Eye-Glazing Geek Stuff
Technical mutterings
Now relegated to Blogblivion...Saturday, March 25, 2006
Murphy’s Out In Force
I’m at work with my nephew today, with overlapping major projects, plus his computer in which the power supply died and took out the motherboard.
Nothing is going right. Nothing has gone right since I got up, really.
I had spare parts that would match the dead motherboard and, if needed, AMD CPU. They were in a machine we built, that died, that we rebuilt, that kind of worked but ran too hot in the particular case, that was put aside for future reference and not touched since months ago.
Turns out it was in the room near the inventory that got stolen last fall, and I never even realized it was missing. Not a great loss, but it really made our day not to have the parts. Well, it means the value of what was stolen just doubled or so, but still, it was a troubled set of parts pretending to think about being a working computer.
That’s going to mean buying a motherboard and, in a fit of sensible “may as well because we’re not sure the old one is good and it’s reasonable to upgrade,” a CPU too. And further delay having the computer working again.
Well, then we started setting up a new computer for the big client’s bookkeeper, the idea being since we’re upgrading accounting software anyway, fell swoop it. Got XP all configured and on the network and the internet, activated Windows, started installing software and the screen went black.
Turned out the video is just fine. It simply stops producing any when the boot process turns itself over to the hard drive, which is SATA, and which appears to be detected just fine. By this time we’re already running even later than we were initially.
Even as I am typing this, the second of the new machines we are trying keeps having trouble reading what’s on install CDs. But hey, the video still works.
Staying in bed: It’s a Good Thing. Some days.
Friday, March 24, 2006
Busy
Today I have to drive to Wilmington to fetch three computers and LCD monitors, which I thought would upgrade the last of Big Client’s computers, but I forgot one guy who is using a P133. Sigh… So I think I have a solution for that in the form of available parts and a machine under construction. Since these are the lower priority folks, they won’t actually get the new machines. Rather, we will shuffle things around. One of the new ones goes to the bookkeeper and dominoes down to a secretary/gopher with a P133, with the others not yet designated. At least one gets setup and the machines shuffled this weekend.
We’re also upgrading Juris, the accounting software, and the timekeeping software associated with it on every workstation.
We’re also upgrading the Sybari software that scans e-mail for viruses and filters spam.
We’re also completing an inventory of who has what precisely, which will help decide who gets the other two new machines and how the shuffling around flows.
We’re also rebuilding my nephew’s computer (he’ll be helping me with the rest), which had the power supply go and take out the motherboard with it.
Posting? Maybe not so much. Though before I head out, I just filled the camera by taking pictures of Valerie, downloaded them, and may post a few.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
I Was Beginning to Think Cars Would Fly Routinely First…
Dean points to news of a 32 GB hard drive substitute.
If you had asked me as recently as ten years ago, and certainly closer to fifteen, I would have predicted - and did predict - the death of the hard drive in favor of solid state memory storage “cubes” or “sticks” of some kind. I always figured the industry would find a way to perfect and make “bubble memory” cheaply and in giant capacities, taking it beyond 2k capacity pocket computers and the memory in your calculator.
It never happened. At least, until recently when memory sticks became big for cameras, and for wrapping pretty plastic and some controls around and calling it an MP3 player. Still, small capacities, versus hard drives getting bigger and bigger, almost to the point of worry about quantum effects. How inefficient and dangerously… breakable, packaging up spinning platters, with heads skittering over them in vacuum, almost but not quite touching, marvels of miniaturization and perfect mechanical control.
But 32 GB on a stick? That’s a hard drive in size, albeit a small one now. Stick that in a case that’s an LCD, along with some ultra cool CPU(s) and electronics and you have a first pass at a real tablet computer of some utility and hardiness. That’s cool.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Business Question of Sorts
Much of what I do is tech support, which I frequently compare to being a doctor.
