Booked my trip back home for the reunion this fall. Thankfully this time it's only a 1 layover trip (stopping in Chicago's O'Hare) so it's only about 7 hours of flight time. Much better than my last trip home where I had to go CHS->BWI->YYG (Toronto)->YEG (Edmonton) and spent about 12 hours in the air and in airports.
The ticket still isn't cheap, but it's a lot more convenient only having to stop once.
Now I just need to find a place to stay...
The pegboard is finally up on the wall, so part of yesterday was spent decorating it with hooks and tools. The workbench area is starting to come together now. I think it looks pretty spiffy.
Now I need to come up with some projects to work on. No doubt the next project I decide to work on will mean having to acquire more tools.
This looks like it would be a fun bike to ride. Check out the video.
Got beta 5 of Movable Type 4 up and running. So far so good. All the issues I was having with beta 3 have been taken care of and I haven't run into any significant new ones yet.
There are a few changes that need to be done to my existing templates to keep them working, but those are mostly related to renamed Javascript functions. Otherwise migrating over with my existing templates should be pretty painless.
The default templates that come with MT4 are very different from previous MT templates. I haven't had a chance to go through them all yet, but everything has been made more modular, which should make things easier to troubleshoot. It does increase the complexity and number of templates and modules to deal with though.
MT4 is a little more sluggish compared to MT3 when moving around in the back end. I suspect some of that can be alleviated if I moved to a mod_perl or mod_fcgi environment. Didn't have much luck with doing that with MT3, but support for them is supposed to be better in MT4 so maybe I'll give it a try again.
Depending on how beta 5 goes, I might go ahead and migrate the blog over to get a better idea of how things go in the real world.
Update: The MTEntryIfComments plugin seems to have broken with b5 with the following error on rebuild:
Parse error in template 'Main Index': <MTEntryIfComments> at line 129 is unrecognized.
Fortunately it can be easily worked around by using a
<MTSetVarBlock name="comment_count"><$MTEntryCommentCount$></MTSetVarBlock>
<mt:if name="comment_count" gt="0">
...
</mt:if>
type of construct, but now I'm finding that MTEntryCommentCount always evaluates to 0 in beta 5. Didn't notice if this worked before, but I submitted a bug report so I should find out soon if it's a problem with me or with MT.
Today I found some really hot wings over at Necter (formerly Brinson's Beef and Brew). I'm talking make you sweat, your nose run, eyes bleed hot. I ordered a dozen wings and told the waiter I wanted them as hot as they come. I wasn't disappointed, and the wings were delightful (definitely not for the faint-hearted). These were the hottest wings I've had since moving to Charleston.
To me, they beat out the Habanero Hots or Braveheart from Wild Wing Cafe, which I've always thought of as more medium (although they do tend to be a bit of a creeper) and not nearly as hot as they sound. Then again I have a pretty high tolerance for hot food.
Definitely going back for more.
I've heard Buffalo South has some pretty hot wings too. I'm going to have to stop by and check them out.
It seems that while my penchant for spicy hot burn-your-mouth food hasn't diminished with age, apparently my body's tolerance for it has somewhat.
I was feeling some interesting sensations when I woke up this morning.
I suppose it could have been the beer too.
"Learn why things work on a starship" - Kirk
"Each ship has it's own combination code to prevent an enemy from doing what we're attempting" - Spock
"Using our console to order Reliant to lower her shields" - Kirk
I've always loved this segment from Star Trek: TWOK. To me, it serves as an example that understanding how and why something works the way it does is always better than just knowing how to use it.
I decided it was high time for me to make use of this treadmill we bought, so for the past few days I've been using it for short 30 minute workouts. So far they've been just walking workouts, up to 3 mph using this Fat Burner program that came built in.
Today I dialed it up to the first running workout, max speed 4.5 mph (I'm going to have to reprogram this thing to read out in metric...). I actually went the whole 30 minutes with only a few walking breaks (part of the program). Much better than I thought I would. Granted treadmill running isn't nearly as strenuous as being out on the road, but I'm quite happy with how I did today.
