Got Grrr?

DirecTV and Tivo to kiss and make up...

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:28:47 GMT

http://www.tvpredictions.com/ddvr090308.htm

Oh happy day! Can I get on a waiting list now please?

Some more work etiquette...

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:29:59 GMT

When you are in a conf room for a meeting at work, please wear your shoes. The rest of us don’t really want to smell the stink of your feet and/or shoes. Even if you are wearing sandals keep them on your feet.

Secondly, please don’t accentuate your belches. ugh.

Seriously people.

Drive failures....

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:50:15 GMT

Gah. For the longest time I’ve been big fans of the Western Digital USB attached storage. Nice design and quiet. Over the past month I’ve had two of these drives fail on me. On one of them, the drive overheats. I suspect the bearings have gone out. The second one has mysteriously developed data errors for no good reason. That was my backup drive. Argh. Time to get a big 1TB internal drive to replace these with and just be done with it. Currently my iTunes catalog is sitting on two external 1TB Western Digital drives joined with RAID0. This makes me very uneasy.

Yay for vacation that didn't seem like vacation...

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 02:42:15 GMT

This seems kinda weird to me. I've been on vacation for this entire week. The first part of the week (Saturday through Monday) was spent in Tampa with friends as we all gathered for a wedding in Orlando for a dear friend from college. I had never been to Tampa so it was an interesting trip. We stayed with a friend's parents while in Tampa. Their house is only about 3 or 4 miles from the shore. I was very taken with the placid waters of the gulf and the beautiful sunsets we had each night. We spent our days exploring aquariums and breweries and our evenings munching and lounging out by the pool in the backyard. It was great.

We drove to Orlando on Monday and attended the rehearsal dinner, wedding, and reception. This was all interjected with a few trips to the lazy river pool at the hotel along with visitations by Disney characters at the wedding. Mickey and Minnie were at the wedding and various characters from Cinderella were at the rehearsal dinner. The brides lunch got special appearances from the Chipmunks and Goofy. During some rain on Tuesday before the wedding I headed over to the Apple Store at Florida Mall and picked up a new iPhone 3G. Saved me the trip when I was back in Raleigh. It was just really nice to see my friend move on with her life and to see that we all have stared to grow up at during our tender mid-30s. After a good night's sleep, I flew back to Raleigh on Wednesday.

Thursday morning at 5:30am, it was back to the airport to board a plane destined for Cleveland where I was meeting M for a couple of days of Ohio fun and a day at Cedar Point. We visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame but were disappointed to find out that after it closes at 5:30pm, downtown turns into a ghost town. M and I had a great day at Cedar Point. We rode all the rides we wanted and got a couple of them in twice. After 11 hours in the park, I think we were both beat. Despite my annoying fear of things that swing, I rode the ferris wheel along the Lake Erie shore in the park. It was a nice break to be alone during the hectic day at the park. Maverick was definitely the roller coaster of choice followed closely by the Dragster.

After enduring fire alarms at the hotel overnight and earning friendship bracelets at the hotel's arcade, M and I made our journey back to Raleigh. We had a wonderful couple of flights at home. I think we safely proved that we can travel well together.

Sunday, M and I made our way to church together. I verged so M was left to sit alone for the service. I appreciate him being willing to do that. Lunch with K and then the Out & About church dinner M.

It's kinda odd in the that I feels like I've been away from work for a month. I seriously enjoyed my time in Florida for the wedding and with M in Ohio. Life is treating me good these days. It just all feels happy and right lately.

Cows for science!

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:54:34 GMT

Cow farts collected in plastic tank for global warming study

Seriously, go back to school...

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:27:23 GMT

I’m on a conference call this afternoon. About 15 people on the conference bridge, dialed in from 8 different locations. We have a 9th location trying to dial in but we are out of ports on the conference bridge.

Oh, the gnashing of teeth. They start to run off and bring up a new bridge to have everyone log out and dial in to a new bridge. Um, dumb. So after a long *sigh* I chime in and suggest that someone simply conference in this final person from their own phone. It’s a double hop bridge but it’ll work. Now I’m in NC and this last dude is in Massachusetts. Call me crazy but it’s logical that the folks already in MA call this guy. Their response, “Well we don’t know how to use these IP phones.” Let me list the ways that this is wrong:

1) If you work for this company you oughtta know how to use an IP phone. We’ve had then at our desks now for 5+ years.
2) Somebody actually asked if anyone knew how to conference somebody in, and nobody other than myself did.
3) It’s a freakin’ phone. You can write machine assembler code and C++ but you can’t figure out how to use the softkey on your phone that says “Confrn”?

