A fine example of geek hackery
What do you do when you don't have the $$ to shell out for a satellite dish?
Imablog Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.
Another publication for my bibliography
Yay! The manuscript I submitted got accepted for publication!
Not sure when it will appear yet. It's a quarterly publication so it could be a few months before I see it in print.
Groggy and loopy
According to the vet, Simba did very well with his neutering today. He's never very happy to go to the vet anyway, and I'm sure after today he really won't want to go again. But everything went well and he's back home recovering. We've got some anti-inflammatories to give him to help keep the pain down, some mild sedatives to keep him calm and mellow while he recovers, and an e-collar on him so he doesn't try to lick his surgery site.
He should be back to normal in about a week or so. In the meantime you can bet he'll get spoiled even more than he usually does.
Lunar eclipse night
There's a lunar eclipse going on tonight. This time, the moon will be in mid-eclipse by the time it rises on the east coast of the US, but people will still get to see it in full eclipse for a an hour or so and then get to see it brighten back up again over the next couple of hours.
I've always liked lunar eclipses. They're easier to watch, go on for a lot longer and I like the colour the moon changes to. Incidentally, today's APOD is a cool movie of the moon transiting the Sun as seen by the STEREO B craft in UV. Neato.
Something to do with all that dog hair
Turn it into yarn. The hair has got to be at least 2" long, so unfortunately it rules out all the hair my labs leave on the carpet for me. Darn.
Found at DoggieNews.com.
Strings on the viola
While running errands over the weekend I stopped at a nearby music shop to see what they had for string instruments. Picked up a set of strings and a pitch pipe to help me get things into tune, but they didn't have any viola bows in my price range. The ones they did have were very nice, but a little more than I needed at this time. Thanks to the pitch pipe and a few MIDI files I found online, the viola is now newly strung and sounds decently in tune, although the A sounds kind of odd to me. Maybe when I hear it with the bow it'll sound better. Plucking the strings does make some very satisfyingly familiar sounds though.
Now I just need to find a bow and some beginner's books.
AFK
Vacationing in Maui. BBS.
Back from vacation
More later. Maui was fun. Many things to organize, receipts to enter and about a half gig of photos and movies to go through.
Only about 1500 emails to skim through though. Must have been a light week on the mailing lists.
More later.
Getting back on track
Ok, so Maui was pretty good. Getting to and from Maui...not so good, at least from the east coast anyway. Three flights and about 11 hours of air time (15-16 hours total including layovers) is pretty tiring, even if all you're doing is just sitting around on your butt.
The week would have been way better if I wasn't sick with a cold all week though. Flew out Saturday (the 10th) feeling the beginnings of a cold coming on, and by the end of Monday, the virus had me fully in it's grip. And then just as I was starting to feel like I was getting over things on Thursday, it morphed into something flu-like and I ended up sleeping most of the last two days. At least I managed to recover enough to make the flight home tolerable.
Despite being sick, I had a pretty decent time in Maui. I just didn't get to do as many things as I would have liked. The highlight of my trip was catching the sunrise at the rim of Haleakala (about 3000 m/9800 feet up), enjoying the scenery at the summit (3055 m) and then riding back down to sea level. So much fun. It's a nearly 3km descent over a distance of 50 km or so. Lots of twists and turns and great scenery to enjoy on the way down. Got rained on during part of the second half of the ride down, but it wasn't too bad. Awesome ride. I'd love to try tackling it up and down on a regular road bike.
A week in the kennel
The dogs spent the last week hanging out together in jail the kennel while we were on vacation.
Much to my surprise, after we picked them up yesterday they were almost like two different dogs. We could actually have them both out at the same time without them going completely crazy running around chasing each other and bashing into everything. They still do it a little bit, and there's always the bitey-face game to play, but having them out together is actually tolerable now instead of having to banish them outside to the back porch for their rough-housing.
Maybe it was Simba's neutering that helped, maybe it was the week cooped up together or something. Whatever it was, it's nice being able to let them both out at the same time without worrying about stuff getting smashed to bits.
Heck, if I had known all it would take was a week together at the kennel, I'd have shipped them off there months ago!
We do need to do a little bit of retraining though. Simba's still pretty good at listening to us. Nala seems to have developed a bit of an attitude though. She likes the kennel well enough based on the feedback we get...I don't think she likes us leaving her there though.
Maui Luau
Thursday in Maui we went out to the Old Lahaina Luau.
The commercial luau seems to be one of those quintessential Hawaiian tourist activities, but it's basically a big outdoor restaurant with a show to watch while you're eating dinner. There were some interesting dishes, some pretty tasty, others not so much.
Some awesome banana bread was available along with a pretty tasty ahi (tuna) poke. There was purple poi there too, which was a lot more watery than I was expecting. I was expecting poi to be something more of a mashed potato kind of consistency, but this poi was more like a salad dressing consistency. Didn't taste like much either and didn't really add anything to the meal at all.
Just before dinner started, people gathered around the imu to watch the roasted pig being uncovered.
The roasted pig served at the luau (I don't think it was the same one that was uncovered) tasted pretty good - tender, flavourful and not too dry. I thought it would have a little more smoky flavour than it did, but it was pretty mild. Since I was still recovering from whatever flu-like thing I had contracted, I didn't eat a whole lot of food, although I did manage to pack away a few yummy desserts.
The white squares were some kind of coconut square which I thought were very good, as were the macadamia nut tarts.
