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

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==Overview==
==Overview==
*[[Staddon vs. Griever]]
*[[Staddon vs. Griever]]
** [[SvsG Plaintiff's Lawyer To-Do List]]
*[[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
*[[DriveFerret]] (currently at experimental stage) to recover work from 60 GB drive
*[[DriveFerret]] (currently at experimental stage) to recover work from 60 GB drive
*[[HyperFile]] (has many uses, but most urgently to help with managing vbz images)
*[[HyperFile]] (has many uses, but most urgently to help with managing vbz images)
==Today==
=Journal Entries=
[[Image:2005-10-31_dalek-tardis_pumpkins_1.jpg|thumb|right|A Dalek pumpkin prepares to assault a minaturized Tardis pumpkin (perhaps the Master shrank it?)]]
* '''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)?
'''11:07, 1 Nov 2005 (EST)''': Currently recovering from Helloween; see image at right... 10/31 was extraordinarily exhausting, although I should note that the weather has been unusually warm for October (most of the trees are still pretty green -- about where we usually are in early-to-mid September, with some trees definitely changing but many still completely green; normally by this time everything is mostly brown...) Woke up with a headache, but a combination of caffeine, aspirin, and food seems to have knocked it out. For now.
: 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.)
=What Woozle Was Doing Earlier=
* '''2007-01-08''':
==2005-10-30==
** [[2007-01-05 Rebekah's response]]
'''15:58, 30 Oct 2005 (EST)''': Just finished a rather intriguing [[2005-10-30 13:41 conversation with Sinaas|conversation with Sinaas]]...
** [[2007-01-08 Woozle's response]]
==2005-10-28==
* [[2007-01-04 open letter to Rebekah Wade]]
'''16:18, 28 Oct 2005 (EDT)''': Trying to figure out how to have "private" pages in MediaWiki, so that I can more easily use MW to collect semi-confidential information -- specifically, babysitter phone numbers and emails. My next task, then, after accomplishing that, is to go on a crusade to start building a stable of babysitters.
* [[2006-12-23 The tirCysP Affair]]
==2005-10-23==
'''14:14, 23 Oct 2005 (EDT)''': Transcribing [[SvsG Messages|Still More Emails]]... I need to stop and do some analysis, but I keep finding new ones.
==2005-10-21==
'''07:48, 21 Oct 2005 (EDT)''' Drafted [[SvsG Benefits of Written Negotiation]]. Now time for kid-delivery and morning errands.
==2005-10-20==
'''21:18, 20 Oct 2005 (EDT)''': So on Monday (10/17) evening, I discover furry stuff growing in my garlic/pepper/oil hot sauce. (Didn't know that was possible; the bottle says nothing about refrigerating, it has never happened before that I noticed, and isn't all that hot stuff supposed to be highly preservative?) And I ate some of that stuff Friday evening, and possibly on other nights close to that. Possible explanation of intense headaches? (Friday morning wasn't the only one.) I threw the stuff out, obviously.


So I'm now being rash and have put my [[SvsG Plaintiff's Lawyer To-Do List|lawyer's to-do list]] up on the wiki, for all the world (and the Defendants) to see. At this point, I don't see what I have to gain by secrecy. I'm also trying to decide between finishing up transcribing emails (a never-ending task) and transcribing the [[SvsG Proposed Ground Rules|Proposed Ground Rules]] and [[SvsG Benefits of Written Negotiation|Benefits of Written Negotiation]] I scribbled down earlier this week.
'''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


==2005-10-15==
* [[2006-11-24 The Cockroach Mafia]]
'''11:00, 15 Oct 2005 (EDT)''': Having a headache; the word "massive" came to mind, though it's really only in the 5 to 7 range (out of 10). Also trying to get started transcribing some emails the hard way, i.e. by going through the files with a text editor and copying ones that seem relevant (with much cleanup).
==2005-10-11==
'''06:50, 11 Oct 2005 (EDT)''': I just realized that none of the Pinecrest-related pages have been marked as moved to HTYP, and the ones that have been moved haven't been tidied up. Also, the Liquid Blue package apparently arrived yesterday (only found it this morning on the front porch; must remember to put up a sign to tell the delivery people to *please* at least leave a note on the side door... or something), and the MailFerret import got full again. :-P
==2005-10-10==
'''14:42, 10 Oct 2005 (EDT)''': [[htyp:Main Page|The Hypertwin Yellow Pages]] is now online, and most of the "local" pages have been moved over. I still haven't started moving the "techniques" pages, and I've only done a little bit of writing on the instructional/help pages, but... there it is.