If you can’t run your phone, don’t admit it. While you’re busy fakin’ it, read the PDF on how to mash all those pretty blinky buttons on your phone.

Cool Whip For The Soul...

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:03:40 GMT

I began reading Tony's blog about a year ago. I came to enjoy reading about his life in east Tennessee close to where I grew up. I found today's post, Cool Whip For The Soul, to be particularly touching because I wish I could have one of those moments with my grandparents.

Some background: The attorney is his long term boyfriend. Tony lives with his grandmother as they are all the family that is left and she needs his help with day to day needs.

Oy....too much BSG...

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 04:47:30 GMT

Four hours of Battlestar I crammed in tonight. Too much of a good thing. A lot there to process. I got questions.

Yay for long weekends...

Fri, 23 May 2008 14:04:28 GMT

And it’s going to be a busy one. So tonight’s festivities are going being with a trip back to the 80s as I’ve been wrangled into going to see a Michael Jackson impersonator. This should be interesting in multiple regards. Saturday morning will be bike riding on the south portion of the ATA . The afternoon will include some retail therapy followed by an evening date. Sunday starts out with church, then a wedding shower for my friend Carol, and then a cookout with friends in the evening. All sorts of goodness abounds. Monday hopefully will be lazy during the day with some board/card games in the evening.

These are all grand plans. Let’s just see how much of it goes off without a hitch.

Did I just step into a soothing post-apocalypic RTP?

Thu, 15 May 2008 16:44:40 GMT

RTP being Research Triangle Park, NC (where my office is) for the non-local folks.

Around 11:30 I decided it was time to make the trek to get my salad from the café. It’s a short walk from my building to the next across a plaza with a fountain. The fountain is unfortunately dry and silent due to the shortage of water. (Though you’d think they would fill it back up with reclaimed water but who knows.) Normally as you cross the plaza people are milling about, cars pulling through the cul-de-sac, and some days even landscape maintenance going on.

Today, there was nothing. No people. No moving cars. No motion what so ever. The only sound was the quiet and far off din of A/C units on the building’s roof. It was like this for my entire walk. I could use a couple days of just this. Perfectly calm stillness. There’s got to be some Zen in there with my name on it. It would make me happy to find someplace where this was the case all the time. A nice clearing in the forest of the far north. The stillness of a great plain in Montana. A remote atoll in the south Pacific.

While it sort of hit me like a wall of welcome calm it was also slightly odd. It was one of those moments where you begin to wonder what event has drawn all the kinetics out of the environment. Are the langoliers on the way? Was there a quiet apocalypse that I napped through? Was I not worthy enough for the aliens to also take me? What bit of news did I miss that is keeping everyone else hunkered down in their cube?

Regardless, I wish I could have bottled up just a bit of that quiet moment to have for later.

Ugh...who gave me the ick?

Wed, 14 May 2008 17:26:23 GMT

I’m doing my best to fight off the ick, but it’s a losing battle at this point. Sore throat, body aches, chills. Fun stuff. I should have just stayed home today but like a dumb employee I schlepped in anyway.

It’s been a boring few days here in the last bit. I’m still kind of off on my vague and nebulous mission at work which makes for some very long days. What work I am doing is slow. For most tests that I’m executing take a good 15 minutes to just bring up all the base configurations and that has to be done repeatedly for each test. This makes for quite the long day

I know that eventually I’m going to have to just start on a mission of nagging the bosses on a regular basis to get with the program if they want to get their money’s worth out of me. For whatever reason though, I have just been lax in doing so. I’m not exactly keen on this lethargic and irresponsible behavior. Perhaps this is just me taking a bit of a break. I think I’ve had about all that I want of said brake however.

I’ve been plowing through all of Stargate SG-1. I’m just now starting season 7. Not too bad for having started with Season 1 in late March. So I’ve got to get through 7 and then 8 and I’ll be all caught up as I watched seasons 9 and 10 regularly. It’s a Ben Browder thing. I might pick and choose a few of those. That’ll let me get the SG-1 box set up on eBay fairly soon. It’s nice to be almost completely plugged into the franchise now. For the longest time, i just got random bits here and there but missed out on a lot of things. Once SG-1 is put to rest, it’ll be time to play catchup on CSI: NY/Vegas, Desperate Housewives, Boston Legal, Doctor Who, and Torchwood. Remind me again why I pay for satellite! At a minimum I’ve got to catch up on the Sci-Fi stuff since it’s required viewing before DragonCon. Fortunately the summer hiatus in TV (excepting The Closer and Burn Notice) will allow for all this catching up.

