Saturday - went to some yard sales,
picked up a sun shade for the explorer, some goggles for gas welding,
all for a dollar or two. Then I mowed the front lawn around lunch, but
decided that it was too warm to do the back. Tomorrow perhaps. I also
need to apply lots of fungicide to the back yard, and dandelion killer.
The back yard is pretty well destroyed, so I need to come up with a
plan and re-do it. Probably more fruit trees, a fountain or pool, and a
smaller lawn. And I need to clean up the front flower beds and trim the
rose bushes. My daffodils are coming up nicely.
I went and looked at some land, outside of town, for building on, but it was way way out there, though cheap.
It occurs to me, I could find out who got that RS/6000 and see what they'd sell it for...
Hey, this is my two year blogiversary, check out the posts for the first week! Yup, those are the same "ancient dual Celerons" that I was talking about yesterday.
Friday 19 March
2004
Friday - working away.
I think my 17" monitor is just too small for the eight or nine windows
I tend to have open. I also learned that someone I know paid to have a Rs/6000 unix workstation removed from their office. Arrgghhhh.
On the other hand, maybe it will stimulate me to write better tools for
windows... In fact, I have a bunch of ancient dual celeron 450's
that run Redhat, so I can use those part of the time. I'll have to put
another monitor on the desk.
I did a favor and dropped a friends young daughter off at the movies. She did the whole "embarrassed to be seen with an adult" thing, where "You can drop me off here..." starts a block from the theater. I explained that I was obligated
to see her walk through the front door... Oh, the horrors of being
fourteen! She's just lucky that I didn't get out and escort her to "her little friends" as we adults like to put it :-)
Thursday 18 March 200
Thursday
- I have a 'sound machine' that someone gave me. It makes sounds of the
ocean, of birds, of rain, and so on. I rarely use it because I usually
have an overhead fan and humidifier running at night, so it would have
to be really loud to be heard. Annoyingly loud, which defeats the
purpose. It also uses batteries at a prodigious clip. But today I
turned it on and put it on the floor to tease the cats. They were
mildly interested - apparently the fidelity of the cricket and bird
noises is not enough to fool them.
My 'car camera' has died. It was a cheap kodak digital that I kept in
the glove compartment, so it's hard to say whether it was the cheapness
or the repetitive heat and cold of sitting in the car. Anyway,
despite small clicking sounds, it no longer functions, even with brand
new batteries. :-(
In other news, Concord is apparently getting a Fry's computer store,
yay! Of course the city officials apparently bribed them with about
$1.6 million worth of incentives, but hey, I live in So. California, it
won't come out of my taxes.
Wednesday 17 March 2004
Wednesday - Happy
St. Patrick's Day!! I worked all day, again. My coworker Tim has a
balky computer - possibly virus related, although Norton says "no".
We've tried installing and uninstalling all sorts of stuff, to no great
avail. Finally we updated the BIOS and the hard drive was missing on
reboot. This was heart stopping, but we eventually got things going
again. We are pretty sure it was the horrible SBC/Yahoo software that
messed things up. And we discovered that his modem does not act as a firewall!
In other news...still working.
Went out for lunch at the Thai Cafe, and then back to work... The CFD
utilities on the PC need a bit of work still, but I just have to press
ahead.
Tuesday 16 March 2004
Tuesday - busy. Went to lunch today with a
prospective employer - someone who wants an analysis done. Hmm. Well,
never turn down work, that's my motto currently. But things are going
to get busy if this goes through. Worked until eleven.
Monday 15 March 2004
Monday - working away. I'm down to the
last few boxes of work notes, which I mess with when I get tired of cfd
and control laws. The filing cabinets are getting full.
My friend Tim is having a lot of trouble with his PC after installing
the SBC/Yahoo DSL and associated software. Apparently there is a lot of
spyware, malware, and whatnot in it, as well as being bad software to
start with. After a number of calls he found a tech support person who
told him that his modem can be configured as a hardware firewall, and
that he can remove all the SBC/Yahoo software and simply use IE or
Netscape. We'll see. That was also one of my suggestions, though I
thought he'd have to go buy a router ($35-$55) for the firewall thing.
Fingers crossed.
Sunday 14 March 2004
Sunday - picked up another small filing
cabinet for $5, from someone selling stuff at the side of the road. Not
as nice as the first two, but it will do having hanging file folders,
unlike them, and the price was right.
In the late afternoon I went roller blading with some friends, across
the street at the local junior college. Skateboarding is not allowed,
but skating is apparently fine. At least the security guards who walked by
didn't shoo us away. Sunday is of course fairly quiet and the wide sidewalks are nice. I did reasonably well, only
fell a couple of times, and then only when I started getting overly aggressive. I
wore knee pads and hand/wrist guards, and the guards worked very well!
We saw several large owls, sitting in trees. Probably
waiting for the unwary rabbit or squirrel near sundown. I've seen them
hunting at this time of day out at the county park.
In the evening we watched Matrix I on TNT, then Matrix II on tape. I never saw II or Matrix III, so it was interesting. In fact I'd forgotten a lot of detail in the first movie. Now I'll have to watch the third movie.
The fourteen year-old went off to see "The Passion of the Christ" and came back saying that it was an intense movie. Well, yes...
Saturday's movies were "Wargames" - on a really bad tape, but fun. The second movie was "National Velvet" which was horribly
acted for the most part, but interesting. I'd never seen it (the movie, not the bad acting)
before. Toward the end of the movie the accident traumatized trainer (Mickey Rooney) regains
his courage and decides to race the horse himself. But Velvet
(Elisabeth Taylor at age 11) wants to race herself, and he selflessly lets her do so. She wins the championship
race but is disqualified for falling off her horse after the finish
line. Hackneyed but fun. I liked the character of Mrs. Brown.
Picture of the Week
Photo Notes: The eagle over dad's garage. It looks like it needs a bit of paint.
