Jeran's Den

What's behind that door?

2009-11-23T21:04:00.001-08:00

"Sarge, what's on the other side of that door?"
"Private, some day you'll have a chance to find that out. And on that day, you'll remember this conversation and say to yourself "Well, Sarge was right, I didn't want to know what's behind that door."."

Recovering

2009-11-22T09:39:00.000-08:00

I'm slowly recovering. What I'm eating is staying down now, that's making a world of difference. The fever flashes seem to be fading. I think I'm going to stay out from work Monday, though, to make sure I don't spread this junk and to give me a bit more time to feel healthy.

Down sick

2009-11-20T20:20:00.000-08:00

Being sick sucks. Wednesday afternoon I started feeling a bit off, tender joints and the like. By night it'd gotten serious. Thursday I was running a fever of 100.5 most of the day, peaking over 102 a couple of times. Today the fever broke around noon, but I'm feeling like I was run over by an entire freeway worth of traffic. Eating is a major chore, and I'm spending more time in bed than not. Bleh. Hopefully I'll be feeling better by tomorrow.

Presumptuous boss

2009-11-17T19:56:00.000-08:00

Tallk about gall. My boss (well, actually the overall manager of the department) wants to schedule a dinner to celebrate a project. Fine and good. But this afternoon he wants to know if tomorrow evening's good. And he has the nerve to act shocked when I tell him I won't be able to be there, and to ask why I can't clear my schedule. Well, technically I could rearrange things, yes. But I have a rule: there are only a few people who get to ask me to clear my schedule on 24 hours notice. Family. A handful of close friends. A manager at work is... well, not in either of those categories. So even if I could theoretically clear my schedule, on general principles I'm not going to. On 2 days notice, maybe, if I don't have anything critical already scheduled. But 24 hours notice for a non-emergency? Not happening.

Comic Con sold out

2009-11-12T17:23:00.000-08:00

Gah. Comic Con's sold out of 4-day memberships for 2010. And it's still 9 months or so until the con, only 3 months since this year's.

Instrument calibration

2009-11-11T16:37:00.000-08:00

"I've recalibrated the bogometer twice, and it's still reading off-scale high."

When did I become Cassandra?

2009-11-09T15:48:00.000-08:00

I warned them.
I warned them that we'd modified the FAX-modem code.
I warned them that we probably didn't want to upgrade it unless something was actually broken.
I warned them that, if they upgraded to the new Hylafax code, they'd need to figure out exactly what we'd changed in the old code and make sure we either made the same changes to the new code or didn't need to make them.
I warned them this wouldn't be trivial, and it wasn't something to be handed to someone who wasn't willing or able to get intimate with the internals of our app and Hylafax.

They assigned the work to the outsourced devs in India anyway.
And those devs ignored my warnings.

You can probably guess what's broken. And while you can probably guess how badly, your guess is probably far short of the reality.
And I'm not even going to estimate how long it'll take to fix things. It's Not My Problem. I have a full plate of my own, let the India dev clean up his own mess. And if it screws up the schedule, well, that's Not My Problem either.

Computer assembly

2009-11-07T15:08:00.000-08:00

I'm starting to assemble the router box. It's basically a collection of leftovers: a KN8 motherboard that turned out not to be needed, a cheap Opteron dual-core CPU, a SATA hard drive I dropped and while it works I'm not comfortable putting it in someone else's computer, a SATA DVD burner that turned out not to work with another computer's motherboard. With a little luck, I should be able by next weekend to be able to replace the ancient K6-3 machine that's currently shuffling packets between my home and the outside world.

So far the Antec 300 case is working well. Fairly easy to work in, bottom-mounted power supply, 5x 120mm fans (2 front and a side intake, top and rear exhaust) and cheap. I'll see how it works once the machine's powered up and all the fans are running.

Outdated as it is, it'll out-power my current desktop. Hopefully not for long.

Addendum: mount the CPU heatsink before installing the motherboard.

Addendum 2: the case is done. All that's left is to get one more fan for the side intake, and get a cheap LCD monitor. Then I have to bring it up without blowing a circuit breaker, and rearrange the network to move the cable-modem drop out to the living room so I don't have all the computers on one electric circuit.

2009-11-01T16:04:00.000-08:00

To Michael Duvall, and his ilk among those politicians who paint themselves as exemplars of family values:

see more Lol Celebs

Printers

2009-10-01T12:48:00.000-07:00

I need a new printer. The old Deskjet 895 is starting to go. This time, I'm buying a real laser printer. No more inkjets. And preferably a color one. Brother makes some decent-looking color lasers in the under-$400 range, and all of them seem to do at least PCL6 which should mean no problems under Linux. And some of them are network-capable. It'll be more expensive to get right off, and toner cartridges cost more than inkjet cartridges, but I'll get more pages out of a single set of cartridges so long-term it should be cheaper than the inkjet. And better print quality.

The effect of Windows on computer prices

2009-09-29T18:22:00.000-07:00

People scoff at the "Microsoft tax". Let me put it into perspective: the motherboard, CPU and memory are pretty much the heart of a computer. A retail copy of Windows costs more than those three items combined. You can throw in a video card and still have spent less on the hardware than on Windows, if you aren't building a gaming system. That's a pretty big chunk of a system's price going solely to the operating system.

