August 2003 Archives

Much rain today: the grass is getting happy again, after a few weeks of crackly brown dormancy.

Created breadcrumb files (one for each index.html in the site) to replace the JavaScript breadcrumb generator code. It's better to avoid JavaScript if possible—not all browsers run with scripting enabled.

This means I get to upload all the HTML files one more time (having just done it the other day after upgrading to CityDesk 2.0). It doesn't take as long as I thought.

Dropped off a poster at Prairie Gardens to be framed. It's an aerial photograph of Champaign-Urbana that we've had for many years; it was in a cheap & nasty plastic frame, and we decided it was time for a good one.

Rather expensive, too: $81. The poster itself only cost $5 or so…

Got the site half-uploaded when suddenly the Pair.com FTP server started returning errors. Guess I get to try again.

CNN reports that NASA is working on a new spacecraft, with the carefully-limited mission of ferrying crews to & from the space station. They hope to be flying in 2008.

We'll see. Perhaps they'll keep a lid on mission creep, on the need for Exciting New Technology, and on the cost of development (not to mention the cost of flying the thing once it's developed). Or maybe it will end up costing more, and doing less, than the Shuttle.

I know which seems more likely to me.

Finished reading Wide Blue Yonder, by Jean Thompson. A rather different book than her previous efforts: more characters, different characters, and a much more complex plot. A good read.

Grandparents coming today.

Harrumph: I've copied a few CDs to nessus, and play them sometimes. (The speakers on the computer are better than anywhere else in the house; so why not?) The Windows 2000 Performance Monitor thingy tells me that Windows Media Player is using only 8MB of memory and 2–3% of CPU time.

So why does it skip so much?

Thunderstorms this morning, right at 6:00am: an extra alarm, since the regular one wasn't doing a very good job of waking me up.

Fun with Unicode:

I lifted these from The Trouble With EM 'n EN, an article at A List Apart: alistapart.com/stories/emen. I might start using some of them here, now that these pages are really UTF-8 encoded XHTML.

(I see that Internet Explorer doesn't render the em & en spaces or the dot leader correctly, and puts way too much space after the single & double primes. Mozilla Firebird, on the other hand, renders everything correctly.)

[Actually, the single & double primes look fine when viewed live—i.e., with the style sheet. It must be a deficiency in Internet Explorer's default font.]

2:00pm, and more rain: I don't get to walk over to the IGA salad bar for lunch, but at least the dead bugs will finally get washed off the car.

People are getting all worked up over Howard Dean, who's campaigning vigorously for the Presidency (only 432 days until Election Day—vote early, vote often!). I wish I could be as enthusiastic, but I can't. It's difficult for me to trust anyone who wants to be President, and it's impossible for me to believe that the electorate understands the nation and the political process well enough to choose a good candidate.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is just my misanthropic tendencies getting the better of me (again). Maybe Howard Dean really is qualified to be President, and maybe the voters really are intelligent enough to recognize that.

That would be nice.

Recently I was poking around on Mr. Dean's web site, www.deanforamerica.com. Nice design. Maybe when I have time I'll read a little more of it and de-cynicize myself. If that's possible.

Interesting: Vinod Valloppillil, co-author of the first Halloween Document, uses CityDesk to run his blog (vinod.com/blog). He says:

The scripting language is quite weak right now (no vars, basically nonexistant string manipulation functs, hard to scope & define content sets) but it's gotten the job done so far and I'm sure it'll get better over time.

Reading this, and remembering various comments Vinod has posted to the CityDesk discussion forum, I thought of the Architecture Astronauts article from www.joelonsoftware.com, and wondered if Vinod was in orbit somewhere. Just how much string-manipulation functionality does CityScript need?

Paid a lunchtime visit to Champaign Computer, to buy a longer-than-six-foot printer cable. They had a nice ten-foot model for only $20. One more trip under the desk to wrestle with the cable tray, and I'll be able to print on the LaserJet again.

The LaserJet—a IIIp—is eleven years old: I bought it at Softwarehouse—later renamed CompUSA—on my way home from the Yellowknife trip of 1992. In eleven years it's given me no trouble at all, and been well worth the $1200 I paid for it.

I just checked CDW: the LaserJet 1000 goes for $200.

There's a new article in the CityDesk Knowledge Base describing how to do breadcrumbs (i.e., those links under the headline at the top of the page) without JavaScript: basically, put the links in the Extra2 field of the index article, then use CityScript in the article templates to copy it into the articles. That would work, except that I only use HTML View (to prevent the mangy MS HTML edit control from scrambling my code) and HTML View isn't available for the Extra2 field. I suppose I could create an article named ‘breadcrumbs’ and put the links in the body there. Then I could use HTML View, and all will be well.

Tonight is Mars Night, and astronomers—professional & otherwise—are getting all worked up about the closest opposition in 60,000 years (except that it gets almost this close every 80 years or so). I suppose if I had a telescope, and clear skies, and an hour or two to spend stargazing, I might be just as excited; but I don't.