I like best fielding questions by e-mail, then going in person if needed, or calling if necessary and expedient. E-mail gives the opportunity to address easy things painlessly, in the best compromise between avoiding icky phones and wasting time in person. It makes getting more information, invoking incremental troubleshooting steps or questions and learning the results or answers, simple and efficient when time isn’t the right kind of factor to need a call, when there is the right ambiguity, and when e-mail itself isn’t the problem.
With the big client that is the main point of my existing business, that fits perfectly: I charge for time the way I would with anything else.
My question has been how best to apply a web and/or e-mail based tech support model to small, irregular customers, smaller businesses or even home computer users. That wouldn’t be the only element of the service, but I’d want it to be a major one.
As someone who might ever need support, how would you feel about being able to e-mail (or enter on a web form) questions or requests for help with problems to a locally based support person/service and get relatively timely answers, steps to try, a call, or arrangements to come in person?
What and how would you be willing to pay for that kind of service?
Obviously I do this now with an established client, and when I bill them they pay be. I can depend on it. I am wondering whether I should use a retainer-like fee up front, or if that would be off-putting. On the other hand, it could be a service only to those who have established themselves as clients already. On the third hand, it could be something payable per incident or in “packs” via an online payment method or less formal pre-arrangement.
I could imagine discounting the e-mail service as compared to in-person or even phone services. I’d rather exhaust the troubleshooting that can be done hand in hand with the customer before I clearly need to go there, and have them learn things in the process. I like to see people know more and more, thereby being happier and more independent in their computer usage and needing me less and less. There are always new people who can use help, new things otherwise knowledgeable people get stuck on, and plenty of challenging things most people will never handle themselves.
So, perhaps this is crudely asked, and too much question in one jumble, but how would you approach the nuts and bolts of this service model, or what would you expect if you were to use such a thing? I’d like feedback before I ponder further or make any decisions.
Update:
Crossposted at Jotzel as Questions of Marketing and Method in the Ask Jotzel section.
Monday, February 13, 2006
Fiber Optic Comes to the Masses
I meant to post that we got a call from Verizon last week, fielded by the machine, that turned out to be about FiOS. It’s now available here, and as a DSL subscriber, we get priority. Never thought I’d see the day when fiber would go “the last mile” to the home.
My only question, besides things like cost, was whether we could get it wired into an apartment. Even if it would be an issue, we have a cool landlord who happily allows satellite dishes, and it’s really no different from cable being newly wired into existing places.
It appears that it would cost us $5 a month more than the DSL for 5 Mbps, which is the lowest speed. The highest being 30, for which they want real money. Well, except that “real money” is what I would have to pay to get a 128k or maybe as much as 256k fractional T-1 at the office. Makes me wonder if FiOS will become available there… Yeah, right, where it’s the same company as rents out the T-1 lines to the local connection providers or directly to businesses for huge bucks.
We’re probably going to wait; let it be better established and all, perhaps even more competetive in price if that’s possible, before we go for it. Plus it requires you to have their techs come in an set it up for you at your computers, which I always feel weird about. But then, they’re changing over your phone service and everything, as I understand it, and opening the possibility of TV service via fiber too.
I love technology.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Alchibah
Jeff Soyer is working on a most fascinating blog group participation project, in which participants will play the roles of Alchibah colonists. It’s an interactive science fiction story. Some of you may be interested in signing up, even if you aren’t regular readers of Jeff’s blog.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Highly Amusing
The International Geek Song, dedicated to my brother Wayne.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
iPod Question
A client who has an iPod asked about this, and I was intrigued enough to pass along the problem here in case anyone knows.
Take an iPod and put songs onto it from your laptop.
When your laptop’s hard drive is getting rather full, delete some of the MP3 files from the laptop.
Subsequently connect up the iPod to the laptop and watch it delete those same files from the iPod, where you want to keep them.
This behavior renders you unable to purge music files from the laptop, ever, unless you also want them removed from the iPod.
