Teleidoscope

Fri, Aug 31, 2007

Luddites at SFWA

Posted at 5:22 pm MDT to Current Events

The officers of the SF Writers Association have done something very stupid and illegal. They sent DMCA takedown notices to a site called scribd.com for every document on the site that mentioned Asimov or Silverberg (not just documents that were written BY Asimov or Silverberg). This included book reviews and a course syllabus.

DMCA takedown notices can legally only be sent by the copyright owners or their legal representatives. They did not own or represent the owners of most of the documents

And forcing takedowns of reviews and such (and books that had been uploaded by their own authors) is kind of counter-productive if you want to pull in new readers for SF.

The current officers of SFWA seem to hate electronic media. To think that I once dreamed of becoming a paid SF writer and being able to join that organization.

Also discussed at Making Light.

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Thu, Aug 30, 2007

Birds. And Concerts

Posted at 10:50 pm MDT to Weather

Fall is arriving even though the Equinox is a few months away.

It's getting noticeably cooler at night, and the sun is rising later: mornings are dark. There are other signs of the changing season, too.

This morning I went out to pull the trash can to the end of the driveway, and as I stepped out on the porch there was a sort of chirpy whoosh and a cloud of a gazillion little birds flew up into the air from my roof and the tree near my bedroom. They settled for a moment on the power lines in front of my neighbor's yard. Several hundred feet of power lines, if you count all of the strands... And then they moved on.

I've gotten my season tickets for the Philharmonic, too. (I've been a member for years) This year I hope to actually attend some of the concerts. Last year, between the Boston gig and the weather and just not feeling like going out in the evenings, I missed all of the concerts.

Most of the concerts are Saturday evenings at 7:30pm.

Looks like it's a multimedia year. Should be fun...

Saturday Oct 13 Nyla Whitmore (a Painter) guest artist for 'Pictures at an Exhibition' This could be fun. Like the NASA video accompanying the Planets a few years ago.

Saturday Nov 3 Marcus Roberts Trio. Gershwin, Hindemith, Brahms, and a special composition for the Phil's 50th Anniversary.

Friday November 23, 4PM the Nutcracker, a Thanksgiving tradition in Boulder. I try to go every couple of years.

Saturday February 16 Judith Ingolfsson, violin and Ars Nova singers. Copland, Korngold (the violin) and Prokofiev (Alexander Nevsky Cantata, with the singers) with videos of the Eisenberg film. Ooooh.

Saturday March 22 Contemporary Ballet, and Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances

Saturday April 26 Colorado Shakespeare Festival actors and the St. Martin's Chamber Choir. Berlioz (Beatrice and Benedict Overture), Mendelssohn (Midsummer Night's Suite),Vaughan Williams (Serenade to Music, with the choir), Walton (Henry V)

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Wed, Aug 29, 2007

Ubuntu

Posted at 8:31 pm MDT to Technology

I'm getting annoyed at Ubuntu. I had more or less gotten used to their admin oddities, I thought.

But last night I learned (the hard way) that they have /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash instead of /usr/bin/bash which is used by all the other Linux distributions. They are even sneaky about it: they use bash in user environments, but dash behind the scenes. And the two sheels are NOT functionally interchangeable. This means that software packages set up for generic Linux will often mysteriously fail to install or run properly.

I'm not sure they haven't also done something odd to their perl installation. I know perl, and I've seen a couple of different perl scripts acting out-of-spec in ways that break things. I was blaming my code, but I have my doubts, now, since the VMWare config utility is also acting up..

I downloaded vanilla perl source from perl.org and built it, and I've been downloading loading perl modules this evening. Tomorrow I'll see whether things behave any better. If not, I'll load a VMWare image of Fedora or Centos and see if I get the same behavior there as I do on Ubuntu.

I'm using this laptop for the remote access for my current gig, so I can't redo the operating system until November, but if Fedora is really providing decent KDE support in thier new releases, I may switch to Fedora instead of upgrading to the next version of Ubuntu.

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Tue, Aug 28, 2007

Throat Infections

Posted at 10:33 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

I spent too much time in airplanes and airports last week. And too much time in New England.

I had a low grade throat infection with occasional coughing most of the time I was in Boston and I still have swollen glands and some scratchiness, though it seems to be improving.

I have a long history of weird throat infections. In college I went to the clinic once (sophomore or junior year) with a throat infection that was causing a bad earache. The doctor looked at my chart and said "Yes, you were in with this a week ago, too. And we gave you a strep test."

