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{| style="background: #eeeeee;" align=right
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|Time doesn't just fly; it tends to go first class and charge the tickets to my account.
|}
=What Woozle Is Doing Right Now=
=What Woozle Is Doing Right Now=
Entries are most recent first; to read in order, start at the end.
Entries are most recent first; to read in order, start at the end.
{| align=right
|-
| __TOC__
|}
==Overview==
==Overview==
*[[Staddon vs. Griever]]
*[[Childsitters Wanted|Childsitting]]
*[[HyperMail]] so I can manage my emails
*[[HyperMail]] so I can manage my emails
*Images for existing VBZ items
*Images for existing VBZ items
==Today==
*[[DriveFerret]] (currently at experimental stage) to recover work from 60 GB drive
'''08:09, 5 Sep 2005 (EDT)''': Another [[2005-09-05 Benjy Story|Benjy story]]
*[[HyperFile]] (has many uses, but most urgently to help with managing vbz images)
=Journal Entries=
* '''2007-01-11''': Actually making some progress on [[FileFerret]], finally. Who knew that all it would take is a bit of single-minded hyperfocussing to the exclusion of all else (except for a bit of vbz shipping now and then)?
: It's not really surprising, though, that this has taken so long to get to, as I am finding that there are many things which will be using it and correspondingly many complications in converting them (and their data) so that they ''can'' use it... (and I'm probably jinxing it by saying that I'm making progress, too.)
* '''2007-01-08''':
** [[2007-01-05 Rebekah's response]]
** [[2007-01-08 Woozle's response]]
* [[2007-01-04 open letter to Rebekah Wade]]
* [[2006-12-23 The tirCysP Affair]]


'''09:56, 5 Sep 2005 (EDT)''': Memo to myself: do the dumb things I gotta do. Touch the puppet head. Write something for [[issuepedia:Main Page|Issuepedia]] about the "concept of self as global leader-in-exile", and apologize to Islam for the Crusades (see [http://www.futurist.com/911/enlightenment.htm]). Put psychoanalyst on danger money... oh, wait, haven't got a psychoanalyst. (That's ok; haven't got money either.)
'''09:04, 10 December 2006 (EST)''' Harena's to-do for today:
* <s>Help W finish Josh application thingy</s>: mostly done; need to see if we can get answers from Tom
* Get all the teacher stuff thingies
** go to AC Moore
** candy canes, put them all together
* <s>xmas cards (low priority)</s>
* pay bills
* <s>stickers for soap</s> enough for this year
* lip balm


'''17:18, 5 Sep 2005 (EDT)''': Okay, so I've been spending way too much time today reading articles on [[wikipedia:David Brin|David Brin]]'s [http://davidbrin.com web site] (and things they link to, and the sites which host those things...), and now I must make another comment which probably won't quite make sense until I write it out at greater length: Brin says that we far too easily assume that everyone else is a mindless sheep, and we alone see clearly. This naturally sparked the question of why it often ''seems'' that way (why, for instance, here in the South -- both [[Durham, NC|Durham]] and [[Athens, GA|Athens]], my two data points of parental experience with public schools -- does it seem like black parents in the public school system overwhelmingly tend to want their kids to be drilled mercilessly, while the white parents want more room for individual differences in the way kids learn, teaching practical skills rather than to-the-test, etc. This may not be the best example, but it's the one which came to mind.) -- and then what suggested itself to me was that we are all relative "experts" in certain areas and relatively ignorant in others, and in any area of decision-making where you rea relatively ignorant, your actions might seem sheeplike to someone who ''has'' been paying attention to the various issues in that area.
* [[2006-11-24 The Cockroach Mafia]]


After a little more thinking, I refined this to "maybe there are different sets of knowledge ''on the same issue'' which come into play for different groups of people, and for a group which is steeped in one set of knowledge, the other group's reactions may seem sheeplike. Lacking the knowledge behind the other group's choices, their behavior seems both irrational and strangely cohesive, which is a pretty good definition of sheeplike." Which kind of seems obvious, when put that way. So maybe I just took the long way around to get back to familiar territory.
'''19:57, 11 November 2006 (EST)''' This came to me as I was waking up; it was only supposed to take an hour, maybe two, to write down; what with one thing and another, I basically spent all day writing it: [[Issuepedia:A spiritual argument against religion|A spiritual argument against religion]]