To top it off, I've been doing it all barefoot. Not quite as punishing as I thought it would be, which is probably a testament to the shock absorbing capabilities of the treadmill. I need to get a new pair of running shoes anyway, but I kind of like the barefoot thing. I don't think I'll be doing it for anything much longer than a half hour or 45 minutes though. Even that would probably be a little too much punishment on these bones and joints.
Feeling good about these treadmill workouts. Better than doing nothing I suppose. Maybe I'll even be able to lose some weight before the reunion.
This is what happens when one of the photomultiplier tubes in a gamma camera gets out of tune and doesn't get caught.
Went for another barefoot run on the treadmill today, although at a lower level than last time (max 4 mph). I think it's time to start bumping up the length of my treadmill workouts now.
As good as the shock absorbing capabilities of the treadmill are, I'm definitely going to need shoes if I'm going to be running on the treadmill for longer than 30 minutes.
Duration: 30 minutes
Distance: 1.56 miles
Average speed: 3.2 mph
Calories burned: 186
Totals so far:
Duration: 3 hours
Distance: 10 miles
Average speed: 2.32 mph
Average pace: 22:38
Calories burned: 1233
It's a toasty one today, and considering it's the beginning of July, it'll be just one of many for the next few months. Not even 8AM yet, it's already 27°C outside and forecast to get up to 35°C this afternoon with a heat index approaching 40°C.
Even the dogs don't want to stay outside for more than 15 minutes.
Figure out how to sync my PDA to the desktop. The cradle I have is a little flaky and for some reason doesn't always establish a reliable connection (works fine for power though). I do have a Bluetooth USB adapter though, so maybe I can get a sync going through BT. Don't know if it'll work though because the BT on the T3 is supposed to be somewhat limited. Worth a shot though.
After all that barefoot walking and running, I'd forgotten how heavy running shoes can be.
Did Fat burner 45 minutes at L5 (4.5 mph max speed) with my somewhat beat up runners today. Thought I'd be ok with 45 minutes, but half way through I was really starting to feel the extra effort from wearing the shoes. Made it through the whole 45 minutes, although I did have to take a break and walk for a couple of segments.
Duration: 45 minutes
Distance: 2.72 miles
Average pace: 16:40
Calories burned: 324
In addition to hyper-caffeinated drinks, mints, and chocolate covered espresso beans, caffeine buzzed geeks can get their fix in yet another form: Caffeinated Sunflower Seeds.
At 120 mg of caffeine per bag, it's a little less than what's in a can of Jolt Cola and a little more than a cup of coffee.
I'm thinking you probably don't want to be snacking on these while pounding back a 6 pack of Jolt following a shower with your caffeinated body wash.
Just here for future reference so I don't have to go digging for it again
Configuring a Bluetooth connection to a desktop computer
Setting up a Bluetooth HotSync operation with a desktop computer
Synchronize your PalmOS® Handheld over Bluetooth in Linux
Bluetooth Adapter Setup for the Palm Tungsten |T series
Internet Access via Bluetooth on Linux
My brother has this in his Facebook profile about his job description:
Pink rock goes to the processing plant, green rock goes to the waste pile...or was that green to the tailings....oh crap, I can't remember.
(He's a geologist)
Well, I'm part way there in my efforts to sync my T3 with my work desktop over Bluetooth. Both of the units can discover the other but when I tap the Hotsync button, the T3 fails with
Error: Serial: timeout. Could be bad cable or faulty Modem. (0x0305)
I can use hcitool to get bits of info from the T3
# hcitool scan
Scanning ...
00:07:E0:31:75:D6 Eugene Mah
# hcitool info 00:07:e0:31:75:d6
Requesting information ...
BD Address: 00:07:e0:31:75:d6
LMP Version: 1.1 (0x1) LMP Subversion: 0x700
Manufacturer: Broadcom Corporation (15)
Features: 0xff 0xff 0x0d 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00
<3-slot packets> <5-slot packets> <encryption> <slot offset>
<timing accuracy> <role switch> <hold mode> <sniff mode>
<park state> <RSSI> <channel quality> <SCO link> <HV2 packets>
<HV3 packets> <u-law log> <A-law log> <CVSD> <power control>
<transparent SCO>
so I know BT is active on both. I just can't get the T3 to establish a connection for some reason.
