I reinstalled my laptop the other week, putting Fedora 8 on it. Last night I finally decided to get Digger installed on it again. The fact that Dave has posted a high score higher than mine helped...
I had the same problem with the sound as the last time I installed, there was a switch to run it with sound, but it wasn't working. This morning I figured out the IRQ number for my sound card (21 for my Precision M90), ran the thing with the right IRQ setting, and viola! - sound.
For those trying to run under Linux - run digger /A21 - where 21 is the IRQ for my sound card. Yours might be different.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
2008 Goal update
- Post a goal update to the blog at least twice a month. 2 updates - Month of January. Right on schedule.
- Don't let a post go by without some progress to report. You be the judge.
- Stain the play set. Spring.
- Finish the retaining wall. Spring.
- Finish the mission journal. No progress.
- Build a bunk bed for Emma and Ruth. Late Spring.
- Stay under the 210 weight. Current weight - 205.4. I'd be ok if I stopped dropping. I got my suit altered a week and a half ago, the pants came back already loose. All my other pants fall down if I am not wearing a belt. This is not a complaint.
- Go to the temple at least once a month. We went to the temple this past Thursday.
- Take Tara somewhere for our 10th wedding anniversary. No trip picked or booked yet.
- Read 18 books. Zero completed.
- Plant something other than tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, green beans and peas. I thought about buying some tomatoes from Burpee.com this week, I decided it was too early...
Arrg!!!
I don't think this is piracy, really...
Tara's got the little girls excited to 'read' the Book of Mormon stories book every day. (Kate is really reading, so she's reading the actual scriptures...) This evening I got onto ldscatalog.com to renew our New Era subscription, and poked around for Tara looking for Audio CDs of the Book of Mormon stories reader. They don't make them. They do have a audio cassette copy of the thing, but no CD. I ordered 3 copies of the reader for the 3 girls (we have one, but "you never delete your master copy"...) and one copy of the audio cassettes. Tara wanted to buy something off thinkgeek.com that lets you copy audio tapes to your PC. Our home teachers came tonight, one of them has his own recording studio, and said he had a cable that would hook an audio out from a tape player to your PC. He offered to let us borrow it.
We have a DVD with the Book of Mormon stories being read while the pictures from the pages go by. I was pretty sure I could rip the audio tracks off and create a CD from them, so I passed on the cable. (The cable just wasn't geeky enough for me.)
I am in the process of using VLC media player to play the disk, and stream it to a multicast. Then I open a 2nd VLC client, read the multicast, and save it to disk. Then I refeed the thing through vlc a 3rd time, and strip the video out, saving it to mp3 format. (I tried combining the 2nd and 3rd steps, but I wasn't able to watch and listen to make sure I was getting the feed correctly, so I split it into 2 steps.)
Anyway, at this point I have 8 tracks done. I'm not sure what the deal is with chapter 9, it didn't save the audio correctly a couple of times. Maybe my laptop is telling me it's time for bed.
When I get all the chapters recorded, I will make each one of the girls a CD to listen to as they read. You can't buy one from me, they aren't for sale. (Because that would be piracy...)
Tara's got the little girls excited to 'read' the Book of Mormon stories book every day. (Kate is really reading, so she's reading the actual scriptures...) This evening I got onto ldscatalog.com to renew our New Era subscription, and poked around for Tara looking for Audio CDs of the Book of Mormon stories reader. They don't make them. They do have a audio cassette copy of the thing, but no CD. I ordered 3 copies of the reader for the 3 girls (we have one, but "you never delete your master copy"...) and one copy of the audio cassettes. Tara wanted to buy something off thinkgeek.com that lets you copy audio tapes to your PC. Our home teachers came tonight, one of them has his own recording studio, and said he had a cable that would hook an audio out from a tape player to your PC. He offered to let us borrow it.
We have a DVD with the Book of Mormon stories being read while the pictures from the pages go by. I was pretty sure I could rip the audio tracks off and create a CD from them, so I passed on the cable. (The cable just wasn't geeky enough for me.)
I am in the process of using VLC media player to play the disk, and stream it to a multicast. Then I open a 2nd VLC client, read the multicast, and save it to disk. Then I refeed the thing through vlc a 3rd time, and strip the video out, saving it to mp3 format. (I tried combining the 2nd and 3rd steps, but I wasn't able to watch and listen to make sure I was getting the feed correctly, so I split it into 2 steps.)
Anyway, at this point I have 8 tracks done. I'm not sure what the deal is with chapter 9, it didn't save the audio correctly a couple of times. Maybe my laptop is telling me it's time for bed.
When I get all the chapters recorded, I will make each one of the girls a CD to listen to as they read. You can't buy one from me, they aren't for sale. (Because that would be piracy...)
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Game Time
Age of Empires
This morning it was just Dave, Dad, and I playing, we played a free for all game.
Not much to say about it, Dave didn't build a wall when he should have, I ended up taking them out. I may get ganged up on next time...
This morning it was just Dave, Dad, and I playing, we played a free for all game.
Not much to say about it, Dave didn't build a wall when he should have, I ended up taking them out. I may get ganged up on next time...
Thursday, January 24, 2008
This is my life
Anyone else ever feel like this?I have a project I'm working on that is sure to end up like this. The only consolation I have at this point is that I met with Kelly this morning, and brought up the topic of this project, he asked if the architect felt the same as I did, I haven't talked to the architect yet, but was going to, Kelly said that if the Lead engineer (me) and the architect are both in agreement, but we can't get agreement with anyone else, we would not proceed.
Having the assistant CIO be an engineer at heart really helps a lot sometimes...
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
People who are Intuitive Investigators have multiple talents and can do anything they set their mind to. They're able to detect numerical patterns easily and are able to grasp the true complexity of the world, both in its details and in a more abstract form. You've got a sharp logical mind and are adept at using words to get even a difficult point across. The combination of all these things makes them truly brilliant.
