November 2005 Archives

Looks like we matched a few numbers in tonight's Lotto drawing: but only enough to get the $3 consolation prize.

Still, $3 here, $3 there - pretty soon you're talking about real money.

Had the notion to buy One Tin Soldier from iTunes; alas, while they have a half-dozen performances available, they don't have the one by Coven that was used in the movie Billy Jack.

On the other hand, Amazon.com carries a CD titled One Hit Wonders that does have the Coven version. Only $5.98, too. Hm....

(According to Left of Centrist, Coven was a trio of Satanists from Indianapolis. They recorded one album, had one hit song - that wasn't on the album - then vanished without a trace.)

MovableType is suddenly having problems connecting to the MySQL server, after nine months of trouble-free operation.

Creating new daybook entries is proving difficult. Argh.

Update: Everything seems to be working properly once more.

Uploaded a picture to the Wal-Mart Photo Center web site, designed a nice Christmas card around it, and ordered a set of prints, all without leaving my comfy chair.

But the real laziness is at Wal-Mart, which says they won't have the prints ready until next week.

Nipped down to Carmi yesterday, for a little genealogical research at the courthouse.

The plan was to have a look at the probate records, and see what I could find out about the Bolerjack, Bramlet, Felty, Maurer & Sturm families.

I found a probate file for William C. Bolerjack, which was full of all sorts of interesting information. It turns out there were two different William C. Bolerjacks running out White County in the mid-1800s. One of them was the father of Jenny Bolerjack, my great-great-grandmother; alas, the probate file was for the other one.

What I should have done was look at the wills, but that didn't occur to me until rather late in the day. Maybe next time (i.e., sometime next spring).

Thing #1: The TypeKey authentication system doesn't work. I can log in easily enough, but the post-a-comment page never seems to notice that I have done so. And the login doesn't stick: the next time I want to comment, I have to log in again.

Thing #2: I want to include pictures in my posts. MovableType has a file-upload option, but it's clunky, and it's unclear where on the server I'm supposed to put the files I upload. In the same directory as the post doesn't seem to be an option.

(Special bonus thing #3: I hate having half my site in CityDesk and the other half in MovableType. What if I want to have links from one to the other? It's a pain. I want everything in one place, in one format. That's one of the reasons I'm not using a photo-album application like Gallery, even though it seems pretty spiffy: I don't want to fragment the site any further.)

CNN says:

A woman who won a $65.4 million Powerball jackpot with her husband five years ago was found dead at her home overlooking the Ohio River, where she had apparently been for days before anyone found her, police said.

A disturbing percentage of lottery winners end up broke, or come to bad ends. Perhaps it only seems that way, because healthy, happy lottery winners never make the news.

Today is Mike's birthday. Nobody's seen or heard from him in years, but so far as we know he's still living in Woodridge. Jennifer & I sent him a birthday card, but we don't know whether he got it.

Today is also Ceej's birthday, though she's a few years younger than Mike.

And today's entry in the Little Zen Calendar tells me:

You are never too old to be what you might have been.

Well, I don't know about that. I can think of quite a few things I might have been that are quite impossible now.

We put up the Christmas tree this morning, and decorated it this evening. (Pre-lit trees are a wonder of modern technology.)

Sam likes to look at the tree, probably because it's so glittery. He'll sit in his swing quite happily, staring at the tree.

We haven't bought any presents yet, so there's nothing under the tree but empty space.

Just back (well, two hours ago) from Arlington Heights, where we had a nice visit with the grandparents.

Apparently we dodged some nasty weather on the way home: sometime after we left, it started snowing.

Everybody sing: gobble gobble gobble!

Took Mr. Explorer to the Ford dealer, so he could have a first-class experience and I could find out what's been dripping onto the garage floor these last few months.

A little while ago, Mr. Ford Dealer called: Yes, there's an oil leak from the passenger-side valve cover. Replacing the valve cover gasket would stop the leak, but would also cost about $600.

As it's a very minor leak, and I'd rather not drop $600 on a car repair unless I really really have to, I think I'll just live with a smudgy garage floor.

Cloudy today, but just a thin layer: I can see blue sky here & there through holes in the overcast.

Rather windy, too. I can hear it against the windows.

