The Time Sink

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Perhaps my shortest post yet; but this was my day yesterday. Umm, watch your status bar.

Okay, I tried extra sleep and cutting back on the things that enhance the stressors in my life... No go. Then, I had this visual occur that just rocked me in laughter for a time. Like the rest of the day...

So what now?? Well, I found a thing or two dinkin' around that may or may not be of interest to you. ...and since I have no life other than work for a little while longer this week, I might as well supply some sort of entertainment to make up for the loss of the usual rants and ravings. ...and oh, there's one brewing; I just need to calm down enough to be coherent<g>.

Let's see, first out of the barn, we have a new loon swimming in the pond; let's hear a round of applause for John Dominik. If you are looking for a little diversion, take a look at his calendar pages. Umm, have your seatbelt secured first; if the ups and downs don't get you, the sharp turns will<g>.

...and if you are looking to get out of town, but you cannot really afford to, you might consider a bridge cam located on one of the ships from Princess Cruises and Tours. The shot from last night was a shoreline picture of Katakolon...

For the security conscious, they've updated the Win9x Netbios exploit page. Yawn... Oh, and there's a Java attack on Virtual Machines using ActiveX controls...

...and just in case you misplaced your secret-decoder ring while reading Bo's post: its "000" for nul and "032" for space...

But that's ASCIIing a bit two^{^5} much, so we'll do it in hex: 0x00 for nul vs 0x20 for space. -eh, somewhat better...

You see, there's this really nice thing about global networking: while I'm heading off to sleep with an addled brain, Jan is waking up and getting ready to face the day. ...with a fresh brain and ready to jump on any dangling participles or incomplete posts he may have run across<g>. I give you Jan Swijsen at his finest:

>But that's ASCIIing a bit two^5 much, so we'll do it in hex: 0x00 for nul vs 0x20 for space. -eh, somewhat better...

To see that it is just one bit difference you should not look at it in hex but in binary of course.
Just the sixth bit flips. Now is that big-endian or litle-endian (Intel-Motorola) ?

BTW You made me realise I live in space.
(Belgium-intn tephone code is 032, 032 = space so Belgium = Space, I live in Belgium so ...)

--
Svenson.
Mail at home : sjon@svenson.com

It's here! Finally! Yeah! ...okay, technically it's still several hours until it's officially The Weekend, but I'll take what I can get. Like one of the alternate instructors taking the class tomorrow. I'll get a day off and the class will get a real live flight medic to play with. 'Course, next week I get to come in with "In my day we had to hand crank the blades of the bird while we continued patient care..." Then again, there was that time we discussed offloading the flight medic (me!) to make takeoff weight in a meadow at 14,000 feet. "Don't worry, we'll pick up up later." Uh... Fortunately there was one area with a little lane between the trees that let us gain enough speed to get some lift. That's how I came to like twin-engine birds...<sigh>

...and the meat grinder is over for a few days; you cannot order stuff, confirm orders, or receive those orders on the weekend. You can, however, fret about it... I'm really planning on two small (and one not so small but much more cuddly) bundles of distraction keeping my mind on other things until Monday.

...and I may even have some time to actually work on a computer this weekend! What a concept! ...and I'm living in what I could politely call a "target rich environment" as there's no end to the things that need things done to their things. Now to see if I can continue the Daynotes tradition and commandeer the kitchen table...

Made it! Finally. The Weekend! Yes, I know; it's like a broken record. Record? Like a CD. ...only more easily damaged, with not as much dynamic range (-eh) and suitable only for playing with amplifiers that have tubes. I mean, I just don't see the sense in playing a CD into a tube amp. Okay, maybe a Telarc CD. ...and I did break a window once (well, it was cracked anyway) with one of their CDs feeding into a Heathkit preamp/Lafayette four channel decoder/Heathkit amp (tweaked)/SWTPC amp (tweaked)/front rebuilt speakers (in storage)/rear Heathkit speakers (sitting behind me here)... Yes, that is a tear of nostalgia running down Bob's face... They just don't make them like they used to.

Only they do: Ramsey Electronics makes some really nice kits. ...from stuff you can use to teach yourself basic solder techniques up to for-real test gear. The FM transmitter I'll use today to broadcast my choice of music throughout the property is from their shop. Their website is a travesty; call them up and order a catalog. ...or copy the URLs and paste them into another browser instance.

Now where the heck did that tangent come from? Oh, yeah. New Daynotes rule #10560432.1/X02/jd/1: never read John Dominik's stuff before doing a post. Sheesh. ...and I thought Brian and I were bad.

So anyway... It is indeed the weekend. ...and I have some country sausage ready to go onto The Beast to cook while the mesquite settles into that nice glow I need to cook the kids a mess of ribs for lunch (or whenever they're falling right off the bone onto your plate<g>). ...and there's all sorts of projects that need to be done. I think I'll ignore most of them and just plant some bulbs around the pool for spring color. Oh, heck. Bulbs. I need to change out that one security lamp. ...the one I need to fully extend the twenty foot ladder for. Sheesh.

Hey, New York won last night! ...and lost this morning. I'd hate to be the pastor at first service anywhere along the east coast this morning. From what I saw, there's going to be a lot of cranky kids unless they sleep in until noon or so.

What's with the sports? ...especially since you don't hear much from me on that subject. Eh. I'll watch the series, especially if it's a good match up. ...or something piques my interest. ...or the local football team is doing so poorly I look elsewhere for something to watch while I relax for a few<g>.

So far the weekend has been progressing admirably; I've managed to do darned little and my plans for today include more of the same. I still haven't changed the halogen lamp in the security light, but I did manage to cook up "the best set of ribs yet" according to the three critics. No big change, just a slower fire and about thirty percent more time. I'm almost there on the Ribs to Die For; I'll give it another shot when I'm off in two weeks. It would be better if I liked ribs; as it is, I usually throw something else on for me. Like those steaks from Costco that Shelley likes<g>.

In other news, Dave's set himself up over in Userland. Check out his new site here. I think he's done one heck of a job translating his original page onto a Manila site. Oh, and JHR; Kris has mirrored the Weblogs.com page into a Netscape friendly mode with faster load times.