I said, "No, that was last year."

So they gave me another strep test...

I don't bother going to the doctor unless these throat infections start spreading out and causing earaches. (The strep tests never come back positive and there isn't much the doctors can do about viruses.) At the moment my ears are making crackly noises when I move my jaw but still pressure equalizing

If I ever really get strep, it will probably kill me, because I won't do anything about it, after all of the negative strep tests I've had over the years.

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Mon, Aug 27, 2007

Olympia

Posted at 9:21 pm MDT to Current Events

Olympia in Greece is being threatened by forest fires that are burning up a lot of the country and have already killed more than 60 people. Some of the fires are believed to be the result of arson.

I visited Olympia during the Mediterranean cruise I took a few years ago. It was wonderful. They had fixed up Olympia for the Olympic Games earlier that year.

I hope they can at least save the museum.

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Sun, Aug 26, 2007

Atlanta Lightning

Posted at 9:26 pm MDT to Travel

I got up Friday morning at 6am Boston time, which is 4 am Colorado time. I collapsed into bed at 4am Saturday morning when I finally arrived home. I'm glad I had a couple of the Larabars left: they were all I had to eat (except a few airline pretzels) after I left Boston.

My flight from Boston left on time, but then we spent an hour in a holding pattern because of a spectacular storm over Atlanta that had shut down the airport. The pilot landed us, more or less between the storm clouds, just before lack of fuel would have forced us to divert to Charlotte.

By the time I got into the terminal, my connecting flight to Denver should have already been in the air. I was relieved to see that it had been delayed a bit because of the storm. But it kept being pushed back and pushed back. The flight that was originally supposed to leave at 8:15pm did not leave until 1:15am.

I've spent the rest of the weekend relaxing.

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Thu, Aug 23, 2007

My Own Bed

Posted at 7:05 pm MDT to Travel

I have woken up at about 2 hour intervals every night on this trip. One way and another, hotels are too noisy... or the wrong kind of noisy. And I'm a light sleeper and prone to insomnia at the best of times. I'm looking forward to sleeping in my own bed.

But before that happens, I have a half day of work tomorrow, and a long day of travel. Assuming my connections work and there are no delays, I should be landing in Denver at about 9:30pm Colorado time, which is 11:30pm Boston time. If I'm lucky I should be home by 10:30 or 11:00.

In the mean time, I think I'll leave the airconditioner on tonight: it's noisy, but it blocks out other noises.

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Wed, Aug 22, 2007

Lobster Time

Posted at 6:04 pm MDT to Weather

Today I had my New England lobster dinner. I think the lobster had molted recently: the claw shells were a lot bigger than the meat inside. But that's just as well. I'm so full that I feel like a snake that swallowed a goat. The meal included a cup of clam chowder, mashed potatoes, veggies, and cornbread.

At least the carbs are warming.

When I packed for this trip, I thought about packing a light jacket. And then I thought: "it's August". Famous last words...

Highs here have been reaching 68 in the afternoons and temperatures are a good bit cooler in the mornings when I walk to work. The news this evenings said that temperatures are running 12 degrees below normal, and today's high would be more normal for September 30.

Fortunately, walking briskly while carrying my laptop bag (about 25 pounds including all of the stuff in it) has been keeping me warm enough. And it hasn't rained on me yet.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a little warmer, with only a 20% chance of rain. Friday is supposed to be closer to 'normal' temperatures, but a day or so ago they were saying that about Thursday.

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Tue, Aug 21, 2007

Lärabars

Posted at 5:56 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

Last week at Costco I noticed some boxes of Lärabar fruit and nut bars. I bought a box and tossed some into my suitcase so I wouldn't be tempted to hit the junk food machines in the evenings. According to the labels, the bars are: No Added Sugar, Unprocessed, Raw, Non-GMO, Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Vegan, Kosher, Cholesterol free and Low sodium. They are also peanut free: I checked the ingredients before I bought them.

So much for the list of things they are not. What they are is ground fruit and nuts formed into nice solid bars that don't get smushed in luggage, and pretty darn tasty.

They are also well wrapped, and don't need refrigeration the way string cheese does.