Instead, while putting away the hose and sprinkler last night, I took a moment to look up at the sky: “Yup, Mars is pretty bright,” I said to myself.

Supposedly, the answer to yesterday's JavaScript problem is to decorate the code thusly:

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
// <![CDATA[
...code here...
// ]]>
</script>

[Indeed, this fixed the problem.]

A few paragraphs tucked away inside yesterday's newspaper report that the Doors are touring again. “After thirty years, replacing Jim didn't seem so insurmountable,” said Ray Manzarek and/or Robbie Krieger.

John Densmore disagreed, but settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

(Looks like www.thedoors.com picked up a new site design when I wasn't paying attention. Very nice.)

Curious cell-phone accessory: the Beach Chair Phone Stand. Get yours today from store.kyocera-wireless.com (or not—the site says they're back-ordered).

Lately, a few of the keys on my cell phone have become rather flaky: I press them gently, I mash them vigorously, I grind my thumbnail into them, and nothing happens. Figuring that two years of being played with by Jacob had gummed up the works, I took the faceplate off and swiped at it with a tissue. No luck.

Hm…I have some anti-static wipes for the monitor; perhaps they will help.

[They didn't.]

Downloaded the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report, a 9.8MB, 248-page behemoth. Skimmed it a bit—don't hold your breath waiting for me to read the entire thing—and found no surprises.

The big question is whether NASA has the competence to design, build & fly a replacement for the decades-old, ever-shrinking shuttle 'fleet'. The CAIB report is unlikely to have anything to say on that point.

Back in March, Kodak announced the LS633. For a long time, the Kodak web site apologized that the LS633 was not yet available in the United States, and—not having $400 lying around anyway—I lost track of it.

Today I had another look, and discovered that the LS633 has vanished from www.kodak.com. The LS443 is the only LS model listed. Has the LS633 been pulled from the market, even before it shipped? Were there problems with the OLED display?

Google can't see any of the Daybook pages, because the only links to them are from the JavaScript-generated calendar pages. Oops.

3:00pm, and NOAA says the temperature is 93°, the dewpoint 73°. I don't think I want to be outside just now.

The desk project continues: this afternoon I dusted off the old computer shelf, moved it next to the desk, and stacked the printers and scanner on it. The parallel cable—which dates to the Compaq Deskpro I bought eighteen years ago—is just a little too short, and will have to be replaced.

Sputnik recorded a high of 98° at 5:00pm.

Upgraded CityDesk to the new version (2.0.19). Only one snag: the JavaScript that generates the navigation links at the top of each page has stopped working. It's probably my fault: I was fooling with that part of the templates.

I'll have to investigate further tomorrow.

[Fixed. See August 27, 2003.]

Tried to turn on the iPaq this morning, and the battery was completely drained: no data loss, but it wouldn't power up until I docked it in the cradle.

Silly iPaq, turn yourself off when nobody's around. Thank you.

[Apparently, this was a problem with the wireless network drivers. See September 13, 2003.]

Wharton says:

E-commerce experts at Wharton and elsewhere assert that pop-ups are not universally loathed and irrevocably worthless.

It's hard to find anything that's universally loathed, but pop-up ads probably come closer than anything else. Irrevocably useless is certainly true. ‘Experts’ who assert otherwise are probably being paid by advertisers to do so.

That said, I still haven't switched from Internet Explorer, which doesn't block pop-ups (for fear of hurting MSN's advertising revenue), to Mozilla Firebird, which does. Laziness, I suppose.

One of these days I'm going to install the copy of Red Hat Linux 9 that I bought a few weeks ago. First, though, I need to remove Red Hat Linux 8.0, and I'm not sure how to do that.

The problem is that when I installed Red Hat 8 I let Grub take over boot-loader duties from Windows 2000. (And it's worked very well.) If I let the Red Hat 9 installer reformat the Linux partitions, Grub won't know how to boot Windows 2000, and that would be a Very Bad Thing indeed.

In theory, I can boot nessus from the Windows 2000 CD, invoke the Recovery Console, then run fixmbr to give the Master Boot Record back to Windows. Then I can install RH9 and let Grub take the MBR back. In practice, anything that has the potential to render nessus completely unbootable makes me very nervous. Hence my procrastination.

I'll work up the nerve, one of these days. Just give me a little time.

[It worked: see September 1, 2003.]

After dinner, we all went outside to water the plants. Jake was in charge of the hose, so the people got as much water as the plants. It was a bit chilly at first, but rather pleasant after a while.

Sputnik recorded a high of 92° today. Tomorrow's forecast is even higher.

Jake, Norm (aka Grampa) & I went to Day of the Dozer over in Bloomington: lots of construction machineries, up close. Jake got to dig some dirt in one of the backhoes. He had a lot to say about this afterward. “I digged it! I digged the dirt!”

