Latest Happenings

Not much exciting going on to blog about these days, mostly just boring details a/b my so-called life, but several good tech. links though.  I’ve mostly been telling my stories via pictures lately.  For anyone interested, here’s the latest run-down: o Watched and shot a zillion pictures of my daughter’s last two home soccer games. She will be graduating this year.  Got several good pics posted to FB and one to Flickr. o Successfully upgraded the firmware on my new camera and have been taking lots and lots of pictures of various and diverse things. o Successfully installed Ubuntu 10.10 on my mom’s new laptop.  I tried my distro (SimplyMepis) 1st, but it does not have latest video drivers required for her system and, it bricked her Windows-7 bootloader (to boot), which I was able to restore after making a “recovery” disk using my work computer. o “Boxed my boxwoods” – My boxwood bushes have grown so tall and big that I can no longer see out the window in my office room, so this weekend I cut them down to a/b 1/3 their size.  This is the 1st time I’ve done this, but I’ve been meaning to do this for several years, but always forgot until they bloomed in (very early) spring (then it’s too late). o Got the last of the Christmas lights down, finally – yay! o Shot this background image (unmodified except for cropping) using my computer’s mouse with a glowing blue scroll-stick, a 2″ tall toy soldier and a handkerchief. Story: I left my computer on overnite to download a CD worth of data (Ubuntu 10.10 for my mom’s new laptop).  My mouse glows blue, I laid my handkerchief over it in order to sleep better, but woke up early staring at this eerie “glowing blue cloud” & decided to make this using a 2 inch tall toy soldier my daughter found awhile back. I’ve been feeling like this soldier – standing guard over everything important to him while possibly about to be sucked into the great vortex of the unknown. If so, resist or go boldly for adventure w/my head up? o Now I’m coming down w/a cold – Oh Joy, Lucky me¡¡¡  Got me some Zicam® and Tylanol® though!   Fox’s `Fringe’ a not-so-distant mirror of our era?   Expect Script Tutorial   6 Tricks with AWK   Should Younger Developers be Paid More?   How to Get the Most Out of Your Laptop with Linux   Setting Up Linux Cgroups   HTML5 Primer: How To Use the Audio Tag   Make your lost phone ring for free!

Happy Martin Luther (King) Day!

(Two Great Men with the same name who equally deserve a Holiday!)
I actually did this many years ago, but decided to add it as a blog post today.

1483-1546	1929-1968
Leader of the Protestant Reformation	Leader of the Civil Rights Movement

The Last Inch is Always the Hardest

Got through my dental visit (1st dental work I’ve had to have done in 8 yrs), but at least it wasn’t due to any new cavities; & no pain (= successful dental visit!) This time, I took my camera over to St. Andrew (Church I grew up in) & did a photo-shoot of the old place (mostly inside b/c the weather here has been grey, cold, & just plain ugly for over a week now). They (Denton) still had some snow on the ground, but we had none here. Then hung out at “Jupiter House Coffee” on the Square (See photo) briefly to check work emails, etc. before toddling back home to work. Other than that, just working & hanging out trying to stay warm. Getting a little cabin fever though. Fortunately Winter is fairly short here! Went to my daughter’s soccer tournament Saturday & shot a zillion action shots of her team playing. I wanted to try out the film camera (w/the (new) zoom lens & the shims I made, but it has 200iso film & the thick cloud cover would not allow for enough light for action shots, so I stuck w/digital & higher virtual iso!

Except for a single sunrise and a single sunset (different days), I’ve not seen the sun at all since I got back here last Sunday (really since Saturday, 1/8 in Houston when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky & I spent the entire day in company meetings. Normally this would get me slightly bummed, but I really had a bunch of indoor stuff to catch up on this weekend that I wouldn’t do if the weather was better. I also took the opportunity to do a couple of “foggy” photos. Also broke out my mom’s computer to begin setting up for her. Connected it to our network & installed Firefox, & downloaded Mepis (Sun. Nite), that’s a/b all I have time for for now. Wish I had some other good links to post (stuff other than just details a/b my boring life) but, I haven’t found anything else interesting lately – guess this is just a slow time of the year.

Busy, Busy, Busy!

What a busy week! I spent last week at my mom’s in preparation to drive the last 100 miles or so to Houston for a weekend business conference at company headquarters. The idea was to avoid flying, or spending most of a work day driving all the way down. I just worked most of the week from her house then drove down early Friday and worked in the office that day. I had a great time meeting several of my co-workers who I communicate with all the time but never had a face to attach with the name! I also got to take a lot of pictures at the main dinner. I drove back today, but now the pbm. is is that it was a very short weekend and promises to be another very busy week.

Old-West looking row of buildings along US 59 between Lufkin and Diboll Texas. This might make a fun movie-set!

The good news is I made it back safe. Yesterday, the weather in Texas was cloudless and in the 60s, today it was completely overcast and raining and 36 degrees for the entire four hour journey. Forecasters were predicting possible ice on the roadways near home, but I decided to chance it. I ended up having 4 degrees to give (before bridges would start icing) the entire way. The snow all went north and east.

I’ve got so much I want to do these days & so much that i don’t want, but have to do – I don’t think I’ve even recovered from the holidays yet. Now, my mom bought herself a new ‘puter & webcam, & of course, wants me to set it all up “just like her old one” (but faster), so she sent it home w/me (I already have waaaay too many computers around here now!). It came w/M$-Winblows 7, but she’s used to Linux (thx to me, lol) with Xplanet, my weather app. & launch buttons to do everything she does with a computer (check email, surf the web, download / view here digital pictures, and now add Skype). By running Linux, it’s much easier for me to maintain AND much lower maintenance to begin with (no malware threats, defragging, forced upgrades or performance degradation over time, and I can barely get around in Windows anyway)!

This mural is at the four-way stop in Alto, Texas where US 69 and TX 21 intersect. I have gone through here a zillion times since childhood visiting all my East Texas relatives, but this seems to be the 1st time I had a good camera with me. My poor Aggies ran outta time & got outscored in the Cotton Bowl. I was at the Company dinner during the game, so I missed seeing it. Oh well, still a great season though! Bits & Bytes: Configuring PostgreSQL for Pretty Good Performance