My assumption is that this is either easy; just some silly synchronization setting, or else that this is hard; perhaps some presumptuous DRM code at work.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Tech Blogging
I’ve started trying to post over here again, after letting is go fallow for months. The idea was always to post tech or geek stuff there, versus here, and actually I wouldn’t mind making it available for other bloggers to contribute along those lines, if you normally focus on other things in your main blog venue. Some of my tech focus should be elsewhere soon, but I expect the tone and content to be divergent.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Up
Glad that didn’t take long. I pay for most of what I have with Hosting Matters by check, and I’ve always noticed they take a very long time from when the check has to have arrived in the mail to the time they credit the account. It appears they simply don’t empty the mailbox more often than every few days. When it’s just hosting, that’s fine. When they provide the domain registration, as with AV, the cutoff is absolute. Which is why I mailed it enough ahead to guarantee our domain wouldn’t be suspended this year, beyond any possibility. I even notified them last week that it was presumably already sitting there waiting to be credited, days before the cutoff.
I’m pleased they got their mail yesterday and took care of it, as we planned to hold out however long it took for them to recognize they were sitting on the payment, and taking any time past yesterday or maybe today would have been infuriating.
Hosting Matters is just amazing. Billing is their one weak point. We’ll try to mitigate that by moving the domain registration for AV away from them. I also still have some to move off of Network Solutions, so I’ll hardly notice one more.
At least yesterday was such an “interesting” day that we barely had a chance to notice and fret about the outage…
Monday, January 23, 2006
Down
As I write this, accidentalverbosity.com is down, though our hosting remains accessible via http://hecate.hmdnsgroup.com/~jaysolo.
I wrote a check to Hostin Matters on the 11th, mailed it within the next couple days, and it should have been on the desk of receivables by the 18th or 19th. At 8:00 AM today, the 23rd, the domain went into suspension, exactly as I was trying to avoid.
I love Hosting Matters, but they have always been slow to credit payments. I suspect maybe they don’t even clean out the mailbox regularly, and that’s the cause.
Sigh…
Friday, January 20, 2006
RSS Feeds
Feeds are now fixed, or at least the XML pages don’t generate a bunch of errors when opened, followed by content that is all wrong.
For benefit of others who have upgraded Expression Engine and lost their feeds, the problem is that the existing copy of pi.xml_encode.php in the plugins folder didn’t get replaced by the new one.
In the unzipped files on your hard drive, this file can be found in [Expression Engine Path]\system\plugins.
In your files online, the file goes in [web root]/[name of your “system” folder]/plugins.
Where the stuff in square brackets will be specific to you or to the version of EE. They recommend that you change the name of the system folder from the default, making it harder for someone to break in, and in this version they seem to have changed their own default name. But I digress.
Let me know if anything weird happens or if the feeds work fine. I was inspired to fix it after finding a problem with the XML for thecotc.com yesterday, in which it thought the name of the index page was weblog.php instead of index.php. The fact that this guy had his working helped me too.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Doh
It’s times like these I wish Deb had a cell phone.
Things are falling apart at the big client. I just talked with their savvy person who can do a fair amount of troubleshooting herself and knows what I am talking about if I give instructions. When she’s done, it may be okay. However, it’s looking at least 50% like I will have to pack up Sadie, currently sacked out in the middle of the living room floor after turning down a nap in her bed, and go up there shortly. There’s a good chance Deb won’t be home before I need to go.
If I could call, I could tell her head to the office when she is done, or see if she could cut things short and get home so Sadie needn’t go with me.
Oh well. Stay tuned…
Update @ 1:31 PM:
No dice, though their e-mail did start flowing again, and I am sure that had some relation. Gotta get Sadie shoed and jacketed and me dressed for outside and fly on up there (maybe a 20 minute drive), at which point likely nothing will be wrong. Hopefully she won’t even fully wake up and will nap more on the drive.