(Jake has a little trouble yet with irregular verbs.)

Day of the Dozer

Jake Digging

Big Truck

Jake and Grandpa

(No, that's not Jake in the middle picture.)

In the news: Microsoft is getting into the web-search market. “We're investing heavily in this space,” quoth the 'softie in charge of the project.

That's nice. Maybe their first investment ought to be in fixing the microsoft.com search function so that it returns a few matches sometimes. Ever since they ‘improved’ it a few weeks ago, it's been quite useless.

Not so warm today as yesterday; tomorrow is supposed to be even better.

Sneaked out of work a little early, and went mouse & keyboard shopping at the Best Buy. I was hoping to find the Wireless Optical Desktop Pro, but they had none. Then I wanted just the Wireless Intellimouse Explorer, but a rather goony-looking fellow made off with the last one just as I spotted it on the shelf.

So I drove down the street to Staples and bought one there. It works very nicely. I'll keep looking for a wireless keyboard.

CNN says that Judge Moore in Alabama has been suspended. Perhaps he'll use his time off (with pay) to contemplate the wisdom (or lack thereof) of his actions.

Perhaps while he's away an eleventh entry should be added to his monument: Don't be a butthead.

10:20pm, and sputnik reports 65°. We have the windows open. I'm sure it's quite comfortable in the rest of the house, but just now the computer room is rather toasty.

Oh well. Time to go to bed anyway.

Jacob woke up grumpy, but settled down later.

The daycare ladies reported yesterday that Jake was grumpy most of the day. We thought maybe he was getting sick, but he doesn't have a fever or any other symptoms; now we think he's a bit unsettled by recent staff changes at the daycare: one of his girlfriends is gone, and there's a stranger in her place.

Poor little guy.

1:50pm, and the NOAA weather page reports: temperature 91°, dewpoint 75.9°. I am so glad not to be outside.

France has seen a month of temperatures in the 90s and 100s, and the death toll so far is 10,000. Ten thousand people, dead for want of air-conditioning. In 1995, seven hundred and thirty-nine people in Chicago died during a July heat wave; I thought that was a lot. But ten thousand—it boggles the mind.

July of 1995 is when Jennifer & I moved into the apartment in Savoy. It was wretchedly hot, but I never feared for my survival. Perhaps I should have, carrying all those heavy boxes.

AOL / Time Warner, acting through its avatar Warner Brothers, has released a trailer for The Matrix Revolutions, which is due to hit the theaters sometime later this year. Alas, everybody's trying to download it all at the same time, and the site is too overloaded to actually serve up any video.

Instant gratification...denied.

People are getting themselves all worked up over a two-and-a-half ton lump of granite in the rotunda of the Judicial Building in Montgomery, Alabama: it has the Ten Commandments inscribed on it. The state Supreme Court has ordered it removed, but state Chief Justice Roy Moore, who put it there in the first place, has refused.

Mr. Moore claims this is about his constitutional right to acknowledge God. I find myself wondering whether he'd allow others to exercise that right by, say, placing quotations from the Qur'an or the Book of Mormon next to his monument. Somehow I doubt it.

On the other hand, it's a lump of rock. It has a few words carved into it that say things like Don't Steal. Surely we all have better things to do with our time than argue about a rock?

Guests this evening: Andrew & Joe, come to watch movies and play with Jake while their mother is otherwise engaged.

The engineer types are still trying to figure out why the lights went out in New York (and much of the Northeast) last week, but the lawyers have already decided: culpable negligence on the part of FirstEnergy Corp. of Ohio. The first class-action suit has been filed; with more on the way, I'm sure.

Lawyers will never admit this, but sometimes when bad things happen it's nobody's fault. Sometimes it's the fault of somebody who can't be sued. And sometimes no amount of money can make things right again.

I'm still waiting to see this advertisement on television:

If you had a strong case, but lost in court due to the incompetence of your lawyer, we can help. We specialize in legal malpractice suits. And remember—we don't get paid until you win.

A piece of paper stuck to the screen door this morning (probably it was put there sometime yesterday) invites us to hire the services of Illini Recycling for all our trash & recycling needs. They charge considerably less per month than our current service—$41 less, which is enough to make me suspicious. Maybe they're no good? Maybe the current service is ripping us off? Who knows?

[Actually, it's $11/month vs. $52/quarter. Still cheaper, but not as much.]

The desk is assembled, the computer is once more operational. Now I need to unpack all the junk from the old desk (not to mention the boxes of junk in the closet, left over from the last move [2000] or the one before [1995]), and decide—ruthlessly—what stays and what must go.

Getting rid of things gets easier with practice. The trick is to keep the important things.

I read this in one of the discussion forums at Joel On Software:

If you buy FrontPage, the longer you use it, the less you will like it.