And pleasantly warm: NOAA says 50° as of noon.

The other day we reassembled Jake's old baby swing, so Sam could use it. He seems to like it, most of the time.

But it's harder to take pictures of him when he's in motion....

Jerry Pournelle complains:

This site takes a lot of work. I fear it is getting to the point where I will need more subscribers so that I can pay one of the Associates to handle some of the details.

The main reason it's so much work is that Jerry is still using FrontPage, which was designed - ten years ago! - to create static pages that don't change very often. If your site is updated frequently, if you incorporate comments from the readership, if you want to provide an RSS feed - FrontPage is not for you.

If Jerry switched to a more modern application, he'd get a lot more done with a lot less work. So far, he has refused to do this, offering rather lame reasons.

Perhaps he secretly enjoys using antediluvian web tools.

This sounds useful: Outlook2Mac, from Little Machines:

Just fire up Outlook2Mac on your Windows PC, pick the Outlook folders you want to export, choose the filtering options you want to use, and click Start - Outlook2Mac does the rest, automatically exporting your Outlook data into portable files you can import directly into your Apple Mail, Address Book, iCal, Microsoft Entourage, or other Macintosh-compatible programs.

Maybe when (we win the Lotto and) I get a Mac Mini, I'll need Outlook2Mac.

November is National Novel Writing Month:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

An interesting notion. I don't think I could write 1,700 words (good or bad) every single day for a month straight: my brain would vapor-lock after a week.

Mr. Samuel is in his crib, having an animated conversation with the mobile (which isn't even moving, having run down some time ago). He's laughing and kicking, and babbling happily.

He's due for one more bottle, around 11:00pm, and then we can all go to sleep.

Wonder if TiVo has any surprises for me tonight. Last night it had a documentary on salt mines (that was a lot more interesting than it sounds).

Tried to buy Smile, by Brian Wilson, from iTunes just now; it wouldn't let me.

So I waited half an hour, and tried again. No luck.

(I think I'm supposed to type SMiLE for the album title. Don't hold your breath on that one, Mr. Wilson.)

Busy, busy, busy:

Jake had some visitors yesterday: one of his daycare friends, with baby sister in tow, come to play while their parents went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Two four-year-olds, a fifteen-month-old, and a three-month-old: it's a wonder the house didn't explode.

Jake & Sam had more visitors today: the grandparents, come from Normal to play while Jennifer & I went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. (Yes, it was an all-Potter weekend.)

(Interesting movie. Two and a half hours long, and it still felt a bit rushed. I suppose that was inevitable, given that they had to squeeze an 800-page novel into movie length.)

I am so tired of having Outlook hang every time I try to check my mail, then - after a long pause - give up with:

Task '[omitted] - Sending' reported error (0x8004210B): 'The operation timed out waiting for a response from the sending (SMTP) server. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP).'

I don't think the SMTP server has anything to do with it. I've seen these hangs with three different versions of Outlook (2000, 2002, 2003) and three different SMTP servers (EarthLink, work, SBC).

No, the blame for this one falls squarely on the 'softies, who apparently can't bring themselves to support a protocol (SMTP) that they don't own. "If we support SMTP, that will just hurt Exchange sales."

Not supporting SMTP hurts Outlook sales, you nitwits.

(I'd switch to Mozilla Thunderbird, but for two things: first, I don't think it can import my [700MB!] Outlook email database; second, the X30 only synchronizes with Outlook.)

Sam cries when he's sleepy. If he's very sleepy, he cries loudly.

Music soothes him. This morning, it's 90125 by Yes; and Sam is happily asleep.

I've been setting up our bills to be paid automatically: so far, I've done the car insurance, mortgage, telephone, and power bills. It's easier than writing checks, and it's probably good for our cashflow to pay bills on the day they're due rather than days (or even weeks) ahead of time.

The cable bill came today, so I thought I might add them to the list. The cable company does offer an online payment option, but it's not so convenient. From their Frequently Asked Questions list:

Can I set up the Online Bill Payment to make automatic payments?

Not at this time. By submitting payment on the Online Bill Payment, you are authorizing Insight to initiate a one-time charge to your credit card or a one-time electronic transfer from your bank account in the amount you identify. You must submit this information each time you wish to make a payment.