'''18:37, 5 Sep 2005 (EDT)''': ...and [http://www.davidbrin.com/addiction.html this] asks a question to which I had already worked out my own answer, i.e. that expressions along the general form of "righteous indignation" are self-reinforcing because they help to maintain certain kinds of [[issuepedia:Power Structure|Power Structure]]. Brin's theory definitely deserves examination; it might even be that a natural reinforcing brain-chemical response evolved ''because'' of such behavior's beneficial effects to the individual (if not to society).
'''19:36, 4 November 2006 (EST)''' Woops, a month went by.


=What Woozle Was Doing Earlier=
I'm now trying to decide whether to pester my lawyer about a discovery I've just made (that's [[wikipedia:Discovery (observation)|Discovery]], not [[wikipedia:Discovery (law)|Discovery]], although it does involve the latter).
==2005-09-04==
'''07:28, 4 Sep 2005 (EDT)''': Laboriously checking through about a hundred possibly-recovered directories checking to see if they contain anything useful. I may end up attempting to write my own drive-recovery app.
==2005-09-03==
'''16:38, 3 Sep 2005 (EDT)''': Chopping onions, attempting to recover files from a messed-up hard drive, interceding between a battling 6yo and 8yo... :-P
==2005-09-02==
'''07:50, 2 Sep 2005 (EDT)''': Requiem for New Orleans:
* "In the Heart of the Night", by Poco
* "Shattered Visions", by [http://www.bridesfunk.com/ Brides of Jesus] (transplanted New Orleans funk band) ([http://wiki.hypertwins.org/audio/boj-wgs-04.mp3 MP3] for a limited time)
* "New Orleans Ladies", by LeRoux ([http://wiki.hypertwins.org/audio/lrx-orleans-live.mp3 MP3] of live acoustic performance on the late lamented [[WQDR Rock]])
'''11:57, 2 Sep 2005 (EDT)''': Ok, so two days ago (the day Katrina hit), we begin to hear about rising gas prices, so I take the Nissan out to Costco to fill up, in case there are shortages by the time the minivan needs a tank. However, I can't get my check card to work (Costo doesn't do credit cards except Amex, but they do take check cards -- which means you need the PIN). So I give up and go home.


Next day, we happen to be in the bank, so I have them reset the PIN to the same number as the other card, which is easier to remember. On the way out of the bank, I suddenly figure it out -- I had the PINs reversed; I was trying to use my personal card's PIN on my business card. So I have just now accomplished exactly nothing, except to have the bank send me an extra card I don't need about 2 months before they would have sent me a new card anyway. ''(Oops.)''
In the trial process, there is a phase referred to as the [[wikipedia:Interrogatories|interrogatories]], which is where I get to ask them questions, and they have to answer within 30 days. (They also get to ask me questions, and I have to answer within 30 days.)


Then today, in the face of continuing news of gas shortages and spiking prices, I decide I really had better get that tank filled, just in case (thus putting myself at the end of a long string of fellow gas-hoarders, I'm sure), so we drive the Nissan over to Costco -- to find that they have no gas of any kind. ''(Oops)''
We did one round of interrogatories already ([[SvsG:Plaintiffs' First Requests to RDA|RDA]], [[SvsG:Plaintiffs' First Fact Requests to Bubba|Bubba]], [[SvsG:Plaintiffs' First Fact Requests to Lynne|Lynne]] &ndash; 5 questions per defendant), and the questions were rather general, and their answers were uninformative.


So we stop off at a Citgo station on the way, the only place we'd seen all morning that had gas under $3.29 (which seemed to be pretty universal, even at places that usually charge more; this one Citgo was charging $3.19). Being a bit out of practice at tanking up at non-Costco pumps, I pull in on the wrong side. ''(Oops.)''
I came up with a much more [[SvsG:Plaintiffs' Position Statement/archive|specific set of questions]] after that, but then the lawyer said I couldn't ask them, because there wasn't going to be another round of interrogatories. From this, I gathered that I'm only allowed one set.