That was my experience as well. For the first few years, I was very happy with FrontPage; then it started getting on my nerves. I'm happy to be rid of it.

Hm...problems with the WRI SMTP server. No email for me....

Found this at www.kingtiny.net: put the following (invalid) HTML in a file, then try to open it with Internet Explorer.

<html><form><input type crash></form></html>

Internet Explorer fall down go BOOM.

It occurs to me that I'm not using the <blockquote> tag correctly in these pages. I'd fix it, but for the following:

1. There are about a zillion <blockquote> tags lurking here & there in these pages. I'd be weeks fixing them all, and the fixed pages would end up looking much the same as they did before.
2. nessus is currently in a zillion pieces on the floor, until I get the new desk assembled.

(About the desk: I think I installed the desktop one notch too low. I may have to move it up a little before I can use it.)

Poor Jacob, very sleepy this morning. Not very grumpy, just sleepy; usually the two go together, but not this time.

Lately, the iPaq has started spontaneously powering up, then staying on long enough to drain the battery nearly dead. It's rather annoying to open up the case and find a stern low-battery warning on the screen.

Dismantled the computer—leaving random piles of cables & components scattered about the floor—and removed the table I've been using as a desk for the last ten years. Then (after vacuuming up the dust bunnies) I began assembling the IKEA desk.

It went together quite easily. The directions are easy to follow (even though there's no text anywhere: it's all pictures, presumably to save on translation costs), and the result is a sturdy piece of furniture that looks pretty good (a bonus).

Still to be done: install the cable trays and outrigger shelves, then reassemble the computer & see whether it still works. I sure hope so.

(I meant to take a picture of the old desk before tearing it down; alas, I forgot, so there'll be no before & after shots here. Sorry.)

Finished reading Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card. It's been a year or more since this one was published; the fourth and (for now) final volume should be coming soon.

Carried the desk in from the car: six boxes, various smaller packages. They're scattered about the living room now, which means we're constantly explaining to Jacob that they are not toys and he shouldn't play with them.

One of these days, I need to clear out my half of the office, assemble the desk in there (since it most likely won't fit through the door except in pieces), then set up computer & miscellany on it. I suspect this will be an all-day project (longer, if Jacob is home); perhaps I need to take a vacation day sometime soon.

Dismantled the car seat (which I had removed before leaving for Schaumburg yesterday), vacuumed up all the goldfish (and kix, and saltines, and various unrecognizable powdery debris), scrubbed on the messier spots, then put it all back together.

The car is relatively clean now, but I hold no illusions that it will stay that way very long.

Jake wouldn't take a nap this afternoon. He stayed in bed for an hour or two, but he never really went to sleep: there was much activity in there, and the occasional call for Mama (never Papa, though). He did this yesterday, too, but—according to Jennifer—howled in outrage and misery until it was time to get up.

Jake is too young to give up naptime. Mama & Papa are too tired to give up Jake's naptime. Go to sleep, Jake!

9:52pm, and the televisions are off. They've stayed that way all day, too, which is unusual. Poor Jennifer was stuck watching Toy Story three times yesterday, which seemed excessive. So today was No Television Day.

I'm sure Jake would be interested in this: www.dayofthedozer.com, sort of like Touch a Tractor Day but with construction equipment.

Sneaked up to the IKEA store in Schaumburg, to buy a desk. Having been there twice now, I can say that chaos is the normal state of affairs. I don't like it: the store's too big, too crowded, and there doesn't seem to be any sales clerks there (at least, I couldn't find any).

But at least I have a new desk. (Not to mention a windshield covered with dead bugs. Euww.)

Big mess in New York and points east: yesterday afternoon, power plants fell over like a string of dominoes, leaving millions in the dark.

The news coverage, as is usual during a crisis, was mostly reporters camped out at various locations where nothing was happening, but with a scenic background for us to look at while they interviewed each other:

“The lights are out. Over to you, Wolf.”
“They're out here, too. Let's hear from Times Square.”
“CNN has learned that it's still dark, Wolf.”
“Thank you for that exclusive report.”

...and so on, and so on. Is this news? Is this reporting?

(Here's some free advice for all the Edward R. Murrow wannabes out there. To win that Pulitzer, you need two things: first, something big has to happen; second, you have to have something intelligent—or at least eloquent—to say about it.)

This morning, the lights are coming back on, gradually. Soon, everything will be back to normal, except for the finger-pointing, keister-covering, and lawsuits. Even now, I'm sure there are lawyers multiplying twenty-four hours of pain & suffering by 40% and cackling with avaricious glee.

Rumor has it that ATMs & direct deposit are offline, which is rather unfortunate as today is payday.

Never tried an ATM, but direct deposit was working just fine.

Warm this morning. Very humid. The air is thick, and hazy: a good day to spend inside an air-conditioned office.

Jake & I stopped at the bank to deposit the recent largesse from President George; the bank said, “Your wife needs to sign this, too.”