Extra Equipment
Tara went in for an ultrasound this morning. We were a little late for the appointment, so I dropped her off at the door to go find a parking spot. On the way into the place, I asked Emma what she thought Mom was having. Emma said "A boy and a girl." Emma was sure that Tara would be having twins. You can see the results below. 
Emma was a little disappointed. There was only 1 baby in there.
The doctor has estimated Tara's due date as around June 12th, the ultrasound put it as June 25th. We aren't sure what that means at this point, except Tara will be having the baby sometime in June...
Anyway, things seem ok at this point. Oh, by the way, either this kid has a mean sense of humor, or it turns out that babies come in boy models too...
Nominations for naming rights (and the appropriate bids) can now be submitted...
Emma was a little disappointed. There was only 1 baby in there. The doctor has estimated Tara's due date as around June 12th, the ultrasound put it as June 25th. We aren't sure what that means at this point, except Tara will be having the baby sometime in June...
Anyway, things seem ok at this point. Oh, by the way, either this kid has a mean sense of humor, or it turns out that babies come in boy models too...
Nominations for naming rights (and the appropriate bids) can now be submitted...
Imagine getting up at the crack of dawn to pick all the red M&Ms out of a bowl, clean up after last night's party (which you weren't invited to), and worry you'll be canned for forgetting to buy the right brand of water. Not exactly fulfilling, huh? With your inspired spirit and desire to make a real difference in the world, waiting hand-and-foot on yesterday's celebrities isn't exactly your idea of gratifying work. In fact, it's just about the opposite: You're much more excited to make a difference and put your talents to good use.
Whether you're volunteering at the humane society, or campaigning for your presidential pick, you'd much rather get involved in things that actually matter. Err, not that picking up someone else's dry cleaning isn't just as important. Shudder.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Midnight Snack
We watched a "Throw Down" tonight where Bobby Flay lost to the Anchor Bar guy in a chicken wing battle. The Anchor Bar guy tried to get cute, he should have just stuck to old reliable, it wouldn't have been even close.Anyway, this show made us hungry. That and we hadn't eaten dinner. I didn't have the right combination of hunger/energy to get to work on it until 11:30. This is what I came up with. I burned the corn & peppers accidentally, but it added a nice smoky BBQ flavor to it.
It's not wings, but it will do.
Breaking in the new project manager
For some reason, we have a bunch of project managers at work. We have a new guy on one of the projects I'm on, the project makes me irritable enough, but I don't necessarily have the patience for breaking the new guy in. Last week, he decided to cancel the weekly meeting 15 minutes before it was supposed to start. Us engineers met anyway. Early this afternoon, they scheduled a vendor's reference client for a conference call for tomorrow morning. I declined, I thought I had to be somewhere else.
In the meeting I said something to the effect of "one other thing... For the other reference clients we will be talking to, will you be scheduling the appointment for some random time during the week, or do you think you could actually pick a time with some hope that some of us can participate?" He looked kind of ticked off. Most everyone else thought it was pretty funny. (They were just afraid to say it.)
Later, they sent the minutes out in docx format (Office 2007). I fairly politely asked that they save the thing in a format we of the non-Windows persuasion could do something with. Clearly I have more work to do there...
In the meeting I said something to the effect of "one other thing... For the other reference clients we will be talking to, will you be scheduling the appointment for some random time during the week, or do you think you could actually pick a time with some hope that some of us can participate?" He looked kind of ticked off. Most everyone else thought it was pretty funny. (They were just afraid to say it.)
Later, they sent the minutes out in docx format (Office 2007). I fairly politely asked that they save the thing in a format we of the non-Windows persuasion could do something with. Clearly I have more work to do there...
Monday, January 21, 2008
Weight Chart
Last night I started playing with a weight chart found on the right. I think I finally figured out the right way to display my current weight. It's very manually updated, and takes some math, but it's there. Hopefully I can remember to update it every day...
Sunday, January 20, 2008
20 cent auction day
Last week ebay had a 20 cent auction day. I put Tara's Serger up on it. So far, no bids, but there has been 28 page views. There are only 3 days left in the auction, I'm not holding my breath at this point...
An oldie but a goodie
On Saturday morning, I woke up from a dream of the type I hadn't had in a while. I dreamt that I was enrolled in a class, but I hadn't been in a while, came in late one day, had to sit in the middle of the classroom, by the time I got settled, I realized I hadn't done any work in the class in weeks, had missed a test, and really had no idea what the teacher was talking about. Boom, the alarm went off. (I don't use the alarm all that much anymore...)
I haven't had this type of dream in a long time. It took about 6 months or so after I graduated to stop having these types of dreams. They were bad back in the day, because I would have the dream, and I would wake up not really knowing at first if that was something that just happened to me, something that was about to happen, or just a warning. The problem was that this happened to me a lot when I was in school. Maybe not the part about missing tests, but pretty much the rest of it. I did miss tests from time to time, but not all that much. It seemed like every semester, about 1/2 way in, I was trying to figure out what I had missed so far, if there was some project I should have done, and trying to figure out if the professor would let me turn all the homework in late. (Math professors usually did... I think it was from all the graduate students that didn't do any work in their classes until the last 2 weeks. By graduate students, I mean Earl.)
For a long time, I had a dream that I had been in a class for the first couple of classes, then didn't come back for a month, when I did, they were talking about the big projects they turned in the week before, and how much of their grade it was worth. I wouldn't remember the big project being on the syllabus. Occasionally, they would be reviewing the test from the week before, which I would have missed.