The dinner wrapped up with more dancing telling the history of Hawai'i
Old Lahaina Luau is an attractive setting once you get inside, and there's plenty of things to check out while you're waiting for the buffet to open up. You can check out people making Hawai'ian totems and other crafts, or learn basic hula steps from one of the staff. Or just wander around with a fruity drink in hand and enjoy the scenery or the expansive ocean view. It's a little on the pricey side, but if you've got room in the budget and looking for your first luau experience, it's worth a try.
Food: 3.5 out of 5
Ambiance and entertainment: 4 out of 5
Wanted: A good home
Stolen from Amanda who stole it from marles607HELP NEEDED ASAP:
Please help!!!! After two long years of being on a waiting list for an agility dog, we have been notified by the breeder that, at long last, our number has come up and ... WE ARE HAVING A PUPPY!!!
We must get rid of our children IMMEDIATELY because we just know how time consuming our new little puppy is going to be and it just wouldn't be fair to the children. Since our little puppy will be arriving on Monday we MUST place the children into rescue this weekend!
They are described as:
One male - His name is Tommy, Caucasian (English/Irish mix), light blonde hair, blue eyes. Four years old. Excellent disposition. He doesn't bite. Temperament tested. Does have problems with peeing directly in the toilet. Has had chicken Pox and is current on all shots. Tonsils have already been removed. Tommy eats everything, is very clean, house trained & gets along well with others. Does not run with scissors and with a little training he should be able to read soon.
One female - Her name is Lexie, Caucasian (English/Irish mix), strawberry blonde hair, green eyes, quite freckled. Two years old. Can be surly at times. Non-biter, thumb sucker. Has been temperament tested but needs a little attitude adjusting occasionally. She is current on all shots, tonsils out, and is very healthy & can be affectionate. Gets along well with other little girls & little boys but does not like to share her toys and therefore would do best in a one child household. She is a very quick learner and is currently working on her house training-shouldn't take long at all.
We really do LOVE our children so much and want to do what's right for them; that is why we contacted a rescue group. But we simply can no longer keep them. Also, we are afraid that they may hurt our new puppy.
I hope you understand that ours is a UNIQUE situation and we have a real emergency here!!! They MUST be placed into your rescue by Sunday night at the latest or we will be forced to drop them off at the orphanage or along some dark, country road. Our priority now has to be our new puppy.
-- Author Unknown
My tap water is brown!
Does anybody else have brown water coming out of their taps?
A call to Charleston Water System's emergency line brought me to a helpful lady that told me the fire department had been flushing lines today and that I should run the cold water in the faucets farthest away from the meter for about 10 minutes to flush out the water lines.
The taps have been running for almost 20 minutes now and the water finally seems to be starting to clear up. I have a feeling I've also just flushed the lines for the entire neighbourhood considering my house is at the end of the cul-de-sac.
Coming soon: New radinfo
Finally managed to get my hands on a new box to replace this aging radinfo server. It's an old PACS workstation that's being replaced with a new workstation, but still it's a much better box than what I have radinfo on now.
The new box is a Dell Precision 530 (about 4 years old now) with dual 1.5 GHz P4s with 1 GB of RAM in it. Should be a much better box than the dual 450 MHz PII that I'm using now*.
Fedora 6 installation is in progress at the moment. Should take me a few days to migrate things over so hopefully by next week I'll have the new server up and running in place of the old one.
Woo hoo!
*When nobody gives you a budget for these kinds of things, you have to scavenge computer hardware where ever you can.
Another good reason to love chocolate
As if chocoholics really needed another excuse
Chocolate improves blood vessel function: study
"In this sample of healthy adults, dark chocolate ingestion over a short period of time was shown to significantly improve (blood vessel) function," said Dr. Valentine Yanchou Njike of Yale Prevention Research Center, a co-investigator of the study
Dead hard drive
The hard drive in the wife's laptop up and died on us tonight. Just like that. It was working fine a few hours ago and then I put it in hibernate mode. She went to turn it back on and got nothing but a BSOD. The drive was making those characteristic clicking and whirring sounds of a dead hard drive, so it sounds like it's time for a new one. Sadly, the last back up was from a few months ago just before Christmas, so there's going to be some data loss.
Laptop drives are surprisingly cheap. Over at Newegg a 160GB drive can be had for $120. Surprising just how small these things are.
radinfo v3 almost ready
Just about ready to bring the new server online. I think I've got all the data migrated over and as far as I can see everything seems to be operating properly. Some last minute testing to do and then Monday I should be able to swap the servers. The new box definitely performs much better than the existing server so I'm looking forward to getting it running.
Hunting for ME LaZerte '87 grads
Fellow grad Adrienne Barclay is looking for our contact information to send out reunion news. If any of you happen to stumble upon this space, drop her a line (Abarclay (at) shaw.ca) with your email and any other contact info you wish to divulge. You can also send an email to melazertereunion1987 (at) hotmail.com or just leave a comment here and I'll pass it along. There's also a Google Group for our class that you can join and post messages to
Show yourselves!
User to BIOS: Where's the drive?
The new laptop drive arrived today from Newegg, a Western Digital Scorpio 120GB drive. Should have been an easy replacement. Pop the old drive out, remove from the bracket and pop the new one in, re-attach the blade adapter and stick it back into the laptop.
Wrong. *sigh*.
Put the new drive in, power it up and go to the BIOS screen to make sure the drive is identified, but for some reason the BIOS reports no primary hard drive.
So now the question is: Do I have a bad drive, or is the adapter/motherboard pooched?
Fortunately the laptop I use at work is the same model, so I'll just head in to work, grab it and bring it home so I can try the new drive out in it. If the drive works there, then that points to the laptop. If it doesn't work, then it's a call to Newegg to see about an exchange.