Meanwhile, I was not able to get ODBC in Windows to connect to the MySQL client running on Camilla. I don't know what's up with that. It connects to a remote server just fine, and I can connect with clients on Camilla herself. In any case, as long as I can't connect, I'm stuck with attacking the problem on two forks:
'''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]]
* Trying to reduce the amount of data to be imported (e.g. deleting "Trash" folders) -- this has helped, but it still choked once and I had to compact the database and restart; who knows if it will make it through the rest of the data.
* Rewriting [[HyperMail]]/[[MailFerret]] on a relatively friendly Linux [[wikipedia:Integrated development environment|IDE]] like [[Htyp:Gambas|Gambas]].
==2005-10-08==
'''09:26, 8 Oct 2005 (EDT)''': Benjamin wanted to tell a story, and fussed and hit me until I finally figured out that he wanted me to [[2005-10-08 Benjamin story|write it down]] (well, I *asked* if that was what he wanted, but he wouldn't tell me)


And lest anyone think that this is the normal state of affairs here at Hypertwin Central, I was somewhat surprised (taken aback, even?) when the waitress at Golden Corral complemented us earlier this week for having such well-behaved children (B was out of school for the 3-week intersession and Z had a teacher-workday off, and it was Tuesday which is 99-cent kids' day at GC, so we took them both).
'''19:36, 4 November 2006 (EST)''' Woops, a month went by.
==2005-10-04==
'''09:55, 4 Oct 2005 (EDT)''': Zander was unexpectedly home yesterday (i.e. we forgot there was a teacher work day at CFS) so it was a bit of a blur. We took both kids for a walk and took lots of photos; didn't get a whole lot else done. Shipped one package to England.


Today: need to finish the proposed [[SvsG:Plaintiffs' Second Request|second request for admission of facts]], print it out, and send it to the lawyer.
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).
==2005-10-02==
'''09:50, 2 Oct 2005 (EDT)''': Well, ''that'' was a lovely string of unmotivatedness, at least as far as updating this page goes. There was a bunch of packing and shipping and I took far too long to get started with it and I still haven't finished it, but it's mostly done. I've also been writing and editing heavily in Issuepedia and, oh yeah, I got [[wikipedia:David Brin|David Brin]]'s permission to repost one of his blog pieces in there, with a strong indication that he will be willing to allow additional pieces in the future. This is good. Once I've finished tackling his writings (maybe an index? the main site is a bit difficult to navigate...), I should go tackle the writings of someone I'm a little less aligned with, such as [[wikipedia:Orson Scott Card|Orson Scott Card]].


Today (for real): finished scanning the latest batch of [[Staddon vs. Griever|SvsG]] documents from the lawyer. I don't know how outraged I should be that she has had the defense's responses in her possession since March 23 and got them to me last week; they did come up in a phone conversation, but of course I assumed she would be sending them on and in the absence of a record of the conversation there was nothing to remind me that they existed, much less to ask for them.
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.)


So next I'll be transcribing those and seeing how they affect the situation. I need to finish up what I've been calling the "Second Interrogatories" and find out if we can get answers to those before the November mediation date or if that will have to be rescheduled.
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.
==Earlier Months==
 
*[[User:Woozle/2005-09|September, 2005]]
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.
*[[User:Woozle/2005-08|August, 2005]]
 
*[[User:Woozle/2005-07|July, 2005]]
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.
*[[User:Woozle/2005-06|June, 2005]]
 
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?
 
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 [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).
 
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...
 
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).
 
* [[2006-09-05]]
* [[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