Author Archives: admin

Tile Floor Installed

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The final touches are being put on the new tile floor in the master bathroom this weekend. This is the first big, costly upgrade to the place since I moved in last year. This should rectify the absolutely dumb setup that preceded it: carpet.

Strangely, when the carpet came up, there was at least one other vinyl floor beneath it, then the wood sub floor. Why people do this stuff is beyond me. Getting a toilet installed and tacking down the carpet is all that remains to get things back to work again for this newly upgraded room.

First up, what it was when I got here:

Now, what it is today:

I can almost feel the property value going up as I write this.

How Did You Spend Your Mother's Day?

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I spent mine (and Steve & April’s) pulling out and replacing 2 toilets at the homestead. It as one of the most horrifying experiences I’ve ever been a part of, primarily due to the cleaning and moving task it presented.

All of this pain was undertaken to kick off the re-do of the floor of the master bathroom, which for reasons unknown to me, the previous owners had carpeted. Hopefully that will soon be remedied, but until then I have the scars of the toilet removal that will haunt my every waking moment.

Flights, Frights, and Long Painful Nights

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Another week, another trip to LA. This week brought the following interesting and weird happenings to bear…

  • I walked across the street for lunch and saw Robert Blake. TV really does make people look fat, because this guy is a straw in real life.
  • For a change, I stayed at the LAX Westin. It was a comfortable bed but I got very little sleep. There is evidently a kennel or pound within 100 feet of the hotel and dogs were yelping from 3am on.
  • My boss purchased a Ducati motorcycle. She is coordinated enough to have dropped it twice in less than a week. And it wasn’t even moving. I’ve started a hospital vigil for her now.
  • The flight back was eventful. I had no seat assignment, the flight prior to mine had been canceled, and the ground crew had no idea how many people were on the plane, how many seats remained, and how much weight they could take.

That, in a nutshell, was my end of week trip. I think that LA may need to modify their visitor message to be…

Welcome to LA. It’s like a whole other planet.

Newsletter Finally Available

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I’ve finally completed my novella and posted it online. Go take a look at the latest creation, almost 15 months in the making: MS Insights Newsletter for 2004

Go on, read it. You know you want to.

Bad, Bad Microsoft

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I had one of those wake up calls today where I remember why its best not to leave all the thinking to someone else.

Microsoft’s XP Windows Update site pushed an upgrade to my home PC. Since it is automated, all I had to do was say “yes” to reboot the system after the update arrived. Once I did, I got a “blue screen of death”, had no working audio, and shortly found several dead files written to my hard drive. Of course, the WU Crash dialog appears shortly after my 3rd reboot, telling me that Microsoft has no idea what just happened. Funny, my PC worked just fine up until today.

To make this long story short, Microsoft pushed down drivers for my nForce2 APU audio SoundStorm product, and they were very broken. I had to roll back to older drivers on the nvidia.com web site to get working again. Now the Windows Update site keeps demanding that I install the “new” drivers again.

Talking with some folks at NVIDIA, it sounds like I’m not alone in this debacle. It was proof enough again why taking human common sense out of the loop on technology is a bad, bad thing. Shame on you, Microsoft.

Long Waits and Big Bills

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I found out today that my chase after a sports car has ended before it began. After consulting with several dealers it appears that everyone is “allocated out” for the year. That means that no one can special order cars until the manufacturer decides to extend an offer to do so. Bummer for me, and stupid for the car maker, since I have money in hand.

On the other hand I’m headed into a mini house overhaul for the master bathroom. Conservative figures put the upgrade at around $4K, but depending on what else comes along for the ride (new door frames, additional room painting, furniture, etc) it could go up from there. So much for saving money by buying a place.

Common Sense vs. The Doctor

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It’s now a few weeks on from my second, knee bending ski accident and a few more weeks further out from my snowboarder tackle accident. Things seem to be getting better, but slowly, so I figured why not go visit the doctor and see what the matter is?

The doctor told me, in not so many words, “don’t ski.” Thanks, I figured that part out. So now I’m supposed to wait another few weeks and see if things improve on their own, even though I have pain now (I should take Alleve, he says) but no visible signs of trouble. And I can’t even imagine how much money the healthcare companies get for this short visit.

Makes you wonder what we did before modern medicine (and HMOs) came about, doesn’t it?

Weekends are for…

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Not to be lame, but here is a commercial parody of my weekend.

  • Buying a new motherboard to fix a dead PC server: $89
  • Investigating low flow toilet replacements: $308
  • Spending all day rebuilding PCs: $ uncalculatable
  • Walking several miles on a bad leg and coming home to find you are so sore you can barely move: Priceless

So again a weekend has passed and my newsletter is not complete. I’ll shoot for next weekend and I’ll keep from walking several miles to prove that I can.

Spam Nuker

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Oh how I hate comment spam. I have tried everything and it just keeps coming. Now I’ve found a site with the best way to kill it for your WordPress 1.5.x install: CJD Spam Nuke. You install it, activate it, go to the comments moderation page, then nuke every single last lame posting. It happened so fast I had to check it twice to make sure it worked.

If you have comment spam, go get this plugin and kill it dead. I did.

Bumb Leg and other Happenings

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As I sit here wondering if my leg will stop hurting, I think back to a weekend only 8 days ago. I was on the slopes of Heavenly, watching the snow fall in feet per day, knowing that I was pushing it to move so fast in such varied conditions. Yet I zoomed ahead, and at the middle of the last day of the trip, managed a spectacular high speed 180, putting me flying backwards down the mountain.

If I would have just fallen over I could have been alright. Instead, I tried to complete another 180 to put me back in the right direction, only my left leg stayed in place. This helped pull me to the ground in a crumpled heap, courtesy of my now painful knee and ankle area. Fully one week ago I was in agony, now I sit here with nagging pain when I sit in place too long (at least its not from walking).

I really wonder sometimes how I get myself into these messes. But then I remember: it’s me and I seem to enjoy having something to complain about. So now I know.