The Time Sink

(MondayII) Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

Yep, my week is officially starting on Tuesday. Monday occurred, just not as a part of this week. As JHR alluded to in an email yesterday, I likely have a full five days of work to put in anyway, especially since I blasted off the job early last Friday. Oh well, the point is that I only have four days until the weekend in the time warp I live in.

...and I have some things to get done before the weekend. ...or at least planned. The back yard didn't get much done last week what with all the sprinkler work on the front, and the packing, and the driving, and the relaxing, and the packing, and the coming home. I did manage to level out one drain line. ...by digging up fifteen feet of trench. Sheesh. But, I left it open; and while I was so busy relaxing, my fertile mind figured out that an open trench is a good trench. ...to run a water line that I otherwise would have blown off and done without. ...and at least one run of schedule 80 for some the lighting. All I need to do is dig another fifteen feet of trench at a right angle to the first one. ...and add a water line and a run of schedule 80 and, and, and...

In other news, Dave is now the proud owner of a new car. His ever-dependable 1992 Dodge Spirit finally gave up the ghost (spirit?) after 104,000 miles. The replacement? A 2000 Neon. ...with nine miles on it.

I forgot to mention something last weekend: while I was over at the coast, I found Louie! I thought he was in the back of some closet (he's the quiet type) or maybe lost in the jumble I call a library; but I opened up the big travel case and there he was. ...and he even remembered me. ...at least he lit up when he saw me.

No, I probably don't need to adjust my medication, but I probably do need to tell you a little bit more about my old traveling pal. Louie is a no-name 486-33 laptop that I saved from the trash pile. He only runs Windows 3.11 on that "too tiny to be believed today" HDD, but he has quite a history. He was the first laptop our firm ever owned; he started with the GM, and worked his way to Risk Management before falling on hard times. The hinges for his LCD screen had failed so often that the fleet guys used pop rivets to hold them together (no, they didn't realize wires ran up those hinges). Even with the pop rivets, the screen would just fall over and lie there (years ago, before Matt or Dave were even born, there was an act on the Sullivan show; this guy had a dog named Louie who would just lie there no matter what trick the owner wanted him to perform. QED).

At one point when I was running the non-MIS department, I found this laptop just laying around. ...dead battery. ...corrupt OS. ...pop rivets. I took it home to attempt some CPR (Computer Power Resuscitation); a little DOS, a little Win3.11, a little Win32, a little ZIP drive (sorry Bob, not bootable), a modem, and I had the makings of a travel machine.

I recall taking off for the coast a few years back with a bag full of parts (I'd found a PCMCIA CD-ROM to add to the mix), a book on Winsocks and the dream of somehow setting up an Internet connection on a Win3.11 machine. I think it took a few evenings after my gang was in bed to finally wiggle my feet into those Winsocks; but when I was done, I'd managed a local dial-up to my WorldNet account and was happily surfing along.

Then fate struck. I didn't have a clue at the time... I didn't know it would be life changing. I was really just trying to look up something I'd seen in a magazine I'd forgotten at home... I didn't even know the exact issue or title of the article; so I was searching on the author's name. ...and it happened. ...the search engine came back with:

After I'd turned the tatters of the non-MIS department over to the new IT department last year, I dropped by one day just to be a bother. Erik would typically give me the first pickin's from his junk pile and I was trolling for a NIC. ...any ol' NIC; just something to throw in a box. Erik's not much of a hardware guy, so stuff that didn't work well or was too out of date for him would routinely get trashed out. ...a fine place for me to go spelunking.

That day I found Louie's replacement sitting on the pile. I moved it out of the way and started digging for a NIC. I saw the docking stations used by that laptop series and asked Erik if he'd like me to stack all of this somewhere else. He said, "Nope, that laptop's CDROM is dead and the docks are all trashed for one reason or another; it's just junk." Uh, excuse me? "May I have this pile of junk, please? Perhaps I can find a use for the parts..."

Okay, from the raid: one P-120 laptop with a toasted CDROM (and no-one in IT can make the video work with Win95); three docking stations in various stages of breakdowns (mostly mechanical); one PCMCIA modem; two NICs in the docking stations; and a partridge in a pear tree (admit it; you knew that was coming). ...all of this in the hands of a hardware geek!

Short version: the CDROM was jammed rather badly, but a little care and the paperclip trick worked; the video is from Chips and Technology (a little web work and a lot of testing to get to the correct driver), disengaging the interlock on one of the docking stations let me use it (..and I'm not an end user who'll just yank the thing off the dock. No way; I, sir, am a Tech!), the modem was a 33.6 no-name that took the USR drivers just fine... Let's see, total cost: my time. Granted, that's priceless where the family is concerned, but for late night work while I harassed Tom (hey, did you read his Thursday post? Pure Syroid...), I didn't think I did too bad.

Bonus time: our Fujitsu pen-based computers for the field crews use a newer faster HDD that this laptop's BIOS will recognize. IT feels that trashed HDDs should be replaced with the newer flash drives. Okay, I'll sort and test. So far I've only managed three that will boot; but that's one with Win95, one with NT4, and one with Caldera 2.2. Lots and lots of toys to play with this summer. The machine is certainly no power house; but as shown last weekend, Good Enough for surfing, email, logging in to the office, and posting from the coast.

...and a rousing "Good Morning" to everyone out there! I hope you're ready for a "up and at 'em" Saturday; Lord knows, I'm not... But, ready or not, there's another another trench or two to be cut. I figure if I can get the basic layout for the watering system and the electrical dug in (after removing a bunch of trash dirt full of rock salt and concrete tailings), I can spend evenings next week laying drip line and low voltage wiring. That would set me up rather nicely for planting shrubs and flowers next weekend. Time will tell and I'll keep you posted.

...and if you can spare a prayer or a kind word, we're starting Shelley on a new medication for her MS today. Around 1400 I'll give her a subcutaneous injection of Betaseron; that procedure will repeat every other day for the foreseeable future. Prior, I'd been giving her an intramuscular injection of Avonex once a week. Her neurologist feels that changing medications may bring things more under control. As with most totally new experiences, we're just not sure what will happen as there are several side-effects from this series of medications. Shelley pretty much had things under control with the old med; now we have to learn a new regimen and she's way apprehensive. I'll keep you posted on this one also.

...and it's a late post. We had company today; Shelley's brother and his family stopped by for a while to celebrate two of their kid's birthdays. We don't get together often enough for Shelley so this was a Good Thing. ...especially as they are moving around ninety miles away later this month.

In a related matter, yesterday's shot seemed to go okay. We're starting at a half-dose to allow Shelley to adjust to the new med. The good news: no particular problems on the first round and Shelley was able to weather the heat outside this afternoon with some help from a mist line and lots of shade. Round two is tomorrow after I get home from work...