The sign says they're requiring pre-payment due to a large number of drive-offs, so I go in and give them my Citgo card, and then come back out to the pump. I stick the pump in the gas tank and squeeze the trigger -- nothing happens. Then I suddenly remember you generally have to turn the pump ''on'' at these non-pay-at-pump places, so I go around to turn on the pump; on the way there, I stumble and knock the hose over a bit, and the nozzle springs out of the gas tank filler hole, spraying a few teaspoons of (increasingly precious) gasoline on the pavement as it does so. ''(Oops.)''
However, I just now found the relevant statute ({{gacode|9|11|33}}) in Georgia law, and it doesn't say anything about the number of rounds; it only says you have to limit the total number of questions to 50, and we've asked, like, 5 or 10. I think. It seems to me that we could seriously clarify some things before the trial by asking my list of questions, even if I have to pare it down quite a bit.


I stick the nozzle back in more firmly, switch the pump on, and it starts pumping. And then I notice that the gas I'm paying for is $3.39/gallon, not $3.19... and then I notice that the pump says "PREMIUM" on it. ''(Oops.)''
On the other hand, my lawyer is likely to insist on doing all the typing and formatting, and one way or another will end up charging me for more hours to handle the additional paperwork &ndash; which runs the risk of pushing me over into yet a ''third'' multi-thousand-dollar retainer. Is it worth the risk? Should I ask her for a statement of our current account status? Or should I just let all this stuff get dealt with at trial?


I point this out to Harena, who so *very* wittily chimes in "well, guess there's no sense in crying over spilled gas!". About 3 seconds later, gas begins pouring out of the gas tank. ''(Insert rimshot here.)'' Apparently the cutoff-sensors at Costco deal with the pump nozzle being at a funny angle a lot better than these ones do -- and this one was, indeed, at a funny angle, because was stretching over from the other side of the car, because I had parked with the tank on the wrong side. ''(Oops.)''
Feh.


On the bright side, I just now looked at the sales slip, and for some unknown reason they actually only charged me $3.19/gallon. Maybe it wasn't really premium? (I could imagine that they might have decided to fill all their tanks with Regular, anticipating a shortage. That would seem like the kind of public-spirited thing which the lowest-priced gas station in town just might do; $deity knows they probably could have stocked up with premium, overcharged for it, and made out like bandits. But the pump clearly thought it was charging me $3.39/gallon.)
'''13:31, 24 September 2006 (EDT)''' Some trivia: I pulled a bunch of old service receipts out of the Benz, trying to clean up after the CD player thief (who rifled thoroughly both the Nissan and the Benz, took the CD player out of the Nissan but struck out with the Benz because it doesn't even have a radio) spilled all the glove box contents everywhere. Oddly enough, the receipts are not for ''this'' Benz but for a different one, a 300TD, license plate CME-837, belonging to some people named Harry and Pam Abel in Atlanta.


(P.S. "$deity" was copied from today's [http://schlockmercenary.com/ Schlock Mercenary] musings and is a variable used to represent the deity of your choice.)
From the receipts, it looks like they moved there sometime around or before August 1985, and sold the car sometime in 1994. I found their address on one of the receipts, which leads to [http://66.64.236.226/identity/mstockton/listings_details.asp?OrderBy=beds&User_ID=mstockton&Offset=10&Listing_ID=5951 this site] showing their former house (with lots of photos) sold for $1,195,000. Googling both office and home phone numbers comes up with nothing for area code 404, which I'm pretty sure included Atlanta at the time (prior to 1992 or so, it was most of northeast Georgia).
==2005-09-01==
 
'''07:22, 1 Sep 2005 (EDT)''': I'm being told a [[2005-09-01 Benjy story|story]].
On one receipt &ndash; October 13, 1988 &ndash; they spent a total of $8076.41 on the car, apparently including a new engine (#617 912-12-727772). So now I don't feel quite so bad about all the thousands I've spent on ''my'' Benz...
==Earlier Months==
 