Guess I'll try again tomorrow.

In the news: Microsoft is abandoning Outlook Express, and encouraging users thereof to sign up for MSN or Hotmail (or switch to Outlook 2003). I guess the vanishing-toolbar bug never will get fixed.

Years ago, I heard a rumor that MS Write was replaced by WordPad mainly because Write was very old, and Microsoft had lost the source code for it. That didn't stop them from shipping it in several versions of Windows, though. I wonder if the story behind Outlook Express is at all similar.

(Somewhere around Windows 95—I've forgotten exactly when—Microsoft decided it would be a good idea to include stripped-down versions of most Office applications in Windows: Outlook Express, FrontPage Express, etc. They're all gone now, a testament to the unwisdom of shovelware.)

Very tired this morning.

At last year's World Free Fall Convention (www.freefall.com), just up US45 in Rantoul, Timothy Kalendek got too close to a helicopter and ended up messily deceased: apparently, he was too distracted by the camcorder plastered to his face to notice the large, noisy, dangerous piece of machinery nearby.

He won't make that mistake again.

A year later, his next of kin have filed a wrongful-death suit, against—get this—twelve separate defendants: the Free Fall Convention itself, various officers thereof, the pilot of the helicopter, the manufacturer of the helicopter, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

It's hard to respect the legal profession when its members pull stunts like this. It's abundantly clear from the number of defendants that the plaintiffs are less interested in finding & correcting any negligence that might have contributed to Mr. Kalendek's demise than they are in finding a defendant who will settle out-of-court for an undisclosed sum (from which plaintiff's counsel will skim 40%).

(There was quite a thread in rec.skydiving about this incident, in the weeks after it occurred. Even then, people were saying, “I smell a lawsuit.”)

[As of October 24, the list of defendants has been trimmed—by the judge—to eight.]

I've been listening to Kid A at work. It's a little bit electronic, like Kraftwerk; and a little bit ethereal, like Enya; but really it's unlike either of them. It's very...textured. Layered. Complex. I'm sure the music critics have come up with a label for it, but I don't know it.

I figure I'll be buying more Radiohead albums, one of these days.

Sneaked out of work for an hour, to visit the Family History Center and have a look at the microfilm they're holding for me: Naturalization Final Papers, White County; and Wills, also White County.

No sign of Jacob Maurer in the naturalization book. Very frustrating. I did find Max Nibling, father of Oatha Nibling, who married Orlando Felty, brother of Barbara Ellen Felty, my great-great-grandmother.

I didn't have time to study the wills very carefully, but I did notice (right there on page 6) Albert Felty, who fits somewhere into the Felty family tree. It might be interesting to get a printout of that one & add it to the Genealogy section.

Picked up my pictures from the grocery store. Lots of nice ones, except:

• I checked the wrong box, and got diskettes full of low-resolution images, instead of CDs with high-resolution images.
• The images on the diskettes are upside-down, every last one of them.
• Whoever was in charge of cutting the developed film into separate prints did a really poor job: many of the prints have a three- or four-millimeter strip down the left side that doesn't belong there.

It cost half as much as the one-hour place, but I don't know that I'll be taking any more film there.

Research Night at the Urbana Free Library; I amused myself looking up Max Nibling in the 1880 Census. I found him, but neglected to bring any money for printouts. Oops.

Gas prices at the Amoco at John Street & Mattis Avenue shot up 16¢/gallon today: they're on to my buy-on-Wednesday strategy. Luckily for me, nobody told the Mobil on University Avenue, whose prices were 23¢/gallon less.

One of the build machines at work got bit by W32.Blaster.Worm, this week's Windows vulnerability exploit. It was my fault—a patch has been available since mid-July, but I never got around to updating that machine. So I wasted much of the day on de-virusing, anti-virusing, etc., etc., blah-blah-blah. What a pain.

The copy of Streets & Trips 2004 I bought yesterday has a rebate offer, which I'll be sending in tomorrow. It amuses me that the receipt also has Red Hat Linux on it. I don't suppose anybody at the rebate processing center will notice, let alone care; but maybe they should.

Time to see whether the ftp servers at pair.com are in a better mood tonight.

[They were.]

Fooled around a bit with Picasa. I removed all the collections & albums it created last time, and started over with just the family photos I scanned last year. The first thing I noticed is that Picasa doesn't support PNG files, of which I have several. The second thing is that Picasa doesn't provide much guidance in how to organize photos.

If I have fifty or so images (plus fifty thumbnails thereof), of various people (in various groups, at various times in their lives), how do I organize that? Do I just apply keywords for names, dates & places?

I must think about this—bearing in mind that the trial version of Picasa I'm running expires in twelve days.

Morning came very early today for all concerned, but we are managing.

<gekko>
Caffeine is good.
Caffeine works.
</gekko>

Dropped off my film...at the grocery store.

