The Time Sink

Hmmm.. If I was too goal oriented, this would have been a terrible weekend. Fortunately, I'm not all that obsessive right now. That may change as I restructure the to-do lists for home and work.

Let's see... On the work side there are two hefty bids to sort through and summarize. ...and a technical bit to finalize and send off the the vendor. ...and another to prepare. ...and that proposal that landed on my desk last Wednesday needs a serious review. Umm... Yeah, that's enough to keep me busy. As if the day to day routine will allow for any gaps to slide that stuff into..

...and the home plans were totally set aside since I didn't feel all that well. VMware Express never made it to the testbed; the new work machine is still in boxes and boxes; and I still don't know how I managed to hose Ispell on the main Linux box.

I really had plans for yesterday (like do another tree or two outside), but all I managed was to change out some bad wheels on my blades and take the garbage out. ...before I fell asleep on the floor at the start of the Bears/Vikings game. Sheesh...

Short shrift... I threw Mandrake 8.1 on the testbed last night; took one look; and tore it down to try SuSe 7.3. I have that installed, but I haven't had time to look at it: I got caught up in some silliness over at the alternate site and never got back to it.

Maybe something later... Work is in one of those phases where things that normally would be spaced out over several months are happening Right Now. ...over several months<g>. At least that's how it seems.

...and homework is king at the household. That and sleep...

Whohoo! Both Brian and Jon have book deals! ...and I'm trying to find the time to hack together a decent post. Sheesh.

Perhaps I should give an example of how work and home have been going lately: last night I caught a break and decided I'd spend a moment or two dinking around on the testbed machine. I wanted to play around with some BIOS settings to see if I can figure out why none of the Linux distros are picking up my SCSI card or my wireless adapter.

But wait! I have a com port free now; so I'll throw PowerchutePlus on to see how well it will integrate with my Back-Up UPS. Hey it integrates really well. ...and tests the battery. ...and tells me the battery is hosed.

A year or so ago, I recall writing a piece that touched on depression and what we call "Holiday Syndrome". I think I may have to dust it off and repost it or link to it. The reason? Yesterday afternoon, we learned one of our medics was found dead in his apartment. I'll likely have more to say over on the alternate site later, but for now, I have a profound sense of loss.

I'd worked with this gentleman for almost twenty years both at the main job and the teaching gig. He was 'state of the art' on the streets and would pull hours of research before taking on even a minor lecture. He'll be missed by the gals and guys who knew him.

Whew, I'm glad that train wreck of a week finally ran out of track... Although today is the day for the finishing touches to the outside lighting for the holiday season... The grand brown-out is scheduled for this evening (Californians, Oregonians, and Washingtonians please take note: leaving un-needed appliances off around 1700 this evening will help the grid recover quickly).

...and once that's done, I need to get going on the testbed and get it at least buttoned up; it's now officially in the way of the work machine. I mean, like, you know, like, there's an Antec case, a P4 motherboard, 1.6g of processor, a gig-o-rimm, and all sorts of other goodies (no, no space for the partridge; he belongs here at home) to stick togther with some super-glue to see what I can make of it. ...and I really need to get that going: there's sometimes a quiet period at the office across the holidays and I'd like to get this machine in and start transferring data and programs before things break loose again.

There's more, but first a word from John Vogt:

Dan,

I'm writing 2500-3000 words a day. I don't have any more to spare. Please mention that I haven't given up - I'm just on hiatus. I really don't have time for a hobby.

Yes, I know, I should have one. But, I need to produce 30,000 words before 12/31. With pictures. Bleh.

I'll be back.

John

Gee, and I thought I was behind in my work... Good luck, John!

...and a teaser for DocJim, Ken Scott, and one or two other readers: yesterday a wonderful gentleman from the broader web community archived my entire ETP site with some Mac-gic and sent it my way. That frees me up to change how that site works and evolve it back into the plan I originally had for it. Yeah, like I have the time <g>...

Okay! The lights out front are up! ...and yes, the city utility guys came by again and disabled the street lamp across the street. I mean, like there's no need: as soon as things fire up over here, the daylight sensor shuts that lamp down anyway. The good news is I remembered to notify the FAA this year; at least there won't be a repeat of that incident from a few years back... Now to see about some underwater displays for the pool, maybe a dolphin or two with Santa hats...

The great news this year is that both boys wanted to help! Oh, not while the weather was merely yucky and they were at their friend's house playing Nintendo; no, we're talking once it started to rain. They were all over that. 'Course I'm working under tree canopies or in the garage; they're out in the open bouncing around. Still, they did help knock several minutes off one project and it definitely helped out to have them drag the cord for Shelley's tree when I moved it from the garage to the lawn. Now if I can just get them ladder-trained... Likely a few more years yet.

Heh. ...and I haven't lost my touch quite yet on the tech side; that one X-10 module that had been acting up last year finally quit responding to any commands. I'd picked up a replacement, but that one didn't have the feed-through wiring I need for the flood light that lights up Shelley's Christmas stocking flag (yeah, I know; it's really hard to tell what's over-the-top and what's straight up <g>). Anyway, that's going to be a show-stopper; so I opened up the bad unit to see what I could see (with the partridge peering over my shoulder and all) and found the wipers that set the unit code (remember the old Binary-coded-decimal switches? Like that.) had detached themselves from the dial... Okay. Lets' see... The form factor for the old and new units is the same... Cool; I tore apart the new unit and swapped the parts to the old one. ...and it worked! So, just to show off, I brought out a soldering pencil and repaired the bad dial and put in back in the new unit. 'Course, I have no need for a Leviton style X-10 wall outlet. No, don't suggest the washing machine... Yet...