I guess I deserve it. I was not a good student. I don't think getting a full time job and going down to 1 class at a time helped any. Last week, while working monitoring the performance of the registration system, I loaded my transcript. There I am, still on academic probation. I don't think too many people pull off graduating on probation, but I did.
Things I pulled, which I don't necessarily endorse for the girls when they get to college:
I haven't had this type of dream in a long time. It took about 6 months or so after I graduated to stop having these types of dreams. They were bad back in the day, because I would have the dream, and I would wake up not really knowing at first if that was something that just happened to me, something that was about to happen, or just a warning. The problem was that this happened to me a lot when I was in school. Maybe not the part about missing tests, but pretty much the rest of it. I did miss tests from time to time, but not all that much. It seemed like every semester, about 1/2 way in, I was trying to figure out what I had missed so far, if there was some project I should have done, and trying to figure out if the professor would let me turn all the homework in late. (Math professors usually did... I think it was from all the graduate students that didn't do any work in their classes until the last 2 weeks. By graduate students, I mean Earl.)
For a long time, I had a dream that I had been in a class for the first couple of classes, then didn't come back for a month, when I did, they were talking about the big projects they turned in the week before, and how much of their grade it was worth. I wouldn't remember the big project being on the syllabus. Occasionally, they would be reviewing the test from the week before, which I would have missed.
I guess I deserve it. I was not a good student. I don't think getting a full time job and going down to 1 class at a time helped any. Last week, while working monitoring the performance of the registration system, I loaded my transcript. There I am, still on academic probation. I don't think too many people pull off graduating on probation, but I did.
Things I pulled, which I don't necessarily endorse for the girls when they get to college:
- Took a final 3 weeks into the next semester - this was my Freshman year, when I had hand surgery. By the time I got around to taking the final, the questions on it were vaguely familiar, but slightly foreign. I got a C in that class.
- Sent homework in by proxy. My freshman year I had a bunch of classes as other people in the dorms. I sent my Chemistry homework in with the guy across the hall. (This is a class I missed an exam in.) Got a D in that class, but it counted. I enrolled in an American Heritage class with Rob that year, I think I went twice. Rob used to get frustrated that I wouldn't go to class, or read the assignments, or do the work, I think. I got a D in that one also, which counted, but I'm not really sure how I got the D. The final was essay style, there were several questions I just completely and totally made stuff up on. Maybe the D came from humoring the tutors who were grading the thing. If it's a consolation to Rob, I did read a bunch of the stuff later in life...
- Took an exam from Indiana. This was when Grandpa Oaks died. I somehow talked the professor into giving me the exam sealed in an envelope, and letting me take it from Indiana, and fax it back to him. This was a Math professor. I don't remember exactly which calls this was, but I got all C's and C+'s in my Math classes (that counted) but 3 of them. (A 'D', a 'B+', and a 'B')
- Doing just enough work to get the C, and no more. This probably caused the frequency of those dreams to occur. If I had been doing everything, it wouldn't have pricked my subconscious nearly as bad.
- Getting kicked out of school. They don't like it so much when you have multiple really bad semesters in a row...
- Taking classes in the spring or summer terms. This should get you done sooner, but I always wished I was outside instead of in class. Then I would be outside instead of in class.
- Graduating on a horse trade. I took a Number Theory class for my last class. This was ok, I got bored with it when they took 5 days to explain cryptography because half the class just wasn't getting it. This class was during the spring term, which I've already talked about. We were also trying to get moved from the old computer room to the new Data Center at night, so I was moonlighting at work. This was the semester I broke my ankle and ended up in a wheelchair. (It was at the very end of the semester. I actually did it just at the end of the semester.) I found myself trying to get done with the Data Center move, the Math department was getting our old Data Center for a Math lab. Sorrel brought the head of the Math department in one day, while I was still in the wheelchair and explained that I was working day and night as hard as I could to maneuver our move so they could have their math lab open for the start of the Fall semester. He then started talking about how I had a problem, I got a D in the Number Theory class, and I didn't really have enough time to finish the Data Center move and take the class over during the Summer term. The head of the math department asked me if I had counted any other Math classes as D's for graduation, which I hadn't, so he said he would take care of it for me. I graduated, they got their math lab in time for Fall semester, everyone was happy all around. It was nice, but you don't always have that kind of leverage to use.
- I'm sure there are plenty of other points, I'm also sure that Rob will point them out.
Election Judge training
The Western States Primary is on Super Tuesday. (Super for the news people, it means they can talk all day long...) The county requires the election judges to go to training every election. (Mostly because of all the people who didn't understand what they were being told the first time.) I am the poll manager, so I always have to go to 2 sessions for every election. There were 2 elections last year, there are 3 this year. Yippie.
This time, the county combined a bunch of precincts into one location. We normally deal with 2 precincts, and stay busy the whole day, this time we have 6 precincts, I fully expect it to be a zoo.
The basic training was pretty slow again, the guy only got through 8 slides in the first hour. I was a half hour late for that one, he didn't seem to care. They only got to the practice on the voting machine part when there was 10 minutes left before the class was supposed to end. Kirk and I set up our machine, but there must have been something wrong with the card the trainer guy gave us, the machine kept saying it was encoded wrong. He gave us a different one, we got the same results. He gave up, told us we could break the machine down and leave. So we did, happily, and fast, before he could change his mind.
Yesterday was the advanced class. I came a half hour late again, it was the same trainer, he still didn't seem to mind. When I walked in, he was already 1/2 way through his slides. (There were only 5 of us in the class.) The advanced class is for the poll managers it is supposed to be much more hands on with the machines. The trainer broke each of the machines in about 4 different ways, but unlike last time, this guy actually told us about it. I had my problems figured out and my machine completely up and ready in no time. (It's not like he did anything complicated...) I stood around for about 10 minutes waiting because one of the other guys was having all kinds of trouble setting his machine up, and it was making the trainer nervous. Finally the trainer just told me I could break my thing down and go. Sweet. The class was 90 minutes long, and I missed the first 30 minutes. That made up for him taking the full 3 hours Thursday...