Jennifer's parents were again very generous in celebration of my birthday; I am struggling to decide how best to spend this unexpected bounty. Leading candidates:

• A 15GB iPod: a few hundred albums, held in one hand.
• An iPaq 2215: much more interesting than I first thought.
• A Minolta DiMAGE XT: Bob has one of these, and I covet it.

The problem is, I already have a digital camera, and an iPaq, and a portable CD player. I don't really need any of these things. But they're all pretty cool, in a geek sort of way.

Last week, somebody asked Scoble how to create an RSS feed with FrontPage. The answers all seem to involve server-side components, e.g., SharePoint Services (formerly known as Office Server Extensions, and before that as FrontPage Server Extensions). Bah. CityDesk can do it with a single article and a little CityScript. No muss, no fuss, no server-side lock-in.

I'm leaning toward the iPaq. They're in stock at Best Buy....

Changed my mind about the iPaq: too expensive (as are all the other toys previously contemplated).

Jake & I had some adventures this evening: first we went to Best Buy and bought some software—Red Hat Linux 9 and Streets & Trips 2004—then to the grocery store. It was a bonding experience.

Poor Jennifer stayed home and mowed the lawn. She works too hard.

Forgot to mention: also purchased at Best Buy, Kid A by Radiohead. A purely speculative purchase, as I've never heard any Radiohead songs. Sometimes this works out well—I bought my first Clannad album knowing nothing about the band—and sometimes it doesn't. We'll see.

Also forgot to mention: the Family History Center called this evening while Jake & I were adventuring. The microfilm I ordered last month has arrived.

Suddenly I don't feel so...cough cough well...I may have to stay home from work tomorrow....

Tried to upload today's blather, only to find that CityDesk couldn't talk to the Pair.com ftp server. Guess I'll try again tomorrow.

A surprise phone call from Leland, who's in town for a day or two. The four of us—Jennifer, Jacob, Leland, me—met for lunch at the Original House of Pancakes.

Off to Bloomington this afternoon, for Natalie's birthday party.

One definition of chaos: a dozen four-year-olds in a room full of trampolines & bouncy gymnastic equipment. Jake had a grand time, so much so that he didn't want to leave when the party was over.

I have two more rolls of film to get developed, one each from yesterday & today, but I don't know where I'll get them developed. I really like photo CDs (they're much easier than scanning pictures myself), but the photo CDs from the one-hour place aren't very good compared to the ones from Kodak: the images are rather grainy, the exposures not quite right. But if I take my film to the one-hour place and ask for Kodak Photo CDs, the (very friendly) proprietor will no doubt ask why I don't want him to do it.

I hate confontation. Maybe I'll just drop my film off at the grocery store from now on.

Interesting: I asked the SBC web site about DSL availability here at Stately Rice Manor, and it said:

SBC Yahoo! DSL may be available, however we need to conduct further testing on your line to ensure that the service can be properly installed.

Good news, I suppose. On the other hand, their Basic Package—$40/month—offers only 384Kbps downstream, 128Kbps upstream: not very speedy. Volo Broadband offers ‘up to’ (i.e., usually much less than) 5Mbps, for $28/month. But the real deal-killer for DSL is in the fine print:

SBC Yahoo! DSL is an information service that combines DSL transport, Internet access and applications from SBC Internet Services, with customized content, services, and applications from Yahoo! Inc.

I have zero interest in ‘customized content, services and applications’. All I want is an internet connection.

Vacation is over. We are all very sad.

Surprise this morning: ants, all over the kitchen counter, lured in by a cutting board covered with watermelon juice & debris from last night's dinner. I was supposed to wash that last night. Oops. I vacuumed up the little creeps and scrubbed the counters with bleach cleaner; that ought to dissuade them.

Tried again to activate Reader on my own account (rather than for Administrator); got it to work this time. The only difference: this time I added my account to the Administrators group before starting the activation process.

Coincidence? Or another sign that the 'softies have no clue how multi-user operating systems are supposed to work?

[I suppose it's also possible that the activation server just happened to be having problems during the half-hour I was trying to use it. It's possible, but unlikely.]

So I downloaded Rabbit Run, and—because they were free—Facing Ali by Stephen Brunt and Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes. I might read them someday.

One of these days, I need to upgrade CityDesk to 2.0. The drawback is that 2.0 generates slightly-different HTML than 1.0, which means every page—1200, more or less—will have to be uploaded again. I don't know when I might have the time for that.

More vacation pictures, fresh from the one-hour place. They do photo CDs there now, which is nice; but they charge twice as much as Kodak for them, which is not so nice.

A few of them might be appearing here, one of these days.

The license agreement for Picasa 1.5 has a few interesting items:

The Software may update its “TrayHelper” plug-in automatically and without your confirmation to ensure security and to provide adequate delivery of network services (including Picasa Express E-Mail and Online Printing of Pictures).