I might as well just write them a check.

Mr. Sam is working on a new skill: rolling over.

He can just about manage it, if he's on a slope (say, on the bed next to somebody). Level surfaces are still a challenge.

P.S. He's tired of being in the crib. WAHHHHHH

Sam is in his crib. He is neither sleeping, nor grumpy. He seems quite happy to be there.

He's wiggling, sucking on his fingers, and chattering away about something. I think he's trying to have a conversation with the wind-up mobile....

The eleven bags of yard waste - leaves, grass clippings, chopped-up tree, etc., etc. - that have been sitting out at the curb for the last two weeks finally were picked up today.

I was beginning to wonder if we'd have to drag them back into the back yard and stare at them all winter.

The Carmi Times tells me that "shotgun deer season" (which sounds rather...messy...) has opened down in White County: part one is today through Sunday; part two is December 1 - 4.

Genealogists planning to tramp about in rural cemeteries on those dates had best wear orange or something....

A half-dozen women, each with a small child in tow, just packed themselves into the office next to mine here at dear old Wolfram Research World HQ.

Much chatter & jollity now emanate therefrom.

I bought an iPaq way back in 2000 (September 21, to be precise), and it served me well until I replaced it with the Dell Axim X30 last year (August 24).

The iPaq spent its retirement in the bedroom closet at home, until we needed the space for baby gear; then it came to work (in a grocery bag full of general closet junk). It sat, bagged up on the floor in my office, for a few months; yesterday, I fished it out to see whether it still worked.

It worked, but the battery - which is not replaceable - is completely shot. It won't hold a charge. I left it plugged in overnight, and this morning the battery was still dead.

A portable that can't be unplugged, even for a moment, isn't very portable. And so into the trash it went.

Update: Well, yes, there are companies that will replace an iPaq battery. Pocket PC Techs will do it, for $80 or so. But it would still be a five-year-old Pocket PC: you can't buy software for those any more.

By now, it's in the dumpster behind the Trade Center building. Feel free to fish it out, if you like. (Tell the police I said it's ok.)

Finished (last night) reading Shadow of the Giant by Orson Scott Card.

A pleasant read, though a number of plot elements were left hanging:

• The unanswered question from Shadow Puppets, the whereabouts of Bean & Petra's children, is answered almost in passing. But they only find eight of them - the ninth is still out there, in case Card decides to write book #9. (I hate it when books contain such blatant sequel hooks.)
• Midway through the book, Peter asks Virlomi to record a video of her saying...something. Something that Peter has written, that he will use against Virlomi if the need arises. The need never does arise, and we never find out what's in the video.
• A recurring theme in the first three books is that the genetic tampering that has made Bean a genius will also kill him before he turns thirty. Then, in the fourth book, the possibility is raised that Bean might be cured, and live a long life. But when the story ends, Bean is neither dead nor cured: instead, he's preserved in relativistic limbo, another blatant sequel hook.

The last few chapters seemed intended more to connect Shadow of the Giant to Speaker for the Dead, to ensure that by the end of the former its characters have done everything the latter said they did, than to finish the story. (Rather like Revenge of the Sith - except that in Sith the entire movie was like that.)

Shadow of the Giant was the last of my birthday presents. I've no idea what I might read next.

I can't help but cackle every time I hear a BBC reporter say "Tunisia".

NOAA says the temperature was 63° at 4:00pm yesterday, but only 28° at 9:00am.

There was a bit of snow this morning, just enough that we could look out the window and say, "Snow? Before Thanksgiving? Outrageous!"

The wind is still rather brisk, too.

(Why, yes, I did wear shorts today. But I also wore my new jacket.)

Sputnik recorded a temperature of 44° this morning, which climbed slowly to 53° by 3:00pm; then it shot up to 60° for two hours; now, four hours later, the temperature is down to 40°.

Jennifer tells me there might be snow overnight. The official start of winter is still thirty-six days away; snow seems a bit premature.

(Very windy, too: sputnik says from the southwest at 12mph, gusting to 27mph.)

Professor Steven E. Jones, of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Brigham Young University, has written a paper about the collapse of the World Trade Center towers:

In writing this paper, I call for a serious investigation of the hypothesis that WTC 7 and the Twin Towers were brought down, not just by damage and fires, but through the use of pre-positioned explosives.