This time, the county combined a bunch of precincts into one location. We normally deal with 2 precincts, and stay busy the whole day, this time we have 6 precincts, I fully expect it to be a zoo.
The basic training was pretty slow again, the guy only got through 8 slides in the first hour. I was a half hour late for that one, he didn't seem to care. They only got to the practice on the voting machine part when there was 10 minutes left before the class was supposed to end. Kirk and I set up our machine, but there must have been something wrong with the card the trainer guy gave us, the machine kept saying it was encoded wrong. He gave us a different one, we got the same results. He gave up, told us we could break the machine down and leave. So we did, happily, and fast, before he could change his mind.
Yesterday was the advanced class. I came a half hour late again, it was the same trainer, he still didn't seem to mind. When I walked in, he was already 1/2 way through his slides. (There were only 5 of us in the class.) The advanced class is for the poll managers it is supposed to be much more hands on with the machines. The trainer broke each of the machines in about 4 different ways, but unlike last time, this guy actually told us about it. I had my problems figured out and my machine completely up and ready in no time. (It's not like he did anything complicated...) I stood around for about 10 minutes waiting because one of the other guys was having all kinds of trouble setting his machine up, and it was making the trainer nervous. Finally the trainer just told me I could break my thing down and go. Sweet. The class was 90 minutes long, and I missed the first 30 minutes. That made up for him taking the full 3 hours Thursday...
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Game Time
Age of Empires - The Warchiefs
Today was supposed to be the inaugural debut for Amy to play, but there was something wrong with her laptop, and she didn't play. (From what she was saying was happening, my guess is it was a Hamachi routing problem of some sort. Someone that likes debugging Windows problems will likely have to help her.)
Drew, Dad, Dave, and I played against 2 expert level computers. I was worried for a bit, the computers had a large army fairly quickly, but they seemed to be unable to attacked more than one player at a time. If I were making the game, I would make it so expert level attacks all over the place. Instead, they attacked Dad first, and worked on him for a while, then started attacking Dave. (I call them 'bait'.)
Drew decided fairly early in the game that he needed to quit so he could work on his addition.
When I got my army built up, I sent all my dudes down to attack one of the computer towns. Since the computer was busy attacking Dave by then, they didn't have a lot of people to defend the town. This ended up being the biggest thing in our favor, since once you knock the town down, it really knocks the fight out of them...
We ended up winning, I was only 30 minutes late for the Election judge training...
Today was supposed to be the inaugural debut for Amy to play, but there was something wrong with her laptop, and she didn't play. (From what she was saying was happening, my guess is it was a Hamachi routing problem of some sort. Someone that likes debugging Windows problems will likely have to help her.)
Drew, Dad, Dave, and I played against 2 expert level computers. I was worried for a bit, the computers had a large army fairly quickly, but they seemed to be unable to attacked more than one player at a time. If I were making the game, I would make it so expert level attacks all over the place. Instead, they attacked Dad first, and worked on him for a while, then started attacking Dave. (I call them 'bait'.)
Drew decided fairly early in the game that he needed to quit so he could work on his addition.
When I got my army built up, I sent all my dudes down to attack one of the computer towns. Since the computer was busy attacking Dave by then, they didn't have a lot of people to defend the town. This ended up being the biggest thing in our favor, since once you knock the town down, it really knocks the fight out of them...
We ended up winning, I was only 30 minutes late for the Election judge training...
Friday, January 18, 2008
Friday Game Night
Scattergories
Dick, Tami, Ronnie, and Heidi came over tonight for Friday night game night. For dessert we had hot chocolate and berry pie. We played 2 sets of 3 rounds each, Dick ended up winning both sets. (Par for the course when you play with Dick...)
We ended up sitting and talking until 10pm.
Nothing next week, Tara's off to go to some sort of reading seminar.
Dick, Tami, Ronnie, and Heidi came over tonight for Friday night game night. For dessert we had hot chocolate and berry pie. We played 2 sets of 3 rounds each, Dick ended up winning both sets. (Par for the course when you play with Dick...)
We ended up sitting and talking until 10pm.
Nothing next week, Tara's off to go to some sort of reading seminar.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Some times I'm not a people person...
The Spanish speaking Elders called the other night, they were looking for me to get them a Stake leadership directory and a map of the wards in the Stake. I directed them to the Ward mission leader in the Spanish ward. Today they called, the ward mission leader wasn't able to print them out copies of the things, they wanted to know if I could do it for them. (How'd they get my number anyway? I figure they were driving the Stake President crazy, he pawned them off on me. (Unconfirmed rumor.) If so, I guess I'm ok with it.)
They wanted the stuff today, "if at all possible". I'm not sure what the problem is. Maybe they are new in the area. Our Stake holds a monthly meeting with all ward mission leaders that the missionaries attend, they would have met them all then. Anyway, right at the end of church, they kept called me over and over modifying their request. The last one very nearly put me over the top. They finally figured out that I was going to give them a map of the stake, with ward boundaries marked. They wanted the maps that the Ward mission leaders from each Ward had of their ward. I let the Elder know that I didn't really know what type of map he was taking about, the Stake wasn't passing out ward maps right and left, and our stake was only 6 miles square, it's not like any map is all that big. The Elder agreed to take what I could give him.
I printed out the stuff, and took it up to the building where the Hispanic ward meets. They start at 1pm this year. I gave the stuff to the second counselor in the Bishopric, his comment was "why didn't they just ask me? I could have given them all this stuff..." Sometimes I can't win.