*[[User:Woozle/2005-08|August, 2005]]
I'm guessing that this was the Benz which the Grievers later somehow obtained and which became Cimmeria's car (maybe she bought it with the settlement money from her court case? I don't remember what that was about except that there was a lot of money and it was gone pretty quickly.) I'm going to assume this is correct, and stuff it in with the other stuff to give back to the Grievers next time I encounter them (presumably in court).
*[[User:Woozle/2005-07|July, 2005]]
 
*[[User:Woozle/2005-06|June, 2005]]
* [[2006-09-05]]
* [[2006-09-04 beach trip]]
* [[2006-09-03]]
 
==2006-08-10==
'''21:36, 10 August 2006 (EDT)''' I feel like however I handle this, it'll be the wrong thing to do. [[2006-08-10 truth and secrets]]
 
==long hiatus==
It's been a really, really busy summer. What can I say.
==2006-03-19==
'''08:05, 19 March 2006 (EST)''' Actually got something done yesterday, in spite of having to drive Zander to a [http://maps.yahoo.com/dd_result?newaddr=122+pinecrest+rd.&taddr=9000+Habitat+Cir&csz=27705&country=us&tcsz=Chapel+Hill%2C+NC+27516-5262&tcountry=us birthday party] (1/2 hour each way x 4 trips = 2 hours felled in the name of improved childhood socialization or whatever): the main catalog portion of vbz.net (all URLs starting with /cat/) is now running from a single script, rather than being hundreds of static pages built on a PC. It's a small but significant step towards making the site completely data-driven and no longer dependent on Windows.
 
A lot of other stuff happened which I haven't had time to post about; see [[:Category:Wallpaper]] and [[:Category:2006-03-10]]. Also [http://wall.hypertwins.org Wallville] is back ^_^
==2006-03-03==
'''07:41, 3 March 2006 (EST)''' Began the seed of an area about making music as a profession: [[Art vs. Career]]. Also, a couple of days ago, wrote up our unhappy experiences with the {{yp|Kenmore 44052}} washing machine. Didn't have time to process the Day In The Life pictures; three days generally isn't enough, unless it includes a weekend and my to-do list isn't more overloaded than usual.
==2006-02-26==
'''15:38, 26 February 2006 (EST)''' [http://secondhandwhore.livejournal.com/ Sraedi] invited me to take part in [http://community.livejournal.com/ditl/profile this], so I've been taking pictures. I also figured out that the camera has a mode which squeezes about 5 times as many shots on a memory card, and (incidentally) doesn't take forever to process them. Who knew.
 
Also creating new icons for vbz.net. The transparency doesn't work in MSIE v6, but who cares, right? ;-) (I wonder if v7 will have proper support for PNG alpha transparency...)
==2006-02-25==
[[Image:P2250007 2006-02-25 Zander in playstructure at Wheels.jpg|250px|left]]
'''21:04, 25 February 2006 (EST)''' Finally put some of my kindergarten-era electronics knowledge to work -- see [[User:Woozle/notes for electronic learning kit|Woozle/notes for electronic learning kit]]
 
Also took Zander to [[htyp:Wheels (Durham, NC)|Wheels]] for the birthday party of Henry (the immediate motivation for creating the aforementioned electronic kit) and picked him up again after (leaving about 45 minutes in between for shipping operations). This was made considerably easier, however, by the presence of Rachel-the-sitter, who made it unnecessary for me to also pack up Josh and Benjamin in the car each time.
 
==2006-02-22==
'''10:28, 22 February 2006 (EST)''': Just now applied for [http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=101&dockey=xml/4/8/485466afd1b98d598f899e71c08d14bc@activejobs0&c=1&source=1 this], after updating [[Résumé - Nick Staddon|this]].
 
Catching up: The overload has continued since the last entry. The plumber replacement section of pipe and removed a large quantity of muck from the existing pipe, but apparently didn't test the fix because the sink was still stopped up after he left (he may have tested it but not realized that you have to leave the water running for a good 5 minutes to be really sure, because it takes that long for the pipes to fill up from the blockage to the sink drain). So Saturday (with a bad headache) I got out the powered plumber's snake and reamed out the drain from the laundry room (after the unsurprising false start where the snake went up the vent instead of down under the floor). So that's fixed.
 
