The Time Sink

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

I must admit, there is something strangely satisfying in the page title this week<G>...

...and my Sunday stayed slow and easy; I made it to the meeting and got the garbage out for the specialists to pick up in the morning. I don't recall eating dinner though... Maybe those brownies Shelley made can count as a meal. Oh, well.

What I did manage to do is to stick myself in the midst of LinuxLand once again! Whilst Bradley was falling asleep, Daniel sat on the couch and practiced his reading skills for me. ...by reading from the most horrible collection of jokes I've ever heard. Arrrghh. But I took that quality time and buffered it by bringing the laptop out and setting it up on the kitchen table.

Big mistake (and a <BG>)... Long after Daniel was down I was still playing. My temporary Mandrake setup now had kPPP enabled and connected; the IRC chat was working; I'd ftp'd my index page down from pair to start my rollover; I'd downloaded Bluefish and installed it in case I wanted to work on this week's page, and the proverbial partridge was singing in the pear tree. ...or maybe that was just the ringing in my ears. Sheesh.

A funny (to me) side note on that: I'd fired up Audio Adrenaline's Underdog CD the other day at work and I commented to Janeen that the My Love Opened the Door cut sounded a lot like the Who in their heyday. ...a lot! Ever the efficient resource person, she hit the net and came back with the information that the song was written by one Mr. Peter Townshend...

I figure if Tom can do it for a week, I can do it for a day<g>. That would be a <G>, but I think I should be cool about this until I see if it will work.

As I write this on Monday evening, the boys are in bed, Shelley is kicked back in the recliner, and I'm at the kitchen table typing on the laptop. Bluefish is the editor of choice tonight, Netscape is the viewer, and I have no idea how I'm going to spell check the page. 'Course, I treat that issue as another form of video game anyway...

Let's see... Okay, there's an "ABC" button... Yep, a spel-chequer alllrightt <g>, but not one that's familiar with my Daynotes style sheet! Ah, well; that's easy enough: just use simple words!

Hmmm... And I can pull mail from any account.... And check in on the chat channel... And talk to the family... Okay, this is workable.

Now, how to make it better? Well, the keyboard is enroute. Brian mentioned today he was loading a scroll-mouse driver, so that's available. I just need to figure out how to tell this thing that I don't want the ps2-based touchpad; please use the scrolldent on com1 (excuse me, ser1... or is that tty01?). Then there's the issue of the screen. I'd really like to fill this screen as it looks fine under Win95 and NT4. I think it's time for some research; I'd really like to use all the real estate I have available. As it is, I'm shy around twenty-five percent of the right hand side. Still, this is workable. ...and I get a chance to play. ...and talk to Shelley. ...and that, folks, is a Real Good Thing!

There's more, but one of those precautions is an adequate amount it downtime. Hey, Brian: thanks for the chat time Monday; it was a nice de-stressor. ...and Moshe, thanks man!

There's not much here this morning... We'll see if I can catch break later today. I'm betting not<g>.

Well, someone asked me about 'this cat thing' the other day... I said it looked like one more thing to get in the way on a desktop. I think Joel covers it well enough. Sheesh; I hope Jakob Nielsen doesn't learn about this one...

I spent most of yesterday evening correcting papers and getting things in order for my assistant instructor. ...thus the short shrift. I'd like to have everything ready by this evening; that would let me concentrate on the family and the upcoming Real Weekend. ...that's one where I have both days off.

Shelley is planning on taking Daniel to an all-day soccer seeding tournament Saturday. That means I may be able to use Bradley as an assistant landscape architect; it's time to make sure things are at least a little ready for the rain.

...and I didn't even get to play with Tom's instructions on how to get my scrolldent working with the laptop.

...and a belated good morning to y'all. I checked out from work late yesterday with an upset stomach; went home and checked out from life for the balance of the evening. Well, Shelley woke me up so I could give her the shot for her MS, but I went back to bed right after that.

I woke up way too early this AM to the sound of RunTunTun snoring in my ear. WT??? Oh, Shelley had taken the couch-bed just in case it wasn't the sandwich she made me yesterday and was perhaps a bug. You see, she spent a year and a half of her life throwing up while carrying the boys and she's vowed that's all of that she'll do voluntarily.

So far so good this morning, I'm in early, which means I'll likely be able to leave early. Tonight's soccer practice for both boys; I may even be able to get some reading in while watching them. I have a new text on XML to go through as I have some information needs in that arena; forced downtime while they kick a ball around is a good time to relax with a technical manual</Scottish brogue>.

More later if events develop. I'll leave you with a tidbit I found while backtracking one of the links JHR put up in his Tuesday post: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#FAQ. A quote to whet your interest:

I'm having problems with my Windows software. Will you help me?