Dr. Jones' paper is...unpersuasive.

He's neither an architect nor an engineer, so he has no knowledge of how buildings are constructed nor of how & why they collapse. He has no information about the damage sustained by the three towers that collapsed, so he can't say whether that damage was sufficient to bring them down.

Instead, he argues:

1. Buildings don't fall down just because there's a fire.
2. These buildings fell straight down, just like in a controlled implosion.
3. Therefore, it must have been a controlled implosion that brought down the towers.

There's a quote that I heard once, something to the effect that the narrower one's field of expertise actually is, the wider one tends to think it is.

That seems to be the case with Dr. Jones.

She left a long, chatty comment here, about three months ago. I never replied; she probably thinks I hate her or something.

No, I'm just lazy.

Rather chilly this morning (48°), with thick overcast and a steady rain.

Sam & I stayed up late last night, watching a Nova episode about coelacanths (now I know where the Comoros Islands are), and then a few minutes of Hulk (the 2003 movie, not the Bill Bixby series).

The idea was that by giving Sam his last bottle of the day a little later than usual, he'd sleep a little longer in the morning (instead of waking up hungry at 6:00am, which he's been doing since the clocks changed two weeks ago). Alas, it didn't work: 6:00am, and wahhhh.

The World Airport Guides - Chicago ORD page has a listing for the Wyndham Garden Hotel in lovely Buffalo Grove. The description includes:

The famous Long Grove shopping village is also a short walk away.

My map tells me that 900 W. Lake Cook Rd. (which is the hotel's address) is 2½ miles from downtown Long Grove. I suppose some people might consider that a short walk, but I surely do not.

This looks interesting: SyncToy for Windows XP:

SyncToy is a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows XP that provides is an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories.

I've been looking for some way to synchronize the X30's memory card with a directory on nessus (and wondering why ActiveSync doesn't support this); perhaps SyncToy is what I need.

Must remember to download it sometime & try it out....

Update: SyncToy can only synchronize directories. The X30, when docked, does not appear as a directory. Hence, SyncToy is unable to synchronize the X30's memory card.

I'm messing about on the computer. Jake is playing with blocks. Sam is in the bassinet, trying to sleep.

There are things that Jacob can do quietly, but playing with blocks is not among them. Sam isn't too happy at having his sleep disturbed.

Poor little guy.

...attempting to rake leaves when the wind is 9mph (from the southwest), gusting to 22mph.

Still, Jake & I managed to fill two more yard waste bags.

Two items of note in this morning's paper:

1. The football team suffered another humiliating defeat, 37 to 3. Perhaps next week, coach what's-his-name should put the players' uniforms on the cheerleaders, and send them out on the field instead.
2. Best Buy is selling a $6,000 television. Who in their right mind would spend six thousand dollars on a television? (Overpaid football coaches, perhaps?)

And now Mr. Samuel needs a bottle....

Not only has warp drive been invented, it's been patented: US Patent #6,960,975, "Space vehicle propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state".

I'm sure NASA will be very interested.

The other day, I downloaded Visual C# Express Edition. (It's free, how could I resist?) When I registered, I got a confirmation email that included a link to a Microsoft web site with even more free toys. It's hard to resist free, so off I went to Microsoft Connect.

They want me to agree to their Terms of Use before they'll let me in. Well, all right, if I must. But part of the agreement is this rather puzzling statement:

You agree that nothing related to your participation will be construed as creating an employer-employee relationship, as a guarantee of future employment, or as a limitation upon Microsoft's sole discretion to terminate your participation at any time and for any and no reason.

Um.

It's a web site.

With a few free downloads.

Why do we need the prenuptial agreement?

Long ago, when I worked at Washington National, I reported to Karin Ellis. (The official department org chart had a fella named Brian Pesko between Karin & myself, but we pretty much ignored him.)

Karin's at CompuPros these days. There's even an Introducing Karin Ellis page, with a picture.

That picture is just a little disturbing. The Karin Ellis I remember didn't have anywhere near that much hair, nor was it that color.

Update: I'm told that Karin doesn't really look like that. Apparently she got all dolled up to have her picture taken, and usually doesn't look like she has a shaggy flightless bird attempting to hatch her head.