But then the washing machine was still making unhappy noises, and when the drain was still blocked it was leaking, so he need to come back and fix that, and I still can't get the drain under the laundry room sink to stop leaking completely (though I've got it to the point where it's a drip every 5-10 seconds instead of 5-10 drips per second; maybe it just needs a new gasket somewhere).
 
Then on Sunday I had an even worse headache and a slight fever and kind of did not much of any use all day. Monday I was a bit better, but still had no appetite until dinnertime. Tuesday mostly recovered; today still mostly recovered.
 
Also, I finally broke down (sometime during all that) and installed the windows drivers for the scanner. It worked fine for a bit, and then I foolishly tried to install a USB snooper utility to help out with the Linux driver development, and various things stopped working (including the network and the scanner). I was able to fix the network, and I got the scanner working again for a bit, but then it mysteriously stopped working again. So I'm still in the middle of that.
==2006-02-16==
The kitchen sink has been doing its quasi-annual stoppage since about Tuesday. This time, we're having a plumber look at it. (For one thing, there's a section of pipe which appears to have been patched with ''duct tape''. For another, this shouldn't keep happening; if the pipe is too small to accomodate the load, then we need bigger pipe.)
 
Meanwhile, we had fun bailing out the laundry room last night (the laundry room sink, dishwasher, and washing machine are all on the same drainage "circuit") in order to prevent the floor from being flooded (again) when laundry had to be done.
==2006-02-14==
'''07:41, 14 February 2006 (EST)''' More things I did between 1/11 and 2/13:
* Upgraded [[vbzwiki:Main Page|vbzwiki]] to the latest {{yp|MediaWiki}} version, in hopes of getting the spam filter to start working; I was able to get it working, though I think this was mainly because I re-read the instructions more carefully and found I had left out a line of code in the configuration file. Also, this will allow me to offer customers the ability to subscribe to topics of interest.
* Set up a test {{yp|Drupal}} page &ndash; it's at http://stuff.hypertwins.org, but I'm still working out the kinks before it's ready for actual use. (At first I couldn't get the email confirmation to work, but then that mysteriously started working several days later. Now it won't create forums, even though it says it is doing so.)
 
And time's up again...
==2006-02-13==
'''21:20, 13 February 2006 (EST)''' Yeah, [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-02/b-oam013006.php this] describes what I've noticed. And I thought it was just my current kid-infested lifestyle. Or maybe it's mainly that, and later on I'll be able to look forward to the joyous prospect of ''always'' feeling like I'm in a room full of screaming kids. Hmm.
 
'''14:47, 13 February 2006 (EST)''' I guess it must have been a busy month since January 11. I've done a substantial number of mentionable things, but can't immediately remember any of them. Oh, wait, yes... there was...
* The new water heater, which took much back-and-forthing between here, Sears, and a few other places (I have the "before" shots and will put them up eventually along with an "after" shot).
* Shaving about 8 inches off the end of the old falling-apart sink base cabinet in the laundry room (forgot to take "before" shots, but got a nice "after" shot).
* Getting one ("Von! Ah-ah-ah-haa!" &ndash;[[Wikipedia:Count von Count|Count von Count]]) [[Childsitters Wanted|childsitter]] lined up. She's too young to do overnights or driving, but it's a start.
* Spent a lot of time working on [[FileFerret]] and oops, that's all I have time for now because it's time to pick up the kids. (I was going to tell about buying a new scanner and looking at phono needles, but it'll have to wait.)
 
==2006-01-11==
'''07:41, 11 January 2006 (EST)''' Just finished the final (I hope) revision to [[SvsG:Messages for Defendants|this]]. Yesterday, we discovered that the reason why vbz seemed to be making so much money over Xmas, relatively speaking (the bank balance climbed to nearly $700 at one point, (yee. haw.), and is still well above $400) was that one of the suppliers had mistakenly been charging one of Sandy's credit cards which I gave them to use ''once'', two years ago. The total came to $730.80... so I'm still working back to "break-even" point. So much for "Black Friday". (She was relieved to find that she hadn't been as much of a spenthrift as she thought; I'm vastly annoyed and dismayed that I can't even seem to make a profit at Xmas. The sales numbers say I did make about $600, but that's not unusual for most times of the year.)
 