The box I bought had three varieties in it:

Apple Pie: Dates, Almonds, Unsweetened Apples, Walnuts, Raisins, Cinnamon

Lemon: Dates, Cashews, Almonds, Lemon juice concentrate, Natural Lemon flavor

Cherry Pie: Dates, Almonds, Unsweetened Cherries

I haven't tried the Cherry ones yet, but I'm sure they will be as delicious as the other two varieties. I think I have found a new addition to my packing routine.

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Mon, Aug 20, 2007

Adams Inn

Posted at 5:21 pm MDT to Travel

It was a long day of travel, yesterday, but fortunately uneventful.

The hotel is not quite as close to my worksite as advertised, but it is quite nice: one side is on the water. They are just coming to the end of some major renovations so most of the hotel is freshly painted and clean.

They have a free continental breakfast in a little pub/restaurant that serves real food for lunch and dinner. I had a cup of excellent clam chowder and 1/2 of a seafood salad sandwich for dinner, and I am contemplating lobster for later in the week. (I won't expense it if I decide to splurge.)

The walk is not bad (and I can use the exercise) but I hope it doesn't decide to rain hard tomorrow. The sky looks a bit threatening at the moment.

I wonder if I should have packed an umbrella and checked my bag through...the no-umbrellas-in-carry-on rule is a pain.

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Sat, Aug 18, 2007

Zombie Day

Posted at 9:22 pm MDT to Travel

My brain turned off sometime yesterday evening. I spent most of today relaxing and reading, and now I'm about to tidy the house and pack (and possibly eat some supper).

I have an 11:20am flight tomorrow (which means leaving the house before 9:00), and a four hour layover in Atlanta before continuing to Boston. I think I'm tired just thinking about it. I've been stockpiling paperbacks to read in the airports.

The flight home has only an hour layover. I think I'm going to check some baggage for that one, and let the airline worry about getting my suitcase moved between the planes. The long layover on the trip out is less of a problem even if the planes end up being at opposite ends of the airport and the shuttles trains are out (which I have known to happen. It can be a long walk).

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Fri, Aug 17, 2007

Elevations

Posted at 5:43 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

A month or so ago when my credit union's website was being annoying, I looked around for an alternative. Today I stopped in to the office of Elevations (I think they used to be the University of Colorado Credit Union) and opened a checking and savings account. It took a while, but I walked out with the new bank accounts opened.

I also walked out with my new credit and debit cards: apparently they have machines that can emboss the cards with the user name and account number right in the (fairly small) branch office. I'm impressed.

The checks will still take a week or two (tsk ... these archaic technologies).

The Visa credit card is part of the overdraft protection on the checking account. They gave me their lowest interest rate, which has a high credit limit. My total available credit is just silly these days

I'm not going to transfer all of my banking to Elevations just yet (though the next time my savings CD matures I may move that money over to a CD at Elevations). I've got too many online payments set up to pull from Bellco. To make any kind of quick changeover practical. I think I'm going use the Elevations accounts to save up for the next car I buy: I want to pay cash for my next vehicle.

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Thu, Aug 16, 2007

Time Share

Posted at 8:22 am MDT to Travel

Because I have been on cruises and have hotel and airline frequent flyer miles, I get lots of brochures for vacation stuff. Last December I filled out a survey that was supposed to put me in a drawing for a prize. Tuesday I got a call that I had won a prize provided I would listen to a pitch for timeshares. The list of possible prizes included $2400 cash, a wide screen TV, a vacation based in Florida or Las Vegas and a Cadillac, and I was guaranteed to win one of them.

I'd been thinking that I might like to own a vacation timeshare (that autonomy thing), but wasn't sure where in particular I would want one. It turns out they have a solution for that.

I have bought a Time Share that had been foreclosed on and was being resold by the homeowners association. It isn't the traditional kind of timeshare where you are prescheduled for one week per year in a particular location, but a newer 'Points' timeshare.

It is theoretically still based on partial ownership of a piece of real estate somewhere, but the actual times and locations of the vacations I take are fungible. Sort of vacations backed by real estate like paper money is notionally backed by gold. In practice, it amounts to a prepaid vacation with some potential resale value.

The points can be used at resorts all over the world and for things like cruises. They don't necessarily need to be for a week at a time unless I want to use them for a 'week' style timeshare. I can use them at 'Points' resorts for long weekends or on weekly schedules that are not Friday to Firday. And they can be carried over for one year (but not two) if I want to save up for something big.

They said the timeshare still qualifies as a second home for tax purposes, so the interest may be deductible. I will look into that.