Later…
I had Sadie bundled up, the diaper bag resupplied, and we were getting in the car when Deb pulled in. Yay! But Sadie was all excited about going, so we all did. The problem ended up being the backup having started running at 9:19 AM because apparently last night’s tape didn’t get put in the drive until then. Nobody has fessed up. When that happens, they should cancel the backup job. This used to be a regular thing, but hasn’t happened in so long that it’s no longer the possibility that comes to mind. It ended up resolved completely roundabout, by someone rebooting the server the backup ran on and so canceling it as a sied-effect.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Even Abnormal People Can Be Troubled
An article I could have written, that says things I have said:
What do normal people do about their computers?
Link received in e-mail from a friend of mine who was astonished by this bit:
I don’t use an anti-virus product at all, and have not for years. They just slow down the system and get in the way when I try to install my own stuff. I’ve never gotten a virus, presumably because I know better than to execute one.
But I’m not normal. Given that you’re reading this, you’re probably not normal either. What works for us does not work for folks who just want the computer to be an appliance, not a working tool in a career.
That’s been me. I didn’t explicitly set out to avoid AV software on my machine, but I ended up that way, and share his sentiments about having the system slowed. Norton seems to have become increasingly a problem rather than a protection.
Interesting piece, anyway. I find myself pondering the question of what normal people do regularly, because I am one of those who rescue them. How can you justify spending several hours making a machine that’s nearly disposable in cost function correctly?
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Wireless E-Mail Advice Wanted
This is totally preliminary, but I thought I’d start asking around.
The plan is to improve my mobility in terms of business communications. Right now, e-mail from my big client goes out to the internet, to a mail account I receive both at home and at the office, and can check via the web from anywhere I have web access. I can be reached by e-mail to my cell phone, but that is limited, and has to be addressed specifically. If I know I will be on the road or such, I’ll tell people they can reach me that way if needed.
What I would like is to have a device that every client e-mail arrives on, no matter where I am, and can be answered on the spot. A lot of my support work is answering e-mailed questions, or starting the troubleshooting via e-mail to get to where I know I need to call or materialize there. I am not always in the office or at home where I can easily monitor things. I anticipate this becoming more common, a topic for another post.
Web access from a portable device would be a bonus. Ease of typing would be appreciated, though I can be surprisingly fast even on the cell with the T9 system. Wide coverage is pretty much imperative. Obviously I am not talking something laptop sized, though it might be fun to have wireless internet service and a small notebook computer that rides in the truck with me everywhere.
I plan to switch from my old prepaid cell, which is Verizon service, with which I have been thrilled, to a “real” cell, preferably two of them. One would live at the office, perhaps being forwarded to the other phone when nobody is here, and be usable by anyone else working here, covering for me, or by me if I manage to leave the other phone home. I may skip the second one if it’s going to cost too much. At the same time, I would be tempted to get one for Deb as well. It would be great on the road, as an emergency phone, and useful for the aspects of business she helps me with.
A wireless e-mail device that is also a phone would be a possibility, which is why I mentioned the phone aspect too.
Anyway, thoughts? Experiences?
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Editing Acidman
Acidman was looking for help resizing a new sidebar image. There may be other folks who come up with better results, or he may prefer learning to fish and then catching his own, but here’s what I came up with.
Straight resize to 157 pixels wide, which makes it 118 high.
Same thing but with sharpening applied.
A cropped closeup from the full picture, 157 pixels wide and 137 pixels high.
Same thing, but 132 high and mirrored so he points the same way as the existing picture.
Finally, the closeup at 157x127 with sharpening applied.
I am torn. It looks better as a sidebar picture this size when it is cropped, but the full picture appears perhaps intentionally composed to capture essence of Acidman: computer on the one hand, guitar on the other.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Wiring
Well, I didn’t knock us offline for long while rewiring phones today. I’m not done, but the dangerous part is over.
Since we moved in, we’ve had a long phone cord plugged into a wall jack in the kitchen, where you’d hang a wall phone. It goes through the air, hooks over a screw on the wall, and goes down behind the microwave to the DSL modem, which has been on a second microwave cart we use for storage. From there a network cable goes around the corner, across the office floor, and up to a router behind my computers. From there a network cable goes into my computer (the one I use; the other is an old Pentium 200 that used to handle voicemail for me until the associated phone died), and another one goes back along the floor, around the corner through a foot or two of kitchen, and over to the laptop in the living room.