Yesterday also, I foolishly started into doing a huge overhaul of vbz's Topic system, and of course unexpected issues have arisen (as I expected).
 
Currently printing out the famous SvsG "Sales Accounting".
==2006-01-05==
'''13:32, 5 January 2006 (EST)''': There's a fine balance between (on the one hand) taking on so many tasks that one starts to get panicky over how much isn't getting done and (on the other hand) taking on too few and ''actually'' not getting much done. I'm feeling like I haven't been getting much done over the past week, but I'm trying not to take this as a signal that I need to take on a whole lot more because I can feel that edge of panic ready to spring up. Just find one or two things that need doing, and work on them. Lather, rinse, and repeat.
 
Reading material: http://www.judithberman.net/sffuture.html

Latest revision as of 00:55, 5 March 2021

Time doesn't just fly; it tends to go first class and charge the tickets to my account.

What Woozle Is Doing Right Now

Entries are most recent first; to read in order, start at the end.

Overview

Journal Entries

  • 2007-01-11: Actually making some progress on FileFerret, finally. Who knew that all it would take is a bit of single-minded hyperfocussing to the exclusion of all else (except for a bit of vbz shipping now and then)?
It's not really surprising, though, that this has taken so long to get to, as I am finding that there are many things which will be using it and correspondingly many complications in converting them (and their data) so that they can use it... (and I'm probably jinxing it by saying that I'm making progress, too.)

09:04, 10 December 2006 (EST) Harena's to-do for today:

  • Help W finish Josh application thingy: mostly done; need to see if we can get answers from Tom
  • Get all the teacher stuff thingies
    • go to AC Moore
    • candy canes, put them all together
  • xmas cards (low priority)
  • pay bills
  • stickers for soap enough for this year
  • lip balm

19:57, 11 November 2006 (EST) This came to me as I was waking up; it was only supposed to take an hour, maybe two, to write down; what with one thing and another, I basically spent all day writing it: A spiritual argument against religion

19:36, 4 November 2006 (EST) Woops, a month went by.

I'm now trying to decide whether to pester my lawyer about a discovery I've just made (that's Discovery, not Discovery, although it does involve the latter).

In the trial process, there is a phase referred to as the interrogatories, which is where I get to ask them questions, and they have to answer within 30 days. (They also get to ask me questions, and I have to answer within 30 days.)

We did one round of interrogatories already (RDA, Bubba, Lynne – 5 questions per defendant), and the questions were rather general, and their answers were uninformative.

I came up with a much more specific set of questions after that, but then the lawyer said I couldn't ask them, because there wasn't going to be another round of interrogatories. From this, I gathered that I'm only allowed one set.

However, I just now found the relevant statute (9-11-33) in Georgia law, and it doesn't say anything about the number of rounds; it only says you have to limit the total number of questions to 50, and we've asked, like, 5 or 10. I think. It seems to me that we could seriously clarify some things before the trial by asking my list of questions, even if I have to pare it down quite a bit.

On the other hand, my lawyer is likely to insist on doing all the typing and formatting, and one way or another will end up charging me for more hours to handle the additional paperwork – which runs the risk of pushing me over into yet a third multi-thousand-dollar retainer. Is it worth the risk? Should I ask her for a statement of our current account status? Or should I just let all this stuff get dealt with at trial?

Feh.

13:31, 24 September 2006 (EDT) Some trivia: I pulled a bunch of old service receipts out of the Benz, trying to clean up after the CD player thief (who rifled thoroughly both the Nissan and the Benz, took the CD player out of the Nissan but struck out with the Benz because it doesn't even have a radio) spilled all the glove box contents everywhere. Oddly enough, the receipts are not for this Benz but for a different one, a 300TD, license plate CME-837, belonging to some people named Harry and Pam Abel in Atlanta.

