The Time Sink

Well, The Great Castle Project is done! Yeah! ...and life can return to what passes for normal around here, at least 'normal' as defined during the school year. Yep, it isn't art, but for an extra credit project (and a needed one) it turned out okay...

Hey! Also okay is the iMac! I never got real specific here, but I thought I'd crashed it out hard... It turns out it was me trying to restart it with a locked up external HDD connected that was causing the problem. ...or maybe that memory chip I tossed in to see if it would work (sure, I'm crazy enough to try that again <g>!) or maybe it was the new mouse drivers. ...or whatever. No matter; in my lack of understanding what was wrong I ended up resetting the PRAM, so there is some recovery to do, but there's nothing major happening that I can see.

The main thing now is to locate a OS 9.2 CD and take the thing to it's limit on that OS before summer: I've decided the iMac may just be a decent replacement for the P-120 laptop I usually use while we're over at the coast. Yeah, the form factor is a little larger, but not by much. ...and to actually be able to 'see' my photos (oh, yeah, I'd better test a USB card reader!) would make up for that big time!

Last night ended up being a bit of a low key night. Brad had baseball practice with Shelley so Daniel spent the late afternoon at a friend's which let me go blade and work out a bit. The castle project took more out of us than we thought and Daniel and I were happy to have a night of minimal homework.

So a store run got handled, and some bills got paid. ...and the iMac had most of its files copied over (some remain for another night) and I made it to bed before midnight.

...and for those following the iMac odyssey, here's the latest update. A local Mac guru loaned me updater CDs for OS 9.1 and 9.21, and I spent last night letting them do their thing. The 9.1 went pretty much as planned, but the 9.2.1 CD wouldn't boot. I went ahead and accessed the updater file from the CD and let the program handle the shutdown of anything else that may have been running and let it do its thing...

That routine worked out okay and then I went looking to update to 9.2.2. Since all I had was a full install CD and I really didn't want to go that route, I tried the software update system. That pulled 21megs of update from the web and installed it. Sweet!

The next step in this project is to check out the modem with the local dialup access and the dialup access over at the coast. I updated the modem's firmware and I'll be real curious to see how it works: the local AT&T modem rack uses Rockwell modems and the rack over on the central coast uses Lucent products. With the laptop I just trade out the PCMCIA modems to maxmize the connectivity; with the iMac, I'll be seeing how their V.90 implementation works.

Today is going to be a bit full, both at work and at home. I'll be starting my workday doing the annual year end inventory. We're down one person this year, but the fleet guy has loaned me two of his staff to help get the central supply room counted out so we can reopen it as quickly as possible. I'm hoping to keep at least one of them to assist Janeen and me in the main warehouse.

...and when the work day is over, we have Open House at Daniel's school this evening. That should be interesting as we'll have a chance to me the latest science teacher in the rotation. ...and thank the math teacher who has really helped out this year with Daniel's homework.

It's a catch up day today. The physical inventory count is finished, but now there's data to be entered and numbers to be crunched. ...and some serious time spent dealing with all the stuff we ignored yesterday to get the count done <g>! More whining as the process continues...

Hey, school was fun last night. We met all of Daniel's teachers once again and confirmed his grades at the three-quarter point in the year. We also saw his castle and all the others built for Open House. ...and Brad took some shots to have on file for when it's his turn.

...and it's my turn to wait on the iMac again: I traded in some new memory and that went well enough. So yeah, you know I tried to take it further and locked it up to where it won't boot again. Tincture of Time, applied liberally, seems to be the cure for this problem...

Today was one of those days when my body reminded me of a few things... Things like, "you're not twenty-five any more and haven't been for decades; blading eighteen hours after the last session isn't the brightest idea in the world." Yeah, well...

Having sons old enough to help out is turning out to be a good thing; this year's garden weeding extravaganza is turning into a tolerable event from my perspective: Daniel is doing the south forty; and after some tips on how to work without working at it, he's cranking out some decent square footage. ...and while Brad isn't big enough yet to really use the shovel and hoe to advantage, I can knock stuff down on the north side and let him handle the cleanup and detail work. That's a decent balancing act...

Well, Brad's birthday isn't for another week, but due to Easter, Easter vacation schedules and the separation of "kid" and "grandparent" parties we're going to head off to the local Lazer Quest and spend some time this afternoon shooting each other. Brad usually partners up with me for these, but I'm thinking maybe this year he'll saddle up with some of his friends; maybe Daniel and I can work on defending the high ground this time around...

I keep telling Shelley she needs to come inside with us on one of these times. Yeah, her MS won't let her run around with us, but just hanging out in a corner and shooting a kid every time one comes by could be such good therapy!

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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"

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