I suppose I could just bag the whole thing and go out to get a new cable or cradle to sync and charge with. That would be so un-geeky of me though.
Well, it seems after years of schema upgrades, betas and life on MT's bleeding edge in general, the schema of my MT blog DB is messed up and causes spurious errors with MT4 that nobody else can reproduce.
Update: Ok, managed to get things cleaned up enough for beta 6 to upgrade the database properly. Cleaned out a bunch of old unused and unneeded blogs along with cleaning up old junk out of the mt_templatemap and mt_template tables. Once I did all that, everything worked as expected.
So here's what I tried.
Created a fresh new MT 3.35 database and used INSERT INTO [table] (...) SELECT ... FROM ... to repopulate the fresh database with the contents of the old one. But when I tried to get MT4 to upgrade the fresh database, I ended up with that same error at just before the end of the DB upgrade process
* Removing unused template maps... Error during upgrade: Can't call method "archive_type" on an undefined value at lib/MT/TemplateMap.pm line 99
Further attempts to get into MT just result in a blank error page.
So then I created a fresh MT4 database and use the same INSERT/SELECT method to copy data from the MT3.35 DB into the MT4 DB. This ended up being only partly successful. While everything appears to be intact, the dashboard is broken and the entry listing isn't sorted by date. Ok, that's fixed...the entry_authored_on and entry_authored_by fields weren't populated. Filling them in with appropriate values seems to have done the trick.
Will be interesting to see what happens when I start messing with templates and rebuilding things.
Bottom of my foot hurts for some reason. Started after that last 45 minute workout, so I wonder if I strained some of those muscles and tendons a bit.
Took it a little bit easy today with a 30 minute Fat burner L5 (4.5 mph max) run. Felt pretty good about it today.
Duration: 30 minutes
Distance: 1.82 miles
Average pace: 16:40
Calories burned: 217
It's definitely past time for a new pair of runners. The ones I have, in addition to not seeing much running over the years, are way overdue for replacement. Come to think of it, I think I've had these shoes since Detroit...They've seen a lot of walking mileage, but not a whole lot of running.
New shoes will have to wait until after AAPM though.
Just got an email saying the itinerary for my reunion trip in September has changed so that on the flight back, I'm supposed to be going from Edmonton to Denver to Washington Dulles and finally to Charleston. It's almost 10 hours of flight time and 13 hours from start to finish (not including the drive to and from airports) and nearly double what it was before. Major suckage. Really, really major suckage.
It's a far cry from the original Edmonton->Chicago->Charleston that I originally booked. I may have to call and see what can be done about switching it back to the way it was, if it's even possible.
Simba has taken to digging out socks from the laundry pile now. I'm not sure where he picked that up from, since Nala doesn't do it anymore. I'll find a sock on the ground here or there while walking through the house. Occasionally I'll catch him sniffing through the laundry baskets probably looking for a sock to nab. I even caught him once with a sock dangling out of his mouth looking at me like it was time to play with a new toy he found.
I don't think he's eaten any yet, but I guess it's time to start closing the closet door again until I can get him to stop going after socks.
The loud thunk I heard when I rolled down one of the back windows in the car didn't sound good and sure enough, it wasn't good either. I can hear the window motor run, but the window doesn't do anything except make thunking noises. I'd guess that whatever mechanism makes the window go up and down has managed to disengage itself from the motor.
Managed to get the door panel off, but quickly saw that anything required to get it working again was a little past my comfort and skill level to handle. This of course means a trip into the dealer service shop for repairs.
Crap.
Hopefully it doesn't turn out to be anything horribly expensive to repair. There are already a few other routine maintenance things I need to get done to the car, and this isn't helping any.
Every now and then, during one of the many internal conversations I have with the various entities inhabiting my brain, I'm stopped mid-stream shocked and horrified as I catch myself using terms like "y'all" and other bits of Southern slang.