Update #2: Other animals considered, but ultimately rejected, for use in the headline: vole (too small), ferret (wrong color), badger (wrong pattern: stripes), skunk (again, stripes).

Amazon.com is selling the Ultimate Star Trek Collection: every episode of every series, all ten movies, interviews, commentaries, documentaries, etc., etc.

Two hundred and twelve DVDs, only $2,500.

It won't actually be available until the 15th. No word from Amazon on how many pre-orders they've received.

My collection of state quarters is stagnating: I haven't added any new ones in months.

This is mainly because I hardly ever handle cash any more. Everything goes on the debit card. (Except the bag of M&Ms I just bought from the breakroom vending machine - that I paid for with actual cash money.)

I'm tempted to go to the bank, withdraw $100 in quarters, fish out the ones I need for my collection, then re-deposit what's left. Or would that be cheating?

The Chancellor demolition project going on next door has reached a new phase: having knocked down the south and west wings of the hotel, sifted through the debris for all metal & recyclables, and made huge piles of what was left, they have now set up a pulverizer machine in what used to be the Aunt Sonya's parking lot and are feeding large chunks of concrete into it.

Concrete does not go gentle into that good night. It rages, most distractingly.

Jennifer and Jacob went to quilt guild this evening, and then to the grocery store, so Sam & I had a few hours to ourselves.

Sam was a bit fussy at first, so I put on some music (A Charlie Brown Christmas, recently purchased from iTunes). Sam likes music; he settled right down. For the first few songs, he fussed during the three-second silences between tracks, then fell asleep.

Silly boy.

When the various kitchen chores - unload yesterday's dishes from the dishwasher, then fill it up again with today's dishes; wipe down the counters, table, etc.; mix up a batch of formula, then fill tomorrow's bottles - were finished, it was time for Sam's bottle.

We watched television (Good Eats and Cops, both recorded by the ever-helpful TiVo) while Sam had some food. We were still trying to decide what to do next when Jennifer & Jacob came home.

Sam's a fun little guy. He's starting to move his hands more purposefully: instead of just waving them around, he's been touching one hand with the other. (Isn't that one of those developmental milestones? Three months, realizes he has hands. Check.) He's also kicking hard enough that he can move himself, a little. (Mr. Doctor says this is just reflex action, and actual muscle control won't come for a few more months. I think I disagree with Mr. Doctor.) And his voice - when he was born, all he could manage was this tiny little mewling sound; now, when he's upset, he yells, loudly & with gusto.

Fortunately, he's easily soothed.

He's just about due for another bottle, too. Must stop blathering & go be a parent for a while....

CNN tells me that on November 10, 1975, ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a storm on Lake Superior.

(The Gordon Lightfoot song was released in 1976. Gord's getting quite a bit of media attention today.)

The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum has a nice Edmund Fitzgerald page.

Just now I am reading Microsoft's Windows Installer documentation:

For the second record, the Directory_Parent field is not Null. Therefore, this record indicates a non-root directory for both the source and the target. For a non-root source directory, the source directory indicated by the record described in the Directory_Parent field is the parent directory. For the second record, the Directory_Parent field is TARGETDIR. As shown earlier, the source directory indicated by the TARGETDIR record resolved to \\applications\source\. Thus, the source directory indicated by the second record is \\applications\source\App\.

Dear 'softies:

Hire some technical writers.

Thank you.

NOAA says the overnight low was 28° at 7:00am.

Three hours later, it's a bright, sunny day, and considerably warmer.

Finally got around to collecting all the paperwork for the $150 TiVo rebate; reading the fine print, I saw:

Rebate may not be combined with any other TiVo offers, including in-store instant rebates on certain TiVo models.

I used one of Best Buy's 10% off coupons to buy the TiVo; if TiVo seizes on that as an excuse to deny our rebate, I will be disappointed - but not really surprised.

(Why did I wait so long to get this in the mail? TiVo says that to qualify for the rebate, you must keep the TiVo service for at least thirty days - and the thirty-day trial period doesn't count. If they're just going to sit on my application for two months before even considering it, what's the hurry in sending it in?)