Too my credit, I didn't get as ticked off about it as I could have. Mainly, I didn't want to get mad at the missionaries. I may (or may not) have been like that back in the day. They don't know me from the next guy off the street, they likely assumed I was a helpful person.
This evening, I went to the Stake center to get the Stake President out of his office. (He was meeting with someone and needed to be somewhere else.) The Spanish speaking Elders were there completely lost, poking their head into every door they could find. It turns out the monthly Stake missionary meeting was tonight, they were looking for the High Council room. They interrupted several other little meetings they had been having. I looked, but neither of them was a Sutton...
They wanted the stuff today, "if at all possible". I'm not sure what the problem is. Maybe they are new in the area. Our Stake holds a monthly meeting with all ward mission leaders that the missionaries attend, they would have met them all then. Anyway, right at the end of church, they kept called me over and over modifying their request. The last one very nearly put me over the top. They finally figured out that I was going to give them a map of the stake, with ward boundaries marked. They wanted the maps that the Ward mission leaders from each Ward had of their ward. I let the Elder know that I didn't really know what type of map he was taking about, the Stake wasn't passing out ward maps right and left, and our stake was only 6 miles square, it's not like any map is all that big. The Elder agreed to take what I could give him.
I printed out the stuff, and took it up to the building where the Hispanic ward meets. They start at 1pm this year. I gave the stuff to the second counselor in the Bishopric, his comment was "why didn't they just ask me? I could have given them all this stuff..." Sometimes I can't win.
Too my credit, I didn't get as ticked off about it as I could have. Mainly, I didn't want to get mad at the missionaries. I may (or may not) have been like that back in the day. They don't know me from the next guy off the street, they likely assumed I was a helpful person.
This evening, I went to the Stake center to get the Stake President out of his office. (He was meeting with someone and needed to be somewhere else.) The Spanish speaking Elders were there completely lost, poking their head into every door they could find. It turns out the monthly Stake missionary meeting was tonight, they were looking for the High Council room. They interrupted several other little meetings they had been having. I looked, but neither of them was a Sutton...
Saturday, January 12, 2008
2008 Goal Update
- Post a goal update to the blog at least twice a month. Well, that's really the reason I'm posting this today, more than anything...
- Don't let a post go by without some progress to report. You be the judge.
- Stain the play set. Spring.
- Finish the retaining wall. Spring.
- Finish the mission journal. No progress.
- Build a bunk bed for Emma and Ruth. Late Spring.
- Stay under the 210 weight. Current weight - 205.5. We got a new digital scale this week.
- Go to the temple at least once a month. We have a Stake leadership Temple night at the end of the month.
- Take Tara somewhere for our 10th wedding anniversary. No trip picked or booked yet.
- Read 18 books. Zero completed.
- Plant something other than tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, green beans and peas. I thought about buying some tomatoes from Burpee.com this week, I decided it was too early...
Game Time
Age of Empires: The warchiefs
Dave, Dad, and I played against 3 hard computers. (Dad wanted to start with 3 expert computers, I talked him out of it...)
It looked iffy for a few minutes, but then I started playing offense, while Dad and Dave kept the computers busy on defense. Since the computers kept attacking, their armies were smaller down by their towns.
My dudes were too much for computers to handle, we won, maybe we should have done 3 vs 5 hard computers...
Dave, Dad, and I played against 3 hard computers. (Dad wanted to start with 3 expert computers, I talked him out of it...)
It looked iffy for a few minutes, but then I started playing offense, while Dad and Dave kept the computers busy on defense. Since the computers kept attacking, their armies were smaller down by their towns.
My dudes were too much for computers to handle, we won, maybe we should have done 3 vs 5 hard computers...
Friday, January 11, 2008
I always feel sorry for the student that gets my hand-me-down laptop...
2 laptops ago, I accidentally poured root beer in my laptop. It was never the same after that. I have no idea who got that one. The last one I had had a number of problems. Half the keys had the letters rubbed off. The monitor had a scratch in it. The thing overheated easily.
This laptop has some problems at this point, some student will be inheriting it in about a year. I've been trying to figure out for a couple of weeks what has been wrong with it. Performance just drops every once in a while. A couple of weeks ago, while playing age of empires, I monitored all kind of stuff trying to figure it out. After the game, I discovered that I had 50% fragmentation on my hard drive. That was fixed, but the problem there didn't go away, and I really had the problem in Linux as well.
Last night I figured out what was going on. When the fan came on, performance degraded. Badly. If the fan was not on, performance was ok. The fan would either come on right after booting up or never come on. (I had noticed it would occasionally start right when I booted up, and that it would run a long time, but I hadn't noticed that sometimes it really didn't start.)
Anyway, last night I downloaded a HW monitor for my windows partition. I figured it was lots easier to generate load and be able to see when performance went down if I was playing Age of Empires, plus it was an excuse to play Age of Empires. My laptop's performance went down any time the fans were running. When the fans were not running, the laptop overheated. Overheated as in the temperature of the graphics card went over 100 degrees C. (The boiling point of water, if you didn't know.) The laptop itself went over 85 degrees C. This is not a good thing. I could have performance, with a future meltdown, or fans, but no way to do anything.
Anyway, this morning, the laptop was cracked open. The fan was absolutely cakes in dust. Even after a good cleaning, the problem continued. I have a new video card and fan on the way from Dell, I hope that will fix things. In the meantime, I borrowed a cooling tower from someone, I have it turned to high, and my system temperature is sitting at 51 degrees C. My graphics card is at 59 degrees. If I start AoE, the thing will go pretty hot, but not necessarily meltdown hot.
What does this mean for the student that gets my laptop in a year? It means he or she will have a disk failure at some point. The only way around that is if the disk failure happens to me before the student gets it. That student might also have random hardware problems here and there that they can't explain. By then, I will have some brand spanking new laptop, and won't be giving this one a second thought. I have to decide in the next year if I want small laptop with a giant desktop, or a large laptop. (My guess is that I will stick to the big laptop.)
