Difference between revisions of "Woozle/to do/archive/2006-2007"

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|Time doesn't just fly; it tends to go first class and charge the tickets to my account.
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=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
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| __TOC__
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==Overview==
==Overview==
*Get ready for trip this weekend
*[[Staddon vs. Griever]]
**Try to fix Skeeter
*[[Childsitters Wanted|Childsitting]]
*Repair Anna's laptop
*[[HyperMail]] so I can manage my emails
*Images for existing VBZ items
*Images for existing VBZ items
*Legal summary document
*[[DriveFerret]] (currently at experimental stage) to recover work from 60 GB drive
==Today==
*[[HyperFile]] (has many uses, but most urgently to help with managing vbz images)
*'''09:44, 29 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Getting ready for beach trip, mostly. Also doing a few last-minute things with Anna's laptop (currently running antivirus again; backed it up last night). Posted an extensive [[vbzwiki:CI Host|review of CI Host]], and included a link to it in my reply to their "please let us know how we could have served you better" email (well, the first one; I haven't replied to the second one, which was apparently sent independently of the first one).
=Journal Entries=
*Yesterday, tried to fix Skeeter (Harena's Thinkpad 390E laptop which works except that the screen illumination has died -- so you have to shine a flashlight on it to see anything) with parts from another Thinkpad (with system board issues) that someone sent us. Unfortunately, the other Thinkpad (a 600) has a smaller screen, and the connections don't seem to be physically compatible. So we now have two disassembled Thinkpads in a box down in the basement, waiting until I can find some cheap parts on Ebay.
* '''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]]