Tomorrow night it’s off to join a bowling league. Since I’m usually happy if my score breaks 100, this should be a learning experience. I think with some regular practice, my score should improve since my current bowling frequency is about once per 18 months. This Thursday night activity will replace the traditional winter time handbell practice. While it might be nice to have my Thursdays free, I find it much better to have my Fridays free to do whatever. Those are just sacrosanct imho.

I’m getting a bit excited over the impending release of Civilization Revolution for PS3. I wasted away at least an entire year of college on this franchise. I see no reason why I shouldn’t continue that tradition. I can’t imagine the same level of control in the gameplay for PS3 so I’m interested as to how it’ll behave. Game is pre-ordered on Amazon with expedited shipping. :) Hopefully a game demo will appear on the PlayStation Network soon. I’m also looking forward to Spore but it’s a bit farther away.

Bad omens...

Thu, 08 May 2008 12:49:35 GMT

It’s never a good sign when I get into work in the morning and there’s no diet Mt. Dew in the break room cooler. Diet Pepsi just doesn’t cut it.

Something wicked this way comes....

Yay for faster internet...

Wed, 07 May 2008 23:41:52 GMT

So it seems that the local Time-Warner Cable has bumped up the downstream caps. :) I have the RR Turbo service and it was 8 Mbit down before, and after rebooting the ol' cable modem it's a zippy 10Mbit/sec now. I can't believe I just called half duplex, slow ethernet zippy. But nonetheless, I'll take my free speed upgrade and be happy about it. :) Upstream is still capped out at 512 kbit/sec for me.

I think the regular 5 Mbit down service was bumped to 7 Mbit.

I had toyed with the idea of switching to AT&T DSL but I don't think that's happening now.

Who put the cat in my laptop?

Tue, 06 May 2008 18:05:03 GMT

My laptop has taken to purring. This ain't no kitten purring, it's Garfield big cat just had a pan of lasagna purring. Wonderful. I think the fan on the left hand side some something gumming it up. Something was stuck under the Tab key yesterday. Since I couldn't manage to remove the key or get said thing out from under the key, enough pressure crushed said object. Great, I can use the Tab key now but the laptop now purrs. Perhaps not the best course of action. Then again the two may not even be related.

Voting: check!

Tue, 06 May 2008 13:45:31 GMT

Well it’s more like Voting: circle filled! For the first time ever, I had a fill in the circle SAT style ballot. Previously, we had ballots where it was complete the line.

So I was voter number 303 in my precinct at Leesville Elementry School. There were a decent number of people there and short lines for each of the tables. The people campaigning outside the polling place are just annoying. They aren’t going to change anyone’s vote at that point and they just make people feel uncomfortable while walking into the polling place. Personally, I don’t think they should even be allowed there at all. Plant your signs and then leave.

No “I voted!” stickers this time. :(

The lady prior to me in line was registered as an independent and couldn’t get past picking a Democratic, Republican, or non-partisan ballot. When posed with the question, she covered her face with her hands and muttered something about how this was so hard. Ugh. If you are that in decisive about how to even go about your voting much less who to vote for, I think you should just stay home. Not that I have it all figured out but when I walk into the door I know what my plan is. In the end, she went Republican but didn't look happy about her choice.

If your .mac ever quits syncing...

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:09:26 GMT

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306484

Basically it recommends doing this at a shell prompt:

/System/Library/Frameworks/SyncServices.framework/Versions/A/Resources/resetsync.pl full

This is goodness as it keeps ugly things like this from showing up in the logs:

Apr 30 09:44:42 computer com.apple.syncservices.SyncServer[591]: 2008-04-30 09:44:42.645 iCalExternalSync[594:10b] [ICalExternalSync ]Encountered Session

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<isyncconcretesession:>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306484

<lj-cut text="The details...">Basically it recommends doing this at a shell prompt:

/System/Library/Frameworks/SyncServices.framework/Versions/A/Resources/resetsync.pl full

This is goodness as it keeps ugly things like this from showing up in the logs:

Apr 30 09:44:42 computer com.apple.syncservices.SyncServer[591]: 2008-04-30 09:44:42.645 iCalExternalSync[594:10b] [ICalExternalSync ]Encountered Session <ISyncConcreteSession: 0x1a6db0> cancelled. detected corrupt database while executing delete from RecordDataReference

After running the above command, all my calendar syncing magically started working.</lj-cut>

Damn us Earth Day people...