We have had to duck slightly on the way into the bathroom, under the phone cord strung through the air in the kitchen. I’d planned to ask if it was okay to wire the place, then the landlord saw it and asked why I hadn’t, which answered that question. I got 100’ of phone cable and a jack, then didn’t get around to it.
Today I decided to tackle it.
Despite having not brought the electrical snake home from the office to make it easier.
How it appeared was that phone wire came up from the cellar to the hall outside our back door, then in the wall to the vicinity of the wall jack. From there phone cable went up into the ceiling, across the kitchen, across the living room, to the bedroom where the other jack is.
Wrong.
First I tried to get at the theoretical junction of phone cables in the wall of the kitchen. No dice. Well, the cable running through the ceiling to the bedroom had a few spare feet of play, wrapped up neatly, so I unwrapped it and snipped the cable. The phone in the bedroom still worked. The internet didn’t. Oops.
That means the phone service, wherever it once came in, now comes in toward the front of the building, and the cable through the ceiling is was supplies the kitchen jack.
Oh well. With some wailing a gnashing of teeth I managed to get the three cable ends spliced. I’d have liked to solder them to say “and I mean it,” but I used the solder I had a while back and forgot to buy more for the once a year I might need it. This is why they make electrical tape. Well, I’d have used it anyway to keep the four wires apart, but I made sure those connections were not going anywhere.
Then came running it across the ceiling to the wall and finding an exising hole. Yes, there was an ideal looking one with an electrical cable running through it.
Well, you don’t think I could get the tiny little phone cable through, did you? Noooo. Eventually I did, after trying various things, including drilling a new hole that wouldn’t be shared with the electric cable. The solution involved a coat hanger and masking tape.
Then I had to undo that because the cord tangled. At least it was easy to repeat the feat, once I’d discovered the trick.
That’s where I stopped. I put all the ceiling tiles back in place and left the phone cable tucked up in the office ceiling, waiting to go the rest of the way across and, ideally, down the inside of the wall near my desk. I rapped on the wall and it sounds like the landlord is right; the inner walls are hollow. He recommended not running it through an outer wall because there’s insulation.
Alternatively, I can run it out of the ceiling down the outside of the wall in a less permanent configuration. That’s tempting at least temporarily.
Really, though, I should bring home the electrical snake and a roll of network cable from the office, finish the phone, and run network cables into the bedroom and living room. Beats having cables across the floor, even if I don’t put in actual wall jacks.
Monday, November 28, 2005
Ecosystem Changes I’d Like To See
N.Z. Bear is in the midst of changes to the Blogosphere Ecosystem, so you may note your blog’s rank has changed dramatically, and that may or may not be where it ends up.
My first impression was that perhaps he’d also pruned out some of the thousands of spam blogs clogging the lowest ranks, but looking closer, that seems not to be the case. That’s a change I could get behind, but an awful lot of work. You’d almost need to enlist the blogging public to check and submit for removal those blogs, almost wiki-like.
I can take or leave the purging of inline trackbacks as links that count, though that wouldn’t be needed if other moves were made. Some of the gaming has nothing to do with inline trackbacks and such trackbacks appearing in open trackback posts. If open trackbacks are manual, you’re foiled. If someone starts multiple blogs and links themselves repeatedly, you’re foiled. If someone hosts open trackbacks, the inline trackbacks may not count, but the obligatory links to the open trackback host will.
First, if Don Surber is the biggest problem, banish Don Surber.
Second, purge the “blogs” that aren’t blogs.
Third, as best you can, purge spam blogs.
Fourth, and most importantly as it makes item one moot, limit the number of unique links that are counted from any one blog to another. Five seems like a good number.
What does that do? It limits the usefulness eevn of open trackbacks that are manual, and of hosting open trackbacks for the hosts who benefit from massive, nutrition-free linkage. It limits the usefulness of starting multiple blogs and linking yourself over and over, or guest blogging and cross-posting/linking yourself over and over.