=What Woozle Was Doing Earlier=
'''09:04, 10 December 2006 (EST)''' Harena's to-do for today:
==2005-07-28==
* <s>Help W finish Josh application thingy</s>: mostly done; need to see if we can get answers from Tom
*'''10:00, 28 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Got a nice big order from Texas last night. So it's official, we're back on the air. Currently taking care of various loose ends and starting to get ready (ha!!) for the beach trip.
* Get all the teacher stuff thingies
==2005-07-27==
** go to AC Moore
*'''21:06, 27 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': The old cart system is up and running. I hope I can still take the time to get the new one working, because it could be so much nicer... but at least orders can start coming in again.
** candy canes, put them all together
*My head hurts.
* <s>xmas cards (low priority)</s>
*'''07:27, 27 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': I think I've got to take a different tack, because there's just no way I'm going to get this finished by the weekend, and something has got to be up and running before we head off to the beach. I'm going to see if I can figure out what's stopping the old cart code from working. Last night I was thinking it might be a permissions issue in the data directory...
* pay bills
==2005-07-26==
* <s>stickers for soap</s> enough for this year
*'''07:56, 26 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Creating code to handle [[vbzwiki:VbzCart Sessions|VbzCart Sessions]]
* lip balm
==2005-07-25==
*'''21:42, 25 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Today I succeeded in actually pulling some data from the database and showing it onscreen. <Sarcastic whoop!> I've spent the rest of the day -- the part that wasn't occupied with fetching kids, cleaning dishes, cooking hamburgers for later so the meat wouldn't go bad, eating supper, cleaning up after supper, helping give Josh his scheduled Monday bath, helping Benjy with his unscheduled Monday bath, and reading ''His Dark Materials'' (ISBN 0439994349) to Harena and Zander -- working on the design of how the new cart system will actually work. I keep wondering if I'm getting too elaborate about it, because this was just supposed to be a quick drop-in to get things working, and I can spend more time on it later... but I seem to be extremely reluctant to design a kluge which I will no doubt have to deal with for longer than planned.
*Meanwhile, Douglas was able to get the SSL server working -- so https://ssl.vbz.net now responds to hails, and the ball is completely in my court.
*Also, Anna made me look at this: http://aviationpics.de/appr/app.htm
*And I placed a Liquid Blue order which really could have been placed weeks ago, but I kept thinking I'd have the store running by now. Haven't heard back from them yet; I should probably email again to make sure they got it.
==2005-07-24==
*'''19:19, 24 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Finally got a proper phone for the vbz.net line -- $40 (Costco) for a 2.4 GHz wireless-LAN-friendly cordless phone with 2 handsets (which can be used simultaneously and as an intercom, unlike the ones Harena has) and caller ID. Came with 6 NiMH batteries, which would go for about $15 retail. My only complaint is this: ''whatever happened to phones you could mount on a wall??'' I ''have'' no desk surface, but these things don't even have mounting holes on the base if I wanted to build something. I'm going to have to velcro one of them to the top of my monitor.
*'''16:37, 24 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': The [[MySQL]] Query Browser is buggy. It only took me about an hour and a half to figure that out, because for the first 40-50 minutes I was still playing around with syntax and looking for examples in the MySQL documentation (of which there are none) in which a field and a string are compared as part of a WHERE clause. When it finally dawned on me that the syntax might be ok and I should try it on the command-line version of MySQL, I first tried shelling into the dedicated server. to run MySQL there and connect to TheRealms's server (Douglas charges extra for shell access), but the dedicated server's install of MySQL was too old to work with the one on TheRealms (good on them, and bad on CI Host for never upgrading my server from v3.23 or whatever it is).
:Then it finally occurred to me to run it directly from Camilla, since Camilla is after all a Linux box, but it seemingly wouldn't attempt to connect to a different server if the local machine didn't have a server (I later figured out that this was probably a malformed command-line on my part, but too late), so I figured I'd better install MySQL on Camilla. That took about 10 minutes, during which I went down to the basement and investigated where Gonzo might be situated so as to become The Basement Server.
:And then I came back up and tried again, and managed to get connected after a couple of false starts. And the syntax was fine. So now I have to move to the ''next'' tiny little step in figuring out why I'm not getting back a result set from MySQL via PHP... except that it's time for me to go get pizzas for the Traditional Hypertwin Sunday Dinner.
:So that's what I'm doing now.
==2005-07-23==
*'''08:04, 23 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Benjy said last night he had a [[2005-07-23 Benjy Dream|dream]] that was "lovely". And today I am fixing a bug that makes it difficult to enter customer orders by hand, and then continuing to work on getting the shopping cart working. Uploaded a lot of data yesterday, so I might be ready to get back to coding today; maybe some visible progress will happen.
==2005-07-22==
*'''07:44, 22 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Designing and creating tables. Also, [http://itsaboutdamntime.com/ Douglas and Sonya] are supposed to be showing up in town sometime this morning and we're all going to meet for breakfast at IHOP...
==2005-07-21==
*'''21:48, 21 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': [[vbzwiki:VbzCart|VbzCart]] design
==2005-07-20==
*'''07:32, 20 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': It seems I had about 15 minutes in all of yesterday for actually working on fixing vbz.net. Hopefully today will be better. I placed the wholesale order yesterday, but it turned out that 2 of the items couldn't be ordered because they were actually only available in adult sizes, and vbz was showing them as only available in child sizes (which is what the customers had ordered, of course). I had to go through and check every other Mountain item listed as child-sizes-only, and found quite a few which should have been adult-only; this took some considerable time.
==2005-07-19==
*'''07:33, 19 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Processing an order phoned in by a customer yesterday. (Amazing how one can still receive orders without the internet...) Hopefully placing a wholesale order this morning, too.
==2005-07-18==
*'''08:10, 18 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Learning the Perl interface to MySQL. Probably going to start creating a proper store database just because that's the right way to do it. Or should I try PHP, since there are examples handy? Hm.
==2005-07-17==
*'''18:19, 17 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Back from Athens, with Anna; supper eaten, car unpacked (I think). Returning to work on Stuff.
==2005-07-16==
*'''08:39, 16 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Getting ready for Athens trip
==2005-07-15==
*'''08:10, 15 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': The evening of 7/13, it became apparent that the kitchen sink was also stopped up (it later became apparent that it was doing so completely on its own and independently of the stoppage in the laundry room, which at least means that the laundry room unstoppage hadn't turned out to be just a temporary fix, a possibility over which I was initially worried). So we put some 24-hour-drain-unstopper stuff into it, not really expecting it to work but thinking it couldn't hurt.
:So yesterday evening I verified that in fact the sink was still stopped up, and then I proceeded to work on it. First I got out the small guns -- the short, hand-held plumber's snake. 20 minutes later no joy. So then I got out the big guns -- the motorized 100-foot (or more?) plumber's snake -- and ran it in. Just on a whim, I asked Harena to look outside to see/hear if it was coming out anywhere -- the theory being that the kitchen sink drains into the back yard, because it doesn't seem to be connected to the house plumbing at all -- and she said that yes, it was coming out of the vent pipe in the roof.
:''sigh...''
:At that point it seemed that retreat was the better part of valor, so I pulled out the snake and put the U-thingy back together so the sink would be usable. (Tried plunging it some more, just in case.)
:We have some options for today:
:*Try running the big snake in again, and watching the roof pipe to see if it comes out again (wasted a lot of time yesterday because it had already come out and snaked all the way down to the ground by the time Harena went out to look at it)
:*Try the small snake going directly under the sink, instead of through the sink drain as before
:*Somehow stop up the roof pipe so that the pressure can't get out that way, and try plunging some more
:*Work out a way to get the big snake up to the roof, and run it in from there (apparently this was the technique used by Roto-Rooter when they unclogged this same drain several years ago)
:Oh, and I didn't even mention about the new web server suddenly becoming inaccessible in the early evening, so I wasn't able to do any more work on vbz.net. It's mostly working, but we're having trouble with the https service, and the cart system looks like it needs a little help. It's looking very iffy that I'll be able to get to it before it's time to go get Anna tomorrow.