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:20:30 GMT

So this wonderful nugget of an email came across the site-wide email alias at work today:

Subject: This new “green” thing...

...has officially gone too far. Anyone been to the cafe today?

I’m all for saving the plastic from carry out containers and making me use a plate, but when you start dictating what I can and can’t eat for your namby pamby, feel good causes, you’ve gone too far.

In honor of you, deciding for me, what I can and can’t have on my pizza, I fired up my gas guzzling truck and drove down the street to get some pizza that had cheese on it. They would even let me get ham if I wanted it. I must have burned at least a gallon of gas... hope we saved enough carbon from not putting cheese on that pizza I was going to order to offset my little trip.

What’s next?

eom

It never ceases to amaze me at just how self-centered some folks can be. There’s only one day that the cafeteria is making changes to promote people to perhaps think just a bit differently. This person couldn’t be so inconvenienced that he resorted to what to me seems like a childish rant. I imagine the thought never occurred to him to try something new or different. Just like anybody else, I don’t like anybody making decisions for me. But, when the tide turns against me for a day I like to think I can deal with it like an adult.

This whole thread quickly degraded into other tangential rants about how the newly installed low flow faucets don’t provide enough water to wash your hands. Of course these are the same people that pull 5 or 6 paper towels to dry their hands when one does the job just as well. Then it was the earth shattering change of default printing to both sides of a page that people went off on and how they just couldn’t work that way.

Earlier in the day someone sent out an email reminding folks that parking was tight today. Portions of the parking lots are blocked off for Earth Day activities. There are quite a few people here that part and take up 3-4 spaces with just their single vehicle. Some of those people replied saying that they didn’t want dings on their car so it was worth taking up multiple spaces. They had the audacity to state they didn’t care about the needs of others and that perhaps we could part on the other side of the street in a different building’s parking lot.

Folks just have this mentality of use as much of anything they need without thinking about the consequences of their actions. I don’t know if this is just a people thing or an American thing. I tend to think it’s both but we here in the US have a heavy case of it.

The weekend and Sunday morning toastiness...

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:15:49 GMT

So this weekend was spent at home to satisfy my grandmother’s official “you need to come home” edict. Not that I mind. I hadn’t been home since mid-February so it was time to go. Saturday morning was spent visiting and the afternoon on the couch at home. That was followed by helping Dad wash the chicken litter from the new tractor. Just what everyone enjoys on a Saturday afternoon. Soon dinner which was followed by a trip to the nursing home to visit with my other grandmother. She was having one of her more lucid moments and we were actually able to have a bit of a conversation which was nice. Those times will be more seldom as time goes on I think. It was good to see her healthy in physical appearance however. it’s been a while since that’s been the case.

After leaving the nursing home it was time to head over to Wal-Mart. It never ceases to amaze me at how Wal-Mart has turned into a destination at home. No trip to town is complete without it. There’s always the social circuit aspect to it as my folks can’t round a corner without running into somebody they have worked with or are related to. I’ve even been known to run into a few folks from high school there. Speaking of high school, I want to have that 20 year reunion that should be around the corner. I would really like to see where some of those folks ended up. Yes, I know that’s totally the wrong reason to want to go.

Sunday was a bit of a marathon. Up at 7 for some tasty chocolate gravy for breakfast. Yummy. We readied for church and then headed to my grandparents to join them. The last time we tried this my grandfather interrupted the whole thing with a heart attack. With both of brought up at the same time.

The Sunday school lesson was all about how the US is based on Christian principles, how we shouldn’t really have strict separation of church and state, and how we have let tolerance get in the way of how things were just mean to be in this country. All this from Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10). Who’d a thunk it? There was of course the obligatory line about the evils of homosexuality and the moral decline of America. Love the sinner, hate the sin. I know I certainly felt so welcome after that. Later during the worship service, the post-communion lesson talked about how there was only one mention of the word “liberal” in the NIV translation. He went round and round that saying how it only referred to liberally helping those in need. The message was excruciatingly clear that one’s proper place was conservatism in all things. Beh.

I suppose it’s terrible form to complain about the message and teachings from a church service. However, this just reinforced the reasons why I cleave to my own church. That’s a whole other than of worms which won’t get opened now.

Lunch, complete with creamed corn and Italian cream cake followed shortly and then the 2hr 45min drive home. I turned right around and took K to the Out&About dinner club. Good times. This was also soon followed by zonking out with serious couch time.