This looks interesting: http://www.cherrypy.org/:

CherryPy is a pythonic, object-oriented web development framework.

CherryPy allows developers to build web applications in much the same way they would build any other object-oriented Python program. This usually results in smaller source code developed in less time.

The only problem is that CherryPy really wants to be its own web server, instead of running as a cgi script under somebody else's web server, which pretty much excludes it from any web projects I might have.

Mr. Samuel is getting pretty good at holding up his head, which means we can hold him upright when we're carrying him around the house.

I think he enjoys the view.

Perl 6: In development for most of a decade. Still not finished.

Parrot: A virtual machine for running Perl 6. Until Perl 6 is ready, you can write code in Parrot Assembly Language!

Pugs: An implementation of Perl 6 in Haskell, because starting projects is more fun than finishing them.

At some point, you have to stop [censored]ing around, and ship something. I don't think the Perl 6 folks have figured this out yet.

The Grokster web site has been taken down. In its place is a legal notice, which says:

The United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that using this service to trade copyrighted material is illegal. Copying copyrighted motion picture and music files using unauthorized peer-to-peer services is illegal and is prosecuted by copyright owners.

There are legal services for downloading music and movies. This service is not one of them.

No. Really?

(By a curious coincidence, today's entry in the Forgotten English calendar is whiddiful, "One who deserves hanging.")

So: zemblan links to juvenilia, who's posted a list of questions: What was the...

1. ...worst book you've ever read?
2. ...worst movie you've ever seen?
3. ...worst song you've ever heard?
4. ...worst food you've ever eaten?
5. ...worst person you've ever met?
6. ...worst day you've ever had?

Interesting questions, even if they're a bit gloomy. They didn't invite me to join their game, but here are my answers anyway:

Worst book: Jennifer forces herself to finish books, no matter how awful they are; I don't. Some books that I threw at the wall:

• Dhalgren, by Samuel R. Delany. I was only 17 when I tried to read this one; it was a little too...intense for me. I actually did throw this book at the wall. (Four years later, I tried again, and found it much more absorbing.)
• Finnegan's Wake, by James Joyce. This book can't be read, for the simple reason that there's nothing there to read. No sentences, no paragraphs, no narration, no plot. Just random words strung together.
• God Knows, by Joseph Heller. I liked Catch-22. But this one...it is to gag.
• Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon. Got it as a Christmas present, which obligated me to at least try to read it: I tried; I failed.

Worst movie: Vince and I spent most of 1985 in movie theaters, and it was a banner year for bad cinema. Thankfully, I've forgotten all about most of them - except for Gymkata, Motel Hell and DefCon 4, memories of which continue to occupy neurons that would be better used elsewise.

Worst song: Disco "music". All of it. (With rap as a close second.)

Worst food: Some brown rice & mint concoction that my mother served on Thanksgiving, many years ago. It was so nasty that I still taunt her about it.

Worst person: I've encountered some pretty messed-up people over the years, but - lucky me! - they never seem to get too close.

Worst day: It's a tie: March 23, 1980 and February 23, 1991. (No, I won't tell you why. Don't bother asking.)

Election Day isn't the first Tuesday in November: it's the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

I thought this was a constitutional requirement, but I can't find any mention of it in either the Constitution or the amendments.

I suspect that this is just a sneaky way for Congress to avoid holding elections on All Saints' Day while steering clear of First Amendment issues, but have no proof of that, either.

Contemplated my email archives (which go back to 1996) this evening. The numbers are alarming: personal email, 14,125 messages; work email, 76,429 messages; grand total, 90,554 messages.

(These numbers are not entirely accurate. There are plenty of duplicate messages, courtesy of inept merging of previous archives. I always felt bad for not removing them, but now I have an excuse: I don't have the time to sort through fourteen thousand messages.)

Poking around in the University (of Illinois) online card catalog (which isn't a very good name: if it's online, there aren't any cards, are there?), I found an entry for Some Aspects of Rural Local Government on White County, Illinois, by Virgil Ira Bolerjack, published in 1947.

Virgil is related, somehow, to my great-grandmother Jenny Bolerjack. I'll have to check out his book sometime & see what he had to say, back in 1947, about rural local government in White County.

Credit-card companies are very keen on balance transfers:

Whether faced with back-to-school, home improvement or other expenses, balance transfers can really help.