Yes, I know, OEM copies of Windows are cheaper. But then, OEMs can get better prices on the hardware too.

Falling over

2009-09-29T07:40:00.000-07:00

Bleh. Went for a nap last evening, planned for a half-hour or so just to refresh myself. Woke up at 2:30am long enough to use the bathroom, then crashed again until the alarm went off. I hate that.

Computer parts

2009-09-28T14:08:00.000-07:00

Oy vey. Priced SATA hard drives. Hitachi, 500Gb is $55, 1Tb is $80. I expected good prices, but not that good. At those prices it literally isn't worth it to put less than a terabyte of storage in a new system. Geez.

Subway

2009-09-27T18:03:00.001-07:00

I noticed yesterday that they've put in a Subway a few blocks down Adams from me. It's not Quiznos, but it's a decent alternative when I want something to munch on and don't feel like cooking.

Plans for the weekend

2009-09-25T18:56:00.001-07:00

First, don't go anywhere. The Adams Avenue Street Fair will be running, so parking will be utterly insane.

Second, assemble the new gateway box. It's all sitting there except for the display, it's high time it got put together and gotten ready to go. If I do have to go out, I'm going to stop by Fry's and pick up the cheapest display I can lay my hands on. Otherwise I'll get the display Monday evening.

Third, start pricing parts and assembling a shopping list for the new computers. Priority #1 is getting 3 copies of XP SP3 before Newegg has to stop carrying them.

Tonight is Fire & Ice, followed hopefully by a shard instance or two.

Computer builds

2009-09-20T17:21:00.000-07:00

OK, Newegg has AMD Athlon II and Phenom II 3.0GHz dual-core CPUs for about $100 each. That's pretty good. They're Socket AM3 chips. So, the plan is to get the best motherboard I can find in AM3 that'll support the highest-end quad-core chips. Then populate it with the dual-core chips with an eye towards upgrading to quad-core as prices fall. I want 3.0GHz because Everquest 2 is CPU-bound and needs all the clock cycles and memory it can get, so in the short term I'm better off trading cores for clock speed and more memory.

I've decided to go with the Antec 300 case for the systems. It's shorter so it'll fit better, it's got a bottom-mounted power supply, and it's cheaper. With a little appropriate arranging of where to put the boxes, the filters shouldn't be too hard to get at.

I also need a laptop. I've pretty well settled on the HP dv7, but desktop boxes are a higher priority. Now to start arranging the money.

Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction

2009-09-16T18:59:00.000-07:00

Ye almighty gods, they're still obsessing over that. It was what, 5 years ago? Let it go already. I know the Religious Right like to scream about even the slightest hint of secondary sexual characteristics (at least female ones, male ones seem to be just fine by them), but it's high time to tell them to get a life.

Definition of gun control

2009-09-05T00:57:00.000-07:00

Gun control: a 1-inch diameter group slightly above center-of-mass.

Lottery

2009-08-25T00:16:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow's Mega Millions lottery draw is for $252 million dollars. A quarter of a billion. That's a lot of money.

Threes

2009-08-22T17:56:00.001-07:00

"Three things never trust in:
the maiden sworn as pure,
the vows a king has given,
and the ambush that is sure."

Filksongs

2009-08-22T17:49:00.000-07:00

I got a bit of money from Mom back when I was helping her deal with the last of the stuff at Grandpa's farm for the auction. I blew a bit of it on a USB-interface tape deck so I can transfer some of my old tapes over to MP3. A lot of these are old, late 80s and early 90s. I'm worried the tapes themselves will be going bad, so I want the music copied over.

Typically, the "easy beginner's" software that's supposed to make things simple fails to work at all. The "advanced, don't use this unless you're an expert" software, by comparison, is dead simple to use and records without a hitch. I'll have to enter all the album and track information by hand, but then I didn't expect Gracenote to know diddly about Bayfilk tapes anyway.

Next item to get: one of the USB-interface turntables so I can copy some of my old LPs (including a bunch of Kiss albums from their first incarnation, and some C.W. McCall) over.

Funny Republicans and the stock market

2009-08-21T09:03:00.000-07:00

It's funny, but back in February and March the Republicans were all over Obama because the stock market was continuing to fall, even though he'd only had a month or two in office and hadn't had a chance to finish getting set up and start actually doing things. But now that the market's back at 9400 and steadily climbing, it's all "Oh, the stock market doesn't matter, it's the real economy that's still bad.".

Lost day

2009-08-19T23:42:00.000-07:00

OK, this hasn't happened in a while. I seem to have lost a day this week. It's Wednesday, but my internal calendar's saying it was Tuesday.

2009-08-17T01:15:00.001-07:00

"Knife? Son, he ain't even the sharpest spoon in the drawer."

2009-08-03T16:42:00.001-07:00

Oh joy. A bee colony, not a major problem. A colony of Africanized bees right in the columns around the office's front doors... Big problem.