From the receipts, it looks like they moved there sometime around or before August 1985, and sold the car sometime in 1994. I found their address on one of the receipts, which leads to this site showing their former house (with lots of photos) sold for $1,195,000. Googling both office and home phone numbers comes up with nothing for area code 404, which I'm pretty sure included Atlanta at the time (prior to 1992 or so, it was most of northeast Georgia).

On one receipt – October 13, 1988 – they spent a total of $8076.41 on the car, apparently including a new engine (#617 912-12-727772). So now I don't feel quite so bad about all the thousands I've spent on my Benz...

I'm guessing that this was the Benz which the Grievers later somehow obtained and which became Cimmeria's car (maybe she bought it with the settlement money from her court case? I don't remember what that was about except that there was a lot of money and it was gone pretty quickly.) I'm going to assume this is correct, and stuff it in with the other stuff to give back to the Grievers next time I encounter them (presumably in court).

2006-08-10

21:36, 10 August 2006 (EDT) I feel like however I handle this, it'll be the wrong thing to do. 2006-08-10 truth and secrets

long hiatus

It's been a really, really busy summer. What can I say.

2006-03-19

08:05, 19 March 2006 (EST) Actually got something done yesterday, in spite of having to drive Zander to a birthday party (1/2 hour each way x 4 trips = 2 hours felled in the name of improved childhood socialization or whatever): the main catalog portion of vbz.net (all URLs starting with /cat/) is now running from a single script, rather than being hundreds of static pages built on a PC. It's a small but significant step towards making the site completely data-driven and no longer dependent on Windows.

A lot of other stuff happened which I haven't had time to post about; see Category:Wallpaper and Category:2006-03-10. Also Wallville is back ^_^

2006-03-03

07:41, 3 March 2006 (EST) Began the seed of an area about making music as a profession: Art vs. Career. Also, a couple of days ago, wrote up our unhappy experiences with the Kenmore 44052 washing machine. Didn't have time to process the Day In The Life pictures; three days generally isn't enough, unless it includes a weekend and my to-do list isn't more overloaded than usual.

2006-02-26

15:38, 26 February 2006 (EST) Sraedi invited me to take part in this, so I've been taking pictures. I also figured out that the camera has a mode which squeezes about 5 times as many shots on a memory card, and (incidentally) doesn't take forever to process them. Who knew.

Also creating new icons for vbz.net. The transparency doesn't work in MSIE v6, but who cares, right? ;-) (I wonder if v7 will have proper support for PNG alpha transparency...)

2006-02-25

P2250007 2006-02-25 Zander in playstructure at Wheels.jpg

21:04, 25 February 2006 (EST) Finally put some of my kindergarten-era electronics knowledge to work -- see Woozle/notes for electronic learning kit

Also took Zander to Wheels for the birthday party of Henry (the immediate motivation for creating the aforementioned electronic kit) and picked him up again after (leaving about 45 minutes in between for shipping operations). This was made considerably easier, however, by the presence of Rachel-the-sitter, who made it unnecessary for me to also pack up Josh and Benjamin in the car each time.

2006-02-22

10:28, 22 February 2006 (EST): Just now applied for this, after updating this.

Catching up: The overload has continued since the last entry. The plumber replacement section of pipe and removed a large quantity of muck from the existing pipe, but apparently didn't test the fix because the sink was still stopped up after he left (he may have tested it but not realized that you have to leave the water running for a good 5 minutes to be really sure, because it takes that long for the pipes to fill up from the blockage to the sink drain). So Saturday (with a bad headache) I got out the powered plumber's snake and reamed out the drain from the laundry room (after the unsurprising false start where the snake went up the vent instead of down under the floor). So that's fixed.

But then the washing machine was still making unhappy noises, and when the drain was still blocked it was leaking, so he need to come back and fix that, and I still can't get the drain under the laundry room sink to stop leaking completely (though I've got it to the point where it's a drip every 5-10 seconds instead of 5-10 drips per second; maybe it just needs a new gasket somewhere).

Then on Sunday I had an even worse headache and a slight fever and kind of did not much of any use all day. Monday I was a bit better, but still had no appetite until dinnertime. Tuesday mostly recovered; today still mostly recovered.