Paying off your credit cards will help even more, but they'll never say that.

Radar shows a line of nasty-looking thunderstorms running parallel to I55, and heading this way. I imagine they'll arrive before midnight.

It's been raining a little already - sputnik recorded .02 inches between 8:00pm and 9:00pm. (I'm surprised by that total: it sounded more substantial than that.)

Whenever Wil Wheaton gets going on poker, or Ceej devotes a half-dozen paragraphs to baseball, I think Geez, not that again and start scrolling.

I suppose the loyal readership do much the same thing whenever I blather about computers....

http://moyabrennan.com/

(I meant this as a joke, but it's true: the Latest News section says:

Many of you will be asking about my name change from Máire to Moya. The answer is simple. Years of misspelling and mispronunciation have led me to a place where I feel that it will save a lot of confusion to have one concise spelling.

In other words, "Those wretched Americans couldn't pronounce my name correctly." I suppose I must include myself in that group - despite having been a Clannad fan for seventeen years, I never knew 'Máire' was pronounced 'Moya'.)

Jake & raked some leaves this morning. The trees in the back yard are nowhere near full-grown, but they still manage to shed an impressive quantity of leaves every autumn.

So I raked, and Jake played in the pile (which, needless to say, is no longer a pile). Then it started raining, and we had to go inside.

We have a half-dozen yard waste bags that were left out in the rain too long. They look normal, but will shred like kleenex if moved. We need to re-bag those - plus another five or six bags of leaves and other debris - and get it all out to the curb before free pickup ends.

Tomorrow's weather is supposed to improve. Perhaps we'll tackle it all then.

Remember, remember the fifth of November.
Gunpowder, Treason and Plot.
I see no reason why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

Messing around on the computer on a Friday night, with Sam in the bassinet beside me. He was sleeping, but a few minutes ago woke up and started fussing.

Turns out he was laying on his rattle. That would wake me up, too.

There's a page on the WRI internal web site that measures...well, never you mind what it measures. Suffice to say that there's a graph of system activity, and that one person can without much difficulty cause a huge spike in the graph, five or six times the average height.

And I thought: by creating four such spikes, equally spaced but of carefully-chosen relative heights, one could produce a fair rendering of an obscene finger gesture. And the whole company would see it.

But the sysadmin people would know the source IP address for all this activity, and know it was the machine in my office. That - and, I suppose, this daybook entry - would give it away.

Heard about this today: FilmLoop:

FilmLoop lets you broadcast, find, and share digital images. Use FilmLoop to build a "Loop" of your personal photos. Share your Loop with friends, family, and anyone else who you think might be interested. Include photos of whatever, from wherever - Internet images, pictures from your phone, or pictures from your camera.

Um. What's the point?

There's already a way to store images on a server, and provide them to clients: it's called a web server. There's already a client program that can fetch images from the server and display them on the client: it's called a web browser. And there's already a way for clients to easily query servers for updated images: it's called an RSS feed. And all of these are available for just about any operating system you can name.

FilmLoop is Windows-only, though a Mac version is coming Real Soon Now. (No unix version, sorry.)

FilmLoop is free, but beware the fine print:

In order to keep FilmLoop free for everyone, our server does insert a paid ad, located in the product, between Loops.

Looks like Guy Kawasaki wasted his money on this startup....

Update: It occurs to me that FilmLoop isn't all that different from Microsoft Max, except that the latter is a bit more generalized (and lacks commercials).

Through the efforts of TiVo, I finally managed to watch Wil Wheaton's guest appearance on CSI. The episode originally aired in March, but I missed it then. (Oops.)

Wil appeared in one very short scene (Crazy Walter gets arrested), one slightly longer scene (Crazy Walter gets interrogated), and one effects shot (Crazy Walter swings a metal pipe). Total screen time: less than three minutes, I'd guess.

The brevity of Wil's part left me puzzled: in his blog (ugh...hideous word, "blog"...) he said he originally auditioned for a different part, but the producers liked him so much they gave him a bigger, meatier role...Crazy Walter.

So what was the original part? Dead Guy On Slab In Morgue? Man Who Gives Phone Message To Series Star? Hazy Background Figure Who Has No Lines?