And I can rent (more or less) my points to other people who want a vacation somewhere. Anywhere. So its a little like when my grandparents were part owners of their beach cottage, but without the maintenance work.

They gave me so many points as a signing bonus (more than half a year's worth) that I am looking at spending some time in Japan in the next year or so. Or maybe some time in England. Foreign sites are more expensive, naturally, but I have a lot of points to use.

Oh, and the prize I won was a cruise through the Bahamas. I need to schedule it some time in the next 30 days and take it some time in the next year. I'm thinking that January might be nice. Things at the company are often slow in the beginning of January. And that's about as far from hurricane season as you can get. It's a trip for two, so maybe I'll see if Nanette or one of my other friend's can come. Or I'll get the luxury of a cabin all to myself.

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Wed, Aug 15, 2007

Potato Chip Code

Posted at 10:36 am MDT to Code

I'm developing a new section for the company's internal website using the Perl HTML::Template and CGI::Application Packages and various plugins for
CGI::Application. I haven't used any of these powerful and flexible modules before, so I'm learning as I go. The documentation on some of the modules is a little sketchy, but things are beginning to shape up well.

I've got authentication (login/logout) and authorization (different people can do different things) in place, display modules for three of the four main data tables and infrastructure for a lot of the rest. This application is going to have about 25 functions accessible from various menus, but most of them involve doing similar things to various DB tables, so development goes fairly quickly. Once I get something working for one data type, adding the same function for the other three databases goes fairly quickly.

Yesterday I started work at about 9:00 AM and stopped at 2:00am, so I am fairly groggy today. A couple of hours of that was dealing with the phone company when my DSL went down, but a lot of it was googling for information and coding. I find developing code is like eating potato chips: There is always one more tweak to try. And until there is a reason to stop, I don't. It doesn't matter that I'm disrupting my sleep cyclethis week, since I'll be in Boston next week: disrupting my cycle now may actually decrease the effects of jet lag.

This is one reason I prefer being a consultant: the contracts put sane limits on how many hours I end up working in a day or week, so I don't burn myself out when I'm working on an interesting project.

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Tue, Aug 14, 2007

Phone Company: Aaargh

Posted at 1:17 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

Qwest really needs to do a better job of letting its left hand know what its right hand is doing.

My DSL dropped again at about 11:40 am. When I called to find out why, they told me that everything should still be working fine, and that the switch back of my ISP to FRII has been postponed from tomorrow to the 20th. After an hour of thrashing (including a lot of time listening to their on-hold advertisements) they finally decided that the ISP change was not really postponed to the 20th, it was happening today. Without any notice to me or FRII.

I called FRII tech support and we eventually got the connection back up. They needed to reconfigure some things at their end now that Qwest is connecting me to them again.

I wish I could get my underlying DSL from someone other than Qwest. If I could, I would change phone providers. Unfortunately, none of the alternatives to Qwest do residential DSL. And the ones that do business DSL are a little too pricey.

Some other observations:

When a connection drops without any changes to the modem settings, it is not likely to come back up again if all you do is tweak the modem settings.

On-Hold messages that recommend using the website support mechanism are likely to produce homicidal impulses in people whose web access is down. Messages bragging about the quality of your High-Speed Broadband just rub salt in the wounds.

I am enjoying the faster DSL, though. Things are noticeably snappier and YouTube is actually usable, which it wasn't before.

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Mon, Aug 13, 2007

Blosxom

Posted at 10:53 pm MDT to Code

The websites for the Blosxom tool (which I use for this blog) have changed. Most of the content from the www.blosxom.com site has moved to blosxom.sourceforge.net. Some resources are also available at The Unofficial Blosxom User Group. I have updated my 'Powered by' widgets.

The old URL seems to be completely dead.

There are discussions of a new version under way on the developers mailing list. At this point they are discussing bugs that need to be fixed and new features that might be added.

I'm fairly happy with the way Blosxom has been working for me, so I don't plan to rock the boat.

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Sun, Aug 12, 2007

Big Companies

Posted at 2:42 pm MDT to Current Events

Our company, as a small suppplier, has had problems with big companies that try to dictate outrageous terms or retroactively chnage deals on us. But I don't think we have ever had to deal with outright extortion. We should probably consider ourselves lucky.

Teresa Neilsen Hayden at Making Light has a commentary on an exchange of letters between an officer of a large Australian book store chain and the head of a small publishing company. Some of the comments are a lot of fun, too.

This weekend seems to be full of examples on how not to do business:

1. (SCO) Don't sue your customers.

