Older blog entries for cmacd (starting at number 60)

HI all.

I have not been here in a long time due to our old friend stress, but I did get a welcome reprive at this years OLS.

I just posted an article on the front page that sums up what I learned at the BOF that I held..

I was hoping to post this yesterday but somehow some dimbulb managed to get an Ant Trap into my Backyard where the dog Got a chance to chew on it, so that day went by in a blur of visits to the vet, and reporting things to the police.

Take care everyone

HI again

Between problems at work, a dead machine at home, and ending up on sick leave for stress...I have not been here for a while..

Since my Advogato cookie was on the machine that croaked, and part of the stress came from lack of web access ... I managed to get back in here by trying about 20 old passwords.

At least I can be proud to say that I am declaring myself Windows free at home.

Must get working on my FAQ updates.

tnt: Good for you, but do you know how much work ajh created for himelf with just that sort of thinking.

dyork: I hear that "Men with Brooms" is coming out March 8.

25 Feb 2002 (updated 25 Feb 2002 at 14:44 UTC) »

I want to update my Linux box before I try to copy all the data from my sick hard drive. I decided that I should get a fresh copy of SuSE 7.3 personal edition on my way home from work on Friday. The one place I expected to be able to find it was at NovoClub on Merivale Road. Detoured way out to the south end, and found out the store is now bankrupt! Not only could I not get anything newer than 7.1 there (on the closeout sale) but My favorite source of O'riley books is Kaput.

Anybody know who stocks SuSE in the west end of Otter-wa?

Tyler is mellowing out, we may be able to get him to calm down enough that he can stay.

Why Me

Our new Puppy is getting fixed this morning, we have found out that he is very agressive with other dogs, to the point where we are afraid that he will have to find a single dog home. Getting fixed early will at least remove one potential source of agression.

On the weekend some friends of ours brought over their one year old Black Lab, (80 Pounds) and Tyler (20 Pounds) wanted to start a fight with it. The folks from Border Collie Rescue have been notified, and they have him listed on petfinder. The experience is heart breaking as he is so sweet with us, and is extremly smart otherwise, but if he is wanting to pick a fight with every dog he sees, he will not be able to participate in agility.

In Other News

My Old computer, that I have been using to keep up my web sites, and so has all the unapplied updates, made a funny noise from the Hard Drive over the weekend.I shut it down, but probaly should try to move the drive to my main box, and get the info off it before it all evaporates.

In the mean time, I can't seem to get through to look at my web site this morning, so my working backup is also not accesible.

Wal-Mart is Amazing.

I took couple of rolls of film in for processing, and asked for a CD, they had two choices, I could get their "Good" one at 8 bucks, which is scaned from the prints on a Kodak machine, and comes with a bunch of WIndows software. or for 5 bucks thay could make one on their Noritsu * printer, scaning from the negatives at the same time they made prints. The Noritsu one comes with just a windows viewer aparently, so guess which one they recommeded.

Scientist that I am, I let them make me one of each, and as I suspected, the "Direct to disk" one was far superior. so I will be able to ask for the less expensive one with a clear consience from now on.- (But must budget for a film scanner)

Mind you I am not really comfortable with the fact that the new minilabs scan, and then use a laser to expose the paper, Too much chance for an upper quality limit to get in there when the printer is only rated for 320 DPI.

Anyway, After some serious Gamma Correction of the .JPGs from the CDs (particularly the Kodak CD,) I stuck up a new page showing our new Puppy

Two border collies are good for the soul.

* Noritsu also has a US site, but it wants to crash Netscape and has navigation based on FLASH.

I see where one of the Virtual Reality folks in town is going to get some actual reality "training" at the olympics

I have been sleepy this week, Our Family has increased. We have adopted a 4 month old Border Collie pup from the Lanark Animal Welfare Society. I will try to get a picture up on the web in a day or three. I expect that it won't be long before he will be taking classes at Dreamfields along with our six year old BC - Boots

davidw: dyork lives here in the Ottawa area. Out west, the Canada US border is along the 49th parallel line. here in the east, it is further south, in fact Windsor Ontario is NORTH of Detroit Michigan. I live in Stittsville, which is south of Ottawa proper, and the nearest major intersection to my house (Hazeldean and Carp Roads) is at 45.26 N

jfleck: Canada May be in North America, but it is rare that one of us Canaucks would use the term "American" to decribe his or her self. If at all, it would probably be qualifed in some way..

"The First Pretzel Eater" - Humm have to rember that one...

Marcus: gav of Transgaming has been playing and writing computer Games since he was 4 years old. (I worked for his father at one time - even at age 4 Gav prefered the Apple ][ to the Commodore PET.). I doubt that his business plan is evil, as it is taken quite liberaly from the postscript book. He has stated that he intends to fully open all the transgaming code after he gets enough subsciption revenue to cover each part of it. If he can make this plan work, I say more power to him.

In other non-news. Took the week off between Xmas and New Years, and got another wall up on my darkroom project. (of course it will not keep the dark in until it has wallboard on it. - which comes after wiring and plumbing)

I have lots of little electrical boxes to stuff with NMD-90 and products of the Leviton company. I got mildly anoyed with the ones I bought however.

It used to be that switches and outlets sold in Canada had screws with a Roberson SCRULOX head, which allows one to just put the screw on the driver, and it will stay in place while you navigate it to where you are installing it. These new switches and outlets have a combination screw head that will work with a Philips, straight or Robertson driver, but since so much of the Robertson head is cut away to allow the use of the Philips driver, it will no longer stay on the Roberson driver if you hold it horizonally. Seems that they now make them in Mexico for the entire NAFTA area, and electricans in the US are more likely to have a philips screwdriver. I find that the philips screws strip their heads after a couple of uses. - the Philips driver is almost DESIGNED to Cam-out and strip the head if you try to force it.

What does my rant today have to do with software? I guess it does point out that sometimes it is better to have several interchangable modules that can be selected rather than a gigantic interface that tries to do all things for all people.

51 older entries...

New Advogato Features

New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser code is live. It needs further work but already handles most markup better than the original parser.

Keep up with the latest Advogato features by reading the Advogato status blog.

If you're a C programmer with some spare time, take a look at the mod_virgule project page and help us with one of the tasks on the ToDo list!