The Time Sink

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If we synchronize our timepieces, we can avoid a panic. ...and help out others in true Daynotes fashion. Depending on your location, the seismic activity/loud, thunderous sound/disturbance in the force/temporal discontinuity you experienced/will experience at 0842 Pacific Daylight Time (UTC -7) was not a cataclysmic event. Rather, it was my lovely wife shouting a joyous "Yes" as she dropped the boys off for the first day of school and declared the local version of Mother's Liberation Day. Be prepared; there'll be another event occurring in the next few days. That one will be centered in a Canadian province.

I admit to some trepidation; I've only been playing with this method of cooking since Father's Day of this year. JHR got me started and both he and Al have given me advice and encouragement as I've learned little by little. Still, I have quite a lot to learn and I wasn't quite prepared for Shelley's menu request: both ribs and chicken breasts served at the same time. Whoa. I'm at the either/or stage. ...or maybe sequential would work. But two meats that cook for different times and at different temperatures? Ready to go at a set time?

We settled on +/- 60 minutes. I hit it at +30. ...while explaining to my father-in-law how an offset-firebox smoker works. He's an Arkansas Razorback and has some serious knowledge of outdoor cooking. ...and he and Jean were speaking a little later about "...maybe we could get rid of those other grills and get one of these for the house."

Positive spin. Positive; positive; positive... Find something positive... Okay, got it! I have an overabundance of "Perspective". Yep, that's it: per-spec-tive. Whew; for a minute there I felt old<g>.

Hey, is anyone out there interested in Christian music reviews? ...with emphasis on rock and alternative? DocJim and I occasionally pass around our thoughts on what we like. If you are interested, drop me a line and I'll post the latest.

...and while we're on that path: if you have a moment, and you feel like lending a hand, take a read. Your call. Thanks for the link Al.

"Some software may differ from its retail version (if available), and may not include user manuals or all program functionality."

That's more interesting than it seems at first blush; the little referencing "dagger" for this disclaimer only referenced the unit with WinMe. ...and Me was the only software supplied with this machine. ...and that "dagger" was not located at any other computer in their ad. ...and I could not find anything similar with comparable ads from CompUSA, Best Buy, Office Depot or Office Max. I may be something of a cynic, but...

...and this from Janeen: "Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow." There's more, but that one will have to hold you until tomorrow.

Man, it's noon and I'm still tired. ...and my wakefulness is not following an upward curve as the day progresses. ...and I don't have a real good reason for this. I got to bed at a reasonable hour this morning<g>, but there's nothing unusual there...

I may be tired from all the driving yesterday. I ended up spending over half the day with the Operations Director for our new contract surveying his new domain and meeting with the staff from one of the local fire services. ...and driving a lot: Kings County, California is mainly an agricultural area; there's lots and lots of "space" between "places". ...not unlike Fresno County, where we have our main office. Lots of fun in the weeks and months ahead...

...and Linux on the Laptop continues. Mandrake 7.1 is the first distro to give me a stable display on the first pass. Caldera 2.2 gets the second place award only because it wanted me to validate its probe results. I'm not sure why the video is too hard for some of the installers; it's a Chips and Technologies chip set... They're not all that unusual; but it does give me a nice test of the installers. I do seem to have a problem with how the video is used by one application: the Mahjongg board extends off the "bottom" of the screen; I cannot see the last row of tiles. Hmmm... I put the Caldera HDD back in and I see the same problem there. Now, what's up with that? You can't play Mahjongg if you cannot see the full tile set... Heck, even the Enlightenment desktop did well with this video. ...and it's enough to send sane people packing with its idiosyncrasies. ...and coolness<g>.

The Mandrake install went well enough, likely because I just let it do its thing. It did ask for the CD That Doesn't Exist, but it grabbed the modem on the first hardware probe. It missed the sound (OPTi chipset), but that's nothing new; none of them have picked up on that. I haven't tried power management yet, and I suspect the chipset on this machine only has limited functionality. Gnome does want to talk to my Palm; I'll have to see if there's a conduit available for my contacts.