2. (A&R) Don't try to extort money from your suppliers at usurious interest rates. Especially, don't do it in writing.

I wonder if going to Business School sonehow destroys common sense.

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SCO PSJ

Posted at 1:32 pm MDT to Current Events

A quick recap:

SCO is the company that sued IBM for billions of dollars, claiming that Linux violated some of their UNIX copyrights. Then they sued Novell for saying that the copyrights in question actually belong to Novell. Redhat sued SCO, more or less for slandering Linux. And SCO sued some of their own customers, more or less for switching from SCO UNIX to Linux and claimed that all Linux users should pay them lots of money for the copyrighted material that was supposedly in Linux. There were also counterclaims all over the place.

After years of litigation SCO was never able to identify the copyrighted material of theirs that was supposedly in Linux.

On Friday the judge in the SCO/Novell case (same judge as for SCO/IBM) published a 110 page Preliminary Summary Judgment that Novell did own the copyrights, and decided a number of other contractual questions in Novell's favor as well. See the Groklaw report for more details.

SCO's claims against Novell are basically gone. Novell's counterclaims mostly stand, including one for conversion (i.e. theft) of license fees that SCO should have handed over to Novell.

SCO probably doesn't have the cash to pay the license fees that were withheld, much less damages asked for in Novell's counterclaims.

SCO's side of the IBM case mostly falls apart because if they didn't have the copyrights, they had no standing to sue. Some of IBM's counterclaims don't make sense any more, but others (like a Lanham act claim that SCO was engaged in the business equivalent of libel) become basically a slam-dunk.

This coming week could be very entertaining as the repercussions of the PSJ begin to take effect.

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Sat, Aug 11, 2007

Pound Cake

Posted at 8:56 pm MDT to Technology

Baking cakes from scratch was not a skill that I learned from my Mother. She always used cake mixes. Sometimes they were modified in various ways -- I remember making lemon cakes with packages of lemon pudding added, before they became so popular that Duncan Hines started producing lemon cake mixes with the pudding already included.

The cake pans my mother used for making layer cakes were unlike any I have ever seen for sale (I suspect she received them as a wedding present). Each pan had a rivet in the center of the bottom, to which was attached a flat, narrow strip of metal that went to the side of the pan, up the side, and ended in a sort of tab. When you were ready to take the cake out of the pan, you pushed the tab all the way around the pan, and the metal strip sliced the cake away from the sides and bottom of the pan. We always greased the pans with shortening (moving the tab to make sure we greased the area under the blade) but the greasing wasn't really functional, and I don't think I learned to do it properly. I have a long history of baked goods breaking when I try to get them out of the pan.

I am not really fond of most kinds of cake. I don't like frosting. When I eat a piece of frosted birthday cake, I generally leave behind a frosting skeleton: squishy frosting that won't hold its shape is disappointing. Mom used to make a frosted cake for my youngest brother, whose birthday is two days away from mine and on a holiday, so we always ended up having family picnics as combined celebrations. For me she made an angelfood cake with a thin whipped cream coating, meant to be eaten with strawberries (my birthday was prime strawberry season).

I love fruitcake (and fruitcake fruit: I stockpile it and eat it raw as a snack. I love strong citrus flavors) and I like poundcake. But in general, given a choice between a rich, frosted cake and a chunk of good artisanal bread, I'll choose the bread. That's part of why I've been baking bread every week or two for years, and haven't baked a cake in ages.

Before I moved to Colorado, I occasionally baked cakes from mixes, but after I moved here, I found that cake mixes designed for sealevel don't really work well, even if you make the recommended altitude adjustments. And they stick in the pans even worse than they do at sealevel.

Food Network recently had a Cake Week: most of the episodes of the various shows were cake related. I found myself in the mood to bake a cake as a technical project.

Yesterday I baked the first cake I have made in probably 15 years, and, I believe, the first one I have ever baked from scratch in my life.

I used the Pound Cake recipe from Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking and I think it came out fairly well. It's not too sweet, or too oily the way some store-bought poundcakes are. I gave some of the cake to some of my friends at the Farmers' Market today and they said it was good, which is encouraging.

I also made a batch of Alton's Pan Lube -- a cup and a half of allpurpose flour thoroughly beaten into two cups of shortening -- and used some to to grease the pan, which seemed to work well.

