The Time Sink

Speaking of hosed... I'd thought that everything had been uphill, upwind, and in the snow, both ways when I'd been blading lately. ...and I finally figured it out yesterday. Since I couldn't skate anyway, I took a look at the latest set of wheels I put on a week or so ago. I'd got to thinking last time out about what would cause me to feel this 'uphill' feeling; one explanation would be wrong-sized wheels.

I'd changed out the back pair on each skate due to a drag problem with some wheels I'd been testing; sure enough, when I looked yesterday, I'd picked up a box of 72mm wheels instead of 76mm wheels. Doh! That gives you this effect oo00-> rather than the standard 0000-> or the rockered o00o-> I sometimes use. So I was going uphill a lot lately <g>.

I think today will be a good day for a Costco run: I need to get out of the office for a time after yesterday's headaches. Erik's server was a little too open and he has a relay headache to work on. At least we have one of the pros from Dover available to assist...

...but at one point in the afternoon, the system configuration was so hosed I couldn't get into the purchasing database. Ah, gee... Let's see... Do we have a project or two I could take on? Oh, yeah; but it's been eight long hours and I'm sooo done.

...and my continued apologies to anyone emailing me at the office or at home: either way you may get a bounce notice. Home is safer; I'll at least get that at some point. Blasted Redmond, open everything, server installs. You forget one or two thousand little tweaks and all sorts of things happen.

Bah... This cold that's been dragging at me for the last few days is starting to irritate me; my brain is going to mush and I'm spending way too much time coughing. The only good thing about it so far is that it's proven out to be a 'dry cold' (possibly due to the echinacea I have on board).

It did get me up early enough this morning to get into the office before 0700, but thwarted my plans for a nap this afternoon since I kept coughing.

I'm getting closer to being able to access the ZIP drive on Wolf(enstein)... If you haven't been following the adventure, that's a dual-boot box with hardware left over from the previous incarnation. ...including a bone-dead, stupid, un-aware, ISA SCSI card with ZIP and Jaz drives hanging off it (no, I don't remember why). The issue being that the Win2k installation can find the card and thence the drives, while SuSe, Mandrake and Red Hat all took a pass on it...

Okay, time to work on this a bit... I found a piece on using ISA SCSI cards with scanners and spent some time digging there. Hmmm... Modprobe? Cool; complete with a parameter string. Hey, I can copy anything. No go: 'I don't know about anything called Modprobe'. K, "Find"... Yepper, right here in 'sbin'. ...on this distro. ...on this day. ...of this month. K, "modprobe". Nothing, 'don't know no modprobe, dude', (freely translated). Look again: exactly the same string the author used...

Wait, what about "./"? Yeah, big time newbie... K, "./modprobe aha152x aha152x=0140, IRQ11". Hey, things happened; let's read... K', we don't like that "I" parameter. K', why does he have that "IRQ" there, but didn't label the address? K', "./modprobe aha152x aha152x=0140, 11". Nothing. No, wait: no error messages. That means something may have happened. K', his next line is to "cat" something (I don't recall that string). Hmmm... Hey, lookee: it says there's a Jaz drive and a ZIP drive there. Cool... Tonight: the adventure continues with "mount"!

Yeah, I'll get it all into fstab sooner or later, but first I want to know how it works. ...and, yeah, I seem to recall that maybe Mandrake would let me specify a device to probe (I did try most, but not with the address and the IRQ stated); that would perhaps let me automount if the OS knew about things early enough... Dunno', it's fun hacking, though.

Crud... Yeah, I'm ending the week on a whimper: that blasted cold has added a fever to the mix and I ended up leaving work and coming home at lunch so I could nap.

I'd have come home even earlier but today was the Great Christmas Card Signing Day. The bonus this year was that Janeen did the cards for both the main company and air operations. I'll have to get the pics and post them as she's really doing quality work. ...and since she's now doing artwork for bothprint and televised advertising, I think it's about time we got her a really nice digital camera...

Better today... At least until I went to change out a lamp fixture in the garage (Shelley just can't deal with total darkness when she gets home from a long day of Christmas shopping) and found out my stamina is at zero. Sweat pouring off after a moment or two with a Makita was a sure sign I could forego the thermometer as a diagnostic tool <g>.

JHR wrote in to comment about my bit on colds and remedies from Wednesday:

...If I read you right, it would seem that each remedy, while relieving one symptom, exacerbates another. Seems pretty futile to me (except for the remedy hucksters who profit heavily from consumer ignorance)...

Exactly. One man's cure and all that... Fr'nstance, under this current episode, what seems to be working best for me is one Sudafed every several hours (and lots of liquids). I want my sinuses draining rather than dried up. The cough is responding to the liquid intake well enough, and the fever doesn't call for any NSAIDs yet.

On the other hand, Shelley made up a big batch of Jewish penicillin for me the other day and I've added Vicks-on-the-mustache into the mix (I'm couch-sleeping anyway). Tonight, I'll throw in the Southwestern cure: decidedly non-regulation amounts of chile powder and peppers in the omelet.

I realized today that this is usually the Sunday where I write about the end of the semester. The difference this year is that the semester never really started... Nope, not at all; I didn't teach a course at the JC for the first time since 1982. Wow...

Did I miss it? Yeah, watching a batch of wannabes turn into people I can recommend as medical professionals always gives me satisfaction, but that's tempered with the satisfaction of watching Bradley play football in the evenings and Daniel play soccer on Saturdays.

...and the financial questions I asked last year when I decided to take a back seat this fall? Well, I haven't been able to just go buy any goodie I wanted. ...and the savings isn't where I'd like it to be. But, all in all, it's worked out okay.

So, next semester? Same deal: I'll leave the door open if the EMS coordinator needs one or two classes covered. ...and if the Computer Division needs me, they know where to find me. But for now, I think I'll concentrate on the house and the yard. ...and the family!