I don't think I've ever caught myself using it talking with real people yet, but the prospect of me inadvertently blurting out something like that frightens me.
I wonder if my friends will think my 'accent' has changed any since I last saw them.
On the eve of my trip to the AAPM meeting in Minneapolis, the manuscript proofs for the paper that was accepted to JNMT arrive in my email.
I have 48 hours to review the proof pages, make any corrections, address a list of questions and revisions and then send everything back.
I'm glad I got the proofs, because that means the paper will appear in publication soon. However, the timing is less than ideal. Now instead of making sure I have everything packed and am all ready for the trip, I'll be spending at least a couple of hours going through everything and making sure it's all ready to go.
Well, at least I still have tomorrow morning to finish getting ready. I can also email the changes back, which will save some time.
This is me right now. Still have 2 1/2 days of stuff to cram into my brain.
Annual meeting's over, and now I'm at the summer school. Lots of interesting sessions at the meeting. Didn't learn anything groundbreaking, but I did learn a lot of new techniques for doing what I'm already doing, and got reminded about a bunch of stuff I should be doing or need to get around to.
It was a good meeting overall. Spent most of my time at the CT and PET/CT sessions which were all very good and very informative. Caught up with a few old friends too, which is always nice.
The AAPM summer schools are usually pretty interesting. To keep the costs down, they like to re-introduce (or introduce in some cases) attendees to the dorm experience. I think it's a good thing because it also keeps people close by and provides lots of opportunities for post-session socializing. I've enjoyed all the summer schools I've been to, and I think this one should be a good one too. This one is a little more remote than past summer school's I've attended, so that will be a little different.
I'll be glad to get back home though.
First day of the Summer School is over. Today's sessions were all pretty good and very informative. There's a lot of NCRP 147 related stuff in my head and I'm thinking it would be cool to see if I can write up a web-based tool for doing shielding calculations based on NCRP 147. It's easy enough to implement in a spreadsheet so it should be doable in PHP.
The rest of the summer school is all about shielding for radiation therapy, which isn't something I'm terribly interested in, but might be interesting to learn about. I doubt I'll ever have to do a shielding design for a therapy unit, but it's always good to know what kinds of things the other side needs to think about.
I may skip a few sessions and go wandering about the campus a bit. The St. John's University campus seems very nice, and apparently there's a sugar shack where they process their own maple syrup. There likely won't be anything going on now, but it will be interesting to see. I've also heard the monks have this bible illumination project going on which would be cool to see.
The last full day of the summer school today. It was mostly all radiation therapy related so I skipped out on the last two sessions to wander around the campus. It's a pretty expansive campus with a couple of large lakes on two sides and lots of trails that go meandering through the surrounding woods. Very peaceful and tranquil (at least when school isn't in session) although considering part of the campus is a monastery, I suppose peace and tranquility is to be expected.
It'll be good to get back home, although I still have to survive a longish flight to get there.
Thanks to a late departure from Minneapolis (allegedly to wait for some luggage according to the pilot's announcement), I ended up missing the flight home by mere minutes, so now I'm stuck spending the night in Memphis. The earliest flight out that I could get wasn't until almost 2PM, so that means I won't be back home until 4:30PM.
The rest of the meeting finished off well with a couple of interesting topics on tomotherapy and gamma knife shielding. A couple of new treatment technologies that seem to be finding their way into more and more cancer centers. It was another good summer school that I'm glad I was able to attend.
Instead of ice cubes in the freezer, I discovered a really big block of ice.
It seems at some point while I was gone, the power went out long enough to turn a full ice tray into a big block of partially melted refrozen ice. That would also explain why everything in the freezer was frozen together. When the freezer gets warm enough to turn half the ice tray into water, it's a good chance there was a lot of thawing going on with the other frozen stuff too. Naturally this makes all the contents of the fridge and freezer suspect, including the rib roast I was thinking about cooking up when I got back.
Well, I suppose I could look on this as an opportunity to clean out some of the dog hair that's made its way into the freezer.