Alton being a southern boy, there is buttermilk in a lot of his recipes, including this one. I may try buttermilk biscuits tomorrow, to use up some more of the quart. Biscuits are neither New England/Canuck nor Italian, so when I was growing up they were usually "Poppin' Fresh" when they appeared at all. I actually learned to like biscuits at a restaurant chain where biscuits and honey were one of the bread options, and I tried them because biscuits were exotic. I have made biscuits occasionally over the years, but I generally lean toward yeast instead of chemical leaveners for breadish baked goods: the last time few times I made biscuits (this is talking about a timespan of ten or fifteen years) they were sourdough biscuits, not southern-style.

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Fri, Aug 10, 2007

Phone Company: Qwest -- Still Bozos After All These Years

Posted at 9:59 am MDT to Miscellaneous

If there was a way to get DSL at home without going through QWEST, I would switch all of my phone service to someone else.

I knew they would manage to screw up the speed increase on my line, and they did an excellent job of living down to my expectations. This morning, my internet connection was down again.

It turns out that when they switched the DSL rate, they also made themselves my ISP without my knowledge or consent. And they can't switch it back until the 15th. They gave me credentials so that I could get back on line until then, so I am currently using two ISPs: FRII for hosting and DNS, and MSN (insert ritual sign against the evil eye) for connectivity.

I knew that rep I talked to earlier in the week sounded incompetent...

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Thu, Aug 09, 2007

Costco Pharmacy

Posted at 9:52 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

I get my prescription medicines at Costco. Their prices are good, their hours are reasonable, they are the closest pharmacy to my house (by a few hundred feet: the SuperTarget in the same complex also has a pharmacy) and they have a nationwide network, so when I get stuck in corporate housing somewhere I can get my prescriptions forwarded easily.

Today they did something I found really impressive.

I've been taking a brand-name thyroid replacement called Synthroid at various dosages since 1986, when I had half my thyroid removed. For the past year I've been taking the same, fairly high, dosage I used before 2001. The doctor's office kind of wanted to push me back down last fall, but I kind of ignored them until I used up the prescription because I felt less depressed and stopped gaining weight at the higher dosage. (I didn't lose weight, but I stopped gaining weight without making a particular effort.)

This week I was coming to the end of the old prescription, so I got my thyroid levels tested, and, as I expected, they are lowering my dosage again to the dose I took from 2001 to 2006.

However, when the nurse called to tell me about the dosage change she asked whether I wanted to try the 'generic' version of the drug (levothyroxine). I knew from on-line thyroid support forums that (unlike most drugs) people often react a bit differently to the brand name and generic versions of thyroid medicine. They are not exactly chemically identical. That is one reason my prescription has always specified brandname-only.

I decided that it would make sense to see if I feel better with the generic at the lower dosage (since I know I feel about a quarter dead on the lower dose of the brandname drug). I told the nurse to send in the prescription for the generic. I'm supposed to be retested 6 weeks after the dosage change in either case, so if the generic isn't working out we can make a change.

An hour or so after I spoke to my doctor's office, I got a call from the Costco pharmacy. They had received the new prescription and wanted to make sure I knew about the change from brand-name only to generic, and agreed with it. I told them yes.

I'm very pleased that they noticed the change and bothered to call me instead of just filling the prescription as sent over by the doctor's office. It gives me a good feeling that if I ever get multiple prescriptions that have conflicts, they might notice and warn me about them.

I should probably read the little booklets about my prescription drugs that they print out and give me (every time I refill a prescription) more often. Something may have changed since the last time I read them.

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No Broadband, Working Print Server

Posted at 8:00 pm MDT to Technology

Yesterday about 2PM my broadband died. Qwest promised to call when it came back up. But, being the phone company, they didn't.

This morning the connection was back up.

I need to figure out how to get the Sprint cellular modem working: being cut off from the internet is very disorienting.

I got my second print server (a D-Link DPR-1260), working while I was disconnected from the net and finished the setup today with aid from the internet. (The instructions ignored all OSs not manufactured by Microsoft, and Ubuntu does something weird to the CUPS admin). So I can now use both the color printer and the BW laser from the laptop in the livingroom.

This server is multiport, while the older one is single-port, so if I run low on network ports on my router I can put both printers on the new router and free up a line. And I'll need to make sure that any future printers I buy are on the supported list.

The new server has WiFi (with a profoundly stupid default configuration) but I turned that off. I really prefer hard-wired connections when they are available.

