Daynotes.com
Weather (& Stuff)
Initial Post
Last Week
Next Week
Humor
The Better Half
TheTimeSink.ETP
Email Dan
The Time Sink |
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
"...chaos rules and I can only react at this point." Man, how prophetic was that one?
Of course, that trashed the day. Gone are the days when I could be up all night and functional the next day. Actually, I didn't do too bad. You know, upon review, I did much better than the local team did during the first half against Air Force.
The house is completely de-lighted, which makes me happy (no, I wasn't going for the easy one <g>); all I have left to do is get all of our stuff into the attic. The tree is shaved and off with the green waste. What? Oh, they weren't scheduling tree pickups until the week of the eighth, so I brought out the chain saw; shaved it nice and close; and put the pieces in the green waste container. ...and a new New Years' tradition is born; the boys loved it: tree to trash is under a minute. Though, the thought of a sleep deprived person wielding a chain saw...
What? That's more garbage information than you really need? Hey, there's more to life than computers... Right, Keith? <g>
Ah, me-oh-my... Never, never, never do two things at once on a system... You know that; and I know that. ...and I still did it. Sheesh.
Sorry babe, that sets your new system back by a day (and I'd already lost one to The Great Sleepless Night). Ah well, I did learn one thing in the interim: your computer will not need MS Office 2000 for you to manage things as you have been doing. The base install of Win98 looks "good enough" and the WordPerfect 9 install will give you an alternate email handler in Netscape. ...and compatibility with the boys' machine as well as mine. Yes, Brian, she's definitely a Linux candidate. All that remains is her Juno account and perhaps the eye candy generator.
Hmmm... Maybe a dual boot box??? For Shelley? That's real workable in a few months... She could run Linux as her day-to-day OS, with Netscape to handle the web stuff, including her site... Hmmm... This may be closer than we think folks. Let her wean her email contacts from her Juno account to her Worldnet account and we're there. Something to think about... That would be as acid a test as I could think of...
Oh well, off to work. ...followed by a routine (yeah, right) trip to the dentist. Painless he is; calm, I am not. ...not his fault; a bad childhood experience. Then home to reformat a drive. Sheesh.
Hey! WhyTucay finally hit! ...a year late. I got into work yesterday to find my machine off. WT?? Oh, the UPS is off. Hmmm, maybe Erik came down over the weekend in a paranoid state and shut things down for some reason... Testing, 1--2--3. Nope: dead UPS. Dead. Not maybe, not limp along like we'd been with Janeen's waiting for IT to get a spare minute. Dead.
Sheesh. Let's see, it's not even 0800 yet and I have a show-stopper. Well, I can go pull some inventory counts while I wait for someone from IT to give a rip... Wait a moment; it isn't 0800 yet. Only the faithful IT minion is here at this early hour... "Hi, Dave! Just checking your stock of 12v7ah batteries. Yep, you're running low. ...as a matter of fact you are now at zero stock. Hey, I'll get you some RSN. C-ya!" ...and I'm off with my loot. Heck, I'll do mine and Janeen's. ...and fill that order whenever. ...and proceed onward with my day.
- Receive new style X-10 Ir motion sensor RF remote (waaay cool: small and programmable).
- Read instructions carefully (sorry, I realize that's a crime around here; but there are only two buttons to program several commands. ...and the last effort was rather terribly received by the main system controller. Like, we're talking bedroom lights to full brightness at midnight<g>. Forgive me; lo siento; mea culpa...).
- Install the device under the eaves by the wood shed.
- Link it directly to the south floodlight through an RF receiver. No need to program it into the system; it's a simple one-to-one issue.
- Stand by.
- Test.
- Whoohoo; "Yreka!" (a town in northern California).
- Rest on laurels.
- Notice that the interior garage lights now turn off when the floodlight turns on.
- Notice that the interior garage lights now turn on when the floodlight turns off.
Darn... I knew I forgot something. I didn't Farquhar that machine yet<g>. Okay, I know Dave's not a verb, and Farquhar is only marginally easier to spell than Optimize... Still, it does have a certain zing to it. Okay, never mind... On to the important stuff.
It's Friday! Yeah! Yes, I know, it's only been a four-day week for some of us; but still, I'm ready for a break. ...and it's the last one I'll have for a few; the spring semester starts next week. ...and there goes a bunch of Saturdays. Ah well, at least we're past the solstice and the days are lengthening little by little. I can already start my blading routine a little later in the day. ...right up against the rush hour traffic. If I could just get to work a little earlier...
...and I'd better get my blading in this weekend: those who make a living divining chicken entrails are talking about rain early next week. ...and we are overdue. 'Course, the last time we had a pattern like this, we almost lost California to the sea that fell from the sky in the spring.
Interesting side note on Shelley's machine rebuild last night: I had an ATI Rage card fail to install. Dunno', I haven't had a problem with them before as I recall. Well, she's set now, I had a Voodoo 3 sitting on a shelf for another project; I think that will hold her for a while.
...a late start to the day; but Shelley's new machine is ready for the move to her work area. I ended up repositioning the new hard drive to an area with better air circulation as the old one was located on the bottom of a desktop-style case and was hemmed in with cables and the FDD.
I also installed Ontrack's Fix-it Utilities 3.0. I've been using this product ever since Dave recommended it back in the early days of his first book. ...and since this is a migrated system rather than the preferred bare metal install, some serious house cleaning was in order. All went well, and for those of you who still show Shelley's Juno email address, please change your address books to reflect her Worldnet account. 'Course, there's still some training to do with the end user...
Uh-huh. ...but she's up and running. ...happy to see a real email client, not so happy to know she'll have to recreate her address book (unless I can find a way to export her old one). ...happy about being able to load most all types of web sites, and not sure what to about the new editing capabilities for her site. Still, a little settle-in time and she'll be a happy little Optimist<g>.
...and for those joining this party late, Shelley's computer really started as a joke (to her); she didn't want one, so I built her one from reject parts. ...and no joke, she had twin Maxtor 540 HDDs on that thing. ...with some free space. Talk about chugging along. Swapping stuff to disk took forever, especially in IE 3.2. ...but she wouldn't use the blasted thing! It was a dust collector.
...so I'd add a tidbit every so often to entice her. Nothing worked. ...for over a year. I added paging, word processing, email, a daily planner; nothing worked. Finally she started to use it for things like running the Couple's Retreat for church. Then she discovered email. ...and Daynotes. Things proceeded apace and now she's a NetWidow. Go figure.
All content Copyright 1999->2001 Daniel C. Bowman. All rights reserved.