The Time Sink

Happy Easter Holiday! Yep; that's quite correct: through some fortuitous set of circumstances (and likely some adroit maneuvering by the HR director), my outfit has the day off. Cool. Way cool...

Of course, I have a to-do list a mile long since much of the weekend ended up detailed to one project or another. ...or just sleep. As a matter of fact, I may even do some of that this morning. But I suspect it's going to be one of those fine California days that says "Get outside and do something!"

Okay. Let's see, there's some more miles to put in on the blades... SuSE to deal with about the wireless NIC... Weeds to terminate with extreme prejudice... A Wiki installation to run (Shelley had one heck of a comment about that title)... A pool filter to clean... A memory changeout on the NT box... A path to level...

Well, you get the drift. I may be over on the other site detailing life in the computer lane, or I may be outside all day working on my sunburn...

What a delightful day I had yesterday! I slept in until the kids were off to school; put some miles in on my blades; made some progress on the alternate site (archive files; I still have some graphics in the cooker); got some yard work done; got some more yard work done; lined out some more yard work for evenings this week; and came out of the day feeling good enough to get to bed at a decent hour.

...'cause in the morning, it's going to take a while for that crane to hoist me out of bed. Oh, my; my muscles are already complaining about the 'spring thaw'. Well, they'd better get used to it; I'm ramping up the project list for the late spring and summer. I managed a lot last year; I'd like to get about the same amount done this year. That way, one more year and the post-pool landscaping will be finished. ...just in time to start over.

During a break from all of my fun, I watched as Bradley ran a psych game on Daniel. He was telling Daniel the pool was almost as warm as it was when they were in the other week. (Now, to me, the 61F I'd measured earlier in the day was no where near the 70F they'd had the other week.) Daniel wasn't going for it until Bradley blew up his new inflatable toy and jumped in. Daniel was weakening and started to blow up his toy.

You know, there are times as a father when it's best to simply sit on the sidelines and watch the proceedings...

That said, there are also times to become a participant in nefarious activities. I went in also. ...and darned near triggered off a 'mammalian diving reflex' episode as I headed toward the deep end from the steps. Man! That water was cold!

Getting out felt a lot better than staying in. At that point the dip actually felt pretty good; although I wasn't going back in anytime soon. Daniel did. He stood on the steps and pushed off on his mini-raft. That was way cool to him. Way cool. ...until he tilted over.

Later, I asked Bradley if he had really been setting Daniel up. He said, "Yep..."

I spent a bunch of time last night reworking and adding to the new alternate site. The servers over at the old site are acting flaky again and I want to get some of those stories off there and over onto my own domain.

...and I spent some time sleuthing around in my SuSE installation to see what I could find out regarding the wireless NIC problem. What I came up with was there doesn't seem to be a problem! I'd hand entered the information about the PCMCIA config last week and figured it was a driver/module issue. No go; I tracked through the configuration scripts only to find that they matched my 'known good' scripts! So now it may be down to something as simple/complex as an interrupt conflict. As I recall, that ISA adapter card grabbed IRQ3 on the other test bed and blocked the use of a standard comm port. I suspect in this install, the rodent is sitting on the interrupt the adapter card wants. Well, that' easy enough to check: I'll disable the on-board comm port and move the rodent if necessary. ...and no, I'm using AT motherboards with this KVM so PS/2 is out for this round.

But I'd like to find out one way or the other and move on. ...or back: the other night Shelley asked if the laptop was available so she could post from the recliner. It seems that cast off P-120 from work is becoming something more than a hobbyist's plaything.

Well, there was a post here about 0030 this morning... One too many clicks took care of that.

I ended up working on a project for a friend this evening. I think it came out okay.

...and another week comes to a close. Man, I haven't played with the toys for several days! Used them, yes; played, no. Unless you count learning more about Flash and animated gifs as some sort of crossover.

...and today started the home stretch for the EMT class: there are only two weeks to go now, and both of them are testing days. The good news from today was that all the students who showed (I think I have another drop) have managed to keep/raise their quiz scores to the level necessary to take the final. ...and that includes one repeating from last semester who has test anxiety (clinical--for real).

Good morning! Well, afternoon, except perhaps for the guys and gals west of me (but this side of the International Date Line)...

Breakfast calls, but I figured I could either find the missing Palm to go over the work list for the day (Item #1: find Palm), write it out on paper (Item #2: find sharp object to draw blood with; write list on walls), or perhaps just type and post...

Let's see... I have a tutorial on using tables on web sites to construct (or link) and pass along to a newbie, the Easter stuff to pull down from the Church site (hey, the chocolate bunnies are long gone...), a browser test drop through system to test for a commercial outfit (find partridge, fire up grill), the wireless NIC to move back to the test firewall (I need the main Linux box back for development!!!), parts to sort, a kitchen area to clean (I came home yesterday and fell asleep), a mess of email to catch up on...