LIFESCAPE MAKES NO WARRANTY THAT THE OPERATION OF THE SOFTWARE OR UPDATES, THE UPDATE PROCESS, OR RESULTS OBTAINED FROM USING THE SOFTWARE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, FREE OF VIRUSES, WORMS, TROJAN HORSES OR ANY OTHER MALICIOUS CODE, ERROR FREE, OR THAT IT WILL FUNCTION OR OPERATE IN CONJUNCTION WITH ANY OTHER PRODUCT.

In other words, “Installing our software might infect your computer with viruses and other nasties. If it does, no skin off our nose.”

I installed Picasa. It's...interesting. Seems very complicated, but maybe that's a good thing when you have a few thousand images to organize.

Brought the Daybook up-to-date, mostly from memory but with a little help from some notes kept on the iPaq during the trip.

I've been thinking that one of those fold-up keyboards for the iPaq would be very useful for vacation note-taking. Perhaps I will buy one sometime.

Frustration: Microsoft is offering some free e-books this summer, so I thought I'd download a few. This week's offerings require an up-to-date and activated version of Reader. “No problem,” thought I. A little downloading, a little installing, and—problems.

First, you can't uninstall Reader from the iPaq without renaming a few .ttf files & doing a soft reset. Otherwise, the files are in use and can't be removed, so the uninstall fails, so you can't install the newer version of Reader.

With that out of the way, I installed Reader on nessus. “Activate your computer,” it said, so I let it. Apparently, though, it only activated the Administrator account, not the entire computer. “No problem,” thought I. “I'll just activate my own account.” It didn't work, presumably because my one-and-only Passport account was already used to activate Administrator. And no, there's no way to de-activate a copy of Reader.

Guess I won't be reading Rabbit Run on the iPaq any time soon.

Memo to Microsoft: this isn't a very good way to drum up interest in Microsoft Reader and copy-protected e-books.

[I managed to activate Reader on my account. See August 9, 2003.]

Stayed up too late—11:50pm—but finished reading Bitter Victory by Carlo D'Este. Jennifer is so happy that she will never have to hear about Sicily again.

Lots of laundry today.

In the mail: a letter from the Internal Revenue Service, informing us that, as a consequence of the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, they're giving us back a little of the money we paid in taxes last year.

Nice of them, I suppose—though the last time they sent us a check was September 10, 2001. One hopes nothing bad happens this time.

Went shopping at Prairie Gardens, to spend the gift certificate Jennifer won as a door prize at Saturday's picnic. We chose a rather intimidating piece of gardening machinery: a hedge trimmer, about two feet long & very sharp.

Then we took it home and attacked all the out-of-control shrubbery in the yard. It looks much nicer now.

Checked out of the hotel, even though we had reservations through Friday; the plan was to find a hotel in the Dells, or just go home.

We signed up for a Lower Dells boat tour. Jake did not enjoy waiting in line, and protested loudly enough that I was tempted to give up & go home, but once we were on the boat he cheered up.

Nice tour, if a bit mercenary. (If somebody hands you something, e.g., a book of picture postcards, without first asking for money, that usually means it's free; not here. By they time they asked for money—of which we had none—Jake had been reading the book for several minutes, and it was well-creased. Sorry about that.)

And that was all the vacation we could handle, so we decided to get some lunch & head for home.

Lunch was at Black Bart's Buffet: a nasty place, don't go there. They promise all you can eat, but the buffet is rather skimpy (most of it is just a salad bar). There's a dessert bar, with a few tiny squares of cobbler & cake; and an ice-cream machine, with tiny bowls. They promise free refills on drinks, but customers aren't allowed near the drink machines: only the staff may touch them. If your waitress ignores you—as ours ignored us—you don't get any refills, free or otherwise.

We'll be going back to the Dells, when Jake is a few years older, but we'll find somewhere else to have lunch.

Lots of driving: I90/94 to I39 to I55 to I74, and we arrived home around 8:30pm.

Off to Baraboo, to visit the Circus World Museum. Jake was very excited to see a pair of elephants, having their morning bath.

We wandered around, looked at a few exhibits, took a few pictures, watched two teams of Percherons unloading circus wagons from a flatcar, then found a jungle gym for Jake to climb on—he's really quite good at ladders—while we tried to find some shade.

There was a circus performance, too. We saw acrobats, dogs doing tricks, a juggler (T. J. “Drops-A-Lot” Howell, or some such), and some clowns. We left before the show was over: it was just too hot in the tent (despite all the Port-A-Cool units), and Jake needed a new diaper.

(The last time I was at the Circus World Museum, approximately thirty years ago, one of the elephants sneezed quite messily all over Mike's shirt. Nothing like that happened this time.)

After a (long) nap for Jake, we headed up I90/94 to the Dells, to visit Tommy Bartlett's Robot World & Exploratory. It starts out rather cheesy, but gets better. Jake had fun.