This laptop has some problems at this point, some student will be inheriting it in about a year. I've been trying to figure out for a couple of weeks what has been wrong with it. Performance just drops every once in a while. A couple of weeks ago, while playing age of empires, I monitored all kind of stuff trying to figure it out. After the game, I discovered that I had 50% fragmentation on my hard drive. That was fixed, but the problem there didn't go away, and I really had the problem in Linux as well.
Last night I figured out what was going on. When the fan came on, performance degraded. Badly. If the fan was not on, performance was ok. The fan would either come on right after booting up or never come on. (I had noticed it would occasionally start right when I booted up, and that it would run a long time, but I hadn't noticed that sometimes it really didn't start.)
Anyway, last night I downloaded a HW monitor for my windows partition. I figured it was lots easier to generate load and be able to see when performance went down if I was playing Age of Empires, plus it was an excuse to play Age of Empires. My laptop's performance went down any time the fans were running. When the fans were not running, the laptop overheated. Overheated as in the temperature of the graphics card went over 100 degrees C. (The boiling point of water, if you didn't know.) The laptop itself went over 85 degrees C. This is not a good thing. I could have performance, with a future meltdown, or fans, but no way to do anything.
Anyway, this morning, the laptop was cracked open. The fan was absolutely cakes in dust. Even after a good cleaning, the problem continued. I have a new video card and fan on the way from Dell, I hope that will fix things. In the meantime, I borrowed a cooling tower from someone, I have it turned to high, and my system temperature is sitting at 51 degrees C. My graphics card is at 59 degrees. If I start AoE, the thing will go pretty hot, but not necessarily meltdown hot.
What does this mean for the student that gets my laptop in a year? It means he or she will have a disk failure at some point. The only way around that is if the disk failure happens to me before the student gets it. That student might also have random hardware problems here and there that they can't explain. By then, I will have some brand spanking new laptop, and won't be giving this one a second thought. I have to decide in the next year if I want small laptop with a giant desktop, or a large laptop. (My guess is that I will stick to the big laptop.)
Friday game night
One of Tara's secret goals for the year is to have people over on Friday nights to play games and have desserts. (It's a secret goal because she won't update blog with any of them. I'm also trying to get her to do book reviews, but that hasn't happened yet, either.)
Anyway, tonight we had Matt, Talia, Chad, and Elise over. We played Apples to Apples. We started at about 7:30, so it wasn't as crazy as the 1am games I played with Russ, Jonathan, Scott, and those guys. Talia spent the entire time juggling a baby, and seemed kind of distracted, really, but she ended up winning. I kept thinking I was catching up to her, but it turns out I wasn't. (She won with 10, I had 7.) I drew both the Superman card and the Batman card, and I couldn't win on either of them. What's up with that?
I made several different desserts: A Butterscotch pudding pie, a chocolate cheesecake pudding pie, a strawberry cream cheese tart, and a blackberry tart. I hear they were all ok. I had strawberries and bananas.
Anyway, tonight we had Matt, Talia, Chad, and Elise over. We played Apples to Apples. We started at about 7:30, so it wasn't as crazy as the 1am games I played with Russ, Jonathan, Scott, and those guys. Talia spent the entire time juggling a baby, and seemed kind of distracted, really, but she ended up winning. I kept thinking I was catching up to her, but it turns out I wasn't. (She won with 10, I had 7.) I drew both the Superman card and the Batman card, and I couldn't win on either of them. What's up with that?
I made several different desserts: A Butterscotch pudding pie, a chocolate cheesecake pudding pie, a strawberry cream cheese tart, and a blackberry tart. I hear they were all ok. I had strawberries and bananas.
Restaurant Review
Pastorero
One of the Bishops in our Stake opened up a restaurant a couple of weeks ago. It's called Pastorero, and is a franchise that has places in Arizona and New Mexico. I guess the pastorero is stuff from Mexico, if you tell someone that has spent some time down there the name, they know what it is.
Anyway, one of the guys at work went with me for lunch yesterday. They have a 5 Tacos meal, which I got with rice and beans. The tacos came with corn torillas, grilled shredded pork, onions, cilantro, and a little piece of pineapple. Bishop Snow gave us free chips.
I thought the thing wouldn't fill me up when I started, but there was more meat on the thing than it really looked like. It was quite good, I would recommend it to anyone around. It's only a block away from my office, which is dangerous. One of these days I will take Tara to the place.
One of the Bishops in our Stake opened up a restaurant a couple of weeks ago. It's called Pastorero, and is a franchise that has places in Arizona and New Mexico. I guess the pastorero is stuff from Mexico, if you tell someone that has spent some time down there the name, they know what it is.
Anyway, one of the guys at work went with me for lunch yesterday. They have a 5 Tacos meal, which I got with rice and beans. The tacos came with corn torillas, grilled shredded pork, onions, cilantro, and a little piece of pineapple. Bishop Snow gave us free chips.
I thought the thing wouldn't fill me up when I started, but there was more meat on the thing than it really looked like. It was quite good, I would recommend it to anyone around. It's only a block away from my office, which is dangerous. One of these days I will take Tara to the place.
Christmas
I finally got my Christmas present from Adam on Monday. (Long week this week, sorry about the silence.)
Adam sent me a nice geek tie, which I wore to church Wednesday night. He also sent me 2 oddly shaped rubic's cubes. So far, they have baffled me.
Adam also sent some necklaces for the girls. They really like them. Lily had hers, and started yelling at me when I took it away. They really like them...
Adam sent me a nice geek tie, which I wore to church Wednesday night. He also sent me 2 oddly shaped rubic's cubes. So far, they have baffled me.
