ our trip isn't much) and I think driving through Arkansas should be prettier than driving across the plains.

Now I need to fiddle with the GPS and get it to give me something approaching that route. (I think I need to use the app that lives in the computer to calculate the route and download it into the TomTom.)

If I was travelling without Dinah Kitty, I'd think about spending part of a day in Memphis. Oh, well. Maybe some other time.

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Sun, May 03, 2009

Software Plumber

Posted at 2:36 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

In preparation for an interview this past week, I have finally thought of an analogy that can explain our business model to someone outside the business. There is another business that a lot of people have experience with that works a lot like ours.

I am like a master plumber for software, and ReleaseTEAM is a plumbing company.

People who have problems in our area of expertise, or want to remodel or put in an addition, hire us to do the work, and I get sent out to various project sites to do the actual work.

Sometimes we get hired directly by the customer who wants the work done, but more often there is a prime contractor and sometimes additional layers of subcontractors between us and the client.

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Intuos3 on Ubuntu 9.04

Posted at 2:19 pm MDT to Technology

I needed the following changes to get the rotation, buttons and eraser working properly for my Wacom Intuos3 graphic tablet. I did a lot of rummaging in the Ubuntu forums vefore I found something that would work for me.

In the old method of configuration using xorg.conf, the Wacom tools have names like "pad", "stylus", "eraser" and "cursor", and that is what the wacom control utilities expect to see.

First set up a translation to take place during boot:

sudo vi /etc/init.d/wacomtohal

Cut and paste this into wacomtohal:

## find any wacom devices
for udi in `hal-find-by-property --key input.x11_driver --string wacom`
do
type=`hal-get-property --udi $udi --key input.x11_options.Type`
## rewrite the names that the Xserver will use
hal-set-property --udi $udi --key info.product --string $type
done

sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/wacomtohal

sudo update-rc.d wacomtohal defaults 27

Set ~/.xinitrc to:

#!/bin/sh
xsetwacom set pad Rotate HALF
xsetwacom set pad StripLDn "core key up"
xsetwacom set pad StripLUp "core key down"
xsetwacom set pad Button4 "core key SHIFT"
xsetwacom set pad Button3 "core key ALT"
xsetwacom set pad Button2 "core key CTRL"
xsetwacom set pad Button1 "core key space"

and make it executable.

Reboot to activate wacomtohal, and make sure ~/.xinitrc is run before firing up krita or gimp. (It needs to be re-run if the tablet has been unplugged and replugged since the last boot or log on.)

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Kubuntu Upgrade to 9.04

Posted at 8:26 am MDT to Technology

I upgraded Kubuntu to 9.04 yesterday, and it went very smoothly, except that it left me with an unbootable menu.lst file for the GRUB boot manager. Fortunately, I had once edited the old menu.lst with an editor that generated a menu.lst~ backup file. Forcing GRUB to use the older version of the file got me in to a point where I could edit the broken file.

I don't think this is a problem with the current update. I'm pretty sure something got broken in one the previous updates and I've been sort of limping along with boot problems after every major update.

I like a verbose boot process, so I edit my menu.lst to remove the 'quiet' settings, and then I have to keep manually hacking the scripts forever after. I'm pretty sure these problems have been around for a while, but because I kept tweaking versions of a bootable menu.lst they weren't fully apparent. This time I let the update tool give me what it thought was a clean copy of the menu.lst.

The update tools for Ubuntu do not have as good a mechanism for reconciling differences in config files as the RedHat/Fedora tools do. The Fedora tools always put a file with their proposed changes on the drive and keep a copy of your customized file there, too, regardless of which version of the config file you told it to use during the update, so it is possible to go back and audit the config changes later. The Ubuntu tools clean up very aggressively and there is no way I have figured out to tell it to leave a copy of the config alternative that was not selected around for reference purposes. If I hadn't had that menu.lst~ I would have had even worse problems, because it turns out that my LiveDisk for rescues is back in Colorado, not packed where I thought it was.

In the current case, the broken menu.lst contains a boot stanza like:

title           Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=32d73b5c-3672-47b7-b704-105947811a7f ro splash resume=/dev/sda2
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic
quiet

and the working one looks like:

title           Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=/dev/sda1 ro splash resume=/dev/sda2
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic

The boot error was from initramfs, complaining that a device with UUID=32d73b5c-3672-47b7-b704-105947811a7f did not exist.

The update (I also like my updates verbose) had complained about the resume device:

update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic
cryptsetup: WARNING: found more than one resume device candidate:
                     /dev/sda2
                     UUID=b025b5c2-02cc-481b-b663-06eccb3b0235

Interesting that cryptsetup was smart enough to know that it was hosed, but update-initramfs apparently was not. I have never had any luck using hard drive UUIDs on this laptop, so I suspect the configuration has been hosed forever. Time to fix it.

I found a thread in the Ubuntu forums that explained how to fix the resume device problem, so I attacked that first.

Running 'sudo blkid -c /dev/null' (no quotes) in a command window gave me the current actual UUIDs:

/dev/sda1: UUID="daee274f-d8bf-447c-914a-e3db8ce84f62" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3" LABEL="/"
/dev/sda2: TYPE="swap" UUID="29e7c127-6729-4009-a201-03fa84b54ad9"
/dev/sda3: UUID="01c67fb7-9818-4a6e-b71c-4597f3ec54ad" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3" LABEL="/home"

The -c /dev/NULL forces it to look at reality instead of using a cached value. Note that the output values don't resemble the ones in the broken menu.lst nor in the error message (final digits are wrong in all cases).