I've seen two CSI episodes now, and all I can say is: ugh. Bad writing, bad acting, bad set design. (There are lights in police stations. Big, bright ones, that are never turned off.) I can't fathom why this franchise is so popular.

(It used to be when a network had a hit show, the other networks would rush into production cheap knockoffs of the original. These days, networks do it to themselves, which is why there are no fewer than four CSI series on the air.)

In yesterday's mail: a flyer from Verizon Wireless. Please come back, we miss all that money you were paying us!

Their big pitch: two lines, 700 minutes per month, $70 per month.

Let's see now. We've had our Virgin Mobile phones for just about a year, and we've paid almost exactly $250. That's $21 per month, or $49 less than Verizon's plan.

I don't understand these cell phone plans that offer hundreds - sometimes thousands - of minutes per month. My total cell phone usage for the last year is under 200 minutes. What would I do with 2100 minutes in a single month? Become one of those cell-phone zombies, wandering oblivious through the world with a phone stuck to my ear?

No, thank you.

(Though I do miss the tricked-out phones that the expensive companies offer. Virgin Mobile has the Audiovox Snapper, which is spiffy, but I don't feel like paying $150 for it. [No, this is not a hint to Santa.])

Jennifer tells me that she's been sending mail to my work address, but it's not getting through: apparently I had my spam filter settings just a little too strict.

The spam filter scans incoming mail, and assigns a probability to each message. Users can then filter all messages with too high a number. I had my filter set at 50%, and it was throwing away legitimate mail. Oops.

It's higher now (80%), so - one hopes - Jennifer's mail will get through.

Stopped by Mr. Doctor's office this morning, to see if they'd give me a flu shot.

Apparently there's no shortage this year: there was no line, no Do you really need a flu shot? interrogation. I was in & out in five minutes.

Does this mean I won't get sick this winter? Or that I won't get as sick as I usually do?

(The nice ladies asked only for my date of birth, and my last name. They didn't ask for any identification, and I didn't have to sign anything. It made me wonder if they get very much fraud.)

Forgot to mention: the new stove knobs were delivered yesterday. (Or was it Monday?)

They were easy to install: pull off the old knob, remove the weird little metal shim, push on the new knob. They work, too.

For the first time in five and a half years, we have four working burners on the stove. How nice. (I even used one of the formerly idle burners this evening, to make grilled cheese sandwiches for Jake & myself.)

CNN says:

[Utah Judge Walter] Steed legally married his first wife in 1965, according to court documents. The second and third wives were married - or "sealed" as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints refers to it - to him in religious ceremonies in 1975 and 1985.

That's not the creepy part. This is the creepy part:

The three women are biological sisters....

All together, now: euwww.

Polygamy always seems to be a middle-aged man surrounded by a harem of considerably younger women (and/or teenaged girls). Why is that? Why don't the polygamists ever marry women closer to their own age? Isn't marriage supposed to be a partnership of equals?

P.S. I don't want to marry Jennifer's sister. (I don't want to marry her brother, either.)

Reading about Microsoft's Bluetooth keyboards & mice, I wondered if I could get a Bluetooth adapter for the LaserJet IIIp (thirteen years old and going strong).

I must not be the only one with an antique printer: Centronics-to-Bluetooth adapters are everywhere.

(The company that gave its name to the Centronics interface is apparently long gone, merged & acquired so many times that it has lost all independent identity.)

CNN says:

When Madonna takes the stage in Lisbon this week to perform her new single "Hung Up," it will be the culmination of weeks of promotion....

Er...Madonna's still recording?

Looks like the weeks of promotion weren't very successful. (I'm only five years younger than Madonna, so I'm probably outside the target demographic.)

Seems I forgot to renew the patrick-rice.net domain, and it expired today: no web site, no email. So far as the internet was concerned, I ceased to exist.

A quick visit to http://www.pairnic.com/ - and a quick $19 on the credit card - and all is as it should be.

Why did this happen? Because spammers harvest email addresses from the whois database. I grew weary of getting all that spam, so I gave PairNIC an email address that's routed straight to the bit-bucket. No more spam - but no more domain-renewal reminders from PairNIC, either.

Oops. Might have to schedule my own reminder before next year....