Yes. Go to a DOS prompt and type "format c:". The problems you are experiencing will cease within a few minutes.

Finally. The weekend is in view and I'll catch a bit of a break. We have some things on the social calendar (managed by Shelley, of course. ...not by me; I'd just schedule in more computer time, yard time, pool time and barbecue...) that will likely prevent me from getting up a good head of steam on any one project. Soooo, it sounds like a low key sort of weekend. ...which I sorely need.

...as do Chris and Wendy. They did everything they were supposed to do. ...and still got tagged. I'll give Thanks that they were not injured, but sometimes this world bugs the heck out of me. Good luck getting on with life.

...and that's how far behind I've managed to get. Days out of sync is major to me; I'm one of those who likes to stay on top of things. Last night I figured out that I still have portions of last Sunday's paper unread. ...as well as the balance of this week.

...and evidently I'm forgetting basic things also. I logged in on the laptop last night to check up on the world and do some testing while I oversaw Daniel's homework process. I must have shifted gears, because I logged into X-Chat as root. They have a very interesting warning message advising that logging in as root to X-Chat is "Stupid". Their word. Okay, I can take a hint. Back out to my normal log-in. Mandrake lets me do root level work while logged in as me/myself/I by entering the root password for each attempt I make at crashing the machine from the command line<g>. That's workable...

2100 +/-...and I've lost my wife to Olympic fever for a while! She's locked in on the tube with some sort of targeting system that doesn't even care if she gets her shot while the darn thing is on. Ah, well; it will be the incentive system for the boys: to get to watch it (the "O" word; I don't think I can mention it twice without paying a commercial endorsement) with Mom, their homework has to be done early. No 2100 spelling lesson reviews with Daniel for a little while.

It appears that Bradley survived the day. When we got up this morning, we found the little guy curled up in the easy chair watching cartoons. We asked what time he got up and all we could get was, "A little while ago." and, "I fell back asleep twice in the chair." Dunno; it could have been half the night. Shelley advised his teacher just in case, but the report back this afternoon was that everything went okay.

Good morning to you. ...and "afternoon" to those over you even one time zone back. ...and a hearty "G'Day" to Mr. Armstrong and all of his countrymen; that opening ceremony was spectacular. Bradley especially liked seeing the young lady doing flips 150 feet in the air!

I'm still working from the kitchen table (laptop/Mandrake/Bluefish) as I never cleaned things up last night. I made a left turn after the update and threw the dual boot HDD in to see if I can get another clue about how to get this video to support 800*600. Shawn left a breadcrumb trail on his post from last Sunday, but my laptop wasn't listed at that location. So I fired up both Win95 and NT to see what I could see.

What I could see was an 800*600*256 screen. Full size. ...with decent color depth. <Sigh...>. So the machine can do it, but it looks like I'm going to have to learn how to speak horizontal and vertical refresh rates and such in penguinese.

That's all from the home front for the morning... Daniel and Shelley are tied up with a soccer seeding tournament much of the day; Bradley and I are full of omelet from my efforts this morning; and the side yard awaits our attention. I may even manage to blade later if we get the one area cleared out enough to grade tomorrow.

Gosh, between all the IRC traffic and all the back channel traffic, I barely have enough time to put up a post<g>!

Sorry. Daynotes joke...

Speaking of which, if you're not from around these parts, check out Tom's update from Saturday afternoon; you'll find both Tom Syroid and Bob Thompson at their finest.

...and the "not from around these parts" is for those wandering in from the ETP and Weblogs circuit wondering WT??? Al was referring to Saturday night. Always glad to help, I was answering a question he had about making a JPEG "transparent". But just in case, I do have an excellent Reference if you'd like one<g>.

Oh, and when Al say's his is bigger, this is what it's about.

Oh, it's my fault all right: for once I watched the boot process and decided to see what the "Hey dude, I see you have new hardware" process was all about. Sure, I'll just add that external scroll-dent in from Mr. Helpful here instead of using the Syroid System. Bah. ...and "bah" again. I know what it's thinking... "Which mouse does he want? The touchpad or the one on com1/tty0? ...and what about that keyboard he's been using? The one plugged into the ps2 port. Isn't that where the mouse is supposed to go? No, the internal board is on that bus, isn't it. No, he has the mouse on..." Or some such...

Back to one thing at a time. I'm thinking the hardware wizard picked up on too many new things at once and had a fit. Well, it's "Failsafe mode" later today and we'll see it I can find a corkscrew for the plug I've managed to stick in my input system. Sheesh. ...and I was going for the record.