It’s a simple rule that presumably would be easy to implement.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Solved
The control panel problem is solved. EE formerly had a themes folder under its system folder, with not a lot in it. In the newer version there is a themes folder off the root, but the directions never tell you to upload it. That is what the control panel uses. It’s very pretty! Here, I’ll show you…
Click for a full size image. The whole tabbed design for the publish screen is new. The top tabs are the same.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
2005 Weblog Award Nominations Now Being Partially Accepted
Nominations are open for the 2005 Weblog Awards. You may nominate someone, but only if you have a Typekey identity.
We have unflinchingly refused ever to register with Typekey, and therefore will not be nominating anyone. Sorry. There are certainly worth choices out there.
Perhaps the voting will not be limited and we will be allowed to vote on whoever are the nominees. Meanwhile, it should still be interesting to watch the process and see if the nominations and results make sense.
Monday, November 07, 2005
Today
We have a perinatologist appointment at 8:30 and will be dropping Sadie off before and picking her up after.
At noon we have a midwife appointment. In between we’ll probably invade the office briefly and make sure the world hasn’t fallen apart.
Carnival of the Capitalists will be late. I wouldn’t plan on it until well into this afternoon or tonight.
I had started a Sadie post I didn’t finish. Maybe that will go up later.
Meanwhile, Carnival of Computing is up! Andrew is looking for other hosts and sending it on the road, so let him know if you’re interested.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
PR Nightmare for Sony Begins
Start with Kevin’s post, which explains rootkits and what is going on in reasonably simple terms for non-geeks.
From there, go to the originating SysInternals post about the discovery that Sony is messing too deeply with systems in the name of DRM. Remove it and your CD drive gets disabled. Nice.
Monday, October 31, 2005
Take The Alito Poll
Hugh Hewitt, noted Miers supporter, has taken over the superb polling aparatus originated by the hiatusing Patrick Ruffini, and is using it to measure support for the Alito SCOTUS nomination.
Go take the Alito poll. If you go via this link, we should show as the referring blog in the blog-specific breakdown. That didn’t work when I tried it for one of Patrick’s polls, but what the heck.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Speaking of Good Questions…
Dean asks who your choice is of most fascinating person of the 2oth century.
He puts forth Tesla. Definitely a selection I can get behind. How about you? Lenin? Hitler? Stalin? Churchill? Einstein? Spears? Rand?
The comments are fascinating and worth a thorough read. However, I would take exception with the idea that we need a Lincoln in the 21st Century. At least not if you include any of the bad with the presumed good.
Clever Use of Pictures
I meant to point this out way back when it happened. Here’s a great use of a couple of Sadie’s pictures by permission. The respective pictures show when you hover over the “Enter” and “Go Somewhere Else” links. We thought it was a cool idea.
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Spamming the Ecosystem
I was looking at the lowest ranked area of the blogosphere Ecosystem and was amazed to see there are over 41,000 blogs now listed. Last I looked, it was somewhere just north of 12,000. Wow!
Then I looked more closely. It seems most of them are spam. Speaking of things to say “doh” about. Doh! It also seems an awful lot of them are URLs for feeds, not for blogs as such. What’s up with that?
So either someone has way too much time on their hands or employs overly cheap labor, or it’s as easy to add blogs in automated fashion to the Ecosystem as it is to create new BlogSpot blogs. Not good. I wonder where all this is leading us.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Yay For The Landlord
The landlord came here this morning, about 10:30, for the repairs. He fixed the hot water valve in the cellar, which now needs a working washer to go with it. Then he replaced the flush mechanism (I assume he replaced it), after joking with me “what are you talking about; it’s just fine!” in admiration of my temporary fix.
Then the dishwasher…
Not the trap. Not the drain. As he was about to take the whole mechanism out from under, he noticed the machine has a small hole through the side, low and on the left, which has to be the source of the leak. All we can figure is the first two times we used it, we ran it before going to bed and never noticed because it dried by morning. The third time we were up and around, so we saw what it did.
