Categories
House Photos Rants

The Pit and Despair

I have just completed the first phase of the X-10 light switch install. After two days I’ve swapped out 8 switches and now have all the stairway lights properly wired. It was pretty touch and go there for a while: when things don’t work and patience wears out you can do some pretty dumb things, a bad idea when playing with 110 volts.

In any case, even though it isn’t pretty, things are working. Now the huge task of mess cleanup comes next. I have boxes, wire cuttings, wall remains, and a whole lot of dust and muck to clean up after. I can’t ask myself if its worth it because I know it will be… it’s just the pile of crud that awaits removal that makes me think otherwise.

Categories
General

First 04/04 Season Ski Days

I just returned this evening from two mostly full days of skiing up in Lake Tahoe. There was no new snow this week, but the weather is cold enough to keep last week’s snow around, so it worked out OK. Additionally, the resorts had the snow makers turned on, so there was some “fresh stuff” to be skied.

I’m really tired but glad to have capped off two days of skiing already this year. It certainly helps take the sting out of the loss of a job when you are freezing on the lifts and hobling around in pain at the end of the day of hard skiing. 🙂

Categories
General Work

Stick a fork in me

… I’m done. After spending no more than an hour going through the various inner workings of HR, benefits, legal obligations, and the standard “why are you leaving” talk I am now officially no longer employed. It was an interesting road taken to get to this point, but that road is now complete.

My next task is to go do some serious skiing, work on the house, assemble a PC for someone’s birthday, fly an R/C plane or two and do a lot of Christmas shopping. Oh, and that whole looking for a new job thing, too. Is it always the case that “to-do’s” fill all freely available time or is it just poor time management?

Categories
Photos Review Technology

BenQ 951 LCD monitor

I am in the process of assembling a completely new PC for a friend of mine and I just received the best part: a new BenQ 951 19″ LCD monitor. At 1280×1024 resolution it has a 700:1 contrast ratio and appears brighter than my laptop display. Digital photos, text, and web pages look great on it. I haven’t tried yet, but I’ll bet image editing works well too.

The only thing I know it won’t do well is play games, thanks to a slow 20ms response time. However, if you don’t play games this could well be the best 19″ display on the market today. And at only $419.00 its a steal. Go out and get one today… I know I would if I needed one.

Categories
General Work

Job Search Speed Up

I am now in the mode of serious job searching. From a meeting yesterday I have a clear mandate to go off and find a new job as soon as possible and I need to make it my top priority. Right up there with buying Christmas gifts and paying mortgages, that is.

There are several ways at looking at this decision, but at the moment I find myself wondering how I can rationalize my need to be passionate and engaged in my next job while balancing my need for steady income. I see many opportunities before me if I’m willing to seek them out and wait, but the strong desire to keep a roof over my head tends to take precedence these days. I suppose I will see if principle or payment wins out in the end.

Categories
Rants Review Technology

Roku Update

After about 12 hours of grinding away, my server finally finished its scan of all my music and made itself ready for streaming. For about 5 hours yesterday I had everything working great, searching and streaming songs, playlists, and the like. Great, this is just what I was looking for.

Then I noticed that my laptop couldn’t go to any web sites. And my router appeared to be dead. Hmm, that’s not right.

I discovered that at least twice an hour, for some reason, my router, a Linksys, goes all wonky and stops responding to anyone but the server and Roku client. No one can be pinged, tracerouted, or communicated to. Cycling power on the router brings it back to life, or I can sit around for 5 minutes or so until it clears itself.

It is truly baffling why this happens, but the music still runs. I suppose more diagnosis is in order, but I find that UPnP is neither truly universal nor plug-and-play. Figures.

Categories
General Rants

Holiday Online Ordering

I spent a good part of today doing some online shopping for Christmas gifts. Much to my surprise, after doing research this past week, capturing prices and URLs, I go back and find that most of the prices change quite dramatically. A combination of local taxes (thanks California!) shipping costs that aren’t known, and just plain bait-and-switch tactics by the web sites have conspired to raise just about every price.

So when you do your shopping and you see a price that is just too good to be true, be sure you verify it by going down the purchase path until the tax, shipping, and availability questions get answered. And watch out for those restocking fees… they’ve gone up to nearly 20% on some items this year.

Categories
General Photos Site News

A Photo Experiment

It’s a P-51 fighter converted to racing form at the Reno Air Races.

If it works as it should, there should be a thumbnail image and the ability to see the full thing. Hopefully you will see it as well.

Categories
Rants

Why Pizza Hut Sucks

I tried for a third time in as many months to find a Pizza Hut, any location, at any amount of purchase price, to deliver a pizza to my door. They simply won’t do it. The closest one is just 3 miles away, I could probably see it if I stood on the roof of the house. No, they would rather refer me to two other locations that are even further away. And of course, neither of them will drive here, either.

So I’m left with some local shops that do an OK job for pizza and charge through the nose, or I have to get up, get out, and get the pie myself. Figuring in the fuel cost these days for the truck, its a wash if I drive to the location and back for the pizza. Guess if I want better service I have to get a better, more fuel sipping form of transportation? In any case, Pizza Hut earns the big thumbs down from me, again.

Categories
General Rants

Post Spam Sucks

Just after I posted that last story I went to look at comments. I found that I have been spammed about 200 times since I last checked, basically once for every time the blog gets updated. This really bites, so I’ve turned off unmoderated comments again until I can find a better way to do things.

That is just poor behavior and I find it difficult to believe it does anything more than upset people. I certainly won’t be going to any casino mortgage gaming web site for my favorite interest rates again.

EDIT: I have found an excellent site that has many possible solutions for spam comments. If you run WP like I do you’ll want to visit the WP Spam Comments site and get some help. Highly recommended.