The HP Photosmart C3100 has a scanner function, but I've never used that even in Boston when it was directly attached to the laptop. It is handy to have a working copier in the house, though.

If I had it to do over again, I would pay the extra price for a machine with builtin fax capabilities, besides the scanner/copier/printer. I may invest in one anyway if the 3100 gets cranky (or starts eating ink: HP ink is expensive).

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Tue, Aug 07, 2007

Phone Company

Posted at 1:32 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

I just spent 20 minutes on the phone with the phone company (Qwest). It's amazing that they don't supply decent lines to their customer support personnel I could hardly hear the guy I spoke to and had to keep asking him to speak louder. The problem was not on my end, because the advertisements they played when I was on hold were very loud.

They also need to fix their computer system so it accepts email addresses with hyphens in them, which are perfectly legal by internet standards even though Microsoft sometimes doesn't support them well.

The main reason I called them was that I happened to notice that my white pages entry still has my house's old street address (even though the county changed it in 1999) and I told Qwest to update their records when it happened. Maybe someday they will get their databases to be consistent: even though the white pages and billing address should now match, I'll bet their repair database will still be wrong. I've only told the repair guys to fix their listing every couple of years, when the mice chew on the lines.

While I was on the line, the rep offered to improve the speed of my internet connection (at an increased cost, of course). That change is supposed to go in Friday.

It will be interesting to see if You-tube and other streamed media become usable instead of pausing every few seconds. If the DSL change doesn't help, I'll take a look at my DSL modem and router to see if they are choking the connections. Since I have to run Flash to get at my bank's site, I might as well be able to take advantage of it.

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Mon, Aug 06, 2007

Vanishing Companies

Posted at 7:45 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

Considering the fact that I have worked in software since 1981, I have worked for very few companies. My current company is only my fifth employer. Proving that is a little trickier, though I have documentary evidence: I have W2s (somewhere) going all the way back. But verifying it could be a problem.

The first three companies I worked for (1981 to 1984, 1985 to 1993, 1993 to 1996) no longer exist. The first one just died a while after I left. The second one (my first period as a consultant) got merged. The third one went through a series of mergers and takeovers and ended up inside IBM, but I doubt that IBM has the employment records available.

The fourth company, at the time I resigned, had been swallowed by a very large corporation in its industry. The signs on the buildings had been changed by the time I left, but my W2 for 2000 still reflects the corporate name from the previous round of mergers. (My employer had 4 names during the 4 years I worked there because of mergers.)

The big corporation has a process that prospective employers can use to find out if you worked for them in the past. Very handy. Unfortunately, I am told, the merging of the payroll systems was not completely successful, so people who left the company that was swallowed before about 2002 are not reported properly. I left n the summer of 2000.

The existence of gaps in the coverage of the official process is not mentioned anywhere official. The paperwork for my next gig was stalled, because the process came up empty when they tried to verify my previous employment. I called HR at the location where I worked (which fortunately still exists) who told me about the problem with the official system, and they are supposed to be sorting things out.

I wonder if employment records for the next employer back still exist in the depths of IBM somewhere? My 401K eventually ended up in an IBM program...

The first two companies are probably untraceable.

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Sat, Aug 04, 2007

Day Length

Posted at 7:32 pm MDT to Weather

The days are noticeably shortening.

Sunrise is just after 6 am. This is helpful in one respect: Dinah does not try to get me to feed her breakfast before sunrise.

Sunset is earlier, too. Today it is supposed to be at 8:11 PM, but it feels darkish already. We are in the middle of the North American Monsoon and the skies are clouding up every afternoon.

Today is no exception. My satellite dish dropped out for a while at 6:20 PM because there was a thunderhead and heavy rain between my house and the satellite.

Even in the mornings, when the sky is clear, the air is positively damp, which feels very strange. The Farmers' Market was very uncomfortable today.

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Fri, Aug 03, 2007

Delays

Posted at 10:36 pm MDT to Travel

I was expectng to fly to Boston this coming Sunday. But my customer is still getting their red tape sorted out. It will probably happen the following week.

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Thu, Aug 02, 2007

Stoves

Posted at 8:39 pm MDT to Technology

Still contemplating stoves.

Nonna always had gas stoves. There was a hurricane or something that hit the Hartford area -- must have been 1956, probably not as late as 1957 -- and knocked out the power for a day or so. We all went over to Nonna and Nonno's house because they had a gas stove available for heating baby bottles. The baby involved was probably my brother Larry, who is about 18 months younger than I am. If it was a different baby, it might have been later.