Also, I finally broke down (sometime during all that) and installed the windows drivers for the scanner. It worked fine for a bit, and then I foolishly tried to install a USB snooper utility to help out with the Linux driver development, and various things stopped working (including the network and the scanner). I was able to fix the network, and I got the scanner working again for a bit, but then it mysteriously stopped working again. So I'm still in the middle of that.

2006-02-16

The kitchen sink has been doing its quasi-annual stoppage since about Tuesday. This time, we're having a plumber look at it. (For one thing, there's a section of pipe which appears to have been patched with duct tape. For another, this shouldn't keep happening; if the pipe is too small to accomodate the load, then we need bigger pipe.)

Meanwhile, we had fun bailing out the laundry room last night (the laundry room sink, dishwasher, and washing machine are all on the same drainage "circuit") in order to prevent the floor from being flooded (again) when laundry had to be done.

2006-02-14

07:41, 14 February 2006 (EST) More things I did between 1/11 and 2/13:

  • Upgraded vbzwiki to the latest MediaWiki version, in hopes of getting the spam filter to start working; I was able to get it working, though I think this was mainly because I re-read the instructions more carefully and found I had left out a line of code in the configuration file. Also, this will allow me to offer customers the ability to subscribe to topics of interest.
  • Set up a test Drupal page – it's at http://stuff.hypertwins.org, but I'm still working out the kinks before it's ready for actual use. (At first I couldn't get the email confirmation to work, but then that mysteriously started working several days later. Now it won't create forums, even though it says it is doing so.)

And time's up again...

2006-02-13

21:20, 13 February 2006 (EST) Yeah, this describes what I've noticed. And I thought it was just my current kid-infested lifestyle. Or maybe it's mainly that, and later on I'll be able to look forward to the joyous prospect of always feeling like I'm in a room full of screaming kids. Hmm.

14:47, 13 February 2006 (EST) I guess it must have been a busy month since January 11. I've done a substantial number of mentionable things, but can't immediately remember any of them. Oh, wait, yes... there was...

  • The new water heater, which took much back-and-forthing between here, Sears, and a few other places (I have the "before" shots and will put them up eventually along with an "after" shot).
  • Shaving about 8 inches off the end of the old falling-apart sink base cabinet in the laundry room (forgot to take "before" shots, but got a nice "after" shot).
  • Getting one ("Von! Ah-ah-ah-haa!" –Count von Count) childsitter lined up. She's too young to do overnights or driving, but it's a start.
  • Spent a lot of time working on FileFerret and oops, that's all I have time for now because it's time to pick up the kids. (I was going to tell about buying a new scanner and looking at phono needles, but it'll have to wait.)

2006-01-11

07:41, 11 January 2006 (EST) Just finished the final (I hope) revision to this. Yesterday, we discovered that the reason why vbz seemed to be making so much money over Xmas, relatively speaking (the bank balance climbed to nearly $700 at one point, (yee. haw.), and is still well above $400) was that one of the suppliers had mistakenly been charging one of Sandy's credit cards which I gave them to use once, two years ago. The total came to $730.80... so I'm still working back to "break-even" point. So much for "Black Friday". (She was relieved to find that she hadn't been as much of a spenthrift as she thought; I'm vastly annoyed and dismayed that I can't even seem to make a profit at Xmas. The sales numbers say I did make about $600, but that's not unusual for most times of the year.)

Yesterday also, I foolishly started into doing a huge overhaul of vbz's Topic system, and of course unexpected issues have arisen (as I expected).

Currently printing out the famous SvsG "Sales Accounting".

2006-01-05

13:32, 5 January 2006 (EST): There's a fine balance between (on the one hand) taking on so many tasks that one starts to get panicky over how much isn't getting done and (on the other hand) taking on too few and actually not getting much done. I'm feeling like I haven't been getting much done over the past week, but I'm trying not to take this as a signal that I need to take on a whole lot more because I can feel that edge of panic ready to spring up. Just find one or two things that need doing, and work on them. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

Reading material: http://www.judithberman.net/sffuture.html

wiki file: https://hypertwins.org/mw/index.php?title=Woozle/to_do/archive/2006-2007&oldid=21374