No fix there. We’re getting a new dishwasher at some point. We told him no rush.
Before I could even remember to say to duck under the phone cord that hangs neck-level across the bathroom entrance, he saw it and asked weren’t there phone jacks in all the rooms. I explained where they were, and that the living room one didn’t work, and he thought it’d be easy to just run wires over the suspended ceiling and put one in the office. After he was done with the dishwasher, he poked around up there and we talked about how best to do it. It should be easier than I thought. Yay!
Even better, that makes me realize it would be easy to run network cable. Wireless makes us nervous, besides saving me money if I don’t have to use it. I can either hardwire a wall jack and plug Deb into it, or run a wire with male ends up this wall, through to the bedroom, and down that wall. I have a few hundred feet of raw cable at the office, along with ends and the relevant tools. I can be sure the landlord won’t mind, as it’s essentially like running phone cable. I’ll probably go with the male cable and not put in a jack, though. Then if we move or stop using it, we can just toss the ends up into the ceiling and no trace unless someone looks up there.
So we luck out, while feeling bad at the same time, getting the ancient dishwasher replaced, and we get a couple other solutions illuminated, plus the two minor repairs.
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Carnival Catch-up
I have been neglecting to link carnivals as they have come out lately; almost like a blogging burnout symptom. Here’s where I’ll do some catching up on the recent week or two, as best I can identify them.
The September 26 Carnival of the Capitalists was emergency-hosted in style by AnyLetter. The 104th edition was hosted by Drakeview.
The next two CotC editions, for the anniversary observance, will be hosted by Business Pundit and me respectively.
The latest Carnival of the Recipes was hosted by The Glittering Eye. The previous edition was at Like News but Tasty.
The latest Carnival of Computing is up at founding blog AnyLetter. As was the previous edition.
The latest Grand Rounds is at The Haversian Canal. The previous week, the anniversary edition, was at Family Medicine Notes.
The third edition of Carnival of Compassion was at Diabetes Mine. I believe I also missed the second edition, with was at Cancer News Watch.
I guess that about covers carnivals I would normally link as they are published. Sheesh. What a slacker. If you’re looking for interesting reading, perhaps something different for a gloomy Sunday afternoon, you should be well covered.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Houston, We Have DSL
Woohoo! I am sitting at my computer in my new home office, on DSL. It’s crudely arranged, but it’s a start.
See, there are 3 phone jacks. Initially only one worked. Last night I made the wall jack in the kitchen work by taking the plate off and pressing where the wires each connect. Magic. I still should wire a line into the office, but at least the kitchen is the next room.
There’s a phone line strung so we have to duck under it to get into the bathroom. It hooks to the DSL modem, sitting on a rolling cart beside the office door. A network cable runs into the office, across the floor to the middle of the room, where the computer sits up on a 2 drawer file cabinet, and plugs into a router there. Then the router has a cable to the computer.
The office also turned out to have the least power outlets of any room. One thing about the place is the outlets are ample and reasonably modern. There are some ancient, ungrounded outlets, but those are all unpowered, obsolete, relics. There is no outlet anywhere near my desk, so the office will forever have an extension cord running across the floor.
This will get even more interesting as Deb’s computer will, when it’s eventually set back up, be in a different room.
I’m quite pleased with my predictive powers. This was the first day for which I had not pre-posted a Sadie picture. DSL was activated last night, and I got back on this morning. I knew they wouldn’t take all the way until the 29th and called the actual timing perfectly.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Yay!
Verizon tells me DSL is now active at the new apartment. As expected, well before the target date of the 29th. Woohoo!
Now I just have to cope with the fact the one working phone jack is nowhere near the computers, and the fact that Deb needs a desk because we used hers as a childproof TV stand, and that sort of thing.
My plan is to rig us up for wireless and not have network cables everywhere. I just have to, you know, order the stuff required to do that.