Update /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume to contain the UUID of the real swap partition.

Check /etc/fstab and update UUID values as needed. I had cleaned out all UUIDs on this laptop long ago, so this was not really necessary. If I get the UUIDs working properly, I should put the UUIDs (which are unique) back in /etc/fstab instead of the names and labels, which cannot be trusted to remain constant across system changes. LABELs like / and /home might be duplicated on an external drive, and the current architecture of the hard drive device drivers does not guarantee that the same physical drive will always be sda (I ran into problems with that when I was having those drive failures on the my server last fall -- the sda values for specific drives changed when I rebooted after a drive failure).

Ran 'sudo update-initramfs -u' and edited menu.lst to put the UUID back into the boot line (carefully saving a copy of the working menu.lst first).

Rebooted. It worked with the UUID in the boot stanza. So I ran 'sudo update-initramfs -u -k all' to make sure all of the kernels in my choice list have current UUID info in them.

Then I tried suspend/resume to disk. It didn't quite work, but I think that was due to interference from vmware on the way down and up. I'll experiment more with this sometime in the future.

For now, I need to figure out what they have done to the configuration of the Intuos. It's supposed to be more flexible now, but the commands I use to rotate the pad don't seem to be working.

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Mon, Apr 27, 2009

Continental 2

Posted at 2:43 pm MDT to Travel

I had the alarm clock set for 4:30, but awakened at 4 and saw snow covering everything. I decided trying to get any more sleep would be hopeless, so I headed out to the airport earlier than I had originally planned.

There was snow everywhere and the rental car said the external temperature for most of the trip was 32 F, but the highways were wet with occasional patches of slush. I drove well below the speed limit, being in an unfamiliar vehicle, but still made decent time.

By 6 am I had returned the rental, taken the shuttle to the terminal, passed through security, and bought some breakfast. I ate in the seating area that served Houston.

After the 7am flight had loaded, the gate attendants came around to the few people left in the seating area and asked: Were we scheduled to fly to Houston?
Did we have connections? and Had we checked bags?

My answers were Yes, Yes and No, so they put me on the earlier flight. That was just as well, since by the time the plane was de-iced and took off it was after 8.

I was able to watch them de-icing the Frontier jet with the white rabbit on the tail while we waited to be de-iced. It was fascinating. There is one tanker truck on each side of the plane being de-iced. The trucks have guys in booths at the top of big cherry-picker arms riding up and down and around controlling the nozzles that spray the de-icer solutions. They have to stretch the cherry-pickers all the way up to spray the top of the planes tail, but they stay lower when they are working on the wings and ailerons and plane body. First they spray some pink stuff that melts ice and snow and colors any snow and ice that hasn't melted yet, so they can see what they missed. Then they spray some green stuff that helps prevent additional ice from forming.

Even after we finally took off, the plane flew the long way around to avoid bad weather over central Texas, so we arrived a half hour later than the 8 am flight's original arrival time. But that still left me a comfortable amount of time to reach my flight to Mobile.

I heard the Houston gate attendants telling people they already had printed out new boarding passes on later flights for people with connections to Newark (and, I suppose, other destinations). That was unexpectedly well organized -- I'm even more impressed by the Continental staff in Bush airport in Houston. (Though I tend to think that flying from Denver to Newark by way of Houston is a prime symptom of what is wrong with aviation in this country...)

I'm going to add Continental to my list of favored airlines, along with Frontier.

After all that, my flight from Houston to Mobile actually arrived 15 minutes early.

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Sun, Apr 26, 2009

Unfinished Symphony

Posted at 8:32 pm MDT to Media

Last night was the final concert of the 2008-2009 season for the Boulder Philharmonic. They played three pieces, and the soloist also played an encore.

The first piece was "Lyric for Strings" by George Walker, a living African American composer. There was a family connection in this piece: the Concert Master of the Boulder Phil is his son.

Next was Schubert's 8th "Unfinished" Symphony, followed after the intermission by Brahms Second Piano Concerto, with Jon Nakamatsu as soloist.

Nakamatsu was an excellent pianist -- more showy in his encoure than during the Concerto-- but I have to confess that the Brahms did not really grab me.

I loved the Schubert, and the Lyrics for Strings, though, so I may just have been in the mood for melody. Being tired from travelling probably didn't help.

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Continental

Posted at 8:31 pm MDT to Travel

This weekend is my last weekend home before the end of the contract. The trip from Mobile would not quite have been faster if I had driven, but it was 11 AM before I reached my front door.

And I am really not fond of landing in thunderstorms in commuter jets. The plane from Mobile had 57 passenger seats. Things got very bouncy at the end of the flight from Mobile to Houston. And then, already running late because of the weather, we sat outside the gate in Houston until after my flight to Denver (which was on schedule) took off.

I have to say Continental treated me very well. They gave me vouchers for a hotel and a meal, so I spent the night in a bed in a Marriott, not in the airport terminal.

They were giving out a number of vouchers. I guess the storms disrupted the evening flight schedules pretty badly.

The weather in Denver was drizzly and cold, and I got home late enough, and tired enough that I gave Nanette a call at the Farmers' market and told her I wasn't coming down.

The weather was nicer today (Sunday), but now another front is moving in. I'm worried things may be nasty when I head to the airport at 5 am tomorrow.

I'm glad I'll be driving the next time I travel from Mobile to Boulder, which will be May 16th.

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