My Mom's first (or maybe second) stove had a built in deep fat fryer. She hardly ever used it: she said it was messy to use, and fried food was not a huge part of the traditional cuisine on either side of the family. But I remember she made homemade doughnuts at least once, maybe more often. When we moved to Montville, the stove that was built into the house was just ordinary.

Looking at the options on stoves on-line, I'm still trying to decide if I want to go to the trouble and expense of switching my kitchen over to a gas stove (or what they call a mixed fuel: gas stove top with electric ovens). It really looks to me like in the stoves with high end oven features, the ones with gas cooktops are made for cooking and the smoothtop electric ones are made to be pretty and fairly useless. Electric stoves with burner coils and bowls to catch spillovers don't seem to have the serious ovens.

I rarely use more than two burners at a time on the top of the stove, except when I'm canning or doing Thanksgiving. But I definitely want a stovetop that will survive a canning kettle. Also castiron skillets and the chickenfryer (a very deep skillet-like cast iron pan that I use for making risotto).

What I am definitely lusting after in the way of upscale oven features is a warming drawer/bread proofer or a bread proofing cycle. A stove that will hold things at 85 to 90 F for hours, while the house is at about 70 would be wonderful. Most regular ovens have 150, or at best 120, as their lowest setting. And most methods I've tried to warm things just a little have no thermostatic control so they end up too cold or too hot. (Generally too hot. It's amazing how much heat an oven light puts out if you leave it on for a few hours.)

A sealed coil oven (if the oven is electric) would be nice to have, so the coil is not in the open getting dripped on by spills and the oven stone could sit on the bottom of the oven instead of on a rack. Three racks would be nice to have, more for the flexibility of more rack location options than a need for baking three batches at once.

The oven I had in Boston would ring an alarm when it finished preheating to the temperature you set, and it had a nice precise digital oven thermostat so I didn't have to guess whether 350 was at the 3 or the 0 on the dial. That oven was the only thing I kind of miss about that apartment, which was quite annoying otherwise.

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Wed, Aug 01, 2007

I35W

Posted at 11:53 pm MDT to Current Events

A chunk of I35W in Minneapolis has fallen into the Mississippi during rush hour. It's playing hell with communications, as well as killing at least 7 people and injuring at least 60... there are about 50 vehicles still being searched for, and a freight train was crushed when the bridge fell on it.

I think the piece of the highway that fell was farther north than I have ever driven on 35W. When I worked in North Minneapolis and lived in Minnetonka, I used 494 and 694, which go around the outside of the city, for commuting, not 35 where it goes through the center. When I drove back and forth between Denver and Minneapolis I used 35W and 35 for the stretch from Minneapolis to Des Moines, but I'm fairly certain from the reports that the fallen bridge was farther north (or the reporters are confused about Twin Cities geography, which is also possible).

I hope my niece Anna is OK. I don't know what her commute is like.

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McGee's On Food and Cooking

Posted at 10:51 pm MDT to Media

The first edition of Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (1984) was one of the first books aimed at general readers that discussed the scientific aspects of why recipes work the way they do. I read it and enjoyed it a number of years ago, as well as his later book The Curious Cook.

The 2004 revised edition of On Food and Cooking is expanded to include sections on fish and ingredients from all over the world, as well as updating and expanding the earlier information on European and American ingredients and recipes. I'm just working my way into the early chapters on dairy and eggs, but the new edition is as impressive as the first edition.

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Rome

Posted at 10:51 pm MDT to Media

I spent most of yesterday watching the first 9 episodes of Rome, the HBO series, plus the commentaries of episodes that have them. It's a wonderful show and deserves all its awards and nominations. But it is very intense and I think I overdosed slightly: I'm going to wait a few days before I watch the last three episodes of the season. The writer's have done a wonderful job of wrapping people around the events of Caesar's rise to power.

The details in the sets and costumes and props are amazing: interior scenes are lit by extra flames in addition to the ones that are visible, but they don't use regular electric lights when filming the interiors (though I have the feeling that they are showing too many candles vs. olive-oil lamps).

The casting and acting are wonderful, too. And strip well: this show makes I, Claudius (which I need to rewatch when I'm done with Rome) look puritanical. The ancient Romans would consider the depictions of sex, nudity and killing perfectly respectable -- which is part of the point -- but they are a bit stronger than I am used to.

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