==2005-07-13==
* [[2006-11-24 The Cockroach Mafia]]
*'''07:20, 13 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': The FTP thingy has been working fine, although does consistently run into problems where the remote site stops responding; I have it set to retry each failed operation 5 times, but I think I need to tell it to disconnect/reconnect before trying... which is best written with object-oriented code, and I haven't yet got the hang of that in Perl.
 
:Meanwhile... uploading store files while installing [[OSCommerce]].
'''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]]
==2005-07-12==
 
*'''07:16, 12 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Yesterday I modified the Perl FTP script which uploads stuff to VBZ so it can handle different target sites. I should probably post a copy of it here at some point, because it's now to the point where it might be generally useful, even though it's not particularly elegant code.
'''19:36, 4 November 2006 (EST)''' Woops, a month went by.
:So now I get to see if it properly uploads the image files I had the store cough up last night.
 
==2005-07-11==
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).
*'''21:56, 11 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': And gak again. In the middle of my emergency moving-of-vbz, a pillow bursts in the washing machine and spews little styrofoam things into the drain, clogging it. This has happened once before, and it required extensive reaming of the drains. There wasn't time for that, though, as Harena desperately needed to wash some underwear for Josh for tomorrow... so I've been in the laundry room bailing water out of the sink so it wouldn't overflow on the floor (too much).
 
:In between other things, at least I got to the point of rebuilding the folder of images to upload to new-vbz. Which will happen tomorrow.
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.)
*'''16:28, 11 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Gak -- vbz.net is mysteriously not responding, and has been that way for several hours. (It was fine last night.) I tried to get onto chat with CI Host to get it fixed, but I couldn't get their chat page to load in either FireFox or MSIE 6... so I'm temporarily dropping everything else and moving vbz.net over to the new server at TheRealms.
 