Next pass: see what happens with Kppp and the modem; if I can connect, I can post from poolside again<g>. ...oh, and the wireless. But I need another machine for that. ...and that involves the "study". ...and creating a footpath to the workbench.

Ah, Mahjongg again... At last. When I have to do that left-brain/right-brain thing to get my thoughts going again, I can pop over to the Linux box and play a round or two. I caved in and brought one of the boxes back up under OpenLinux last night. Just because it showed up in the mail and I wanted to see what I could see... Now I can play with Linux on a box that is half torn down for some reason I don't remember. Sheesh.

At least I got to the laptop for a little testing. I was checking out the Kppp dialup with Mandrake as I was spending my quality family time at the kitchen table<g>. Well, it was quality to me...

I did manage a non-problematic session with Worldnet from the laptop. ...and used the time to test email and ftp the rpm for the wireless down from its home. I'd still like to get a better handle on the screen resolution and real estate use; right now I have a fair amount of screen that isn't used. It just sits there blank. I think I should be able to use the larger space without distorting things too much; I just don't know enough as yet.

I had more, but the night got away from me. I did run across a reasonable discourse on why you should be polite to women drivers... Same source: Geeks with Guns...

Wait a minute... Didn't that Canadian feller get paid to tell about how a Service Pack didn't work? I'm missing the boat on this one. I have all sorts of things around here that don't work... PC Hardware in a Cocked Hat. Yep, that's it. O'Reilly, here I come!

I'll leave you with one of the Ten Rules of EMS:

On the other hand, I will not have any problem at all this weekend knowing where the high spots are. ...or the low spots. I can see the low spots easliy enough; they're the ones doing the imitation of small lakes.

Oh, and the entire household is up. The thunder and lightening that accompanied the party work up Daniel. ...who woke up Bradley so he'd have someone to be scared with. ...which woke up Shelley. ...and you can guess the rest.

...and I'm just not a morning person. ...and she is! ...all perky and chatty and wishing the newspaper were here so she can get an early start on here day. ...and I'm struggling with coherence.

...and the summer is over? Reading the weather reports from around the Gang I have to wonder. Central Cal took a hit yesterday in the early AM; the raisin farmers were caught with their crop on the ground. Normally a little rain can be worked through, but this was a downpour in some areas. ...and it never warmed up. We didn't get sun until after noon and the day never got into the 80s. The forecast is a crapshoot at this point; they're saying "fair", but last night I could see rain approaching on the radar. I have my problems with some mud and drainage issues, but some people may have problems measured in seven figures.

On the Good News front, there's mixed feelings all around on the latest from Sandy's story (linked on Tuesday's post). I'll let Patti fill us in. I imagine several of us have comments on the state of the medical care system in this country...

...and while I'm in social commentary mode, take moment to read Brian's rant on intellectual property; he pretty well covers the issues.

...and that's about it for this morning. If we get rain, I'll be back. ...but the local football team is about to take on Ohio State; that may delay the start of my day.

So I go to watch the football game... Now, I pretty sure they're not going to win against Ohio State, or UCLA next week either. Maybe. ...and things start off okay, especially the series where the defense stops Ohio State six times inside the three. So there's hope. ...for a few. Reality asserts itself very shortly and I decide I don't want to watch this during breakfast. Okay, I'll pop over to the Penn State game, that's always okay for a bailout... Double wrong... That may be it for me for the season.

Contrast this with the lady across the street and down the block last month. On all of the front porches for a two block radius:

Hi neighbors,

I'm throwing a thirtieth birthday party for my husband this Saturday. There will be a live band and things will be quite lively. We're going to start around 4PM and we promise to be done by 7PM (at least with the noise). Please call me at xxx-xxxx if we get too out of control.

thanks,

Susie

She had a very loud bash, but she also didn't have any visits from local law enforcement.

...and today we find out the occasion for last nights festivities was a sixteenth birthday party. Wow, things sure have changed. I have hope: Daniel thought they were quite rude about the noise level and wanted us to call the FBI. I was sorry to have to disappoint him. ...but he did think it was way cool that Dad had a police radio in his "study".