WEEK 15 2008
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Saturday
- keeping busy. I changed the tires on the Probe & had it aligned.
One tire is new as of last year so I kept it. But when I looked at the
other three - one was separating, one had a sidewall bubble, and the
third...I just didn't trust after the issues with the other three.
About $300 out the door, with alignment and balancing; but it's now
pleasant to drive, not the noisy chore that it had been.
Picked up some used audio tapes at a Friends of the Library sale, so that's nice.
Downloaded and backed up all of last weeks field inspection data. I forgot the laptop power cord, but hey, it has a battery :-)
Did a couple of bills.
In
the evening helped a friend get her contacts transferred from an old
xv6600 to a new xv6800 - that was easy, we just 'beamed' them via IR
port. Moving favorites for IE was tougher, we needed to download and
install the newest and bestest Activesync 4.5 on her laptop, then move
the favorites folder to a laptop from the old 6600, then back up to the
6800.
Apparently you can't beam folders. Why not, you ask? I
have no idea. Microsoft's decisions on WM6 seem to be completely
capricious - one thing works well, another basic capability will be
missing. But my friend likes her 6800 - much better than the 6700 with
its connectivity issues and faint screen that Verizon agreed to replace
free. Like me she misses that larger screen on the 6600, but small is 'in' right now.
Then we headed out to see Blink
at the LPAC. Last show of the season for us, and as a magician's show,
was sold out, with lots of kids in the audience. Old style card tricks
and pretty assistants, swords through boxes, coins from kids ears and
various other bits of classic stagecraft. Fun stuff!
Friday 11 April
2008
Friday
- another hot day, with blowing wind and sand. Yuck.
In the evening we went to a LPAC performance of the Wailin' Jennys,
a Canadian band. Good fun music. Three female musicians, and a guy on
the fiddle. Mostly their own stuff, but they did cover a Belafonte tune
and a old Emmy Lou Harris piece.
Thursday 10 April 2008
Thursday
- back at work. It's getting warm out.
Wednesday I was able to get my SEP-IRA contribution in, for tax year 2007.
It
was hard to navigate their web site, the SEP-IRA option is hidden from
easy view for some reason, so a phone call was necessary. The nice lady
walked me through the account setup and told me where to send the
check. I really didn't mean to leave the contributions so late -
after April 15th I'll set up and start regular contributions to a 2008
account.
She mentioned that their office, with 75 support staff,
were doing an average of 50 new accounts per person, every day. So I'm
not alone in a dilatory wilderness.
Last weekend I 'fixed' my windows pc. It had serious overheating issues
and it seemed likely that the fan had come detached from the processor
- it would overheat even when idling, and it had been a long while
since it was possible to run something like a processor intensive virus
or malware scan, let alone a finite element code.
So I opened it up and wiggled the heat sink unit, a huge after market toroidal
Zalman unit. No play, no looseness, nada. Hmmm. On close inspection I
could see that the fins of the heat sink were clogged down near the
processor, though the greatest area of them, well away on the periphery, were clear. A
thin knife and a can of compressed air sufficed to remove the cat hair
and dust from the lower parts of the heat sink - and the problem was
solved. The pc was able to complete an entire scan with Spybot Search
& Destroy without getting within 20F of the alarm temperature.
Interesting that the innermost 30% of the fan made such a big
difference. Perhaps I could have stayed with the stock Intel heat sink
and fan, way back when I first built the unit.
Wednesday 9 April 2008
Wednesday
- It's not difficult to get a Ventura County library card.
Essentially
you ask, and they give it to you. No ID required, no proof of
residence.
There are two libraries within walking distance of my place
in Ventura, so that's nice.
I didn't work today, the mapper broke, so I took it into Los Angeles
for replacement. Back to work tomorrow though.
Tuesday 8 April 2008
Tuesday
- Book #13
was Alexander
Hamilton,
by Ron Chernow. It was interesting. I'd always had a mild distrust and
dislike of Hamilton, it seems that it was possibly an artifact of his
relatively early death. He wasn't around to write his biography and
gild his accomplishments like Adam's and Jefferson. Indeed both men
were enemies of his and happily distorted and lied about his
accomplishments and beliefs, long after he was in the ground and
couldn't refute them. Adams comes off rather badly, but Jefferson comes
off as a real snake. Aaron Burr comes off worst of all...
I was thinking about installing those pavers in the side yard in
Lancaster. I bought them this
week in 2005.
They are sitting in the side yard still, overgrown by
weeds, three years later. Urrk. I should mention, in my
defense,
that the place I intend to put
them is full of cactus. The kind with really fine and itchy needles
that pass right through gloves and long sleeved shirts and remain in
your skin for a week or two. My
handyman refuses to clear them, so I will have to do it myself.
One of these days.
Monday 7 April 2008
Monday
- I bought my brother a book for his birthday last weekend. I
told him that we'd
considered getting him a laptop but that he'd said he didn't want one.
He replied that what he said was that he didn't want to buy one, not
that he wouldn't like
one. Too late...Fatal
Revenant was his birthday
present!
Sunday we drove about, looking for baby hawks (ravens?) in the nests
commonly found on telephone poles in the west valley. We were probably
a couple of weeks late - the nests all seemed abandoned. Too bad,
that'd be a neat picture.
Sunday 6 April 2008
Sunday
- Cut down some small tree's in the back yard. They were too near the
block walls, being volunteer trees seeded from wind borne seeds. That
Sawz-All came in handy. There is another, not so near the wall. I may
leave it for next year - it's nice to have a speck of shade on that
side of the yard.
A friend told me that they were selling potted Cherry tree's at a local
supermarket for $10 each - an amazing steal. Bare root can cost more
than that. But I was just too busy running errands to get by there.
There's room in the back of the yard yet, they'd fit. I'm told that the
new thing is to get a couple or several different varieties, plant them
side by side, and then wrap the trunks about each other. You get a
variety of blooming dates, a variety of fruit, and staggered harvest
dates, all at a minimum amount of real estate.