*'''07:37, 11 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Yesterday as I was going out to get Costco pizza for the masses (as has become a Sunday ritual), I discovered that some jerk had apparently gone through the glove box of my Nissan, and left the driver's-side door just slightly open -- enough to leave the inside lights on and drain the battery. Nothing appeared to have been stolen.
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.
:Now, I don't like to go accusing people of things, but on Thursday afternoon (just after we got back from Athens) [[David Burnette]] had come by asking for a contribution to his cause. He even said "just $5 would help". I had some cash in pocket but it wasn't mine to give away (it was Harena's) so I said I could write him a check. He looked all crestfallen, and then asked if I could give him $1.50 for the bus. I said I might have that and went back in the office to look for change. I came back out with 50 cents, and gave that to him.
 
:So now we have the car, where someone went through only the glove box (and maybe the little compartment between seats) and didn't take anything. It was almost as if they were looking for something very specific... loose change, perhaps?
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.
:I really need to type up a quicky article on David and post it to the attention of the Pinecrest Road group, to see if anyone else has any opinions on him.
 
:...anyway, today. Right now I'm fixing a minor error (caused by a change I made to the design of a table) in the vbz topic pages scripts.
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.
==2005-07-10==
 
*'''15:26, 10 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Uploading [http://vbz.net/cat/sn rebuilt pages with new shirt images in them]. Entering [[:Category:SvsG Emails|S vs. G emails]] into the wiki to make them easier to search and cross-reference. Pondering Harena's suggestion that image pages (and maybe others) need navigation links -- e.g. if you're in [[:Category:Benjy]] and you click on an image, the image's page should have links to the previous and next images in the series on the page from which you came. Not a quick hack, but it seems like it could be a major improvement. The main trick (aside from the actual programming) is figuring out how not to be arbitrary about the look-and-feel of the nav links -- some kind of template or variable?
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?
*'''08:41, 10 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Finally getting around to processing some images of shirts I purchased and photographed what seems like ages ago. The [[HyperFile]] program would really help with keeping track of this stuff, if I could ever manage to spend enough time on it just to make it usable.
 
==2005-07-09==
Feh.
*'''13:02, 9 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': I seem to have spent much of the day making sure all the VBZ suppliers had [http://wiki.vbz.net/index.php/Category:Suppliers wiki pages], just to be sure the new supplier wiki links from the main site didn't lead to blank pages. And my head hurts (stupid head cold still clinging tenaciously). Yesterday afternoon I added a few pages to the [http://issuepedia.org Issuepedia], starting with an article on [http://www.issuepedia.org/index.php/Arbitrary_Requirement Arbitrary Requirement].
 
==2005-07-08==
'''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.
*'''12:15, 8 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': A few miscellaneous things related to vbz/wiki interlinkage, mostly.
 
==2005-07-07==
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).
*'''15:52, 7 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Back from Athens. Details when I get my head together.
 
==2005-07-06==
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...
*'''20:53, 6 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': In [[Athens, GA|Athens]], using Joel's computer to make this entry just to show I was here :D
 
*'''06:46, 6 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Packing for Athens trip.
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).
==2005-07-05==
 
*'''14:37, 5 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Posted a [[SvsG:Legal Disclaimer|Legal Disclaimer]] in the [[Staddon vs. Griever]] area. I decided last night to stop restricting it to just the legal documents. My "bad kid, go to your room" reflex kicked in for a little while after I posted the disclaimer (since that was sort of crossing the "line of commitment"), but something else deeper and stronger says it's the right thing to do, and damn the torpedoes. We'll see what happens.
* [[2006-09-05]]
:Otherwise, today we're getting ready for the trip to Athens tomorrow. I'm trying to put together a list of missing invoice paperwork, in case there are any in the stack of papers we have to review ("9-12 inches of documents from the years 2000-2004", said the defense attorney's paralegal), so we know which ones not to bother copying. I've already put together a list of emails from those same years.
* [[2006-09-04 beach trip]]
:Also shipped a few in-stock orders this morning. Yay.
* [[2006-09-03]]
==2005-07-04==
 