Argh, people need to not harass my grandparents....

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:01:21 GMT

So, this weekend while my grandparents where gone to church on Sunday morning, somebody broke into their house and stole all of my grandmother’s jewelry. I know all the reasons why they would target folks in their 80’s. It’s just frustrating that they have to go through something like especially with the sentimental value placed it all. Cops came out and they cataloged everything that was taken but the chances of recovering it are slim at best. 86 years my grandfather has lived at that place and they’ve never had to deal with something like that before.

Power go blinky-blinky...

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:05:02 GMT

...and that’s never a good thing. Now all of the lab network access switches in the lab have no power. This means I’m reduced to reading documentation until I can actually get some work done. :(

Too...much...sushi...

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:34:10 GMT

Ergh.....I’m all about some tasty sushi for lunch but one piece too many and not a pleasant journey through the rest of the meal or the day. Next time the basic lunch plus just one crunchy shrimp roll. I promise.

Ohh, Rajaton concert in Charleston (and Vancouver)....

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:34:18 GMT

So I’ve been a fan of the Finish a cappella group Rajaton for a while now.

On a lark I checked out their concert schedule and discovered they they are doing a concert in April 12 with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. I’m not necessarily thrilled with the fact that it’s an ABBA concert, but it’s a heck of a lot closer than going to Finland to hear them.

I sense a road trip in my future.

They’ll also be in Vancouver on August 13 doing a non-ABBA concert. I’ve been looking for excuses to go to Canada and Vancouver would be a particularly nice destination.

These are the (geeky) things that keep me up at night...

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:45:51 GMT

So I was watching an old episode of Stargate: SG1 last night: A Matter of Time, S02E15. Long story short, the stargate gets stuck open to a remote world where there’s a black hole. The gravitational forces from the black hole come through the stargate. It in turn creates a lens effect on the Earth side which creates a fairly steep time dilation gradient in front of the gate. With higher gravitational forces, comes the slowing of time according the general relativity. In general, this is badness.

So, in this episode Jack and some other guy are lowered on ropes from the control room to the stargate. Because of the gravitation force from the gate, they appear to be “lowering” horizontally towards the gate from the control room. According to Carter in the control room, the gravitational gradient is high enough that the time is running faster for them in the control room than it is for Jack who’s about halfway to the gate. Something on the order of 100% faster.

So my question is this: If the time gradient is severe, wouldn’t that wreak havoc on a organism big enough to cross a significant portion of the time gradient?

For example, let’s assume Jack is fairly tall. In this scenario, time would be moving more slowly towards his feet than at his heart. Wouldn’t this create some insane amount of blood pressure in the top portion of the body as his heart moved blood at a higher rate but it moved through his feet at a lower rate? While the circulatory system isn’t a completely closed system it can be approximately modeled by one. Or, would the blood simply move faster towards the feet in order to balance the pressure in the closed system. At a faster flow rate, wouldn’t that have the detrimental effect of lowering the oxygen transfer efficiency though?

This also seems like it would be a problem neurologically, as electric and chemical messages would have the timings all wrong. It would be like exponentially increasing the latency of messages from the extremities.

Why this was so important that it kept me up for a couple of hours I’m not sure.

New in-flight safety from Delta....

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:07:42 GMT

This hit Wired today so I’m sure it’s already well known, but I thought that it was kinda fun. Cheeky, a bit of finger wagging, and some bling where you don’t expect it. :)

Nearly an iBrick....

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 02:40:42 GMT

With the recommendation of brianrdu, I got myself a copy of ziphone to get some pre-2.0 software goodies on my iPhone. That was working well until I tried to call my grandmother today. I heard her answer the phone and then all of a sudden, no more audio. Period. No ringer, no iPod music, no DTMF tones. Nada. Nunca.

I had to restore the phone back to 1.1.4 software before it was sane again. I've ziphoned it again and it seems to be working okay but I'm going to be a bit more diligent about testing the voice functionality before upgrading willy nilly.

Despite the extra trouble of having to cycle through the whole process this evening, it was remarkably easier this time around than when I did this on the 1.1.2 software.

I finally got the MobileChat software installed this time. It seems to have took on this second ziphoning. The first time around, I never did see it show up in the list of packages.

I was surprised to see OpenTTD as something that runs on the phone. Really surprised. It's not exactly playable since the pointer is way to small for pinpoint accuracy. I love me some TTD but not so much that I need to play a game or five on my phone.