They have the backup main module from Mir on display there. I wonder how such a thing ended up in Wisconsin: shouldn't it be in a museum in Moscow?

We spend the morning with Grandma (Grandpa had to go to work), then headed north on US 14, through suburbia and into the farmland beyond, all the way to Janesville.

We stopped at a Mobil station near I39/90, to pick up supplies (i.e., caffeinated beverages & unhealthy snacks). It was next to the hotel where we stayed during the Guild family reunion, three weeks ago. Small world, etc.

There was a lot of traffic on I39/90, and even more when I94 joined the party.

Our hotel, the Portage Super 8, was no more than adequate. Almost the first words from Jake when we arrived were, “Go swimming?” Alas, they have no pool.

After dinner (Culver's, burgers), we watched Shrek on the portable DVD player. A wonderful child-calming device, that one; worth every penny.

Jake had a bath in the hotel tub—his first hotel bath—and he didn't protest too much. (He's still learning what Close your eyes, I'm going to pour water over your head means, which makes rinsing his hair somewhat problematic.)

We asked the hotel for a crib, and got a Pack & Play. Jake didn't mind; he was worn out—as were Mama & Papa.

Norm and Barb called the hotel room to sing Happy Birthday to me. That was nice of them.

Sneaked onto my mother's computer, to have a look at these pages. There are problems. Specifically, the banner is missing from the main page. I think there's an out-of-date cache somewhere between my mother's computer and pair.com, because the image is definitely there.

Jennifer & I paid an afternoon visit to the Schaumburg IKEA store. It's enormous, and very crowded. The parking lot was full of attendants, directing traffic away from the front door (and down aisles of the parking lot that were already full).

Lots of nifty stuff in there (though hard to see, through the crowds). We're thinking of buying a desk for me: it's a nice desk, and not too expensive, but the model name is 'Jerker', which is a little off-putting.

“Say, that's a nice desk.”
“Yes, isn't it? It's a JERKER.”

IKEA has a web site, www.ikea-usa.com; maybe we can order the desk from there.

More thunderstorms rolled in during our search for parking, but were over by the time we were finished shopping. How convenient.

After IKEA, we went searching for Prints Charming, a fabric store somewhere in Palatine. Jennifer was very happy when we found it (Plum Grove Road, just north of Euclid, as it turns out).

Went to Rotary Hill in Lake of the Woods Park, for a company picnic (Jennifer's work, not mine). Jake had fun climbing on the jungle gym.

We left around 3:00pm, and headed north on highway 47—straight into a line of rather intense thunderstorms. The temperature dropped ten degrees, the wind picked up, the rain was so thick it was hard to see; but after a few minutes we were out of it and into clearer skies.

We arrived at Grandma & Grandpa's house around 5:30. Jake likes it there: lots of toys to play with, lots of expensive objets d'art to break, and—of course—Grandma & Grandpa.

My birthday present this year was a big box from Amazon.com, containing just about my entire wish list. Thanks bunches, Grandma & Grandpa. (I suppose I'll have to wish for a few more things now. Christmas is coming.)

The churning mass of data known as the Internet disgorged an interesting tidbit this morning: a nineteen-year-old video of Steve Jobs, saying, “Let's show 'em why 1984 won't be like 1984.”

Pundits & commentators had a field day in 1984. Every newspaper and magazine was full of Orwell this and Orwell that. Then suddenly it was 1985, and worrying about global totalitarian dictatorships—real, potential, imagined—was no longer fashionable.

2001 came & went, too, but nobody had much to say about that one.

Recently I was reminiscing on a book I'd read, some decades back, which argued that John Dillinger wasn't killed in 1934. Today's column over at www.straightdope.com deals with that very subject, and mentions what is probably the same book: Dillinger: Dead or Alive?, by Jay Robert Nash and Ron Offen.

Amazon.com says a paperback edition of Dillinger: Dead or Alive? is available as a 'special order item', only $25. That's more than I feel like spending on a paperback; maybe the library has a copy.

(Cecil's verdict: Dillinger died in 1934, Nash is a crackpot.)

[See also November 23, 2002. Does eight months ago count as recent?]

Upgraded the (Matrox G400) video drivers on nessus from 5.84.023 to 5.88.061, to see whether that had any effect on Adobe Photoshop Album. It didn't:

Event Type:     Information
Event Source:   Save Dump
Event Category: None
Event ID:       1001
Date:           8/1/2003
Time:           8:54:27 PM
User:           N/A
Computer:       NESSUS
Description:
The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck.  The bugcheck was:
0x00000050 (0xb9a6c074, 0x00000000, 0xbb59e3f5, 0x00000000).
Microsoft Windows 2000 [v15.2195]. A dump was saved in:
C:\WINNT\Minidump\Mini080103-01.dmp.

I've uninstalled Photoshop Album. I might look at it again when (if?) they release version 2.0—unless by then I've already found an alternative.