Adam also sent some necklaces for the girls. They really like them. Lily had hers, and started yelling at me when I took it away. They really like them...
Saturday, January 05, 2008
The right way to eat Buckwheat pancakes
I really can't eat plain Buckwheat pancakes. They just need something with them to go down properly. Since I can't have syrup, this causes problems. Last week I discovered that they aren't too bad, as long as you have enough mashed banana in them to make sure there is plenty of banana in each bite.Today I stepped it up a notch. Buckwheat banana pancakes topped with unsweetened peaches isn't bad at all. (And this sized portion fills you up.)
Game Time
Age of Empires
Dad, Dave, and I played a Free for all game this morning. The past couple of games we have played, I have had performance problems with my laptop.
Last time, I had the other computer logged into the work VPN because I had nearly 200 servers down at work. My laptop was logged into the Hamachi VPN. About a painfully slow hour into the game, I turned off the other computer, which seemed to help with the lag. My guess is that i could have just logged out of the work VPN.
This week, I started out by turning off the other computer, but still had some performance problems with my machine. It took a while for the game to actually start. After the game, I poked around, and my installation of Windows had 50% file fragmentation. I'm not sure how exactly this happened, but it was the worst I've ever seen. I have now defraged, we'll have to see if the game plays faster for me now.
So anyway, the game. We had a treaty period, I was up at the top by the water, and saw Dave with ships in the water. I thought Dave was below me as a result, so I went down there to attack Dave, but it ended up being Dad.
I roughed Dad's guys up a bit, then went to attack Dave. Eventually, and by eventually I mean something like 2 hours later, my never ending stream of dudes was too much for both Dave and Dad, I ended up winning the game.
Dad, Dave, and I played a Free for all game this morning. The past couple of games we have played, I have had performance problems with my laptop.
Last time, I had the other computer logged into the work VPN because I had nearly 200 servers down at work. My laptop was logged into the Hamachi VPN. About a painfully slow hour into the game, I turned off the other computer, which seemed to help with the lag. My guess is that i could have just logged out of the work VPN.
This week, I started out by turning off the other computer, but still had some performance problems with my machine. It took a while for the game to actually start. After the game, I poked around, and my installation of Windows had 50% file fragmentation. I'm not sure how exactly this happened, but it was the worst I've ever seen. I have now defraged, we'll have to see if the game plays faster for me now.
So anyway, the game. We had a treaty period, I was up at the top by the water, and saw Dave with ships in the water. I thought Dave was below me as a result, so I went down there to attack Dave, but it ended up being Dad.
I roughed Dad's guys up a bit, then went to attack Dave. Eventually, and by eventually I mean something like 2 hours later, my never ending stream of dudes was too much for both Dave and Dad, I ended up winning the game.
A 4 hour tour
This morning I went out to go make some copies for a Stake Conference letter. We wanted one copy for each household in the Stake, so I had some work to do. I left the house about 30 minutes after it started snowing pretty hard, there was ice underneath 2 inches of snow by the time I left.
I got to the Stake Center, and figured out how many households were in each ward. The Library copier is brand new, I figured it would copy faster than the one in the Stake offices, so I went over to it and started 500 copies. I started doing 50 copies at a time on the Stake copier, and 100 at a time on the printer off the Stake Computer. After the 500 copies were done, I realized that I would have to count out the number of copies. I could have just done 179 copies for one ward, then done 154 for the next, 134 after that, and not have to had done all that counting. I guess I'm just slow sometimes.
Anyway, we promised the Bishops on Wednesday they would have this stuff before Sunday. Our ward switches to 9am tomorrow, so I didn't want to wait until tomorrow to deliver them. By the time I got done making copies, the roads were very bad. One Bishop lives up a very long drive, I wasn't able to get all the way up it, and had to walk up to the door, then I had to just roll down the drive backwards to get out. Another Bishop lives in a condo complex, I couldn't get back out the drive, I had to go back around the condos, and gun it going straight to get out. About halfway through the deliveries, I decided that people had to either be crazy or stupid to be out in it.
After the deliveries, I went to the store to get some stuff. I loaded the truck, and remembered that I was going to get multi vitamins, so I went back into the store, but after I realized that the keys got locked in the car with the groceries. It was nearly 2pm, I called Missy to see when Steve was headed into work, hoping he could bring me the spare set, she said he had just left. (Drew had made me a spare set of keys for the truck last week when he took it to buy housing materials. Talk about timing.) I borrowed Steve's car to get the keys, As I was coming up to the front door, Tara called me to find out what happened to me.
Anyway, by the time I got back to the store, it had warmed up, everything was melting. The keys were underneath a bag of groceries...
I got to the Stake Center, and figured out how many households were in each ward. The Library copier is brand new, I figured it would copy faster than the one in the Stake offices, so I went over to it and started 500 copies. I started doing 50 copies at a time on the Stake copier, and 100 at a time on the printer off the Stake Computer. After the 500 copies were done, I realized that I would have to count out the number of copies. I could have just done 179 copies for one ward, then done 154 for the next, 134 after that, and not have to had done all that counting. I guess I'm just slow sometimes.
Anyway, we promised the Bishops on Wednesday they would have this stuff before Sunday. Our ward switches to 9am tomorrow, so I didn't want to wait until tomorrow to deliver them. By the time I got done making copies, the roads were very bad. One Bishop lives up a very long drive, I wasn't able to get all the way up it, and had to walk up to the door, then I had to just roll down the drive backwards to get out. Another Bishop lives in a condo complex, I couldn't get back out the drive, I had to go back around the condos, and gun it going straight to get out. About halfway through the deliveries, I decided that people had to either be crazy or stupid to be out in it.