*'''09:46, 4 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Working on legal stuff (which is appropriate, today being the one year anniversary of [[2004-07-04 Pseudoquasime|"pseudoquasime"'s visit to SluggySquad]]). I think I have an idea for how to make this move a bit faster, too... heh.
==2006-08-10==
==2005-07-03==
'''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]]
*'''16:31, 3 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': While searching for an image which I needed in order to get a particular thing done and off my desk, I found the hang-tag images which I thought might have been lost in migrating from Windows to Linux. So I've been reorganizing images (because there was a lot of other stuff in that same area which really belonged elsewhere), and getting B&Z ready for swimming with Grandma Dorothy, and now it's just about time to go get Sunday dinner (assuming Costco isn't closed early for July 4).
 
*'''09:58, 3 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Trying to decide if I should renew glxp.com. Wrote proposed [[Domain Resale Code of Ethics]].
==long hiatus==
*'''09:14, 3 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': One of the thumbnails still won't show up, but I've decided it's good enough (maybe a cache somewhere just needs to expire) and have pointed wiki.vbz.net at the new server.
It's been a really, really busy summer. What can I say.
:Meanwhile, this morning I was thinking of names for a hypothetical multi-wiki site. The first thing that came to mind was "wikimonster", which is pretty good and suggests a great logo -- a cookie-monster-ish creature eating one of the brackets by which it is surrounded -- but is a bit long to use for multiple subdomains. Then I thought maybe "wikimon", as a short form alias for wikimonster... and then I thought "wikim", even shorter, but then that suggested "wikem" (like "sic'em"), which is even shorter and doesn't require a longer form (but how do you make a logo for that? A dog chasing a wiki flower? Chasing brackets? More complicated and not as cute.)
==2006-03-19==
:But okay, wikimonster.com is taken (not .net or .org). wikimon.com is available; wikim.com is taken (not .net or .org), and wikem.com is also taken (not .net or .org). So do I get one of those in .net/.org form, or maybe base it off hypertwins.org (htwiki.org and htwik.org are both available) or glxp.com, even?
'''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.
*'''08:18, 3 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Still in the "getting up" process, but Pip hopped up on the sink so I thought it best to go make an entry so he would go away. Today: finishing move of vbzwiki.
 
==2005-07-02==
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 ^_^
*'''21:28, 2 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Rotten headache most of the day, so didn't get much done -- but it mysteriously cleared up around suppertime (not that I'd eaten anything, and I still have a bit of a sore throat) and since then I've started moving the vbzwiki over to the newer-cheaper-faster server. Should be able to get it fully moved tomorrow morning. Going to bed now.
==2006-03-03==
*'''10:18, 2 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Feeling rather crappy due to mild throat cold. Mowed lawn anyway, because it was overdue. Processing in-stock orders.
'''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.
==2005-07-01==
==2006-02-26==
*'''17:51, 1 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': And then we decided (at Mel's invitation) to finally watch ''The Return of the King'' (extended DVD). This may seem frivolous, given all the other stuff we needed to do today, but you have to understand the following:
'''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.
**We've had the DVD since before Christmas
 
**Neither of us got to see it in the theatre -- there were no show times where it ended before kid-pick-up time
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...)
**This is the one movie we've really wanted to see for the past year or so
==2006-02-25==
:...so basically, if we didn't take this opportunity, who knows when we'd actually get around to seeing it. (As it was, we had to watch the last 20 minutes after picking up B & Z.)
[[Image:P2250007 2006-02-25 Zander in playstructure at Wheels.jpg|250px|left]]
:And don't even ask about the hassles of trying to pin down a date when we can have the kids watched (ferried to & from camp, fed) so we can both go down to Athens next week to view the court documents. Also don't ask me why I don't just go by myself, because if you ask I'll tell you. And then you'll be sorry.
'''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]]
*'''08:42, 1 Jul 2005 (EDT)''': Got all the images working. Oop, gotta go do Friday Morning Errands. *zoop*
 
==Earlier Months==
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.
*[[User:Woozle/2005-06|June, 2005]]
 
==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