After the deliveries, I went to the store to get some stuff. I loaded the truck, and remembered that I was going to get multi vitamins, so I went back into the store, but after I realized that the keys got locked in the car with the groceries. It was nearly 2pm, I called Missy to see when Steve was headed into work, hoping he could bring me the spare set, she said he had just left. (Drew had made me a spare set of keys for the truck last week when he took it to buy housing materials. Talk about timing.) I borrowed Steve's car to get the keys, As I was coming up to the front door, Tara called me to find out what happened to me.
Anyway, by the time I got back to the store, it had warmed up, everything was melting. The keys were underneath a bag of groceries...
Friday, January 04, 2008
Not exactly the right size for a scarf
Tara got me a scarf loom for Christmas. I think she was trying to give me a hint. I started a scarf, but ran out of the pink yarn when the scarf was just about 16 inches long. This really wasn't the right length for a scarf. I went to the store looking for the same kind of yarn as what I was using already. I couldn't find any.
What do you do with a very small scarf? Make it into a purse. Ruth seems to like it.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Open Letter to the Mayor
Dear Mayor,
As you know, the city council recently approved an overnight parking ordinance in our neighborhood. The caveat was that we would have to pay $15 per permit to park on the street at night. (The money was to pay for the program. I have it on a fairly good source that there won't be any new employees hired to hand out tickets, it will just be left to the overnight shift officers, who will find anything else to do but hand out tickets at night. I consider the $30 a year charge for street parking to be an extra tax by the city just for living in the neighborhood. Kind of like the "tax" I will have to pay when my kids have to start rents school books. What would the school district say when I pass on the book rental?) I remind you this all came up because the city is unable to enforce the housing code in any way at all, and this is not a solution to the problem just East of just, it's just a way to allow our neighbors to use their streets and yards.
The ordinance was to take effect January 1, the signs the city put up are very conspicuous. I'm glad you decided to move the signs to the property lines instead of in front of our houses. That saved me the effort of having to pull the sign out of the ground and return it to the city. "You lost this." was going to be my response as I brought it back.
I sent my application for permits with my check for $30 several weeks ago. Last week, the check cleared the bank, but I have yet to receive my parking tag. Are the parking tags coming? It's very inconvenient to park 2 vehicles in the drive when there is all that space on the street I could be using. If you are going to steal from us (My $30 check was cashed.), you could at least set us a card or something thanking us.
So, is enforcement going to start? Will I get my parking tags? The signs are nice, but they are nothing more than an eyesore if nothing else happens. I could put up a "Beware of Dog" sign up on the fence in our backyard, but it's not going to keep the quail out of the yard in the spring...
We await your response.
As you know, the city council recently approved an overnight parking ordinance in our neighborhood. The caveat was that we would have to pay $15 per permit to park on the street at night. (The money was to pay for the program. I have it on a fairly good source that there won't be any new employees hired to hand out tickets, it will just be left to the overnight shift officers, who will find anything else to do but hand out tickets at night. I consider the $30 a year charge for street parking to be an extra tax by the city just for living in the neighborhood. Kind of like the "tax" I will have to pay when my kids have to start rents school books. What would the school district say when I pass on the book rental?) I remind you this all came up because the city is unable to enforce the housing code in any way at all, and this is not a solution to the problem just East of just, it's just a way to allow our neighbors to use their streets and yards.
The ordinance was to take effect January 1, the signs the city put up are very conspicuous. I'm glad you decided to move the signs to the property lines instead of in front of our houses. That saved me the effort of having to pull the sign out of the ground and return it to the city. "You lost this." was going to be my response as I brought it back.
I sent my application for permits with my check for $30 several weeks ago. Last week, the check cleared the bank, but I have yet to receive my parking tag. Are the parking tags coming? It's very inconvenient to park 2 vehicles in the drive when there is all that space on the street I could be using. If you are going to steal from us (My $30 check was cashed.), you could at least set us a card or something thanking us.
So, is enforcement going to start? Will I get my parking tags? The signs are nice, but they are nothing more than an eyesore if nothing else happens. I could put up a "Beware of Dog" sign up on the fence in our backyard, but it's not going to keep the quail out of the yard in the spring...
We await your response.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Polenta
I tried polenta tonight. Fried is in butter with garlic, onions, and a bunch of spices. I had 5 disks of the stuff. I was able to eat 3 1/2 of them. It tasted good, I just couldn't do any more. I thin kit was the butter more than anything, but it might have been the mush, too. In case you are wondering, it tastes a lot like grits mixed with cornmeal...
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
2008 Goals
Ok, this year, I'm going to really try to get these done:
- Post a goal update to the blog at least twice a month. The last 2 years I petered out in the middle. I think this hurt the effort to finish things.
- Don't let a post go by without some progress to report. The first goal doesn't count. Hopefully the combination of the first and second will motivate me to get moving at times...
- Stain the play set. This is gonna take some work when it warms up, I'm not sure how I will get to the top of the thing...
- Finish the retaining wall. No time to put this off this year, It really needs to happen.
- Finish the mission journal. Maybe if I keep saying this, it will really happen.
- Build a bunk bed for Emma and Ruth. Maybe we can fit 5 girls in that little bedroom.
- Stay under the 210 weight. When I get off this diet, I have to see what happens, but this goal is better than trying to lose weight, I'm at least trying to maintain where I'm at now.
- Go to the temple at least once a month. It's only a mile up the road. It might be easier if I had some Family File names to take with me.
- Take Tara somewhere for our 10th wedding anniversary. She will have survived 10 years with me, that deserves something special. I'm think September or October, really. If it's out of the country, we need to plan ahead to get passports.
- Read 18 books. 14 last year, I didn't do any reading in the last couple of months, so it's not like this is impossible at all, I just need to get busy.
- Plant something other than tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, green beans and peas. Our garden needs more variety...
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